TTVO.fi goes new!

TTVO.fi - TARINA's new webpage

The new webpage of TARINA is open. The site includes all the links and essential info than before, but we’ve also added something extra. Go check the site and give feedback. We are more than happy to receive also some ideas about improving Tarina’s or the school’s activities. You can give feedback anonymously, but if you enter your name you can win VIP tickets to TTVO Festarit on December!

So take a look at http://www.ttvo.fi and tell us what you think! And if some info is missing in English, please tell us ASAP.

Text: Tia Tuovinen

11IMP Poster Turns Out to Be a Breakthrough!

Here it is, freshly printed and in a nice, warm orange, our contribution to the poster wall on the second floor! Although inspired by last years’ posters secret of success, we managed to only almost pull even with 10IMP in both poster size and being late. Despite of that, our class poster clearly depicts no fear of breaking boundaries, being the only one of its kind.

One of the most complicated parts in creating the poster was actually agreeing on an idea – as in the beginning, being too creative to get things done, we just had too many great ideas to decide for one. We spent a lot of time talking and discussing how we would actually do it, as we, given the amount of concepts we had, could have come up with about 5 different awesome posters.

At the point we had finally chosen an idea, an EloTV poster which just looked too similar to what we were going to do appeared on the wall. Furthermore, the general motivation to put effort into the poster magically faded after a while:

General Motivation Graph

Having been stuck for quite some time, at some point we realized that we have to get going and decided to start something – which turned out to be the motto “Out of the Box”, with a poster that would go deeper than just another brick in the wall. Finally having decided on a concept, and having set the deadline for the poster on the 24th of October by our teacher-tutor teacher Ari Närhi, we had to start working on the poster pretty soon.

A photo shooting for the whole class was carefully planned and scheduled, because we tried to make sure that everything runs smoothly. The start of the photo shooting was delayed by 2 hours, mainly because we couldn’t find the right sync cables for the camera flashes. The motto temporarily changed to “Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong”.

After all, we still somehow managed to get all the photos in one day – thanks a lot to Oona Seppänen and everyone else who helped! Also, asking the janitor for tools to destroy a wall was priceless.

“…So we want to match the poster color with the color of the wall – how do we do that?”

- We worked it out thanks to the master of photoshopping Miika Fabritius. And after a couple of weeks of working on the poster, we even managed to print it almost in time!

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” – Douglas Adams

Having removed the white edges, luckily without doing any greater damage to it, we started wondering - “So where do we get tape now?”…

Despite all minor and major struggles, we managed to put it up! There you go, 11IMP =)

This years’ poster team were:

Photoshopping: Miika Fabritius, Lorenzo Servi, Minna Eloranta

Photoshooting: Oona Seppänen, Heidi Mäenpää, Erika Sangah Kim

Organising and bugging Minna for being late with her work: Me (Lukas Kallenbach)

Special thanks to:

Heidi Mäenpää from 10IMP for helpful advice, taking pictures of the wall and Ari and occasionally saving the day as she had gone through all this before.

Everyone else who was not in the official team but helped with tips, suggestions, ideas, or setting up the green screen.

11IMP for a lot of patience during the photoshooting, and being awesome in general!

Blog post by Lukas Kallenbach

Intensive Course: Video Techniques & Expression

During the semester break the most exchange students made some trips or used the time to go home. But one course in this semester break sounded too interesting, in order to miss it. The "Video Technique & Expression"  was about filming, lighting, camera techniques and editing. It was held by Ville Salminen from Obscure Entertainment.

Each day another issue was treated. We learned how to film with  a Canon 7D camera, how to edit the clips in Adobe Premiere, how to use light in the studio and how it was used in professional shootings.

It was not only about theory, we got always a little task in which we implement our skills. So we tested how to use the manuel settings in the camera and how the moving pictures looked in different shots. Or we simulated a lighting scene after a predetermined film shot. Furthermore we film a little interview with camera, lighting and professional record equipment. So we learned as well to edit footage with extern sound.

In the end we were divided in several groups to do a task including all things we learned in this week. It will be a max. 3 min Film related to the title: "Meeting your loved one". And I guess, within our current knowledge, there will be a few very nice shortfilms.

Although I already knew some things, it was a good chance to refresh my skills and to experiment with these professional equipment in a real studio. It was more a basic course, but even more profound questions have been answered. We got an overview of all important aspects to make a movie. And in addition it was really a nice atmosphere, so that we are up for doing our task in which we will give proof of our skills. Oh my god, it was a really nice and funny week.

