Our Lighting Design students climax the Light Festival

Tampere Light Festival last shows:
December 31th to January 5th 4.30pm to midnight: Tammerkoski Rapids
January 2nd to January 8th 4pm to 8pm: Pyynikki Observation Tower and Old Termopyle Bandstand

Carita Elko: Hidden

Tampere Light Festival two last events are almost here. Starting on New Years Eve you can admire a light intstallation by TAMK previous lecturer in light design Roope Siiroinen and light design graduate Katja Muttilainen at the banks of Tammerkoski rapids at Tampere city centre. It is best seen from Hämeensilta bridge and Verkaranta park.

Our students of Theatre and Event Lighting Design Carita Elko and Satu Leskinen are the artists of the last Chain of Light show.

Carita gives the old Observation Tower and its surroundings a new life and look with her light installation Hidden (Kätketty). If you pass the observation tower and walk towards the old Termopyle Bandstand you will find Echoes (Kaiut), the video installation by Satu which uses the treasures of Tampere photography archives.

Satu Leskinen: Echoes

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Also don't forget the spectacular fireworks show in the bay between Ratina Stadium and Laukontori market on New Years Eve at 10pm
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Read posts about previous Lighting Design projects 
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Wolf Carver invited to Clermont Filmfest!

During the shootings in February the weather was freezing
and most of the shootings days were outside

Wolf Carver (Sudenveistäjä) directed by Aino Suni is the only Finnish film selected to one of the world's leading international festivals for short films, the Festival du Court Metrage de Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival celebrated January 27 to February 4, 2012.

"The International Competition is a rare moment, full of magic, where films from a wide spectrum intersect. Animated gems, documentaries, brilliant comedies, down-to-earth fictions, genre films or graduation shorts from some of the finest film schools out there will undoubtedly take you on a unique journey into young film creation. Just relax and enjoy the thrill."

Wolf Carver is the story about Sulo, a lonely artist, who lives in the countryside. One day as he is going to see his ex-girlfriend, he meets a girl with a trailer full of cardboard boxes and helps her move her things into her new flat. Sulo finds out that the girl is his daughter. He tries to tell that to the girl also, but it is complicated.

The film is a part of the diploma work of director Aino Suni, cinematographer Kerttu Hakkarainen and producer Ilona Tolmunen. The main actors are Kai Lehtinen and Jaana Joensuu.

Wolf Carver home (trailer, too)
Festival du Court Metrage de Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival
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Read more about Wolf Carver on this blog
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“Design is too important to be left to Designers.”

Reporting after the Design Management -course

What is Design Management? It is a far wider concept than one 5 credit course can cover.

“Design is too important to be left to Designers.” (Raymond Loewy)

Concept Designs by Kristina and Sabrina

We got a visiting lecturer Simona Vitalini to guide us through varying subjects. We thought about being a designer, what it means and who exactly is a designer? Crowdsourcing has become popular and anyone can create things on the home computer. The course is not only for future designers, we went through a lot of the powers that are behind the creative process, as the course name "Design Management" suggests. There's research, design thinking, innovation and values. We studied convergence and divergence and the importance design has for innovation. We talked a lot about values and what ethical problems or responsibilities designers have. We also had visitors from all over the world telling us about cultural differences in design and in the workplace. Of course our students are multicultural, too, so we had a lot to talk about.

We learned about so many things I can't list all here. One of the subjects that interested me was brands (and logos), business identities and how they are communicated. We also got to hear about influential designers and we did some design company visits. And we had for example someone from the theatre world to give us exercises concerned with group dynamics and leadership.

We got to practice how to pitch and sell our ideas to the clients. The biggest assignment on the course was a real project. Most did some designing for Antti Hietala. There was Klubin Tiistai Tummat or Hang the DJ projects to choose from, consisting of logos, posters, merchandise and all kind of marketing material for the client. My group chose to do a whole different thing, the http://int.NoNukeArt.org poster project. We made a website for our posters and will be exhibiting them also at school next year, stay tuned!

Kaisu, Camille, me and Yukyung pitching our ideas

All in all it was a very effective and enlightening course, but the one thing all our teachers could take note of was our feedback session yesterday. We all went to Runokahvila and talked about the course and the subjects a bit more. We also gave feedback to Simona and she gave each project their grades and comments and even gave every single student their personal feedback. A similar nice event was the UXdesign / Project Management / Demola Academy end EXPO last week where all lecturers and students explored what everyone had done and gave and got feedback. It's a good direction if that's where we are headed. We give a lot of feedback about our courses online and we get comments of our work when we present them in front of the class but nothing beats sitting down and talking about things together.

