Guest post: Eight Multimedia Career Opportunities

Written by Bob Hartzell

Advertising Graphics: A remarkable amount of advertising still takes the form of a printed page.  True those pages are often published on the internet, but the layout, design and theme requirements are similar to those required by a print ad.  Increasingly online ads are incorporating applets or video, so this profession crosses into multimedia on a regular basis.

Website Design: This specialty requires the study of and experience with web formatting and function.  While graphic design may dictate the look of each page, the manner in which those pages fit together is the key to the site’s success.  Many web designers have favored software programs that dictate site functionality.

Business Graphics: Corporations have moved beyond television and print ad campaigns to maintain their corporate identification.  Continuity is the key to corporate media presence and a multimedia-trained professional can contribute both strategic and artistic elements to the development process.  Products may include multiple websites, logos, annual reports, collateral print material and public presentations that are slide show or multimedia-driven.

Marketing Graphics is another area that requires work with multiple platforms.  Marketing campaigns may incorporate an advertising effort that incorporates a theme across both broadcast and viral internet media.  Utilization of social networks is the latest, greatest marketing tool that every professional in the field is trying to figure out how to harness. 

Broadcast Media Support For as long as we continue to have local television stations there will be an increasing need for multimedia specialists in the newsroom and for any other local programming.  Consider the amount of graphic support every weather report requires; multiply that by three or four daily broadcasts and branch out from there. 

Architectural CAD: Architects and engineers use 3D computer programs to develop elaborate presentations for proposed projects.  A multimedia expert can interject 2D images with animated presentations for structures, tables for engineering statistics, and use a variety of presentation techniques to help explain technical details to non-technical clients.

Game Design: This is a highly competitive field that has lost much of its growth momentum.  However the field has grown more complex as the games have gained complexity and bandwidth; multimedia professionals in the field today combine animation skills with computer programs written for the purpose of game authorship.  It’s a cooperative effort requiring code writers, visual experts, writers, a producer, and someone with mastery of the multimedia skills to pull it together.  Audio plays an important role in this field.

Product Design This field is similar to CAD work in other fields, in that it involves 3D modeling.  However product design presentations also involve functionality of the item being portrayed; it’s not a building or a bridge.  Product design also may include graphs that illustrate such things as stress load, function speed, and other engineering statistics.  Working in product design presentation may require some fairly sophisticated mathematics background – again, to make technical facts clear to executives who are not technically oriented.

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Article Source:
Bob Hartzell is a freelance writer for Get Degrees. They offer career information and online degrees in various fields including art, business, technology and more.

We Go DobleClick, Vic, Barcelona!

This is the call:

Welcome to the first edition of the inter-university open days DobleClick, hosted in the city of Vic (Barcelona, Spain), from the 16th to the 18th of March 2010. This event stems from the collaboration between students and professors.

We held an international competition of short films to make visible the creativity of European universities. For the first edition, ClickFilmFest calls for the participation of  TAMK and UVic students. During two days, the selected videos will be shown in different venues, and that 's what we call ClickFilmFest: a competition with the peculiarity of awarding any kind of audiovisual works: music videos, commercials, reports, short films... and offers roundtables where students with audiovisual flair have a space to share work experiences and communicate.

For three days we will stay out of the classrooms to exchange the roles between students and professors, what we called ClickShows: workshops created and given by students who will show practically their knowledges, methodologies, and tricks acquired on their own, on topics of interest
for media studies.

This is the reaction:

TAMK School of Art and Media sends Lecturer Pertti Näränen, two films and six students to the event:

Family Portrait is represented by Nalle Mielonen (Script, Photography), Minna Korhonen (Director) and Nina Forsman (Editing)

Whistle While You Work is represented by Jussi Sandhu (Director, script), Ville Hakonen (Editing, music) and Milla Kaski (Assistant Director)


DOUBLECLICK HOME
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Nordic Film Schools Met in Gothenburg

Gunilla Burstedt, Director of the School of Film Directing of Gothenburg University and Poul Nesgaard, Principal of the
National Film School of Denmark wishes the students welcome

A group of lecturers and students from TAMK School of Art and Media participated in the annual Nordic Film School meeting hosted by the film school at Gothenburg university. We post two reports from the event:

Lecturer Anne-Marie Söhrman Fermelin and Aino Suni, TAMK, networking

Lecturer Arto Koskinen:
The teachers from all the central film and TV schools around the Nordic countries gathered to present their own teaching methods and sources for educational inspiration in the premises of the School of Film Directing at University of Gothenburg. Representing TAMK was yours truly. I presented a method I'd developed myself, which allows the student to get in touch with their own creativity and ”their own voice” in their writing. This method got a lot of positive feedback because a lot of the schools in the same field face the same problem – students examine the emotional world of their stories from too far, while they should first get in touch with their own world. It is impossible to make unique works without first finding your own uniqueness.

