Forces of Light Festival in Helsinki

Our fine art students are an active part of the fifteenth Forces of Light Festival in Helsinki November 11-15.

"Climate change and it’s prevention have created a new challenge for a light event to exist. What is the role and responsibility of a light event in the energy consumption? Is the new technology the answer for saving energy in the future? Can an artist have an influence and participate on the discussion about climate change with his/her work?"

Jukka Silokunnas is one of the School of Art and Media students present at the festival with his installation "Youth Stoppers". You can find "Youth stoppers" at Telekkakatu 8, and read more about the installation in English in Jukka Silokunnas' blog.

Jukka Silokunnas blog
Forces of Light Festival

Pictured: Youth stoppers

DEMOLA is The Place for Game Design Workshop

TAMK´s two day Game Design Workshop was organized for the second time in DEMOLA. This time we were able to experience how it works to have a virtual lecturer as one participant of the workshop.

This was not the original plan. It was the second best solution after our lecturer Gareth Noyce (Ruffian Games, UK) called us from Aberdeen airport and told that he cannot fly to Tampere because his passport has expired.

We were really lucky because Demola is now equipped perfectly for virtual (e.g. Skype) meetings. We were also very lucky having DEMOLA activists Teemu Haila (in picture) and Antti Salomaa as teachers and organizers who knew how to use the equipments for shaping virtual lecturing experiences. E.g. when Gareth was listening the discussions among the students we saw him from "small" Mac screen, which Antti propelled according the interaction going. And when he was lecturing we saw him from big screen.

In the two hours rapid game design workshop the students created an awesome board game called "Status Update". It was tested and rated high among the students and the teachers in the Game Evening after the workshop. We believe that nobody who is working at Demola can avoid playing it in the future:)

Leena Mäkelä

Ruffian Games
Demola

Pictured: Teemu and Gareth

The Electrician took Sichuan and Rovaniemi!

The Electrician won the Gold Panda Special Jury Award at the 10th Sichuan International TV-festival in Chendu, China last weekend. Simultaniously the film became winner of the Vimma09 (Fury09) competition at the Arctic Fury Film Festival in Rovaniemi, Lapland. The Electrician was also winner of the Favourite of the Audience award in Rovaniemi.

The Electrician is directed by Miina Alajärvi and produced in cooperation between Tampere UAS, Finland and Salford University, UK.

The film already won three awards in St. Petersburg, Russia, and has been invited to film festivals in Italy, Germany, Austria and Finland this month.

Read more about the Electrician

Combining interaction design with agile methods

TAMK’s interaction design student Vappu Leinonen has studied in her final thesis “Interaction Designer in Agile World” how the shift from traditional waterfall process models towards agile methods in software development affects the work of interaction designers.

“It has been a widely known fact for a long time that the waterfall model does not work in ever changing situations, which are the essence of software development. Developers created agile methods as an answer and they have proven that it works. But when they created agile methods, they forgot one thing: the design.”, Leinonen writes.

“Interaction design is an important part of creating software, but agile does not even suggest anything related to that in the process descriptions.” According to Leinonen the combination of agile and interaction design is not so simple as it may sound to be. “Both have to give up on some principles in order to gain something more: a better product for the end user.”

Leinonen did a case study about the process model, which is used by one project in Nokia Devices R&D. “The survey results show that while interaction designers don’t have big issues with the process model, they are too busy to fully concentrate on the design work and they feel that they are not yet part of the scrum teams. While agile methods might seem threatening from interaction designer’s point of view, they have proved to work much better than waterfall process model. With agile methods it is possible that the final product will actually be what interaction designer intended it to be.”

Workshop at the Academy of Popculture, Leeuwarden, Holland

The lecturers and the students of our partner Academy of Popculture in northern Netherlands have given already two workshops at our school.
Now it was finally time for the return visit. We are happy to present a photo gallery and below it the report, both made by Veera Niemi.

Wall art at Academie voor Popcultuur

Planning the installation

Installation "Brick by Brick"

Installation "Brick by Brick"

Jussi Autio, Satu Leskinen, Joonas Tikkanen, Veera Niemi and Jori Kemppi, part of the installation

We arrived in Leeuwarden Monday last week after travelling roughly 6 hours. We took lodgings at our hosts and got acquainted with the city.

On Tuesday our workshop started with brief introductions although most of us had already met in Tampere in May during the VJ-workshop arranged in connection to our Tampere Art Factory Festival.

We started reflecting the similarities and differences between Holland and Finland, searched exemplary materials on the Internet. Finally - inspired by our city tour the previous night - we ended up with the installation "Brick by Brick".

In the installation we would use materials filmed and recorded in advance in Finland and new stuff from Leeuwarden, additionally photos and music from both countries.

Our group members found easily the different roles: Jori mixed a mash up of the music, I made sound scapes, Jussi illuminated, Joonas and Satu joined their forces with Academy of Popculture students Richard, Gerrald and Willemijn for projections.

The installation was presented on Saturday on the Academy of Popculture open doors day. We got good feedback and lots of brilliant ideas for the future.

The participants of the workshop were School of Art and Media theatre and event audio-visual design students Satu Leskinen, Jussi Autio, Joonas Tikkanen and Jori Kemppi and sound design student Veera Niemi, Academy of Popculture students Richard Toepoel, Gerrald van der Kolk, Willemijn van Arnhem, Bea Grootscholten and Jamila Faber.

With tired but happy regards

Veera Niemi (Sound Design 06)

International New Media Art Week in Liepaja

University of Liepaja in Latvia, by the Baltic Sea, is one of TAMK's partner universities. Last week they had the opening of the New Media Art study and research environment and International New Media Art Week with workshops, presentations and lectures.

From TAMK to Liepaja travelled two lecturers, Björn Aho from Fine Arts and Sohvi Sirkesalo from Media, to attend the event. On Thursday, 6.11. in the programme were presentations and discussions about New Media and Art education, including, among others SMARTLab From London, Academy of Popculture and Utrecht School of Media and Technology from the Netherlands and Estonian Academy of Arts from Tallinn. Björn Aho gave a presentation about Media Art education at TAMK.

On Friday 7.11. there was a series of open lectures about different topics around new media and research; Rob van Kranenburg talked about "The Internet of Things", Chris Hales presented world's first interactive movie, Kinoautomat, and Carole Gray's theme was reflective practice on research of creative disciplines. Sohvi Sirkesalo's presentation was about social media tools as part of a content creation process.

Presentations raised plenty of talking and also ideas for new international projects and new ways for cooperation. Evening programme was also inspiring with an unique experience of Latvian wet sauna - and on the last evening there were two Finnish rock bands in the club next to our hotel!

Photo: Rob van Kranenburg introducing "the rebel road" through the jungle of RFID tags.

New Media Art at University of Liepaja

Portfolio Review by Visitors From St.-Petersburg

A group from St.-Petersburg Informational Center FotoDepartament visited our Fine Art Programme today, to meet our students and review their portfolios.

FotoDepartament is prepering an exhibition for young Nordic photography- and media-artists. The group has already visited the other Nordic countries.

At TAMK the project is prepared in cooperation with the curator of the Nykyaika Photographic Centre Ulrich Haas Pursiainen as a part of the TAF on Tour internationalisation project.

Photo and story: Antti Haapio


Informational Center FotoDepartament