Text by Susanne Wasserlechner (exchange student)
Photos by Luka Jesensek (exchange student)
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Ville Salminen
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Kissed with a Fist - Update of TAMK's international short film projectfilm

For about six months ago I wrote here a post (http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.com/2011/03/kissed-with-fist-bit-of-light-filming.html) about the film called Kissed with a Fist. At that time I and some other TAMK students were living in Salford, England, in order to produce the film. Back then I wrote that “it was almost a year ago when we were first introduced to the idea of coming to England to shoot a film, a lot has happened since that and huge amount of work has been done.” Well, even a lot more has happened since then.

Our director Iiro Peltonen and screenwriter Liz Chesters were still working on the script and the film isn’t actually about what I then wrote it would be. Progress went on and luckily it did because the way was the right one. The pre-production, hence, was fast but after all we managed to shoot on schedule because the main elements didn’t change. So much time has passed that now I dare to admit I was just a little bit nervous if we would!

Dave's lovely penthouse.

For me as producer the hardest part was to find the locations. When making films in Finland you always know someone who can help and usually manage to get the right places for cheap. In a foreign country that is quite difficult. Luckily the living room of our cinematographer Niko Nurmi and sound recorder Arttu Hokkanen was actually not bad as all as the main interior location! Our local production co-ordinator Dave Rigby saved our skins and offered us his apartment to be the other important location (thank you again Dave).

The shoot took us two weeks and they were rough two weeks I can tell you. Happily the young main actor Beth Dyke was so full of energy she endured very well. The technical group coming from Finland also gave us new energy even though they were knackered after the long drive. So much happened during the shoot that I could write a whole post about it but for now I’ll keep it short. In the end everything went ok and we had good times shooting the film. We were probably quite an odd sight with all our big lamps and other special equipment, filming our movie at our home street Penelope Road. Well, if not all the inhabitants were happy about the fuss the children living next door enjoyed watching our work and even wrote us a fan letter when we were finishing off the shoot!

Gaffer Marko Ijäs lighting the location at Penelope Road.

When we had done what we needed in Salford we packed our back bags and headed towards Scotland to have some time off before flying back home to Finland. After having a short holiday our editor Martina Kuitto and director Peltonen started to work with the material in the edit. During this whole autumn they have been building the story and the final cut was set on late September. The next thing that’s going to happen is the work with sound and colour before we can say the film is finally ready.

If you want to support our project, please go to www.indiegogo.com/Kissed-with-a-Fist and donate. That how we can finish the film and screen it so you can enjoy it!

Finnish equipment, English wall plug...

Story and photos: Niilo Gustafsson.

International Exchange: Media Studies Next to BBC

As a part of the four-year degree programme in Interactive Media, I’m going abroad as an Erasmus exchange student for the third year. Some make it shorter, but I wanted to properly get to know to English culture and ways of studying and thus decided to stay for the full academic year. Right now I am writing to you in the library of University of Salford located in Greater Manchester.

Media City UK by night. University of Salford’s Media campus on the right

Salford’s Media Department is located in fresh and newly opened innovative space called Media City UK which is in cooperation with companies such as BBC, ITV and SIS. There are 38 undergraduate and postgraduate courses taught in Media City and they cover a wide range of media field.

There is a high demand for studying in Salford University among young British people. However, it was a piece of cake coming here as an ES from TAMK due to the strong collaboration between the two universities.

As an ES you can get in multiple courses from different degrees in order to meet your needs to cover and continue studies in the home university. I must admit it was a tricky task to pick up the most interesting modules from the vast and impressive selection of courses. Now I attend the modules Edit Theory & Practice, Advanced Camera, Practical Advertising Production and Drawing for Animators.

I’d like to thank our Erasmus coordinator Lloyd Peters from Salford University for giving a helping hand for us ES’s while sorting our courses.

Despite all the excitement and new experiences, I found it overwhelming to use the facilities in the new school as only the staff can book PC suites! At that point I truly missed TTVO that made it possible to come to school late at night and start working as long as I felt like.

Surely that’s a part of the entire experience. All these matters from left-sided traffic and strange power plugs to quirky humour and the art of small talk are there creating the whole experience of living in another culture and that’s precisely what makes my heart beat faster.