The next day the students from the same schools presented their works and exercises. Ready pieces were forbidden at this presentation, because the idea was to let students have the opportunity to see  exercises and hear how they were made. The director of the Danish film school Poul Neesgard shared his opinion that Finnish schools possess certain originality and some elusive element that other Nordic countries don't seem to have. On the third day there was the traditional interschool NORDICIL meeting, where future meetings, teacher exchanges and common seminars were planned and agreed upon.

Grande restaurant opening coctails

Niina Virtanen, a student of Media Production (in her movie blog in Finnish):
So Aino (Suni) and Niina (Virtanen) headed to Gothenburg on last week's Tuesday to a meeting of Nordic film schools. With us were also three other projects and representatives from our school: Miro Laiho with his film ”Herääminen” (The Awakening), Martta Tuomaala with her film ”Aatamin naiset (Adam's women) and Mikko Keskiivari with his film ”I am Youtube”.

On Wednesday we were joined by Kerttu Hakkarainen, the camera operator for our film, and another student from our school, Hannu Koivuranta. They had already spent several days in Gothenburg in master class tutelage of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

There was some time to see Gothenburg

At the university each of the six schools got their own viewing room, where they could show their own films. During the day we visited the other schools' rooms and acquainted ourselves with the productions of our colleagues. The films were seen by a quite nice number of people, though regrettably not many of them were brave enough to comment or ask about the films. Based on their reactions though, the reception was positive.
Read the full report by Nina (in Finnish)

Utrecht School of the Arts our New Partner

We have had a lot of interaction with the Utrecht School of Arts, but no formal agreement of staff and student exchange before. But soon we will have.

On the last day of their our to Netherlands Leena Mäkelä and Cai Melakoski visited the Faculty of Art, Media and Technology in Hilversum and got familiar with the departments of media, game design and music technology.

Studies are project based liked in our school. They have a dedicated project office to support the projects, and they invest more time and energy in the research phase than we do. We consider loaning some ideas and practices from them.

Head of Media Programme John Hennequin, lecturers René Lansink, Tjepke Zijlstra and Melanie Kandelaars,  with her back to the camera Leena Mäkelä

A very nive feature was that all BA and MA students prepared their final exam projects on the top floor in one of the buildings. This enables multidisciplinary projects and new ideas.

We will meet representatives from Hilversum next time at our International Week in May.

 Utrecht School of the Arts Faculty of Art, Media and Technology

Previous stories about the Netherlands tour:
Leeuwarden
Hague

PRETTY IN POP 24.2.2010

Free entry!

That’s right. Pretty in Pop is the best get-together place in Tampere at the moment! People are falling in love! In Pretty in Pop you can hear music from different sources, some of it you may already know, or not.

Whatever: You know it or not, everything you hear in the night of Pretty in Pop will be beautiful! Though, you will hear some graceless songs as well, but hey, there must be a contrast in everything. Smashing songs founded from tv-series, movies, c-cassettes, from internet, CD’s from regular record shops and vinyl. Old, new and everything between. Main thing is that is good. Song wishes are accepted. Doors are open at 23:00. Ferris, let’s keep a day off! BO!

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Pretty in Pop @ DORIS restaurant

Aleksanterinkatu 20
33100 Tampere

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::::TOP POP::::

Prince: P Control - Duran Duran: Notorius - The Informations: Strange Habits - Phoenix: Lisztomania - R.Kelly: Real Talk - Eddie Murphy - Finland men's national ice hockey team! - Timo Jutila - Oh No Ono: Eggs - Whitney Houston - Nirvana: In Bloom - Korput ja lerput

We are Dj Farttu and Dj mikkomikko and we are studying sound design in the School of Art and Media

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Ready Set Go! - Photographic Exhibition in Ikuinen Gallery

Welcome to the opening on Wednesday 24 February at 4pm.

Everyone explores their surroundings in their own way, and every environment creates different feelings in different people. It is said that home is where the heart is, but where exactly is the heart? Some feel at home almost everywhere when others are constantly searching for their own place. Many also seek to change their living environment into their own image, but they may not always realize that the environment could be changing them at the same time.

This photographic exhibition tells  of different environments, of the early steps in the search for a place, and of small moments that have been encountered on the way.

Come and find your place in Ikuinen Galleria on weekdays between 25 February and 12 March from 12pm to 6pm.

Previous Ikuinen Gallery posts

Ikuinen gallery is a contemporary art project space located in the old factory complex Finlayson in central Tampere. The gallery is run by a board of fine art students in Tampere UAS School of Art and Media as part of their study program.

Ikuinen gallery’s main focus is in presenting interesting and high quality student work, whereas work from other art school students and teachers as well as visiting artists are regularly also at show.

Imps vs. Alien

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a battle. More of a case of us admiring the beautifully disgusting or disgustingly beautiful art pieces by H.R.Giger at the Tampere Art Museum. The newly founded IMPD group of designers has been doing a lot of interesting things both online and in school premises lately, however, we hadn't done anything more organized yet. All that changed this Thursday with our visit to the museum, kindly organized by our very own Neil Hopkins.

