Eevi got the Golden Pineapple!

The results of the 2010 Golden Pineapple game design awards were announced yesterday. The selected Nominees were judged not only on what is displayed for the People’s Choice, but on all other aspects on the game design concept; gameplay, challenge, learning outcomes, budget, etc. In total, 20 entries were selected for review from over 70 submissions from 10 European countries. This was further reduced to the top three in each category.

Two of the the awarded games were designed during the Engage Learning Summer School at Demola, Tampere. The Summer School was organised by FH Joanneum, Graz, Austria and hosted by TAMK Media programme.

Sorting Rush by Jamie Myland, Eulalia Guiu and Anuja Dharmaratne won the category Best Educational Concept. "For the best Learning or Education game concept, the submission had to be unqiue, and be appropriate for the target audience. It also needed to make full use of the targeted platform."

Cyber Hero by Eevi Korhonen, Erik Ortman and Kenneth Swedlund won the Best Social Inclusion Concept Award. "The best concept for Social Inclusion needed to show potential in raising self-confidence, motivation to learn, and foster participation in a community or society in general and thus contribute to social inclusion into the knowledge society."

Sorting Rush also won the 'People's Choice' Award with a margin of two votes to Cyber Hero.

Cyber Hero team member Eevi Korhonen is a student of our international Degree Programme in Media.

Find all the Golden Pineapple winners
Our previous story about Golden Pineapple
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All stories, SummerSchool EngageLearning
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SL:MIMA 2011: Vote for your favourite

The Swan Lake: Moving Image & Music Award (SL:MIMA) invited again young talented filmmakers to participate with a movie in one of the three categories: ’Computer-Animation’, ‘Digital Film’ and ‘Interactive Movie’. Modern piano music by international artists serves as the basis for the competition.

You have the one-time chance to vote for your favorite film from all the submissions. You only have to register, watch all the videos and finally vote for your favorite. The three movies with the most votes will be the finalists for the audience award at the award ceremony on January 12th 2011 and get the chance to win great prizes. Therefore, support your favorite movie and pianist with your vote!

Voting running until  2nd Jamuary 2011.

VOTE HERE
Swan Lake: Moving Image & Music Award
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TAMK is a partner of SL:MIMA

Vote: the Golden Pineapple Award Nominees are here

The Golden Pineapple Awards is a student contest for designing learning games, focused on developing awareness among young game designers and creative people and companies of the potential of games as learning material. Originally starting as an educational game design course created by Professor Maja & Paul Pivec, the concept has taught over 300 information design students at the University of Applied Sciences Joanneum in Austria.

The International Golden Pineapple Award™  is presented in the following categories: the most innovative or outstanding game design or graphical environment, the best learning or educational concept, the highest commercial marketing potential, and the best concept for Social Inclusion. The final award is the People’s Choice, where the public can vote online for any of the nominated concepts.

Among the nominees there are two projects developed at the Engage Learning Game Design Summer School hosted by TAMK Degree Programme in Media earlier this autumn:

• Sorting Rush by Trinary Logic, team: Jamie Myland, Eulalia Guiu, Anuja Dharmaratne
• Cyber Hero by SynapsisOne, team Eevi Korhonen, Erik Ortman, Kenneth Swedlund

Golden Pineapple Award 
The nominees - vote here
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All stories, SummerSchool EngageLearning
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Coming up: summertime horror

A small country town is getting ready for a big celebration when two strangers, Kiuru and Moukari, drive through it. On the highway they meet young Alma, who leads them to an ancient forest. When night falls, the hunt begins...

This is the synopsis of one of this year’s thesis films, Metsästysmaa aka The Hunting Ground. The Hunting Ground was shot during the last heat wave on August 2010. The locations were scattered around the countryside of Pirkanmaa, at Lempäälä and Valkeakoski.

Joanna Mäkelä produced the film and the crew was formed by a group of TTVO students from many different classes. The Hunting Ground is the thesis film of the director of photography Janne Keränen, the editor Anssi Rautio and writer/director Nalle Mielonen. It’s a horror film, genre, that is especially close to the cinematographer’s and director’s heart.