Story and photo by Amir Abdi
Amir is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students 
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Read more about our cooperation with Media at University of Salford
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Goodbye to camera's automatic settings at Photography Workshop!

International workshop led by professional photographer Rami Marjamäki collected some twenty students with different photography skills. The participants were divided to three groups: Group 1 was taking photos with white background, Group 2 with black background and Group 3 in a space with artificial light. All groups learned how to use both studio flashes and speedlights with main flash and  an external slave flash unit. We also used softboxes, coloured filters, umbrellas and reflectors to create different lighting settings.

The tasks weren't too exact, leaving us more possibilities for free expression and new ideas. At the end of the course we selected three photos to be printed in size A3, and presented 15 photos to other groups. On Friday we also had time to participate Backlight photo exhibition at TR1.

I learned interesting facts about promotional and magazine photography, and got also useful tips for photo editing. Before the course I used to shoot with automatic settings and modes, but after learning the principles of using ISO value, aperture size and shutter speed, I will use only manual settings for now on. I can recommend the workshop for everyone, whether you are more into learning manual camera settings, lighting, studio shooting or photo editing. Our printed nine A3 pictures will be later seen in a mini-exhibition at TAMK Finlayson area.

Story: Sanna Kuisma
Photos: Riku Heino, Sanna Kuisma
Sanna is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

New learning modules for exchange students

Our campus at Finlayson is truly international thanks to our international degree programmes in media and screenwriting and the exchange students we host. This autumn we have students from 28 countries.

In order to give the exchange students a clear and comprehensive view of the learning options they have here we have designed six learning packages.

Future Film Studies include work with ice screens. (Photo: Alexander Lembke)

The four main packages are Future Film Studies, Game Design Studies, Fine Art Studies and Interactive Media Studies. The studies in these modules are arranged Tuesdays to Thursdays over the spring semester. They overlap, so only one of these can be chosen.

The fifth package is made of intense courses, evening courses and courses running Mondays and Fridays. These courses can be chosen to complete the packages mentioned above.

The sixth package is Demola Academy, studies and real life project work in cooperation with enterprises at Demola, the innovation community of the three Tampere universities and 30+ companies. The exchange student can make her/his entire exchange at Demola Academy or combine it with parts of any package above.

The modules are produced by the three Artmedia BA programmes: the Degree Programme in Film and Television, the Degree Programme in Fine Arts and the international Degree Programme in Media. The Game Design Minor is a fruit of the collaboration of the Degree Programme of Business Information Systems at TAMK Main Campus and our Degree Programme in Media.

Regular degree students of Finlayson Campus also participate in the modules, thus they offer good possibilities for international networking for our own students.
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Read more:
Overview of the modules
Aims and contents of each course 
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Building new Game Design minor with Mikko Tikkanen, Startup Sauna Tampere winner!

Zonear won Startup Sauna Warmup Tampere

My colleagues and I had a meeting with Mikko Tikkanen - our interaction design graduate 2010 - to discuss cooperation implementing our new 30 cr Game Design module next spring. Mikko was full of energy and joy, Zonear had just won Startup Sauna Warmup Tampere arranged by Stream Tampere, New Factory and Aalto Venture Garage. 

Mikko Tikkanen

Mikko founded Zonear with another School of Art and Media graduate, Timo Pietilä and some other friends. Zonear started with developing cross-platform mobile apps with custom maps, now they also design middle-ware. Their new project BoilerBuild enables developers to remotely build, optimize and deploy their web applications with just one click.

Startup Sauna Warmups are one day coaching sessions held in the leading startup cities in Northern Europe and Russia. The warmup winners from 15 cities are invited to six-week intensive training. The teams live and work full time at Aalto Venture Garage during the training. During the program, some of the most hard working teams will be taken to Silicon Valley to meet investors, competitors and media.

Ovelin, another team grown up at Demola, won the heatup last year and are at present on tour in Los Angeles and San Fransisco.

Networking really pays back

The topic of our meeting is connected to Mikko's other professional enterprise, he is CEO of High Score, a co-operative society that focuses on Game Development.

Mikko has build excellent connections to Finnish and international game industry players. During his studies he made good use of all possibilities we have arranged for students to network with professionals at MindTrek, Demola and international exchange. But Mikko and his fellow students did not only take advantage of the opportunities the School of Art and Media created, they founded Score, the game development society which opened access to the resources and contacts of IGDA, the International Game Developers Association.

