Nordic Analog Network

A Nordic-Baltic network bringing together universities, artist-run spaces, residencies, and private technology companies, increasing the societal impact of creative technologies through sustainable institutional collaboration in the ecosystem of experimental electronic music. Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture, 2024 to 2026.

What is NAN?

Nordic Analog Network (NAN) is a Nordic-Baltic network that brings together different stakeholders, universities, artist-run spaces, residencies, and private technology companies, aiming to increase the societal impact of creative technologies by identifying and developing new sustainable ways of institutional collaboration in the vast ecosystem of experimental electronic music.

The contemporary and experimental music scene is crossing the borders of narrowly defined musical styles and conventional interpretations, moving outside of the established, the obvious, and the genre-defined. NAN brings together multiple perspectives on electronic music-making as it is understood in the 21st century.

We focus on research-based technological innovation in instrument building, bringing to the limelight forgotten music and sound technologies, valuing their particularities, forgotten possibilities, and new potentials, and promoting the sustainable use of technology by giving it a new life on musical scenes.

NAN places a focus on green consumption, preservation, use, and development of cultural heritage, and promotes a circular economy by giving obsolete cultural heritage a new life. All confirmed activities have been realised as described in the original application, with new collaborations formed at local, national, Nordic, Baltic, and international levels.

"Radical innovation in experimental electronic music has consistently originated in independent, open-access organisations rather than in academic institutions, and the two sectors play structurally complementary rather than competitive roles." NAN Research Report, 2025.

Six core partners, twelve extended partners, nine countries, three major productions, more than sixty years of history reconnected, and 3,500 Ulysses Platform members.

What happened

7 to 9 January 2025, Helsinki. Network launch at the University of Helsinki. The inaugural meeting at the UHMRL introduced partners to the DIMI instrument collection by Erkki Kurenniemi. It established the research framework and set the agenda for heritage preservation, academic collaboration, and future joint activities.

13 to 15 March 2025, Riga. Workshop at Erica Synths. A hands-on workshop on modular synthesis, sustainable instrument production, and DIY culture. It brought academic partners, independent organisations, and industry into direct exchange.

Spring 2025, several cities. Nordic festival networking. NAN members attended Dark Music Days (Reykjavík), Time of Music (Viitasaari), and Ultima Festival (Oslo), meeting curators, researchers, and artists and expanding the network's international reach.

31 August 2025, Tallinn. School Reunion at Studio Tallinn 1965. A temporary "school" event combining performances, installations, and discussions. Ensemble EMA presented Elektra; Raul Keller showed Jammer; speakers included Roberto Becerra, Matas Samulionis, and Jesper Pedersen (IS). Moderated by Girts Ozolins and Taavi Kerikmäe.

25 October 2025, Tallinn. Synth DIY workshop. Organised with Liivatera OÜ. It brought together instrument builders, engineers, students, and enthusiasts, with module-building sessions, panel discussions, and a concert of participant-built instruments.

October to November 2025, Huddersfield. hcmf// 2025, EMA performs Sachermann. Ensemble EMA performed the forgotten electroacoustic works of Õie-Olinda Sachermann at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, using the technology of the 1950s and 1960s on one of Europe's most prestigious contemporary music stages.

20 to 24 March 2026, Riga. Concluding network meeting. The final gathering evaluated outcomes, presented research results, formulated policy recommendations, and developed future cooperation models. The project was formally completed on 25 March 2026.

Who makes NAN

Core partners

ECCM, Estonia. Network coordinator and lead applicant. Manages Studio Tallinn 1965, an open experimental analog studio combining professional tape recorders, classical oscillators, filters, and echo machines with modern equipment. Taavi Kerikmäe, Maria Hansar, eccm.ee.

EES and Ensemble EMA, Estonia. Workshop organiser and heritage documentation. Ensemble EMA, founded in 2017, five musicians with diverse backgrounds, co-leads the Ulysses Journeys for Live Electronics Composing workshop series. Tarmo Johannes.

KMH Stockholm, Sweden. Academic methodology and research. Founded in 1771; holds Sweden's national mandate for electroacoustic composition. KMH students regularly work at EMS, bridging academia and independent infrastructure. Henrik Frisk, kmh.se.