Actors Janne Hannula, Tiina Tanskanen and Tommi Raitolehto

The inspiration for the film came from the short stories of Peter Straub, alternative country music and such horror classics as The Wicker Man (Robyn Hardy, 1973) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974).

The basic elements of the film are highway on summer time, nature and the encounter of three hunters. Gender and violence stayed as the themes and the story was build using traditions of several genres. It is a coming of age story, a fantasy and a revenge tale of a sort. Put in a social context, it's a dark utopia of a society where the night has been taken back with the help of the supernatural.

The Hunting Ground premiere will be on January 2011. Until then, check out the film’s website, made by Ruben Ginéstos. There you can find the trailer of the film and some more info.
Hunting Ground home

Story: Nalle Mielonen
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Tampere - the Focal Point of Northern Europe

Finlayson is the home of TAMK art and media programmes

Where is Tampere? At the edge of the tundra? Why should one bother to move to Tampere to study or to do business?

Tampere is actually the central spot of Northern Europe. If you draw a circle with a radius of 1000 km, including the Baltic sea, Scandinavia, Finland, and northern Russia, your circle will hit the Russian capital Moscow, the Polish capital Warsaw, Rostock in Germany and Hammerfest in northern Norway. And there it is, the centre of this circle, Tampere in Finland.

This 1000 km circle includes other capitals like Copenhagen (distance from Tampere 913 km), Oslo (726 km), Stockholm (394 km), Helsinki (160 km), Tallin (235 km), Riga (505 km), Vilnius (762 km) and Minsk (873 km). St. Petersburg (396 km) is really close.

Tampere is really accessible: Direct flights from Riga, Kaunas, Milan, Bremen, Frankfurt, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Tallin, Alicante, Edinburgh, Malaga, Pisa, Gdansk and Helsinki, train from St. Petersburg and Helsinki, ferry + train from Tallin, Stockholm, Gdynia, Travemünde and Rostock.

Tampere is an attractive and international centre for students, 200 000 inhabitants and 40 000 students of higher education in four universities. The cultural life is rich, and the city is surrounded by beautiful lakes and forests.

Degree Programme in Media, run in English

We are arctic and fabulous

From All that i Wanted

The Arctic and Fabulous film festival competition finalists have been selected. Out of 189 registered entries 20 were invited to compete in the professional's category and 24 in the student's category. Five of the chosen student projects are made by film&television and fine art students from TAMK Finlayson Campus.

Arctic and Fabulous is a Nordic Film Festival arranged by Nordic Glory Festival Association annually in Jyväskylä. The next festival will be February 10-13.

Our films chosen and invited:

• Helvetin hyvää työtä / Whistle While You Work, Jussi Sandhu & Ville Hakonen, fiction
• Perhepotretti / Family Portrait, Minna Korhonen and Nalle Mielonen, fiction
• Niin paljon sinua halusin / All That I Wanted, Aino Suni, fiction
• Syyslaulu /Autumn-song, Mari Aaltonen, experimental
• Vallaton Minna Raitapuro & Arttu Salmi, document

Visitor from Prague - Tomáš Bouška

This week we got a visit from the College of Media and Journalism in Prague. Tomáš Bouška is Vice-Director for External Relations and Communication of the college, and he is looking for international partners, because CMJ has decided to join the European networking community of higher education.

The educational programme of CMJ has been divided into three main fields: Journalism, Audiovisual and Digital Media, Public Relations and Marketing Communications.

I had a very good discussion with Tomáš Bouška and gave him a tour of our premises at Finlayson campus. We agreed to be in touch again when CMJ has joined the European exchange programmes. Of course Tomáš also got the invitation to Tampere Art Factory International Week April 11-15.2011.