Our Degree Programme in Media has until now arranged some annual courses in game design, but the emergence of some twenty new Game Design companies in Tampere sets a demand of more purposeful education. Thus we start a 30 credit minor in Game Design in cooperation with TAMK Degree Programme in Business Information Systems. The module is also attractive for many of the exchange students we host.

Our meeting with Mikko brought very good results, and our students will have brilliant opportunities to work and network with game design top experts again next spring.

Cai Melakoski
Head of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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VJ´ing first steps at manSEDANse

Image: Petri Ruikka

Prelude:
“Start VJ´ing” has been in my to-do list for way too long without me doing anything about it. Electronic music & club culture is close to my heart and naturally I want to a part of it. I´ve been thinking “VJ´ing would suit me because I´m a visual person and I´ve been so keen into this culture and mentality for quite a few years already."  I´ve just never knewn where to start. And from whom to ask advices how to start. With these and few other excuses I´ve been postponing the start of my VJ career.

3.-5.10.2011 TAMK and manSEDANse organized a VJ (Visual Jockey)-workshop in collaboration.

Workshop was about the basics of VJ culture and VJ´ing. During this three day intensive-course we learned about the history of VJ culture and the very basics of how to compose and project visual material from the scratch to the screen.

Workshop started out with some basic knowledge about VJ culture and it´s history. Quite soon we started hands-on exersices involving basics of Modul8 software.

One of the key elements in the practice of VJing is the realtime mix of content from a "library of media", on storage media such as still image files, live camera input, or from a computer generated visuals. In addition, VJing mostly implies realtime processing of the visual material.

During the workshop we got familiar with composing and "playing" images as well as projecting the visual material into desired surfaces. We learned how the surface itself is not as important as the projection. You can create awesome visualisations with using -for instance- only a shoe as the surface.

Our lecturer, Petri Ruikka, a graduate from Aalto uni. MediaLab, was a big-time VJ in both, commercial spaces and in club scene as well. Petri really motivated us by showing his own work and telling us how he had learned to do it. Check it out here: http://www.woland.fi/

For sure, one of the best and most effective experiences during my studies in tamk.

If you want to see more:

• http://vjforums.com/
• www.vjfinland.fi
• http://createdigitalmotion.com/
• Amon Tobin -Isam- live
• Klaus Obermeir developed one of the first dynamic dance visualizations

Story: Vesa Rantanen / 10IMP

Vesa is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

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manSEDANse electronic culture festival

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Visitors form Mondragon Unibertsitatea

Mondragon Unibertsitatea is a young cooperative university located in the Alto Deba region, in the geographical centre of the Basque Country. Their educational model "is based on values such as innovation, humanism, solidarity and cooperation."

In April this year we had the first contact with Mondragon as their representative participated in our Tampere Art Factory International Week. We decided to start cooperation in student and staff exchange, and the agreements are under contruction.

Media and Communication is an international programme suitable for exchange students. It is a 30 ECTS study period in Journalism and Media at Mondragon University [Faculty of Humanities and Education]. The working language of the course will be English.

The cooperation is already established between the Team Academy of Mondragon and TAMK Proacademy. Sixty students from Mondragon are visiting Proacademy for a forthnight, today some of them had a meeting at our school.

Mondragon Unibertsitatea
Media and Communication Programme
Proacademy

Stydy media in Tampere? Applicant's Guide now online

Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) Applicant's Guide 2012 for degree programmes run in English is now available.

You can download the guide following the link below or pick up your printed copy at the application office, TAMK Main Campus or the Study Office, Finlayson Campus.

The application time is January 9 to February 14 2012

To apply for the Degree Programme in Media a pre-task has to be sent in addition to the application. The pre-task is available for downloading on December 1st.

• All details about application +  Applicant's Guide dowload
• Degree Programme in Media home
• Read stories by & about the IMPs, the Degree Programme in Media students

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The Hunting Ground Festival news

Actor Tommi Raitolehto plays
one of the main characters in "The Hunting Ground"

The Hunting Ground (directed by Nalle Mielonen) was finally finished in February 2011 and had it first public screening at Tampere Film Festival a month later. Since then the film has crept in to the consciousness of the rest of the world in various film festivals. The film has screened around Europe, for example in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. The US premiere was last summer at Dallas, Texas at the Fears for Queers Horror Film Festival.