H.R.Giger, for those of you who don't know him, is a surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer that's mostly known by his work in the movies Alien, Dune and Species.

Actually, the piece one meets first upon entering the exhibition, is a table and chairs designed for the movie Dune. Giger's famous Harkonnen Capo Chair isn't exactly something you'd find in IKEA and it's certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but that doesn't make his designs any less beautiful or ingenious. The chairs looked surprisingly comfy too, but for the sake of preservation and decency, our behinds or any other part of our anatomy weren't allowed anywhere near them.

The tour continued with many paintings, sketches and gadgets Giger made, including a blood-filled hourglass device with the head of a blindfolded man in the center. It wasn't operational at the time, but there was a video displaying how the blood would flow on the head and into the vial on the lower side. The device and head would then be flipped and the same thing would happen all over again.

Also on display was an alien head complete with those lovely sets of teeth. Unfortunately, the materials were pretty much falling apart since they're not made to last and it's been a good deal of time since it was made. Our guide said that we might have been a few of the last people to see it on display in a museum.

The coolest, by far, item of the exhibition, however, was the full-body alien sculpture hanging on the wall opposite the Harkonnen Chair Set. A cat-like figure with a tail that would make a knife wound seem like a needle prick and you'd certainly not want to be at the business end of those nails. This deadly and agile beast is the monster featured in Alien 3.

We got all sorts of nice information and trivia on Giger and his work, thanks to our tour guide who's name, unfortunately, I didn't take note of. She gave the tour in English and made us feel very welcome. In fact, the museum people were kind enough to not only give us free entrance and tour to the Giger exhibition, but also to the other two exhibitions featured in the building.

I would have loved to post some pictures, but they were prohibited, so all I have for you is a snapshot of our Anna and Tero in what looks like an "about to be attacked by an alien from above" position. I recommend H.R.Giger's exhibition to all artists/artists to be out there and you certainly don't want to miss it if you are a movie freak. It will be up until the 5th of April as will the other two exhibitions.

Story and photo by Vasia Tolou, '09 IMP

Tampere Art Museum H.R. Giger exhibition

Training the new IMP tutors

Anna

Autumn is still far away, but tutors, the older students who are responsible for guiding the new students through their first year, are already busy at preparing the way for new students. The tutor selection was done earlier this year, and the three brave people entrusted with tutoring the second ever class of IMPs are Eevi Korhonen, Anna Tikkanen, Nelli Norman. Nelli is already a veteran tutor, thanks to her previous studies at TAMK, but Eevi and Anna still have to face the tutor training gauntlet ahead of them. Because nobody is born a tutor - they must be trained.

Eevi

The tutor training kicked off on Tuesday with a two-hour evening training session. We assembled together with all the other new tutors (there's 138 of us altogether) in one of the lecture halls in Teiskontie campus, where we received information and advice from former tutors and TAMKO (students' union) board members. We also had a little group exercise where we pondered what is tutoring, what makes a good tutor and what sort of activities would we arrange for the new students. I'm glad to say that we did get a couple of new ideas for our autumn programme.

Nelli

During this spring there will be another evening training session and one over-night trip, which has been promised to be the best part of the training. We'll be ready just in time for our first job as tutors in April. We get the first glimpse of the new students as we will be helping and guiding around the lucky Media applicants who have been invited to the entrance exams.

Story: Eevi Korhonen, '09 IMP

IMPs are students of our International Media Programme, the Degree Programme in Media

The Famous TTVO FilmFest Party Invites You Again!

A group of students of TAMK School of Art and Media (TTVO) are once again setting up the TTVO's legendary Filkkaribileet-party for the honour of Tampere Film Festival.

This year the party will take place at Klubi, Tampere, on 11 March. The celebration will start at 9pm and will last till 4am. Besides the students and personnel of TTVO is everyone else the most welcome to attend.

The performers

live performance:
POUTATORVI
turntables:
PLAUGE DJ's
video lounge:
FUTURESHORTS

Let the good times roll!

K-18, Tickets 7€ / students 5€ advance from the festival office.
Special prices after midnight.

Facebook-event
Klubi

Story: Niilo Gustafsson

Special screening "TTVO New Student Films" at Tullikamari, Thu March 11 4pm.
Tampere International Short Film Festival

Also Hague UAS will join our International Week

The entrance to the university is stunning! You can't capture this enourmous plaza in one picture. The main auditorium in the center

The tour in Netherlands by Leena Mäkelä and Cai Melakoski continued yesterday to Hague. The Hague UAS Academy is our newest partner in the Netherlands. The cooperation has been active, several lecturers have visited TAMK School of Art and Media and the first three exchange students from Hague have studied at TAMK this academic year, so now it really was time for us to see the school we have heard so much about.

Hague seems to be a very good destination for our students to make their international change. Hague offers a very inspiring international environment, the modern campus is very functional, and there is a good choice of courses, also a full International Semester run in English.

Jannie Oosting was the perfect host of our visit, we learned all aspects of the Degree Programme in Communication and Media Design. We met lecturers we have met in Tampere and many new lecturers, we saw the students working, followed a workshop and saw finished projects. The conclusion after the day was that we can be very comfortable sending students here.