Cai Melakoski

Pictured on our roof garden: Tomáš Bouška on right, Timo Malmi, information officer at the University of Tampere on left side.
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EVA - the virtual campus of visual culture studies

Prof. Doru Pop, coordinator of the project, leading the curriculum workshop

Last weekend the EVA-project was kicked off in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania in Romania. Our aim is to build the campus of visual culture studies as a pilot of European Virtual Academy over the next two years. We will have courses, library, labs and forums in the digital world, taking advantage of social media tools and Open Source software.

We will involve the best experts of learning - the students - to create the campus. Professors, lecturers and artists are already preparing the first nine pilot courses to start next autumn. The general language of the campus will be English, but courses will also be translated or subtitled to Romanian, Italian, German, Hungarian and Finnish.

EVA will allow the students of the media and art programmes of partner universities to do exchange studies in a truly international environment without traveling.

We are Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania (coordinator), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy, Hochschule Mittweida - University of Applied Sciences, Mittweida, Germany, Sapientia Hungarian University of Transilvania, Cluj, Romania and Tampere University of Applied Sciences, TAMK.

Later we will also invite other universities to join us.

The project is funded by the European Union Lifelong Learning Programme.

The web site of European Virtual Campus will be launched in April.

Cai Melakoski
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The Art Christmas Sale - welcome!

Ikuinen Gallery
December 8 - 11 2010
Art Christmas Sale
Open Thu-Fri 12-16; Sat 12-18
Finlaysoninkuja 3 Tampere

The Art Christmas Sale has become a tradition for the art students of TAMK. Unique crafts and amazing pieces of art will be on sale in Ikuinen Galleria from Thursday 8th to Saturday 11th of December.

The opening times will be on Thursday and Friday from 12am to 4pm and on Saturday from 12am to 6pm.
 
Get your most imaginative Christmas presents here!

We accept only cash.

Welcome shopping!

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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.
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Previous Ikuinen Gallery posts
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Teemu Markkula – German tour 2010 with Pintandwefall

At first the idea was that I would go to Germany and play couple of shows as a warm-up artist for Pintandwefall. Then it turned out that they would need a sound engineer also. I was hired for the job with the condition that I wouldn’t have to work as a sound engineer on those gigs I was playing as a warm-up.
Then it turned out that they would need a tour manager too. I was hired for the job. I just can’t say no can I? Well no problem. A little bit of extra work can’t do any harm. 

6.9. - 20.9.2010

Then, all of a sudden came the day of departure. We were on a boat to Tallinn with cheerful minds I think. We started the tour by walking around Tallinn for a couple of hours before hitting the road towards Berlin. The drummer of Pintandwefall had to stay in Finland due to personal reasons so the tour would be a special one.

Via Baltica: pretty flat Baltic country side, lots of motels and trucks on the road.
We almost drove through a piece of Russia next to Lithuania and Poland because our navigator thought it was the quickest route to Berlin. We told the navigator that we don’t have visas for Russia. 10 hours of driving in the same day and we were in Poland ready to sleep. We checked in a motel in the side of the road, had a good night (or morning) sleep and continued the journey.
Driving through Poland is one kind of an experience. You got to have buttocks of steel. Europe endless.

Finally we arrived to Germany and to Berlin. We spent the night in the accommodation of Esa and Lasse (our record label guys). They were in Berlin because of the Popkomm showcase festival.

Wednesday: Grüner Jäger, Hamburg. The local football team was playing and people were out in bars watching the game.  First gig of the tour in Hamburg in this cosy and great place. The place was packed. Pintandwefall had a great gig as a three-piece band with the help of Mr. Casio (little synthesizer) on the drums. The night was lots of fun. After the gig we drove back to Berlin.

Thursday: Berlin, Popkomm. Showcase gig in Comet Club.  Ilari from the band Jesse came as a stand in drummer for the night. He performed as Death Pint. Good and helpful staff and good equipment. It was nice to work with the sound. This was a really special gig. The drummer had not been playing with Pintandwefall before and they only explained the songs verbally to the drummer and tried a couple of songs in the sound check. Nevertheless the gig was really great and dangerous.

