Erkki Kurenniemi

Erkki Kurenniemi (born 10 July 1941, Hämeenlinna, Finland — died 1 May 2017) was a Finnish designer, composer, philosopher and artist. He was a pioneer of electronic art in Finland and a former nuclear scientist who composed computer-based music and designed his own instruments founding the University Of Helsinki Electronic Music Studio in 1962. Kurenniemi was a pioneer of industrial automation at Rosenlew in the 1970's, an automation designer in Nokia's cable division in the early 1980's, and head of exhibition planning at the Heureka Science Centre from 1987 until 1999. The exploratory search for new kinds of user interfaces for musical instruments and the semi-automatic generation of music were among Kurenniemi's main goals during his career.