TAMK goes Assembly

Next weekend Hartwall Areena is going to be overrun with computer enthusiasts as the summer's biggest computer and video game related event, Assembly, kicks off. And the students of Media and Interactive Design are going to right there among them. TAMK is one of the sponsors at the even, and the school's participation is being done as a student project, where the students plan and implement TAMK's marketing and presence at the event.

We aren't alone, however. We are cooperating with the Computer Engineering students from the main campus as well as other schools in Finland. TAMK is going to be represented along with other schools that offer game education, KAJAK and Turku Game Tech & Arts Lab. We have a common booth, where we will be showing and playing the games made by the students and giving information on the various programmes in the schools.

Even though this is the first post about the subject, we've been working on the project whole summer. We've been designing badges (see pic), flyers, even got ourselves a sponsorship from ASUS in the form of a touchscreen computer that we will use to run our interactive tour of TTVO. We're also going to have sweets and other giveouts like any good booth.

If you're at Assembly next weekend, come swing by our booth and say hello! If you can't, follow the blog from Thursday to Sunday, we'll be reporting from the event here!

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Assembly Summer 2010 
Read all Assembly stories
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"Brothers In Arms" was shot in Pori

Director/Script Writer Iiro Peltonen in action with Jose Viitala and Antti Väre

"Brothers In Arms" - written and directed by Iiro Peltonen - was shot on the 19th of June in Pori, in the Fortress Park of Reposaari.

In the short film two soldiers affectionate of each other find themselves in a dilemma when their own sexual derivatives do not meet.

"Brothers In Arms" has a goal to establish festival success both in Finland and abroad. The film's unique approach and taboo-breaking storyline has already up heaved a lot of conversation even before its completion.

The Fortress Park was built in 1935 as a volunteer military act. It was last used in 1944 and it stopped functioning after the Interim Peace.

The length of the final film will be around five minutes. Its deadline is 30th of August 2010 and the premier will be held in Tampere with "Finders, Keepers" and "Connection Lost" in the middle of September.

Story: Hannu Koivuranta
Photo: Hanna Maria Mäkelä

Connection Lost was shot in the beginning of July

Actor Raimo Grönberg, Outi Hartikainen and Hannu Koivuranta in Action

Having received a 5000 euro production grant from the Languages Through Lenses 2010 -shortfilm competition "Connection Lost" went under production on the night of 2nd and 3rd of July. The film is directed by Outi Hartikainen and found its idyllic location in Lempäälä near Tampere.

Challenges included the Finnish summer: the script happens during nighttime and since we are only a week after Midsummer's Day the length of twilight is only five hours. Shot and light planning was more precise than ever before in order to reach the level of maximum efficiency during the shoot.

The script - written by Hannu Koivuranta and Outi Hartikainen - has been revised further from the original script so there is something new to everybody.

The final deadline of the film is 7th of September when the Prix Europa -festival is due. The local premier of the film will be arranged some weeks after that and it will be a co-premier with two other shortfilms: "Aseveljet" (Eng. "Brothers In Arms") and "Etsivä Löytää" (Eng. "Finders, Keepers")

Story: Hannu Koivuranta
Photo: Eero Alava
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Connection Lost (Facebook)
Our previous story about the film
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Prix Europa
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The Reach now online with English subtitles

The Reach (Loppuun palaneet) participated in the Uneton 48 - competition, where you have to write, shoot and finish a short film in 48 hours. It is a post-apocalyptic short film about a world, where the Sun is too close to Earth.

The film asks the following questions:

• What is meaningful in a world, where man has to fight against invincible forces of nature?
• What happens, when Sun that has been worshipped for centuries becomes our enemy, the cooling water burns our skin and light no longer shows us the right path, but instead blinds our eyes?

The film was nominated for best cinematography (Anne-Mari Musturi) and best sound design / music (Michael Law) in the Uneton 48 finale. In addition, director Miro Laiho won the best film idea pitching contest in the event.

The reach on Facebook
The Music Score (Michael Law home)

5D2 is finished

It's been a busy summer here in the Supernova lab. So busy, in fact, that we haven't had time to update our progress to this blog.

Anyway, our five games are now finished, but the project isn't quite yet. We still gotta put together the documentation, gather screenshots and gameplay videos. All of the material will be available at our blog, so go check out on Wednesday or later.

You can find all of the 5D2 games here, so go and try them out.

Text: Eevi Korhonen
Previous stories about the project

Welcome to Game Design Summer School!

Demola, Finlayson behind the taf (Tampere Art Factory) banner

The Summer School for Students and Young Designers is to be held in Tampere, Finland, from 30th of August till 3rd of September in 2010 at the DEMOLA Centre of Innovation. The Engage Summer school will tackle issues related to game design as well as how to embed curricular topics in the game design. The summer school (3 ECTS) will accommodate between 15 – 25 international students and game designers. For further information about the logistics and the application form, click on the links at Engage Summer School home

The Summer School is organised by the Engage project and hosted by TAMK/Media Programme. Engage is coordinated by our partner FH Joanneum in Graz, Austria.

This Summer School will give designers and creative students insights and knowledge of educational game design e.g. creating educational games for the target group, embedding curricular topics and stealth learning, providing accurate information, consulting on one hand teachers and on the other hand the target group; asking the right questions and embedding these answers into the game.