Friday: We started the day by walking in Berlin before we were off to Cottbus, Glad House. It was just 1,5 hour drive from Berlin.
It was a big rock club with a big stage in a big echoing hall and good sound equipment.

Saturday: Bremen, Sitzdisko. The local football team was playing and people were out in bars watching the game. When we got to Bremen and started carrying our equipment on stage we noticed that we had forgotten our snare drum and cymbals in Cottbus. Luckily some local drummer let us use his snare and cymbals. The venue was great! The building was an old bear brewery changed into this culture centre and a bar. The audience was sitting. That’s why the name “Sitzdisko”. The host of the evening was this charming lady who also performed songs and told stories. After the show a half German and half Finnish guy named Felix showed us Bremen. The next day would be free so the night went on till morning. You can get veggie hot dogs at 3 a.m. from Bremen! Great city.

Sunday: Day off.  We walked around Bremen for a while and then headed back to Berlin. Driving in thunder and rain we saw a traffic jam on the other lane which had 20 km of parked cars.

Monday: We were supposed to have a show in Munich but it was canceled. So we avoided one 7-hour drive and had another free day in Berlin. I spent all my money buying records and I also bought this old German drum machine from the 80’s. We also visited Tacheles, the house taken over by artist's working spaces.

Tuesday: Hannover, Café Glocksee. On the way to Hannover we stopped in Cottbus to pick up our stuff. Apparently Café Glocksee has been working a couple decades. Really traditional rock club and the people knew where to come on a Tuesday night. We had a great accommodation by an old mathematics teacher Ralf. We talked with him about politics and the state of the world.

Wednesday: Leipzig, Moritzbastei. This was the first show on the tour that I was going to play and not work as a sound guy.  The venue was an old brick building underground in the centre of Leipzig. It seemed like an old wine cellar or a castle.
It was great fun to perform. Not that many people but the ones that were there seemed enthusiastic.

Thursday: Stuttgart, Keller Club. Again a traditional rock club in the centre of the city. We were stuck in a traffic jam on the way to Stuttgart. German autobahns aren’t really that fluent all the time. It was a good show. People seemed to like our music a lot.

Friday: Frankfurt am Main, Nachtleben. The local football team was playing and people were out in bars watching the game. It was really strange to drive to the centre of this huge city to play a rock gig among skyscrapers. The venue was again underground. It was a good traditional rock club. It’s funny how the clubs are usually the same all over the world.

Saturday: Cologne, Die Lichtung. The local football team was playing and people were out in bars watching the game. We visited Colognes Dome church and a huge music shop. This was the final show of the tour. The venue was underground. Great gig from Pintandwefall and I had a good gig also. I think we were sort of happy that it was the last show of the tour. The atmosphere after the gig was restless and exhausted. We were just making jokes and laughing all the time.

Sunday – Monday: Heading home. We drove towards Finland through Denmark and Sweden and took the boat to Turku from Stockholm.

We were in Stockholm about four hours before check in to the boat. So we drove around and watched the changing of the guards in front of the Kings castle.
Finally we got in to the boat and started sleeping almost right away.
At 7 p.m. we got to Turku and then drove to Helsinki. We switched the navigator language to German. I guess we missed the autobahn already that much.

Two weeks, 7 countries and 9 shows. 7000 kilometres, not enough sleep and lots fun! As I am writing this I am in Budapest. Just went through Via Baltica, Poland and Slovakia. I have a sound engineer gig tomorrow here in Budapest. I really can’t understand right now what it is that makes me want to do this but I am enjoying every minute.

Story: Teemu Markkula
The writer is student of TAMK Media Programme in Virrat

Photos: Ninni Luhtasaari

The tour diary written by Cute Pint from Pintandwefall
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WSA Mobile Content Award Winners: Angry Birds and Need4Feed

The Trophy (Photo: Juha Kaario, Newelo via Facebook)

The United Nations based World Summit Award announced the winners of the best mobile content and apps at the Abu Dhabi Gala, December 6th, 2010. While mobile telephony is a global network, the best content comes from producers developing very local content.