Communication and Media Design lecturers Patrick Deters and Alex Reuneker will join our International Week and Tampere Art Factory in May, and give a workshop to our and the visiting students during the International Week. You can soon read more about the workshop in the Tampere Art Factory blog.

Exchange Students are accomodated in the tower next to the campus

The Hague University of Applied Sciences
International Week&Tampere Art Factory

Read the first report of the tour to Netherlands

There is always hope..

This spring Tampere UAS Art&Media presents a film called “Crumbs of hope”. The movie is about hope that can make you get through tough times in life. Many of today’s young people are experiencing the effects of recession for the first time in their life as money is tight and there are no guarantees for landing a job after graduation. However,  during these hard times tens of students and volunteers were ready to work hard for this film.

Vera Kiiskinen and Esa Latva-Äijö are starring in this heart warming drama about an entrepreneurial family and their everyday struggles in the midst of the 90’s recession in Finland. The business is going bad and the money is not enough to support the family. Even the Christmas holiday at the grandmother’s living far away is at risk. The mother of the family keeps on believing that things will work out as the father is already losing hope for a better future.

The director, Emmi-Sofia Markkanen, found the inspiration for the script last spring when she thought about her own and her family’s experiences of the 90’s recession. Thus, the film has a great deal of personal experiences from the director:
"The first inspiration for the story was a small incident that happened to my parents last recession, and I expanded the story from there on. I wanted to remind people how important it is to hold on to the small joys of every day life, even when everything seems to be falling apart".

“Crumbs of hope” will be presented at the Tampere Film Festival 11th March 2010

Story: Maiju Virkkunen and Saana Sillanpää
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Toivon murusia / Crumbs of HopeFiction, 12 min
Director: Emmi-Sofia MarkkanenScript: Emmi-Sofia Markkanen, Marie NieminenPhotography: Kerttu HakkarainenSound: Tuukka NikkiläEditing: Terhi MehtolaMusic: Miro LaihoProduction: Saana Sillanpää, Maiju Virkkunen

Crumbs of hope is one of the films that will be showed at the special screening TTVO (=TAMK School of Art and Media) New Student Films at Tullikamari, Thu March 11 4pm.

Tampere International Short Film Festival
TAMK School of  Art and Media New Student Films Show

Preparing our International Week in the Netherlands

Our International Week (May 3-7) and Tampere Art Factory (TAF) opening weekend May 7-9 will host many student and university staff delegations from the Netherlands. TAMK School of Art heads of degree programmes Cai Melakoski and Leena Mäkelä visit our five Dutch partner schools this week. The International week is a central topic of the meetings.

Hanze University of Applied Sciences Academy of Popculture in Leeuwarden sends again Adri Schokker and Albert van der Kooij wirh a group of students. The workshop led by Adri Schokker will present VJ features and probably live performance. The results of the workshop will be shown at TAF evening clubs.

Pawel Pokutycki from Academie Minerva, Groningen, of Hanze UAS will also come to Tampere and give a workshop on "Rethinking Interaction Design" during the International Week.

We will also see guests from the NHL University, Leeuwarden, at the International Week. A piece of information for students concidering an intrnational exchange period: NHL invites more exchange students from our school. NHL has some special attractions including the option to study at the new Gameship Studio featuring games, films effects and animation.
http://www.gameship.nl/

The TAMK School of Art and Media goes Netherlands tour next stops are the Hague University of Applied Sciences and the Utrecht School of Arts.

Story and photo: Leena Mäkelä

Pictured from left Albert van der Kooij and Adri Schokker (Akademie voor Popkultuur), Cai Melakoski (in charge of of Intrnational Week) and Pawel Pokutycki (Akademie Minerva)


Tampere Art Factory (TAF)

Tuunaamo – tune your game

In February 2009 a project started in Demola, where the goal was to produce a demo of online game platform. The game platform was created for a television program Summeris’ (Finnish Broadcasting company YLE) website. The target audience for the program is youth between 9 and 14. The idea was to create a game engine that allows users to customize the content of a game or an animation.

In the project group there were three students from TAMK School of Art and Media and two students from Tampere University Hypermedia Laboratory. The project group got fairly free hands for the project, but the key frame for the project was to create an online game engine where the users could customize the textures of a game or an animation made with Flash. For the group an important aspect was the social side of the game engine. Users can customize a game, and embed it into for example their blog.

The main goal of the game engine “Tuunaamo” was to produce something new, different and interesting for the Summeri website. The target audience itself is very demanding, and kids these days use the internet very fluently. The project group wanted to create something that would be easy and fun to use, but does not underestimate the skills of these users. Another key thing was to make an easy and fast tool for the reporters to produce content for the website.

The finished demo was ready in May 2009. The original idea changed a bit during the project. The demo was a “frog spawn”- game, where the user could customize the texture of the game. The demo is only a start for this project and there are plans to develop this online platform further in the future.