Lectures will be interleaved with practical work and will be provided by academic and industry experts. Topics will include:

• Game-Based Learning
• Game genres, platforms, and industry roles
• Gender issues and target audience analysis
• Design guidelines for successful games
• Concept documents and the development cycle
• Gameflow and usability testing
• Educational games and learning outcomes
• Game engines and development tools
• Marketing, packaging, and promotion

You will also need to prototype your idea and analyze the usability. This can be done on paper, as a mock-up, or by utilizing game engines provided during the school. This will obviously depend on the platform chosen for your concept.
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See the promo video
SummerSchool EngageLearning on Facebook
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FH Joanneum
TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Demola
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All stories, SummerSchool EngageLearning
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Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award 2010

Deadline of submissions July 30

The Ubimedia competition seeks to broaden our understanding of where and how ubiquitous media will influence our future life. We are looking for disruptive artistic visions as well as clever near-to-market solutions off the beaten tracks! This includes any range of innovative ubimedia, pervasive, or ambient products and services. The Ubimedia Award is a highly interdisciplinary competition and we invite Designers, Computer Scientists, Artists, Economists and Engineers to take a stand on the following questions with their entries:

• What is the particular aesthetic experience opened up by the rise of ubiquitous and ambient media?
• What constitutes the specific intelligence that drives future media environments?
• How will location- and context-aware media services change our social life?
• How will our future lives look like in the era of ubiquitous computation, and how can society benefit from these advanced technologies?

The award sum for the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award is 7 000€.

TAMK is one of the organisers of this competition.

Ubimedia Award home

The nominees of Ubimedia Award will be invited to MindTrek Awards prize ceremony at the MindTrek Conference October 6-8 2010
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Pictured winners of Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards 2009 from right to left: Third Price winner Jan Roters, Traffic Light Detector (Germany), second prize winner Katrina Bekessy, PING, the Smart Trash Bin (USA), and the winners with Donkeypedia Frank Alsema and Joost van Eeden, the Netherlands
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IMPs Go Up

President Markku Lahtinen taking the students to the sky

The higher levels of the IMP-life were concretely experienced after two IMPs headed their way to the local airport for an unforgettable flight. The flight event was arranged by the TAMK Aviation Club for the fifth time.

The vehicle was an ultra light aircraft piloted by no other than the TAMK President Markku Lahtinen himself. The two-seater aircraft called Eurostar was assembled by the TAMK students of aircraft technology during the years 2005-2006 as a project work. The maximum flying altitude of 2000 feet was more than enough to provide stunningly scenic views over the city of Tampere. Rest assured the author was provided some gastrointestinal excitement too as the skilled pilot demonstrated the groovy aerial moves. What a memorable ending for the first year!
The TAMK Aviation Club takes the lucky students up in the sky few times a year. Keep an eye on TAMK Intranet if you fancy a flight with the Headmaster as only the quickest make it once the chance comes.

Tampere outskirts from above

If flying is the thing that tickles you, take a peek at the website of
TAMK Aviation Club  (in Finnish only so far)

Story: Johanna Peltola
Pictures: Amir Abdi

IMPs are students of TAMK international (interactive) Media Programme
More IMP adventures

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TAMK Erasmus notes by students from Barcelona

Leticia and Laura preparing the smart screen for their Interactive Film Show

When you come from Spain, Finland sounds far away… and sometimes, Tampere doesn’t even sound. “Where have you been those five months? – people now asks to us – Tampere – we answer – Oh… great… emmmm… good place…”.

And then we have to look for a map and show exactly the place where we have been, “Oh! So it must be cold”. Yes, it was cold, but it was more than that. It was the place where we discover that we were able to draw in an arts school every Wednesday from 17 to 20. We come from a Communication Career, but once we were in Tampere, the important was not where we came from, but what we wanted to learn.

Model drawing was one of those things we wanted to learn. It is true that we were sharing class with “real” art students, and our draws in comparison, could have been done by a five year old child. But at the end of the semester, our draws had maybe achieved the ones of a twelve year old boy, and that was awesome.

One of Laura's and Leticia's projects was the video installation for the Megagagaa art exhibition

We are sorry we stayed only 5 months

Your own improvement is what counts in TAMK. The competition is between you, and yourself. Also in Animation class we started from zero. Just for the new exchange students: don’t be scared, don’t be afraid. Sometimes it seems that you could never do anything like this, but then you try, you became part of a group that has the same fears than you, and together, you make this fear became an acceptable animation. Maybe not the best… but for the best, maybe you should have been the whole year. Because we are quite sad we choose only stay for five months… otherwise we could have done much more, especially related to personal projects.

In TAMK, projects are never “personal”, they can be yours, but you will always find people that can help you or join to your project, students or teachers, they are involved in the same way.

So, If your first day you enter in Finlayson, looking at your tutor like he was crazy, because your university cannot be there. Don’t worry, it’s normal. If you go on walking, and by mistake you go inside Fujitsu offices, it’s ok, really, you won’t be the first student that does it.

If after opening the door, you think you are in a kind of workshop or factory… well, maybe you are not that wrong. And after all, if when they give you the school key, you meet your coordinator that asks to you, what do you want to learn, what are you interested on… you feel more important than ever, well, welcome to TAMK, welcome to Media and Arts Career.

We count on that as one of our best experiences ever, and although once we are back in Spain, we are appreciating the sun and the beach more than we have ever done, when we look back to the past, we cannot help smiling remembering all our ERASMUS in the most strange, far away, cold in Winter but at warm in Springtime.

This are our few word about studying in Tampere but it was just a quarter parts of what we could experience there. From spending time in the Sauna in winter to swimming in the lakes in Spring, all that happened in between is something that you have to live.

Story: Laura Quintana and Leticia Martin
The authors are students of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona who made their Erasmus exchange period at TAMK last spring
Laura and Leticia were extremely productive students. At our Tampere Art Factory festival they presented the two projects pictured with this story.
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