Feedback coffee and tea

Story and photos by Johanna Lievemaa (design Kristina Põldots and Sabrina Seidl)
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The Design Management Course is part of the optional studies of Degree Programme in Media
Read more posts by and about IMPs, the international media programme students.
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24 hours in Tampere best media installation at Videomedeja 2011!

Tampere Art Factory workshop project successful around Europe
The  15th Videomedeja Festival  was arranged December 16-18 2011 in Novi Sad, Serbia.

The jury was unanimous awarding "24 hours in Tampere, an interactive documentary" with the Bogdanka Poznanović award - for the best media installation due to participatory potential of the work. The Sphinx award – for the best video/film went to "A Finnish Fable" by Niina Suominen.

24 hours in Tampere is an online collaborative online interactive documentary and video installation by Richard Vickers and James Field, University of Lincoln School of Media (UK). The project started in a Tampere Art Factory (TAF) workshop in April with Richard Vickers and our students Jani Ilomaki, Robert Niva and Guanjun Liu and exchange student Vaidotas Ambrozaitis from Vilnius Gediminas Technical University.

After the first show at TAF the documentary has been online at www.24-hours.in. In September the project was demonstrated at MindTrek conference in Tampere and further developed in a workshop with our international Media Programme students Anna-Kaisa Nässi, Trent Pancy, Vesa Rantanen, Erika Kim and Tuomas Mikola.

24 hours in Tampere has got a warm reception also at the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Istanbul in September and at the EUROPRIX Academic Network Conference in Graz in November.

Read more...
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Zonear is the Finnish winner of of the Startup Sauna Fall 2011

The most talented startups from Northern Europe, Russia and Finland have been found. Last Friday, the Startup Sauna announced the top three winners of its latest Fall Batch. These three teams show great improvements and hustle during the program. The Coaches of the program made the decision that Zonear, Qminder & Maxygen are the winners of the Startup Sauna.

Mikko Tikkanen revealed Zonear plans visiting our Media Programme
in October

The three teams were awarded to free office space at the Aalto Venture Garage and (office space in Rocketspace in downtown) San Francisco, flights (for the whole team) to Silicon Valley and have access to the Startup Sauna’s network in Silicon valley and helping them get established there.

According to jury "Zonear is making HTML5 sexy". It is developing a quality assurance tool for HTML5 web apps. Zonear tool optimizes Javascript and CSS code and automatically runs unit testing on desktop, tablet and smartphone browsers to ensure faster and more reliable HTML5 apps.

Startup Sauna, founded in 2010, is an open source seed accelerator that is designed to kick start the region by coaching the selected startups from Northern Europe and Russia. Read more...

Two of four Zonear Co-founders and staff members, Timo Pietilä and Mikko Tikkanen, are graduates of the predecessor of our International Media Programme, the Media Programme run in Finnish. Quite international people, though!

Congratulations!

Link to:
Zonear
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After Earthquakes and Tsunami in Japan 2011

Now I exhibit my photos which I have taken in earethquakes and tsunami-hit places from May to July this year, at entrance space of Finlayson campus. The exhibition lasts until 23rd December.

When I came to Finland in August, I wanted to talk about the disaster but when I talked, they usually became quiet and I felt that I broke good atmosphere among foreign students who were excited with the first stay in Finland. So I couldn't find a good way to convey what I was thinking of and just time went on.

In class of Media Studies, my group gave a presentation about News. When audiences were giving presentations about how they should convey tsunami news through internet, radio and newspaper and so on, it was really hard for me to listen to them. Because there's no reality in their presentations at all and they thought of tsunami too easy. I couldn't understand why they were indifferent to that disaster though some of them wished working on media companies or so. I was really frustrated with my presentation too, because time was too short and I couldn't say enough. This class was also one of reasons which I decided to exhibit my photos.