India and US producers won four awards each in the eight categories of the WSA-mobile. Russia and Germany scored high in content quality with 3 winners each. Finland made very well with two winners. More than 420 products from close to 100 UN member states were entered in the 2010 contest.

The Finnish winners are Need4Feed by Newelo Oy in the m-Media & News category and Angry Birds by Rovio Mobile Ltd in the m-Entertainment & Lifestyle category.

Need4Feed is a service for media houses and news agencies, allowing them to have flexible mobile workflows and deeper customer relationships. Need4Feed service can be easily integrated as a seamless extension of customers' own editorial solutions (via Web API) or it can be used directly via Web UI.

Angry Birdsis an easily accessible mobile game downloadable from multiple sources and offered on a series of different devices. It is built as a physics-based game for touch screen mobile devices. The touch screen enables intuitive controls and users do not need to go throughlong drawn-out tutorials.

The WSA Mobile Finland Award was produced by Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) in cooperation with MindTrek. "The rise in this global contest shows that creativity and mastery in content development is still on high level in Finland. The Finnish nominees were all very strong, and I was confident one of them would win the trophy. I believe this success stimulates the Finnish designers and developers to find again new solutions to serve the users" says Cai Melakoski, WSA Eminent National Expert in Finland and Head of Media Programme at TAMK.

The World Summit Award (WSA) is a global activity to select and promote the world's best e-Content and most innovative ICT applications. It offers a worldwide platform for all who value the creative use of ICTs and who are committed to making today’s information society more inclusive. WSA Mobile is a special contest to identify the best mobile contents.


WSA Mobile Content Award
World Summit Award (WSA)

Newelo
Rovio

MindTrek
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Game Design Workshop

It was that wonderful time of the year again, when students of the Game Design course gather to present their game ideas in a two-day workshop, where they get feedback from industry professional as well as their peers. To me, this is the highlight of the year, as I find this workshop to be one of the most useful parts of our education here. I've already lurked in the background for two previous workshops making notes and giving feedback, but this time I was finally an actual participant and thus got to pitch my idea.

Team Red Balloon presenting their idea. From left to right: Vasileia Tolou, Johanna Peltola and Anayte Delahay

This year the workshop was organised on 1st and 2nd of December in its familiar place, Demola. Eight teams presented their work, which ranged from bee-themed Facebook games to an RPG based on the Kalevala. The visiting industry professionals, Gareth Noyce from Ruffian Games and Lassi Kurkijärvi from Helsingin Sanomat, were there to give their insider view and expert advice to the students. Unfortunately, Gareth was unable to attend in person due to the Edinburgh airport being closed, but that didn't stop him from attending via Skype and even giving a small talk on where the game industry is going.

The two days fizzed past very fast, but fortunately there was something positive about the end, and that was the after-party. This year it was doubly exciting as people got to try out the brand new Xbox Kinect, which proved to be very popular. Trying everything from river rafting to dancing, from popping bubbles to boxing, people kept on waving and flailing madly in front of the screen, to the great amusement of others (and themselves, of course).

Playing with Kinect. From left to right: Mikko Tikkanen, myself and Olli Hämäläinen.

The workshop is over, but the work continues. The teams will take the feedback and ideas, hone their concept and write their GDD (game design document) as their final project for the course. Hopefully, they'll also make the games or at least a prototype of it during the spring.


Text: Eevi Korhonen, 09IMP
Photos: Antti Salomaa

Christmas of the Arts

The Special Guest: Heart-a-Claus

First year students from all different study programs – fine art, television and media – united their powers in organizing a memorable pre-Christmas party last Friday. Christmas of the Arts was held in “the secret chamber” of 4th floor – a former classroom also known as Tarkovski. Few eager students set up decorative lights, music and video installations to set the mood. Christmas food like rice porridge and glögi was offered as well as other snacks.