Among the festivals there have been couple big ones as well: The Hunting Ground screened at the South Korean Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, a festival designed especially for horror, fantasy and thriller films.  This past September the film took part of the New Nordic Voices competition at Nordisk Panorama festival at Århus, Denmark. Nordisk Panorama is one of the biggest short and documentary film festivals in Nordic countries.  All in all 12 Finnish films were selected to the festival, to compete in different sections. The New Nordic Voices competition was for new promising nordic filmmakers. Director Nalle Mielonen, editor Anssi Rautio and sound designer Ilmari Jyskä were present at the festival. The quality of the films selected to the festival was high, so even though The Hunting Ground did not win anything, it was wonderful to see it screen among such good films.

The Autumn will bring more festivals. The next places to see The Hunting Ground are, for example, South African Horrorfest (new continent for the film!) and Iik! horrofilmfestival at the town of Ii, Finland. In Halloween the film will screen at the US again, this time at Fear Fête Horror Film Festival at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where it will hold the place of “best fantasy-horror short”. 

Story by Nalle Mielonen.

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Website for The Hunting Ground

Experience about manSEDANse 2011

Jacob Sikker Remin performing with his
"Cheap, Fat and Open" synthesiser at Telakka.

An exciting week is over. It was the week of manSEDANse 2011. The festival of electronic music, art and culture was filled with interesting lectures, workshops, works in the exhibition and the awesome DJ and VJ Events at the evening. 

We had the great chance to exhibit our works in the exhibition. It was possible with the course Art Process from Fanni Niemi-Junkola. And we were completely free in working. The only condition was: it should fit to the concept of manSEDANse 2011. So thank you Alex Regan for accepting our works! It was up to us to organize the equipment for exhibit our works, to built it up and down and of course to finish it till the opening. So we had a lot to do, but is was fun and we were looking forward to the exhibition and what us would expect this week.

There were also a lot of lectures and workshops. I have to admit that the most information was very interesting but also very technical based (at least too technical for me). But a great experience was the VJ workshop from Petri Ruikka. We learned in two days basic things about VJing, projection mapping and working with Modul8, so that we were able to try a demo projection. At least for me it was like the next step, after I thought doing some motion graphics and animation would be the highlight of creative working. To mix motion pictures or animation in this way, on different surfaces was awesome. 

Next to workshops and lectures we met other exhibitors what I felt was the most profitable. Especially at the shows at Telakka and Klubi we enjoyed talks with other artists and listen to great DJ work. Some of them had also interesting projects in the Exhibition. One of them was Jacob Sikker Remin who developed this open source synthesizer "Cheap, fat and open". I met him also at Telakka and I was wondering what he would do with this Game Boy. Is he still playing with Game Boy? Yes, he is. And he played it very well, made funny awesome sound with it. Interesting point: he told me he was also an exchange student a few years ago. So it's nice to see what people do after leaving their study.

Overall it was an eventfully and exciting week and we had lot of fun, even some days were very long. Thank you guys!

Story & photo by Susanne Wasserlechner

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ManSEDANse

Website: Jacob Sikker Remin

Sini Sofia Kujala: Anonymous in Ikuinen Galleria

Sini Sofia Kujala: Anonymous 14.10.-4.11.2011

Ikuinen Galleria

Opening on Thursday 13.10. at 16-18

Black figures stare at you. You don't know what or who they are. Anytime they can do something peculiar, attack or disappear. Or maybe they just stand still and stare at you. Unknown threat - Anonymous.

My work is about anonymous fear and threat. Everybody should be able to recognize you and see your face. When you're known you can't do any harm to anyone. How necessary it is to have anonymity? Does it create more fear and threat if you remove the chance to be anonymous? Maybe it's more frightening to reveal yourself than be unknown.

Sini Sofia Kujala (born 1989) is third year art student in Tampere University of Applied Science.

In disguise or not, come to the opening 13.10. 16-18!

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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.

Ikuinen Galleria

Previous Ikuinen Gallery posts

Backyard Bauhaus

The third year in the studies of IMP09 students has kicked off. For many of us it means student exchange, since it’s part of our programme’s spirit. I have been happily residing in Weimar, Germany, for the past couple of weeks, so I guess it’s about time to update some news from down here.