Still I don't know why I want to talk about what I felt and what happened in the disaster. I don't think you should donate or do voluntary work for my country. And I know it's difficult to know and keep interested in everything all over the world. Even though I lived very far away from the disaster place and I didn't lose any friends or relatives, it was so shocking for me. Problems of nuclear plants of Fukushima have not been solved yet and many people in the disaster places have not got jobs, but people even in Japan are forgetting the disaster. Through the exhibition I want to make beginning for people to know and think of the disaster and I want to talk with people. Through the disaster I have heard a lot of good parts and bad parts of human behavior and saying, so I think this disaster is a lesson for human beings. 

I want to give presentation about the disaster somewhere and someday. Next year I live in Tampere for a while. If I can use a projector and a computer, it's enough. Especially it's important for media students to know how SNS, newspaper,TV and radio functioned in the disaster. And I also want them to know there's a big difference about media between the disaster places and outside the disaster places even in the same country.

If you have questions about photos or the disaster, please ask me anything. 

And you can see other photos of earthquake and tsunami, in my flickr.

www.flickr.com/photos/ikukoishida

Ikuko Ishida

ii_195@yahoo.co.jp

information about the exhibition:   http://www.facebook.com/events/265855303463767/

International guests impressed by Demola

Three international delegations last week

Bart Geerts and Jan Louis De Bruyn at Tampere waffle café

Our academic international coordinator Sohvi Sirkesalo was very busy last week. The beginning of the week she spent in Brussels preparing EU funded projects, then hosting three international delegations.


First visitors on Wednesday were Jurate Urboniene, Gene Sliaustiene, Gerda Ivanickiene, Vaida Bartkute-Norkuniene and Inga Dabkute came from Utena University of Applied Sciences, Lithuania.

On Thursday and Friday Sohvi hosted Jitka Hejtmanová from FAMU, the Film and TV Faculty of Academy of Performing Arts and Jan Louis De Bruyn and Bart Geerts from MAD-Faculty (Media Arts Design) of KHLim, Belgium.

Utena UAS delegation on their tour of Finlayson. Photo: Tuomo Joronen

The guests were very impressed by Demola, our joint project and innovation platform with Tampere universities and enterprises.

FAMU and MAD-Faculty are our old partners and the visits gave many ideas and stimulation to develop further the cooperation.
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Finnfoto 2011 Award winner: Juha Suonpää

The head of our Degree Programme in Fine Arts Juha Suonpää is awarded with the Finnfoto 2011. The Union of Finnish Photography Associations grants this annual award to a person or an organisation who has had a significant impact on developing Finnish photography as an art form and promoted the appreciation of photography.

Juha Suonpää analyzing photographs with students Elise Mäkitalo and
Liina Mäki-Patola. Photo: Antti Haapio

Juha Suonpää is a photographer, researcher and teacher who graduated in education from the University of Tampere and gained a doctorate in art from the University of Art and Design, Helsinki. His doctoral thesis Petokuvan raadollisuus (The Beastly Image of the Beast, 2002) was a study of the social significance of nature photography. He is also well known for his earlier prizewinning books Metsä Liikkuu (The Forest is on the Move, 1994) and Luontokuvan totuuden hetki (The Moment of Truth in Nature Photography, 2001).

Juha's newest book, Valokuva on IN
(Photography is IN) was released earlier this year

His book in English and solo exhibition Sacred Places-Pyhät paikat took place at The Contemporary Art Museum Tampere 2007.

Juha is actively engaged in lecturing on photography, writing academic papers on related topics and arranging regular photographic exhibitions in Finland and abroad. He has also gained recognition for his children’s books, teaching materials and documentary films.

Awarded Family portrait online

The Minna Korhonen short film Family Portrait (Perhepotretti), awarded the Best Experimental Short Film at Tirana International Film Festival 2010 can be found online.

Family portrait was also the official selection of several Finnish and international film festivals. Read more in the article by Nalle Mielonen, writer and cinematographer of the film ...

Tampere - the Focal Point of Northern Europe

Entrance to TAMK UAS Finlayson Campus

20 new media student seats available

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 indeed accessible: Direct international flights from Alicante, Bremen, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Frankfurth, Kaunas, London, Malaga, Milan, Pisa, Riga, Rome, Stockholm, Tallin and Trapani, train from St. Petersburg and Helsinki, ferry + train from Tallin, Stockholm, Gdynia, Travemünde and Rostock.

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

More information:
VisitTampere.fi
Tampere All Bright on Facebook
Tampere All Bright on Twitter 

Degree Programme in Media, run in English

Tampere University of Applied Sciences has several degree programmes working in English. Application period for the international degree programmes of Finnish UAS is January 9 to February 14 2012.
Applicants of our international interactive media programme are required to complete and send a pre-task, which was published last week.