The guests could express their inner (and outer) artists by drawing to the huge art wall that had been set up. A mailbox allowed people to write love letters or wish lists to Santa Claus, whose brother “Heart-a-claus” visited and handed out small gifts for lucky, often attractive, artists. In addition there was a music quiz and casual socializing with classmates as well as unfamiliar people.

Apparently the party was a success and the organizers were not the only ones to enjoy themselves: the toughest partiers leaved school at 6 am. If only they had been studying...this event was another proof that school can be fun, too!

Story and pics: Tia Tuovinen, Media '10

Making Of The Poster

Tuomas Mikola demonstrating his princess pose in front of the IMP10 poster

Some of you might have noticed the huge and entertaining picture which has appeared on the wall in the 2nd floor hallway. The 10IMP poster has finally arrived.

IMP10 found out a way to make everyone love their poster. Number one: make them wait. Number two: make it massive. Who could pass this great poster and not smile? A big hand to our design team for the great idea and creation! But how did it all come alive?

The first idea that came up on our poster discussion was the classic Nintendo and soon we were all about retro Super Mario. We were all very excited about it and had a blast at the poster meetings. We designed the background and thought about what 24 IMPs could be doing in an 8 bit Mario World. We numbered the final poster sketch and  made everyone in the class pull a number out of a hat, not knowing what they signed up for...

Sketches for the poster (made by Joonas Nissinen)

We were also very lucky to have a professional photographer Stephanie Scharschmidt to help us with the photo-shoot and our Photoshop teacher, Tuomo Joronen, assisted us with booking the studio, fixing the lights and putting up the blue screen for the background. We got Cai Melakoski to pose as the main character of the poster, a hardcore Mario player (with a hint of madness in his eyes?).

Everyone began to find their rightful place

Eventually we started to combine the images, finally ending up with probably the biggest .psd file ever seen on Earth! The TV set itself also turned out amazing, thanks to the very talented Joonas Nissinen. As we cut the photos of our class mates in the team we learned a very important thing: technologies will not always be kind to beginners. The blue-screen background wasn’t even, the light tones had to be adjusted, Photoshop liked to anti-aliase already erased borders with random colors. So as you can probably imagine we ended up with quite a lot of work, but it was definitely worth it. Some professionals may disagree, but we gave our best and also learned a lot during the process. The end result is awesome and we are very proud of ourselves!

Johanna Lievemaa, Kristina Põldots and Heidi Mäenpää eagerly waiting for the poster to print

When we got to the printing part we were only three little girls against a printing machine as large as a small department store. It was great fun to watch our masterpiece come out, though finding a spot for a wallpaper sized poster was a tad problematic. And also the “tallest” ones were trying to hang it as high as possible. All's well that ends well, there it is and hopefully the blu-tack will keep it up in the future or we’ll have to find some heavy duty duct tape. We celebrated the finished poster with some home made muffins, or should I say, 1up cupcakes. Of course the happy looks on people’s faces when they saw our work was the best reward.

Who could resist these cupcakes that Johanna made?

Our amazing poster team members, who never gave up, were: Heidi Mäenpää, Johanna Lievemaa, Kristina Põldots, Joonas Nissinen, Joonas Sairiala,  Emma Kiiski, Camille Romano and Sabrina Seidl. Special thanks to our great photographer Stephanie Scharschmidt and our class The10IMP.


Story: Johanna Lievemaa, Kristina Põldots and Heidi Mäenpää
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Read more about the IMP students
Degree Programme in Media (International Media Programme, IMP)
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Application pre-task now online

Next application time for our BA programme run in English is January 3 - February 15. For the Media Programme it is not enough that applicants fill in the online form, they also have to complete and send by the deadline a pre-task with three assignments.

60 applicants with best points for the pre-task are invited to the entrance exam in May.

The focus of the four year programme is in interactive media content design and production. The students learn about current digital media issues and they specialise in visual design, interaction design or project management.


Download the pre-task
Media Programme home
All details about the application process


Last year we had 182 primary applicants, 24 of them are now IMPs, International Media Programme students.
Read about their studies and free time activities
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