Bio

Otso Havanto is a new media artist and a maker creating digital art and audiovisual sculptures. Otso’s digital art leverages data and experimental analog/digital interfaces, and his audiovisual sculptures and instruments explore errors, medium-specific artifacts, found objects, and obsolete technologies. Otso works cross-disciplinary with different tools and methods, focusing on generative processes and automation.

Otso’s work takes form as physical sculptures, audiovisual performances, and digital art, drawing inspiration from engaging and working with the material, object, or technology at hand. He crafts generative and autonomic systems that explore our relationship with time, data, and language.

Besides his artistic practice, Otso designs and crafts commission work using analog and digital tools ranging from UI design, sound design, programming, and electric circuit design to digital fabrication and woodworking. He has worked with artists such as Maija Annikki Savolainen and Vilma Metteri, helping to realize and exhibit interactive and kinetic installations.

Otso also teaches courses and workshops exploring creative and expressive possibilities for different technologies. He teaches the Programming for Visual Artists course at Aalto University and runs Mehackit, an initiative for teaching programming and creative technologies in high schools and upper secondary schools through art and design. With Mehackit, Otso has been teaching and giving workshops in various schools, museums, and cultural centers such as EMMA, Kiasma, Oslo Teknisk Museum, and Stockholm Tekniska Museet.

Additionally, Otso does commercial work as a UX design and web development consultant at Columbia Road.

Otso holds a Master of Arts degree from Aalto University’s Media Lab and has also graduated with a Master of Science in Technology degree from the Information Networks study program at Aalto University.

Contact otso dot havanto at gmail dot com.