Story: Siru-Emilia Määttä, Media Production '07       



Picture: A plan of the Summeri Tuunaamo
Made by: Niko Kosonen, Antti Tolppanen and Vilja Heinonen

Bring on the Loaf!

TAMK University of Applied Sciences School of Art and Media filmed a 3-minute short film The
Loaf (Limppu) in December 2009. The shootings took place in Tampere in the areas of Pyynikki
and Tammela. The crew staged a commercial space located in the premises of Pyynikki swimming hall to look like a porn store. The shootings lasted for three days.

The Loaf is a humoristic story about the basic needs in life. The characters seek for success,
nutrition and sexual satisfaction in their daily lives.

The shooting crew was rather small, the production was executed in a good atmosphere and
the job was successful. The director Pauli Kopu thinks that it was pleasant to work with a crew,
who put a lot of effort to the work, but didn’t take it too seriously. He points the importance of
a relaxed attitude, when the goal is to achieve and work with something fun.

The film was shot by Outi Tienhaara and produced by Annukka Numminen.
The Loaf is a part of TAMK School of Art and Medias course. The school didn’t how ever take a
too dominant role during the production, but gave us eager and innovative students space to
work with the project. Within the given budget of course.

The Loaf gets its official premier on the 11th of March during the 2010 Tampere Film Festival,
in a showing together with the other new TAMK films.

Iida Höckert
The Loaf Production manager
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Limppu / The Loaf
Fiction, 5 min
Director: Pauli Kopu
Script: Petri Uusitalo
Photography: Outi Tienhaara
Sound: Tuukka Nikkilä, Miro Laiho
Editing: Mikko Kuuttila
Music: Michael Law
Production: Annukka Numminen

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The Loaf is one of the films that will be showed at the special screening TTVO (=TAMK School of Art and Media) New Student Films at Tullikamari, Thu March 11 4pm.

Tampere International Short Film Festival
TAMK School of  Art and Media New Student Films Show
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A New Festival Sees Daylight in Tampere!

Like all the great ideas in Finland, this was also born in sauna in the end of year 2009.  At that time some guys from Bubiklubi came up with the idea of arranging new festival in Tampere during the next summer.  Time passed and the idea changed into a plan, and now if everything goes as planned in the end of July there’s going to be a music festival at the main campus of TAMK. This yet-nameless-festival will be just like all the other festivals – it offers good music performed by Finnish artists, food, drink and other entertainment. The biggest difference is the price – the organizers want to keep the price of the tickets as low as possible, so that the main target group – the students, wouldn’t miss this event because the lack of money. This is possible because Bubiklubi isn’t trying to make profit with this event.

But wait a minute... what is Bubiklubi?

Bubiklubi is one the clubs in TAMK and it has arranged many big studentparties and happenings during schoolyears.  So, arranging events is at least someway familiar to the boys, but arranging something this big isn’t. So they have to be a little bit nuts trying to do something like this. The boys are admitting that the biggest challenge will be finding the money to make this event even possible. However, they aren’t  terrified of this, they only have to work harder.

At this moment, the group is trying to find sponsors and technical staff. The advertising starts in the spring, before the schools end.

We will hear about this event later, it’s guaranteed.

Written by: Sanna Lindroos
Media Production '07

Fancy Photojournalism? Come to TTVO!

Learning the camera techniques

The editorial photographer Sanna Heikintalo from Switzerland has arrived in Tampere for TTVO's (School of Art&Media) journalism course to carry out a photojournalism workshop (1.-16.2) for the students.

The students are to learn the basics of photojournalism and the most essential camera techniques when shooting photos for a magazine or a newspaper. Sanna is also going to give the students advice for creating an ideal editorial photograph. The assignments include creating a series of pictures that consists of a journalistic portrait, a motion photo and an illustration which together build up a story. All the photos are analyzed as a whole at the end of the course.

Photo journalism doesn’t always have to be that serious

Sanna’s aim is that after participating her workshop the students could use their camera more creatively and understood the basics of producing the photo journalistic content.

We asked Sanna to reveal us the secret of a perfect editorial photograph:
“A successful editorial photograph makes an impact to the viewer; it should be simple and profound, actual and timeless as well as conventional and surprising”, Sanna describes.

Students can take the journalism course (10 cr) as a part of free-choice studies.
The course concentrates on the basics of journalism as well as photo- and cultural
journalism. In cultural journalism students are to write articles in TTVO's TAF-magazine.
More on Sanna Heikintalo’s work:
www.sannaheikintalo.com

Story and photos: Johanna Peltola
The author is a Degree Programme in Media student

IMPs Always Come Back - Now 2005 Edition Reunion

Students of the special one term programme for exchange students Interactive Media Programme frequently visit Tampere to go to Sauna, to meet their friends and to go to Sauna, to visit School of Art and Media and to do Sauna and to visit good old pubs and to take a Sauna bath. If the visit/reunion is in winter, swimming in the hole in the ice is of course an integral part of the menu.