When we seriously started to talk about student exchange last year, I was soon quite interested to have Weimar as my study place. The world famous Bauhaus University is one of the partner schools of TAMK, so through ERASMUS exchange it was easy to get through. I arrived here in the middle of September and haven’t regretted a day! The universities in Germany start in October, so it’s been pretty lazy until now. (In fact, I’m eager for the school to start, because I’m interested to see how it’ll be.)

Weimar is astonishingly beautiful little town right in the middle of Germany and European culture. (It was the European Capital of Culture in 1999.) The mention of Weimar lights up a fire in the eyes of any German, after which they inevitably chant the names of Goethe and Schiller as well as Liszt. It is understandable when you walk around the town, the whole place is like an open air museum: apart from the men mentioned above also J.S. Bach and F. Nietzsche lived here among others. And even if the Bauhaus movement didn’t stay in Weimar for long, one can feel its roots in street names and in the campus area. All this naturally draws multitude of visitors from all over the world. That’s why the locals have learned to be very helpful and show the tourists that they are holding the map upside down and that the Liszt House is actually not far away but in the other direction and that yes, they should definitely try Thüringer Bratwurst.

The life as a student in Weimar seems very fair. There is some student party every night somewhere and if you are not that much a party person you can always explore the rest of Thüringen. Local students travel completely free in regional trains and Weimar’s buses! Even if architecture students are in majority, there are few other faculties, too. Media has surprisingly large selection from Media Management to Media Culture and Media Art and Design (my field).

The only thing that has been stirring trouble for some of the exchange students is that not all workers in different offices speak English. Considering that Thüringen used to be part of  East Germany it’s also no wonder. The students who don’t speak German are offered with an intensive course in the beginning of their studies, but it helps greatly if you happen to know German already before the school really begins. Still, everybody is very kind and helpful, so everything works out in the end.

On top of all this, the weather has been stupendously good for the last couple of weeks. They do say that it should rain here regularly, but so far the sun has been shining every day and the temperature has been around +27°C at best. Not a bad way to start my exchange studies in Weimar! :)

Eeva-Kaisa Ahlamo
IMP09

Ada open learning space opened - Happy Ada Lovelace day

Our new open learning space Ada was today formally opened to celebrate the International Ada Lovelace Day. Pictured Vesa Antikainen and Jonna Rautala unveiling the portrait of Ada made by Lukas Kallenbach at the entrance to Ada.

Read more:
International Ada Lovelace Day
About Ada, the open learning space
Our previous Ada Lovelace story
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manSEDANse Play! and IGDA meeting in Tampere

This  week’s Tuesday was filled with interesting events for a game designer student and a game developer.
ManSEDANse Play! event was new and fresh. This year’s theme wrapped around technology and the role of it: What can you really do with it, what are the new possibilities and how important is the technology in the creative process of creating new games.

The speakers talked about their projects they had been working on. Annakaisa Kultima opened the event with a few words and welcomed the first speaker: Dajana Dimovska. With many examples of new concepts how to use motion controllers in play and games, Dimovska explained the creative ideas behind them and let people test the games. One of the most surprising one was called ”Dark Room Sex Game”. Everyone can google it and check out what it was about!

Kutomo in Finlayson area got full of people

Then Markus Montola talked about a popular iPhone game called Shadow Cities. The game is the first location-based roleplaying game there is. It was interesting to know more about this game since there has been some fuzz around it; it was in this year’s MindTrek LaunchPad. It truely sounds like a cool idea that you can choose your side and fight against the other group from your location. Montola couldn’t tell if the game will be available in other platforms than iOS, but it would be a shame if they prevented other smartphone users from playing this really nice game!

Tommi Koskinen explained about Supersonic

After that sound designer Tommi Koskinen talked about his project, Supersonic. It was a nice story about a game that needed some tracks but instead of getting only a few, they made a whole soundtrack! Koskinen had for example recorded some sounds of an old elevator to create this electronic music. He also spoke some about crowdsourcing because he is a manager at AudioDraft.
Other speakers were Perttu Hämäläinen who talked about choreographics in motion games and Tuomo Tammenpää who had made funny cubes with lights that you could play with.

In the end I gave a few words about our very own Score Club and what we are doing right now. Follow us in Facebook, by the way! There’s a lot of stuff to come! After my words the speakers had a panel discussion about all kinds of things.

