Cold weather, warm experience: a PhD work-oriented stay at Aalto University (Finland)

By Samantha López (Artsoundscapes project PhD Researcher)

Last year, from September to December 2022, I spent three months at Aalto University (Finland), in what I see as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In the framework of my PhD thesis, funded by the ERC Artsoundscapes project, I undertook a work-oriented period of research related to the implementation of the action. The possibility of taking advantage of the institution’s facilities -especially the Aalto Acoustics Lab- was incredibly rewarding, and the staff I met were extraordinary. I also had the chance to visit some places around, enjoying breathtaking landscapes. An unforgettable adventure I believe every researcher ought to experience at least once in their life.

I landed at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport at 2pm on a Sunday, managing to take a strictly-on-time bus to the city. I was yet not being fully conscious that this was going to be my home for the next 96 days. I remember wearing two unnecessary sweaters under my winter coat and thinking “it was supposed to be cold in here”. After picking up the keys of my apartment, and getting rid of all my luggage, I rapidly decided to go for a walk to see Kallio, my neighborhood. Helsinki is beautiful in the early autumn. The sky is a different color, and the sun is much crispier at this time of the year than in Barcelona. The nice weather and the multicolored autumn trees that greeted me on that first day, however, would not last long.

Figure 1. Top and bottom left: Tokoinranta Park. Bottom right: façade of the Otakaari 5A building (Aalto University). Photographs taken by author.

I went to sleep early that evening in order to get ready for my first day at the Aalto Acoustics Lab. The campus of the Aalto University is located in Espoo, a city nearby Helsinki. Enumerating everything I was surprised by on my way from home to the campus would make this blog entry way too long. I will just highlight this beautiful creature I encountered when I arrived there: robots such as the one on the video below transporting and delivering packages around the campus (see the video!). They are smart enough to dodge you if you are in their way. Yet, they don’t manage the red lights very well; if they have to cross, they just wait in the crosswalk for some human fellow to press the traffic light knob.

Video 1. Package delivery robot in the Aalto University campus. Click on image. Video made by author.

After a couple of false attempts, I managed to find the right building, and there I met Pedro Lladó, a 3rd year PhD student at the Lab, who thus became the first friend I made there. He showed me the offices and the labs, and during my first days he helped me around. He introduced me to the other PhD students and post-docs at the lab, which was extremely useful in order to get to know everybody very quickly.

The facilities of the lab are just amazing. They have three anechoic chambers, a variable acoustics room, a listening test room for subjective audio testing, three independent sound-insulated booths for headphone listening tests, and lots of high-quality measurement equipment. They also have excellent audio reproduction systems, including reference-quality headphones and many Genelec loudspeakers. I was particularly impressed by one of the anechoic rooms, which has a 3D audio system of 45 loudspeakers. The objective of my stay was to conduct a listening test with some of the 3rd order Ambisonics impulse responses we recorded during fieldwork undertaken in the framework of the Artsoundscapes project. That anechoic room was the absolute perfect space to conduct my test.

On my second week there, my lab mates invited me to a festival in the city center, the ÄÄNIAALTO festival of audiovisual performances, new media and sound art (Video 2). This would not be the only time: they often agreed to go out as a team, and they always included me, starting by the traditional Thursday beer at Olarin Panimo, the on-campus brewery. I should highlight that the Finnish craft beer is the best of the kind I have ever tried; you can go to any brewery and know for sure that they will have an excellent craft beer. I tried to always say yes to plans, remembering something that one of my PhD supervisors, Prof. Carles Escera, who once lived in Finland for a few years, told me before I left: “go outside every day. If one day you stay home because you think it’s too cold, you will never go out. It will always be too cold!”

I immediately started working on my experiment, although it was difficult at first. I went to Helsinki with the idea of conducting an experiment with the signals that some of the Artsoundscapes project members had recorded months earlier at the rock art sites of Cuevas de la Araña, in Bicorp (Spain). However, once I was there, we realized that, even if they were good enough for the acoustic analysis, the signals presented problems and had to be processed again for auralization purposes. Luckily enough, several colleagues were willing to help me. Without the assistance of Teo (Teodors Kerimovs), in particular, it would have been impossible to get the signals finally ready. I am extremely grateful for his kind support because, in a new place where you don’t know anyone, it can be harder to ask for help. The working environment in the laboratory was very healthy. My colleagues were really friendly, as well as the senior members of staff: Professor Lokki, who supervised my internship, was always attentive to whether I needed anything and, if he deemed it appropriate, he introduced me to other teammates to solve doubts. Every time I finished a day of work, I felt like I had done a lot, even though I had felt very calm all day. Every Friday, after lunch -which was quite early, if you compare it to the Spanish meal schedule- there was a Coffee Talk. These were talks usually given by members of the research group, where they presented their work, the experiments they had been working on lately, and their latest results. It was a way to keep up with what everyone was doing, and a way to allow the emergence of synergies between projects.