Ice skating on Pyhäjärvi

 Last week-end Johannes Widmer, Guy Stratermans, Max Ratzi, Alex Yip, Toni Edo, Albert Bieder met in Tampere and were hosted by their tutor Emilia Howells.

Swimming in the hole in the ice

 The Interactive Media Programme was arranged 2000-2008. In autumn 2009 a new programme, the Degree Programme in Media was started at the School of Art and Media. It is run in English, so there is no more a need for a special programme for exchange students.

Coming from Plevna with friends

The old Interactive Media Programme students were called the IMPs. The students of the new degree programme also decided to be IMPs, because they are International/Interactive Media Programme students.

Lighting Design Students: Architectural Lighting

3rd and 4th year Lighting Design students began their studies on architectural lighting with teacher Antti Hiltunen. The course familiarizes the students with common architectural lighting equipment, work in general in the architectural lighting field and during the course the students will produce a lighting design on paper for a building or space of their choice. The course is conducted by visiting teachers Antti Hiltunen and Arto Heiskanen from the lighting design company Valoa Design but several other visiting teachers will shine light on their fields of expertise as well.

On the first week of February the students visited the Electricity, Telecommunications, Light and Audio Visual 2010 -event in Jyväskylä. On the same excursion Hiltunen also presented the various ways in which the city of Jyväskylä has built their image as a city of light through improving public space lighting and design. The course will also include a trip towards Helsinki to visit the Finnish headquarters of Philips, Hedtec and iGuzzini.

The course was initially started by the Guerrilla Lighting event in fall 2009 by teacher Annukka Larsen.

Story: Essi Santala, student of Lighting Design


See Guerilla Lighting report, pics, video

I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day!

Sauna Open Air festival gathers annually metal music fans all around Finland to Tampere and this year the festival rocks 10th to 12th of June.

This summer Tampere’s Eteläpuisto will be painted in black and white when on Thursday festivals main act, no less than KISS takes over the stage. KISS posted a video greeting to Finnish fans to invite them all to their show in Tampere. 

Story: Anne Heikkonen

The author studies media production and does her practical training at Sauna Open Air. Her duties include marketing and analysis.

Sauna Open Air

Students strewed and smeared walls in public swimming hall!

Pää edellä art exhibition
Pyynikki indoor swimming pool
Vernissage Fri 12.2.2010 15-17
Exhibition open until 17.4.2010 Wed-Fri 13 - 17, also during theatre shows
Free admission

The first year fine art students in Tampere university of applied sciences (TAMK) are taking part on a cultural project held by local theater group called Teatteri Siperia. The project takes place on an empty swimming hall that is waiting to be renovated. Named Pää edellä (Head First) the project includes a theater play, an art exhibition and discussion series about youth.

The art exhibition is a vast combination of different  entries from professional artists, art and media students and teenagers and children from art clubs. TAMK students have been working in the dressing techniques rooms and the shower and sauna department. After their six weeks of intensive work the labyrinth-like space has turned into a unique atmosphere with viewpoints to youth, identity and space.

Amor´s bad hair day, Action men in love, tits thrown on shoulders and plants penetrating the floors and walls. These are just a few examples of things you might see in the exhibition which challenges the visitor to take a step from just viewing to really experiencing the works. Would you like to crawl through a fridge to a secret garden or sit in the sauna with a man from past and rebellious swimsuits?

Story: Mari Ljokkoi

Pää edellä (in Finnish)

Google Street View: School of Art and Media Entrance

View Larger Map

Turn right, and you see our entrance

The Lucky Baker

Mauri has a plan which he thinks would be a shortcut to easier life. Mauri has put his eyes on a rich and proud lady and he wants this lady to be all his – even for a little moment. But everything isn’t going the way Mauri planned it.

The Lucky Baker is a short film made by the media students of the Tampere University of Applied Sciences. Each year the third grade students push movies out of a system called Tuubi. Short films are part of the students studying schedule. Tuubi again is a new arrangement in the Uni. Teachers are watching closely that the movies are made well and with a good taste. It has happened before, that students have made a film, which was some what against the morality principles of the school and couldn’t be published under the schools name.

The movie scripts are written by the students themselves with a little help from some professionals of course. The writer behind the baking story is Jussi Sandhu but also the director Markus Aaltonen participated to writing. There was a lot to work on with the script ´cause it’s very challenging to fit the story in only three minutes. The script to the Lucky Baker was ready in September 2009 after which the preparations for the shooting started. There’s heaps of work before those three minutes can be filmed on tape which is a common surprise for an outside viewer. My cousin can’t believe that there has been as many working months as the film has minutes in it (because we aren’t pros – quite yet).

The Lucky Baker was filmed all around the city of Tampere for instance in the Uni Hospital TAYS and at the practise area for firemen in Vuores. We had to go the practise area ´cause the huge buns had to be burned in the oven without causing any danger. Oh yes, the burning bun you can see on the film was really half a meter size and we had five of those. I guess you all know what we ate at our closing party for the filming and I will not take a bite in the next five years that’s for sure.

