CulturePeople, stories and technology

In October 1998 a two-week open-air production took place in the ruins of the Cistercian monastery at Padise. The idea grew out of a long-standing plan by Aivar Tõnso and me to stage a larger open-air event on one of Estonia’s hill forts. It was directed by Jaan J Leppik and designed by Juho Kalberg. The monks were played by actors of the Tammsaare Theatre and acting students of the Pedagogical Institute, and in the courtyard members of the fan club of the Estonian Open Air Museum played the ancient Estonians.

On weekdays school groups came, at weekends visitors with single tickets, and in the evenings there were concerts. As a finale, Vox Clamantis sang on Halloween evening, 31 October. We organised it together with the people of the advertising agency C4, led by Raavo Kullama and Tambet Mumma. ETV made a two-part programme about the production, which was broadcast on 10 and 16 November 1998.

ERR archive: part 1 (10.11.1998) · part 2 (16.11.1998)

In Käsmu I was there at the birth of Viru Folk and Kaunid Kontserdid (“Beautiful Concerts”). The founder and chief organiser of Viru Folk is Peep Veedla; the festival was first held in 2008. I was on the festival team in its early years. The festival’s live broadcasts on the internet grew into IT Rotid, which we founded in 2010.

virufolk.ee · IT Rotid on the information technology page

For several years I ran folk evenings at Urmas Varm’s rock club Woodstock in Tallinn. Closer to my heart was the blues club Risttee (“Crossroads”) that operated there.

Klubi Woodstock (Facebook)

The Starlight Cabaret shows at Hotel Viru were made by the Estonian Dance Agency. My friend, the sound engineer Alo Jaanivald, took me there. Together we made a stage sound, lighting and video solution for the shows that was modern for its time and that Alo had picked up in America.

Starlight Cabaret (Visit Estonia)

MTÜ Teadusteave, which I founded together with Tiit Kändler, organised teadus.ee summer schools at the Käsmu Maritime Museum from 2005. The themes of the first years were water, fire, air and earth, with a hundred or more participants. In 2009 the summer school was held on the last weekend of August on the theme “Ether: making the invisible visible”. The speakers included scientists, the composer Urmas Sisask and the head of the museum Aarne Vaik, and the programme also included the Night of Ancient Lights.

Looduskalender 18.06.2009: summer school 2009 · MTÜ Teadusteave on the work page

With Kaido Einama we first hiked around Estonia; later I occasionally wrote stories for his magazine Arvutimaailm (“Computer World”). At one time I also wrote for the environmental portal Roheline Värav (“Green Gate”), which was run by Juhani Püttsepp and funded by dentists.

Arvutimaailm

KV Stuudio is Villu Veski’s studio, which organises concerts, produces digital media and represents artists. I am an adviser there.

kvstuudio.ee · Work and ventures

Paper books hold a lot of knowledge that cannot be worked with on a computer. That is why I am building my own book scanner in the printer room. The book is laid open on a 110° glass ridge and two old phones photograph it from below at the same time. I trigger the shots with a foot pedal, and a laptop shows in real time whether the page lies properly on the glass. It is based on the Dutchman Fred Jan Kraan’s “Bookscanner mk2”.

The result is not a PDF but a body of text: every page and chapter is a separate text file, the metadata are in a table and every page refers to the original image. This makes it possible to search the text, cite it and work through it with artificial intelligence tools. The magazine Arvutustehnika ja Andmetöötlus has already been processed on the same principle.

Home-made book scanner — paper books into the computer (PDF, in Estonian) · Arvutustehnika ja Andmetöötlus on the information technology page

Music and film are important to me. I keep my collection on an archive server; a selection intended for public sharing is in a Google Drive folder. Listening, viewing and downloading at your own risk.

From Tiit’s music and film collection

In our family a camera has always been at hand. My sister Leida Lepik once had the old black-and-white negatives and colour slides digitised. They were on Flickr until I closed it, because I am building a new solution for the photo archive. In 2026 the contents of the slide cabinet from our home in Palmse, several thousand slides, are being digitised at Fotoluks.

Photo albums on the Roots page

My mailing list is in Estonian; the posts are listed here in their original language.

Tiit Lepik’s mailing list archive