Figure 3: Anechoic chamber of the Aalto Acoustics Lab. Photograph taken by author.

Every day after work, if the lab mates didn’t have any plans, I went to explore the corners of the city. This is probably what I enjoyed the most, and I really miss it now. I loved spending time discovering this and that all by myself. Before going to Helsinki, I had watched a lot of reviews on YouTube about the city, its attractions and cultural life, and the piece of information that caught my attention the most was about the Oodi Central Library. This library has very modern facilities to carry out any type of activity, from soundproofed rooms for rehearsing music, to sewing machines and 3D printers, and all of it for free and for everyone. I always thought that this service would be reserved for the citizens of Helsinki, but not for tourists, but when I visited the library, I found out that anyone had access. The only drawback was that the music rooms, the main object of interest, were always booked. However, I soon discovered that almost all of the city’s public libraries had facilities of this kind, not as fancy, but with nothing to envy. I identified a library near my apartment, the Töölö library, which had a room with a piano, and I made a routine of going there to play a couple of times a week.

Figure 4: Helsinki Central Library Oodi. Original photograph by Alexignat

As expected, the good weather didn’t last. The first thing I noticed was how the days were getting shorter. In mid-September, the schedule still resembled that of Spain, but the sun began to set earlier every day. And by Christmas, when I had little time left before returning home, it was already dark by 3 pm. On the other hand, apparently, by the end of June in Helsinki the sun doesn’t set until two in the morning!; and this is one of the things I would definitively like to see, and for which I will undoubtedly return. In early October clouds started to cover the sky every day. «I hope you said goodbye to the sun because we won’t see it again until next year”, they said. With that cloudy, rainy and windy weather, no wonder why everyone says autumn is the worst time to visit Finland. However, I was lucky because it only rained for a couple of days in early November, although the temperature dropped quickly and it soon started to snow. Apparently it had been a long time since the snow season had started so early. With it, the season of sliding on the street also arrived. Fortunately, I didn’t suffer any falls, and I actually enjoyed the snow, the cold, and the darkness, as they make this city a very magical place. One of my favorite things about winter is the comfort food, and none of the typical Finnish dishes disappointed me. Starting with Glögi (mulled wine), a spiced wine that is served hot and is typically found at fairs and markets during the fall and winter seasons, which warms your hands and body on the coldest days. My favorite dish was Lohikeitto (salmon soup). I liked it so much that I learned how to prepare it, and now we eat it at home at least once a month.

By the end of November, and after solving the problem with the signals, I was finally able to start implementing the experiment with real participants. But don’t think that during the first few weeks I was idle. It took me some time to get used to working with the programmes and plugins employed in the laboratory. I learned how to use the SPARTA plugins, developed in the Aalto Acoustics Lab, and I also learned how to operate the 45-channel audio system in the «Multi-Channel Chamber» or «Wilska room» (Figure 5). All this would not have been possible without the help of Aleksi Öyry, the laboratory technician, who not only gave me a tutorial soon after my arrival, but also constantly helped me with everything I needed. In Barcelona, our experiment participants are usually students from the faculty. They read our announcements on a bulletin board or website and come to do an experiment that can last two or three hours in exchange for some money. But at the Aalto Acoustics Lab, my participants were my own colleagues, the experiments lasted no more than 30 or 40 minutes, and the reward was always a few chocolates. During my stay, I took the opportunity to participate in everyone’s experiments, in order to be more up to date with all the research projects and the types of tests they implemented, which were also very different from what I was used to.

Figure 5: Multi-channel chamber or Wilska room of the Aalto Acoustics Lab. Photograph taken by author.

When I had only one week left before returning home, I went for a weekend trip to Lapland. It was a trip that I organized with some friends as soon as we knew that I would be spending a few months in Finland. We went together to Rovaniemi to visit Santa Claus’s village. I was able to see many snowy forests, and I visited a husky farm where we were taken for a sleigh ride (Figure 6). It was a very special end to this great adventure.

Figure 6. Huskies farm in Rovaniemi. Photograph taken by author.