Creative Director
Antti Pirskanen’s programming skills got an early boost in his childhood, when, in 1980, one of the first personal computers, Apple II, was introduced to his home. Art studies and an interest in producing images and sounds appealed to him and his professional career started with architecture visualizations and video productions at the Helsinki University of Technology. During his work there, his repertoire expanded to computer animation and he learned the basics of dramaturgy with moving images. When multimedia production industry finally developed alongside CD-ROM drives and the increasing capacity of computer, he enthusiastically started to combine different media and in 1989 co-founded Loop Finland, a pioneering audiovisual production company.
One of the first clients was Science Center Heureka, which commissioned several groundbreaking exhibits. The exhibitions later toured the world and, according to the latest 2014 statistics, were seen by over 25 million visitors. Reliability, adhering to schedule, and ease of maintenance are absolute requirements for programs in exhibition use. These values remain a central part of Nodium’s philosophy.
Not all projects were published as dedicated one-off exhibits. Examples of projects prepared for distribution on physical media include Epeli, a type of life simulator and Docrom, an educational program about documentary photography. After such large scale, successful projects, University of Art and Design Helsinki, University of Oulu, Academy of Fine Arts and Tampere Polytechnic School of Art and Media asked Mr. Pirskanen to give lectures and workshops on new media production techniques.
After the mid-90s, the Internet became an increasingly important medium for Mr. Pirskanen’s work. Helsinki City Theatre became interested in his skills after he participated in an experimental three projector video stage design, and he later produced a web site for them. The client base started to grow and soon technical production assignments were received from some of the most prominent companies such as Sony, IBM and MTV3.
A colossal project in the beginning of 21st century was the production of the multimedia exhibits for G.A. Serlachius museum. Mr. Pirskanen acted as a technical producer for all of the multimedia exhibits, which are an integral part of this famous and acclaimed museum.