The best of all the IGDA meeting that is usually arranged in Helsinki came to Tampere for the first time and was a huge success! There were a lot more people than usually. The sponsored drinks could have been a bit too tempting for most of the new visitors.. But the main point was that there were a lot more people and the atmosphere was more open than in Helsinki. One of the reasons why there were so many people was also that before the free socializing time there was a lecture held by the legend of Game Design, Ernest Adams. Of course Score members took the awesome chance to see the lecture and were having a great time learning about Game Design, finding new contacts and meeting fellow students for example from KAJAK.

Story and pics: Emma Kiiski
Emma Kiiski is running Score Game Development Community, also a student of our Media Programme.
http://score.igda.fi/ 

Opening Ada today - Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Everything not on place yet, but intense work going on

Welcome to open our new open learning environment Ada 5th floor 3 pm!

Traditional class rooms are good for teaching, but not always so suitable for collaborative learning. Our students (and teachers) learn and work more and more in collaborative projects and need big round tables instead of the traditional rows of desks directed to the teacher on the podium.

We pulled down two computer class rooms and merged them with our top floor lobby. Thus we got an open space with groups of bigger and smaller tables, desks, chairs and sofas. We also have big screens for the team members to show case their projects.

The main function of the space is that many project teams can work there simultaneously, hopefully inspiring each other. Ada can also be used as an auditorium for up to 100 people.

Most students have their own laptops, pads and smart phones to work with, Ada is also outfitted with some for students who do not have.

Ada is not complete yet, but the students have already started using it. Also the student clubs meet there, the Visual Design Club IMPD, the Game Development Club Score and the Film Club.

Why Ada?

The reason we have the formal opening of Ada today is that the international Ada Lovelace day is celebrated  today all over the world. The reason we name our open learning environment Ada is that Ada Lovelace is the person who invented programming, and she symbolises the union of creativity and technology in modern times.

Read more:
International Ada Lovelace Day
Our previous Ada Lovelace story
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Ernest Adams: Game Design Workshop, 5th of October

He's the founder of IGDA, a former programmer, game designer and nowadays a freelance game consultant. He's THE GUY every game developer should meet and participate in his lectures and workshops. This day was really interesting, fun and teaching! Mr. Adams [http://www.designersnotebook.com/] is really a top professional in his field. Of course some curious and enthusiastic Score members showed up to participate to this awesome action!

Ernest Adams having a great lecture about Game Design

We started the morning slow with some small talk as everybody gathered in New Factory premises. Mr. Adams started the day with explaining the day's schedule. After that he held a lecture about game design which was basically all the information we needed to design the games in the workshop.

Enthusiastic game developers working in groups

We were divided into groups of 4 to 5 people, completely randomized. The task was to design a functional game that followed the given theme. The themes were dreams of someone: I wish I could... "be a top fashion designer" or "create a wedding".
Everyone got their own roles in the team; Art Director, User Interface designer and Lead Designer just to name a few. So the work could begin! The group brainstormed about their topics and came up with cool ideas about the concepts. Some teams had slight problems with their themes; all of the team members were guys and the theme was about designing a fancy wedding! I also as a girl had the nice chance to draw trucks and other vehicles; had basically never done that! So it was quite interesting and different.

After the lunch everyone would work individually under their title. Everyone had their own worksheet with different questions that could help sum up the topic. The Art Director would for example write down some initial aesthetic definitions like how the style looks like and how the lighting would affect the feel of the game and so on. Same time the Mechanics Designer would think about how the game works. It was really like a simulation of the game industry; sometimes you work in a team but there's also some individual work. We also noticed there’s never enough time to finish the project. It was good to notice these things in that sense that I haven't worked in the industry myself (yet).
The last part of the team work was about summarizing the information together that the Lead Designer could then tell all the other teams what their team had designed and the team got feedback from Mr. Adams.

Save the whales team showing their concept

We showed the concepts to the other teams. It was nice to see what the others had as themes and how they had pulled it off. We saw some awesome ideas about saving whales from whalers who tried to capture the animals with a plunger and a children game where they could drive big trucks and build stuff.

In amount it was a truly great workshop! I'm really thankful for Ernest Adams to come to teach us and a big thank you to those who invited him! Really awesome!

Some people (many of which are Score members!) just wouldn't leave
before having a nice little small talk with the living legend of game design.

Story and pics: Emma Kiiski
Emma Kiiski is running Score Game Development Community, also a student of our Media Programme.
http://score.igda.fi/

"8" in Night Visions

 Poster for 8 is designed by Henna Pekki.