UHMRL Helsinki, Finland. Academic research, history and methodology. Founded in 1962 by Erkki Kurenniemi; holds the world's only working collection of original DIMI instruments, including the DIMI-6000, DIMI-A, and Dimix. Mikko Ojanen, helsinki.fi.

Erica Synths, Latvia. Industry partner and residency studio. An international manufacturer of modular synthesisers; provides a fully equipped residency studio in Riga and a circular economy instrument-sharing platform. Girts Ozolins, ericasynths.lv.

Inkonst and Intonal, Sweden. Residency and festival platform. Home of the Intonal Festival (Malmö), one of the Nordic region's leading avant-garde sound art platforms. A founding member of the NERDS network. Ulf Erikson, inkonst.com.

Extended partners

Iceland University of the Arts, Iceland. Iceland connection and festival outreach, including through Dark Music Days, Reykjavík. Jesper Pedersen, lhi.is.

LMTA Vilnius, Lithuania. Live electronics composition and pedagogy. Roberto Becerra's LIVE SPACE curriculum contributed directly to NAN workshops at Studio Tallinn 1965. Matas Samulionis, Roberto Becerra, lmta.lt.

Aalto University, Finland. Research and engineering. Connects Jari Suominen's Sound in New Media programme to NAN's instrument-building work and the Erica Synths collaboration. Antti Ikonen, aalto.fi.

MH Lübeck, Germany. Electroacoustic composition and instrument development. Kris Kuldkepp bridges Baltic artistic heritage and German academic infrastructure. Kris Kuldkepp, mh-luebeck.de.

Notam Oslo, Norway. Open studio infrastructure and Nordic-Baltic networks. Founded in 1993; studio access around the clock for hundreds of artists annually. notam.no.

JVLMA Riga, Latvia. Academic connection in Riga. Latvia's principal music higher education institution; also a Ulysses Platform member. Anna Fisere, jvlma.lv.

Üle Heli Festival, Estonia. Estonian experimental platform and NERDS connection. A member of ECCM and NERDS since 2025. Collaborates with Skaņu Mežs through joint Tallinn Music Week showcases. Aivar Tõnso, ule-heli.ee.

Skaņu Mežs, Latvia. Baltic experimental platform and NERDS connection. Riga's premier festival for adventurous music since 2003; described by The Wire as the most important experimental music festival in the Baltic states. skanumezs.lv.

What NAN built

Infrastructure: Studio Tallinn 1965, a permanent platform. Established not as a one-off project but as a reusable platform for Estonian experimental music internationally, modelled on EMS Stockholm and Notam Oslo, designed to accumulate identity and critical mass over decades.

Production: the Elektra co-production. A live-electronic staging of Strauss's Elektra developed with ECCM, Erica Synths, the UHMRL DIMI Studio, the Estonian National Opera, and hcmf//. It uses Kurenniemi's original instruments and replicas alongside ensemble EMA's live electronics practice.

Heritage: DIMI instrument replication. Working replicas of Kurenniemi's DIMI instruments built by Jari Suominen for placement at EMS Stockholm and Studio Tallinn 1965. A physical distribution of embodied instrument knowledge that ensures the tradition survives institutional contraction.

Networks: Ulysses Platform membership. ECCM's membership in the IRCAM-coordinated Ulysses Platform since 2025 connects NAN's work to 3,500 members across European academies, ensembles, and festivals, the highest tier of institutional legitimacy in European contemporary music.

Performance: EMA at hcmf// 2025. Ensemble EMA performed the forgotten electroacoustic works of Õie-Olinda Sachermann using the technology of the 1950s and 1960s at the UK's largest festival of new and experimental music, a direct result of NAN's work.

Education: new generations of the avant-garde. A Niilo Helander Foundation-funded project bringing early-career composers and instrument builders into direct contact with UHMRL's collections. The triangle of UHMRL, Aalto and Erica Synths transmits knowledge across institutional boundaries.

Dissemination

Ulysses and IRCAM, European institutional. 3,500 members across European academies, summer schools, ensembles, and festivals. NAN's ideas travel through several institutional vectors at once: via JVLMA in Riga, Ultima Oslo through Notam, and Time of Music (Viitasaari).

hcmf// Huddersfield, international visibility. A three-year partnership between ECCM and hcmf//, 2025 to 2027. The UK's largest festival of new and experimental music provides major international public visibility and critical prestige. Its Artistic Director travelled to Tallinn to research the Estonian scene NAN helped build.