The Lucky Baker has premiere officially at the Tampere Film Fest´2010 on the 11th of March. Besides The Lucky Baker there’s also other films to see from the soon become moviemakers. Let’s get the Oscars ready.

Story: Maiju Laitinen
Producer
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Oman onnensa leipuri / The Lucky Baker
Fiction, 2 min
Director: Markus Aaltonen
Script: Jan Sandhu
Photography: Jaakko Sorja
Sound: Jarkko Hietanen
Editing: Osku Tuominen
Music: Jarkko Hietanen
Production: Maiju Laitinen
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The Luck Baker is one of the films that will be showed at the special screening TTVO (=TAMK School of Art and Media) New Student Films at Tullikamari, Thu March 11 4pm.
Tampere International Short Film Festival
TAMK School of  Art and Media New Student Films Show
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Innovator Update

Innovator format development is alive and kicking well. We’ve been busy with funding and co-operation arrangements, but no worries I have a good feeling that during the February we can come out of the closet with the most recent development.

Here is the Innovator tv-show in a nutshell:

INNOVATOR

• A television reality show format development
• Factual entertainment / Family / Interactive content / Multiplatform
• A new TV show designed to make your life better one problem at a time.
• We can prove that Innovations are inspiring, down to earth and make a great entertainment.
• What happens if you put together a group of specialists – marketing manager, designer, engineering student, senior citizen and a house wife – and let them plan the ultimate retail store? Can they solve all the problems of shopping?
• Or what if another type of a group gets to design a revolutionary public transportation system for the future?
• The Innovator show, not only brigs out the common difficulties of our lives, but also creates fresh ideas and solutions on how to improve things – and execute them!
• How about a TV show that encourages people to improve their every day life and inspires to think about innovations as keys to our problems?
• We want to show in practice that great ideas inspire everyone and have a positive influence in our lives. As a team anyone can make a difference.

But before you get all too exited about the tv-show, I must warn you. The tv is just a tv, we are about to do something bigger. We aim to think something new and tv is just too old school… so be prepared for something co-creational on the web.

Innovator has started as a joint project with Demola, PAKO Studio, Pakastin and Prame and currently it’s been developed as the first multiplatform content project of KLOK Creative Agency.

Story: Pauli Kopu

The writer, Pauli Kopu, studies producing and media productization at TAMK Finnish media programme. He is the vice president of Tarina the student organisation of Art and media. Besides he’s studies Pauli is working for KLOK Creative Agency and makes fun about innovations for living.

More stories about Innovator

3D animation in progress at Tamk, Art and media

A group of students from TAMK University of Applied Sciences, the School of Art and Media are working on a 3-4 minute-long 3D animation. This is a pioneer-project, because the crew consists of students from the AV-field and the interactive and visual fields.

The animation is done with Blender, one of the most popular free 3D software. Other crucial stages of the project are for example scriptwriting, character designing and sound designing.

Join the Facebook group and follow the progress

There is also a blog in English, where all the different stages are being explained with posts and pictures. The idea is to write down the whole process from the first idea to marketing so that the blog can be used also in education purposes.

Join our Facebook Group
Read our Blog

Text by Martti Sirkkola and Robert Niva

Art students join Damien Hirst in an exhibition

 Producer Kathleen Blumel, exhibition manager Ulla Jaskari, professor Brigit Richard, Head of the Degree Programme of Fine Art Juha Suonpää, curator Pekka Niskanen and artistic director Inke Arns inspect the exhibition plan

Artist, teacher and curator Pekka Niskanen and the Head of the Degree Programme of Fine Art Juha Suonpää visited Dortmund to negotiate about the InterCool 3.0 exhibition. The exhibition will open in September 2010 and will contain environmental, media and social works of art from world-famous artists as well as from TAMK’s fine art students.

The internationally famous names include, alongside Hirst, Isaac Julien, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky and Banksy. InterCool 3.0 is a collaboration project of images and media spaces, where TAMK’s international partners are the Frankfurt University and Hartware MedienKunstVerein. The exhibition will tour Dortmund, Vienna and Leeds, and will arrive to Finland, to Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, in 2011.

 

The exhibition will be executed in the U-culture centre which will be renovated in the centre of Dortmund

In conjunction with planning the Inter-Cool 3.0 exhibition, an Erasmus collaboration agreement was signed between TAMK and Frankfurt University. This enables international mobility for both students and staff.

Text: Juha Suonpää

Inter-Cool 3.0 is a part of RUHR.2010 European Capital of Culture.
Inter-Cool 3.0
RUHR.2010
Damien Hirst (Wikipedia)

The imps go to the movies!

The 09 Imps have been exploring their film-making capabilities lately, during our video crash course which is part of our larger Multimedia and Animation course this semester. Lead by tutor Mikko Uimonen, the imps are learning some basics in video, sound and lighting equipment handling and techniques for the purpose of filming a scene. We have been divided into four groups and each of them will make a single movie scene using what is being taught to us.


