This amazing DVD entitled The Dawn of DIMI is a tribute to the work of the Finnish artist Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941). Over the last 40 years, he has been experimental filmmaker, scientist, composer, inventor of instruments, artificial intelligence researcher, visionary, and unsung pioneer of electronic art. This multimedia work reflects his interests in the relation between science and nature: robotics, nuclear science, computer’s architecture, biotechnology, nanoscience, ubiquitous computing, alternative physical interfaces, computer games, computer’s memory, life on the space, and prosthetic technologies.

The Dawn of DIMI includes a brilliant documentary, directed by Mike Taanila, about his life, originally released as The Future Is Not what it Used to Be; in this documentary you can find a chronological description of Kurenniemi’s life, ideas, experimental films, and self-documenting manias.



The movie discusses metaphors in which the soul can be compared with software, and therefore cannot die. On the contrary, the body is an ephemeral hardware product of evolution, in the future quantum computers will be able to store our personalities and liberate us of our fragile bodies to be uploaded into a machine, hence his obsession about storing images, sounds, video or text about his life on a daily basis. Turning life into a database, the preparation of such databody, is the first step towards immortality.