NERDS network, the Nordic-Baltic circuit. Two parallel NAN channels: Inkonst (a founding NERDS member) and Üle Heli (joined 2025). Together with Skaņu Mežs, they form the horizontal curatorial circuit through which experimental music reaches live audiences. NERDS doubled to 14 members in 2025 with a showcase at Berlin's CTM festival.

Research and policy recommendations

NAN produced a full research report examining the structural relationship between independent organisations and academic institutions in Nordic-Baltic experimental music. A working paper has been completed; a peer-reviewed cultural policy journal submission is in preparation.

For cultural ministries and state agencies

1. Establish permanent structural funding for independent music technology centres. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania each lack a permanently funded national centre for electronic music and sound art equivalent to EMS or Notam. Cultural funding frameworks should include a dedicated structural funding line for independent organisations operating at the intersection of technology, sound art, and experimental music: multi-year, core-funded rather than project-based, designed to support open-access studio infrastructure, artist residencies, and knowledge exchange. The Nordic model demonstrates that state funding at arm's length from government, through arts councils or performing arts agencies, is the most effective structural arrangement.

2. Commission systematic documentation of Baltic electronic music history. The histories of electronic music in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania under Soviet conditions have not yet been systematically documented and made available as a living resource for contemporary practitioners. Ministries should commission and fund this documentation work through partnerships between academic institutions and independent organisations. The University of Helsinki's work on Kurenniemi is the model: patient, rigorous scholarship that turns obscure inventors into recoverable traditions.

For Nordic-Baltic funding bodies

3. Develop a structural funding instrument for cross-border independent music organisations. A new funding instrument, perhaps developed jointly by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Baltic ministerial framework, should support permanent cross-border infrastructure: shared studio access, reciprocal residency rights, pooled equipment maintenance, and sustained organisational capacity rather than isolated projects. This is the missing layer between the national structural funding that Nordic institutions like EMS enjoy and the project-by-project existence of Baltic equivalents.

4. Weight structural network impact heavily in evaluation criteria. Short-term network funding of the kind that supported NAN's initial phase has an outsized return on investment in a field where the primary obstacle is not talent or ambition but connectivity and coordination. The connections forged through NAN, between UHMRL and Erica Synths, between ECCM and KMH, between ensemble EMA and hcmf//, would not have existed without dedicated network funding. Structural impact of this kind should be weighted heavily in evaluation criteria.

For academic music institutions

5. Formalise partnerships with independent organisations. Baltic music academies should develop formal partnership frameworks with independent organisations: agreements that give independent organisations access to academic resources in exchange for access to studio infrastructure, practitioner knowledge, and experimental programming space. The NAN model, in which KMH and UHMRL contribute methodological frameworks while Erica Synths and ECCM provide hands-on infrastructure, is a template for this kind of structured interdependence.

6. Invest in documentation and transmission of regional electronic music heritage. The University of Helsinki's work on Kurenniemi's instruments demonstrates the value of academically rigorous attention to regional history. Baltic music academies should develop equivalent research programmes focused on their own histories: the Soviet-era studios, the improvised instruments, the composers and engineers who worked in the margins of official cultural structures, and the exiled avant-garde whose contributions have been absorbed into Swedish and Canadian cultural history.

7. Accept the academy's role as transmitter, not initiator, of experimental innovation. The most generative contribution academic music institutions can make to experimental electronic music is to serve as its memory, methodological conscience, and bridge to wider publics and policy structures, not to claim leadership of innovation. This requires an honest internal reckoning with the structural limits of academisation, and active support for the independent organisations that perform the laboratory function the academy cannot.

For network practitioners

8. Build toward permanence: from network to institution. NAN's long-term ambition should be to generate the conditions for something more permanent: a shared Nordic-Baltic resource centre for experimental electronic music that outlasts any single project cycle, whether a jointly operated studio space, a shared residency programme, a distributed instrument library, or a research consortium. The specific form matters less than the commitment to permanence as a strategic goal, and to the funding advocacy required to achieve it.

Supported by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture. Contact: info@eccm.ee.