During our first meeting, the agenda was making a synopsis and script for our "movie". The plot had to be fairly simple and easy to film within the school premises. We took a look at a couple of scenes displaying some nice camera work and also talked about some basic concepts of visual narration. After a little chat with our tutor and his approval of our works, we set off to get familiar with the filming equipment during our second session. We set up our videocameras and monitors and learned about the functions and capabilities of our equipment as well as how to efficiently use them depending on what we want to portray and how. Rough versions of our films were shot and fiddled with a bit by Mikko and the next step was to learn about lighting and how it affects a scene both in its practical and artistic nature.

The next agenda is sound and after some more shooting and editing, we're set. The final versions will be viewed by all groups together after they have been finalized.

Global Game Jam - making games in 48 hours

The last weekend of January was an interesting one for game-minded students here, because Tampere was hosting one of the jamming sites for Global Game Jam. GGJ is a worldwide event where game developers, professionals and amateurs alike, get together to make games within 48 hours. During this year's event over 900 games were created by almost 4,000 jammers in 39 countries! From the total 28 jammers in Tampere, almost half were Score members (including one IMP).

Global Game Jam games are made based on an annual theme and constraints. This year's theme was deception, and the constraints for our location were fire, wire and lyre. The theme and one or more of the constraints had to be featured in the game somehow. A new addition this year was achievements, which were optional constraints. These achievements were same for every team around the globe, and they included such things as having no text or numbers in the game or using an unconventional controlling device i.e. something other than keyboard, mouse or console controller.

The event itself went very well, even though this was the first time of Global Game Jam was organized in Finland. Handily, the jamming spot was located right next to our school in Demola, which provided the space, internet connection, some computers and, most importantly, a quiet place to crash after many heavy hours of game jamming. The organizers had made some sponsorship deals with local restaurants, so we also had food a-plenty throughout the weekend. Entertainment was never too far away, whether it was fooling around in front of the webcam or listening to the zombie team growling in the mic in an attempt to test out their game.

There were a couple of tech talks before the actual event started. We had Reko Nokkanen, lead designer from Digital Chocolate, giving us tips on how to get a game made in 48 hours. Then there was Juhani Hujala and Niko Korhonen from our very own Score talking about how to make games with Unity3D. We also had a surprise guest speaker, Arto Koistinen from Dicework Games, talking about his own experiences with fast game prototyping.


The participating IMP, yours truly, was part of team that made a game called Grow Up!, an art game about a seedling that tries to grow all the way from the core to the surface of the earth. I worked as a producer, making sure that everyone knew what they were doing and generally trying to get 100% work efficiency out of them (in a nice way).

Global Game Jam is not about competitions, but about good spirit and making new, innovative games. Nevertheless, there were three different awards handed out in Finland: The Best Game, the Best Silverlight Game and the Jammers' choice. Tampere dominated the competitions by grabbing all of the three prices! Best game went to Play Dead 2: Growling of the Dead, the Best Silverlight to Lyre and the Jammers' Choice toGrow Up!.

All in all, the experience of game jamming was very fun and educational. I had the chance to make something new and innovative, while meeting new people who share the same interests. Global Game Jam is not just about making games, but meeting and networking with new people. Students get the additional benefit of having a possibility of getting something into their portfolio or at least a prototype they can develop further.

So, if you like games and would like to try your hand at making them, see you at Global Game Jam 2011!

Story: Eevi Korhonen, IMP09 student

Mobile Route Service: Iida, the Children’s Church Route

Iida, the children’s church route is mobile route service which helps you to explore with children’s eyes Tampere in the 20th century.  The route starts at Väinö Linna Square and guides you through about ten targets to the end of the route at Amuri Museum of Worker's Housing.

The service has been directed to families and everybody who wants to get knowledge of the history of Tampere. The route is about 1,5 km long and it takes about one hour to walk. It’s not necessary to take your own mobile phone with you, because you can walk the route with a group.

The targets has been chosen according to theme of church and the life of the guide, a little girl named Iida, and her life during last century. Iida worked once at Finlayson cotton mill and studied at the school of Mamselli Hydén (Maiden Hydén.
   
The map is based on a relief city map of Tampere on which the buildings has been drawn. The pictures of the targets have the perspective of children. The service’s illustrations are in comic style. The church route you can walk in any order that you like to choose. The mobile route service will guide you to find the right places and it will tell you on every stop about the target’s history and present state.

The Service is born in a co-operative project with Congregations in Tampere and Citynomadi Oy. It’s free of charge and it can be downloaded on the Internet to our own GPS-mobile phone which has a touch screen.  The route has been executed technically and contents edited by Citynomadi Oy. The route’s content and exterior is executed in a student project with eleven students at Demola in spring 2009. The students studied at Tampere University of Applied Sciences and Tampere University.

Iida has been available for downloading at web page of Congregations in Tampere since 28 of October in 2009. 

Go to: www.tampereenseurakunnat.fi/iida and on the same page you can get the instructions of use (in Finnish).

Story: Mia Hämäläinen