After one and a half years of technical, bureaucratic, financial and logistical battles, uphills and headwinds, psychological horror film 8 is finally finished. It is part of the thesis work of four students in TAMK School of Art and Media. The film premieres with style in Night Visions festival, the biggest genre film event in Finland.

8 will be seen along the feature film Red State on 

Friday, October 28th at 21.15 in Kino Maxim (Helsinki).

Night Visions writes:

"8 is a psychological horror film about people who have to relive their most traumatic memories in a cave that projects the human subconscious. The shadow of David Lynch lingers behind the beautiful images of the director Miro Laiho’s original story, quite unlike anything the feature length Finnish productions of today have on offer."

More info at the official website of Night Visions.

Info about the film

Duration: 36 min

Starring: Salla Juntunen, Antti Launonen, Pekka Laiho

Written and directed by: Miro Laiho

Production: Blind Spot Pictures

Producers: Pekka Ollula ja Miro Laiho

Production manager: Markus Aaltonen

Director of photography: Jaakko Tuure

Gaffer: Jaakko Sorja

Costume design: Maija Tuohino

Set design: Heli Suorsa

Makeup artist: Lisa Mattila

Film editor: Ville Hakonen

Visual effects: Juha Lindstedt

Sound design: Paul Houseman, Liisa Koikkalainen, Michael Law

Music: Michael Law

See you at Night Visions!

Trailer

Official website

Facebook

Twitter

Text by Miro Laiho

Learn how to build your very own robot!

Building our tiny Frankenstein

October has begun with grey and cold weather. Luckily manSEDANse festival has kicked off at the same time. I participated with dozen other TAMK students in Arduino workshop at Finlayson campus held on Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th afternoons. Even though it was a two day workshop we got to experience a lot of basics of Arduino. We didn't necessary need to know any fancy stuff before the workshop. The lecturers helped us hand by hand how to build our very own singing Frankenstein.

Wait. What actually is Arduino? I had no idea about Arduino before entering the world of ones and zeros on Monday. I learned that Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. Arduino itself is a microchip plugged in to your computer via USB. You code with Arduino software.

Controling sound and LED with a controling tool

“Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.” (Source: Arduino.cc)

I didn't have any knowledge about coding or building computers from scratch before. I felt a bit confused and fool at first - yet here I am now writing to you about this awesome thingy! Don't let the complex look fool you. Anything can be learned!

During the first day sessions we learned how to make a blinking LED bulb work, how to control the light (speed of blinking and light) and how to get the light on without Arduino software. To control the speed you had a tiny control tools which names I can't remember... Same applied with controlling the tones. We created our very own game console theme song! (The out coming tones were naturally very monotones.)

Experementing how Arduino reacts with our drawn image

On the second day we focused more on how to make sounds with Arduino. We already experienced this on Monday's sessions but not so fully focus. On second sessions we discovered how to make sounds via drawn image or shape. By changing the values of our code we could get different levels of tones and speed. The change was based on pure mathematics: multiply and division formulas. We even combined two Arduino microchips and audio equipments to each other and recorded some basic tones together.

Basically only the space is your limit when you're working with Arduino. Another nice thing about this workshop was the fact that you didn't need to own fancy equipments to build your device. And just by doing a lot of research and practicing your skills you can build your very own robot sooner or later!
||| Links:
manSEDANse
The Arduino team on Twitter
Arduino

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Story and photograps: Aino Yrjänä
Aino is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

manSEDANse 2011 kicked off!

The Arduino workshop will work three days

The electronic culture festival manSEDANSe is "A week of startling seminars, fascinating talks, engrossing workshops, dramatic festivities and club nights beyond brilliant. Amazing acts, inspiring people, food for thought, and love potion for your ear canals."

Arduino workshop uses a lot of stuff 

Two manSEDANse workshops, the VJ-workshop and the Arduino- workshop started yesterday at our school. Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer.

Also "TAMK Art and Media Presents" exhibition opened last night showing works by Robin Jochem, Lena Strutz, Jone Vildziunaite, Jiyoung Park, Johannes Gemuerr, Lotta Kallio, Masa Pelc and Susanne Wasserlechner. Read more...

There will be more workshops and seminars, e.g. manSEDANse Play seminar today.

Arduino talk

Read more about manSEDANse artworks, workshops, lectures and much more