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A new public outdoor artwork, Glitch, designed and created by artist Laura Könönen, was unveiled at the Otaniemi campus of Aalto University on 14 October 2025. The sculpture is situated in a prime location on the campus, in the meadow area between the Undergraduate Centre (Otakaari 1) and the Marsio building (Otakaari 2). 

‘The process of creating the sculpture involved inspiring meetings with brain researchers from Aalto University. After one of those meetings, while driving home, two radio stations overlapped on my car radio. The mixture of classical music and gangsta rap sounded surprisingly good! I wanted to create my own disturbance, a glitch, in the middle of the campus landscape’, Könönen explains. 

The artwork invites the viewer to consider the interaction and challenges between the elements surrounding them. Könönen has used black diorite from Varpaisjärvi and spectrolite in the sculpture, whose colours and shapes reflect the surrounding campus architecture. 

‘We live on a rock planet, and Glitch is like a torn rock opening to an unknown space where lonely planets wander. The small and colourful reflections of the piece serve as a reminder of insights and thoughts that can arise through interactions between people from different fields’, Könönen notes.

The artist welcomes everyone to explore the world of Glitch and discover the hidden perspectives it offers. The unique shape and characteristics of Glitch encourage viewers to see art differently through light and the surrounding world.

The Glitch sculpture is part of Sharing Imaginations, the Marsio building’s public art collection.

The vision of public art at Aalto University

In 2017, Aalto University decided to comply with a one per cent art principle in its building projects. The one per cent art principle was first applied to the Radical Nature art concept in Aalto University’s main building, Dipoli.

The vision of public art at Aalto University is to address and raise questions about what it is to be a university, what we do together in society, and what constitutes the public. Public art is site-specific and connects with the diversity of the university and its post-disciplinary communities. Public artworks reflect this diversity through different art forms, materials, techniques and traditions.

More information
Outi Turpeinen, Manager
Aalto University's Art Collection & Campus Experience 
outi.turpeinen@aalto.fi