Download the pre-task
All details about the application process
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Media Programme home
Media Programme on Facebook
#tamkmedia on Twitter
Read about studies and free time activities of IMPs
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Game Design & Game Party!

The Game Design Workshop - Part 2 (Click here for Part 1)

The second day of our Game Design Workshop began with one of my favorite game ideas by the SuperSmash Foreigners. In the game the player is controlling drops of water on a leaf by tilting their smartphone or tablet. It's a shame that most of the team will go home after Christmas, all of them being exchange students. But I am putting my hopes on Klemen Krulec to make this awesome game ready before he leaves Finland!

The SuperSmash Foreigners with their game "Drop, Drop, Water Drop"

After the first presentation it was time for "Dash" by Liquid Jacket Studios. Their concept was a car racing game where the car is moving between different lanes while dodging other cars. I especially liked the 3D model Joonas Sairiala had done for their presentation's background!

Liquid Jacket Studios presenting "Dash"

The third game idea presented was our Voldbeat team's "Druid's Apprentice". The game is about making potions by collecting ingredients from goblins and becoming a mighty druid in the process... Here is a link to the game trailer we made (with the help of Lukas Kallenbach).

Our awesome Volbeat team presenting "Druid's Apprentice"
See Douglas joining us through the computer screen!

Next were the Wild Walrus Production's "Billy the Bearded Barbarian Boy", an adventure game with basic hack'n'slash and an interesting looting system, and Noname Team's "The Man Who Planted Trees", which is a game based on a story by a French writer Jean Giono with visual inspirations from its animation adaption. Both ideas were very interesting and it will be great to see how they will work out!

"Billy the Bearded Barbarian Boy" presented by Wild Walrus Production

Noname Team presenting: "The Man Who Planted Trees"

Lassi Kurkijärvi and Gareth Noyce commenting

Toni Pippola and Pasi Pekkanen discussing the presentations

Johanna and Emma took notes so that we wouldn't forget what had been said!

After two mornings and afternoons of game concept pitchings it was time to finally relax (gamer-style, of course). Me, Anna Narinen, Emma Kiiski and Andreas Heinrich went out on a crazy shopping spree to get food for the hungry game designers. And of course, we kept all the snacks healthy... Or somewhat healthy.

Yummy, right?

Anna chopping veggies

Table before...

Table after!

And what would a game designers party be without games? That's right, nothing! Unfortunately when technology is involved nothing ever works as expected. It took finally four people to get a sound AND picture come out of the lovable Xbox360. Thanks to the mystery tech wizard who finally solved everything out! Without him we would have been completely lost... Hours and hours of non-stop Guitar Hero was about to begin!

Emma observing the technology vs. game design students battle
from a safe distance

First, Guitar Hero showdown!

After playing guitars for a few hours it was time for DJ Hero!

Here are our workshop guests showing off their DJ Hero skills, and if watched carefully, you can also spot Klemen there holding every Finn's favorite drink...

Like Emma said earlier, thanks again to Pasi, Toni, Gareth and Lassi for the great workshop, I am sure everyone had a blast! And thanks to Gareth and Lassi for all the inside information about game industry, bug reporters, user testing and how to avoid eager reporters... I'm sure your advice will not go wasted!

Story and pics: Heidi Mäenpää

Read more stories about IMPs, the Media students

Read more about the Media Programme.

Read more about Score Game Development Community

Testing Motion Capture with Kinect

Last Thursday a TAMK student Jussi Salonen held a lecture on the Finlayson campus about using Microsoft Kinect for motion capture. Everything was made possible with Blender, a free open source 3D computer graphics software, which the 10IMPs also have tried out during their Animation course last spring.

Jussi preparing his presentation

The program Jussi used for the motion capture is called Brekel Kinect. At the moment the program only runs on Windows (the creator doesn't seem to be a huge fan of fruits!) and its purpose is to make more people in the 3D community acquainted with entry level motion capture, as well as 3D object/environment scanning. At the moment it can only record data from one Kinect, but perhaps in the future multiple cameras can be used.

Tuomo Joronen trying out the software

Our teacher Tuomo Joronen was the bravest when experimenting on how his movements could be tracked by the program, but later Emma Kiiski also showed us her great ninja moves. After exporting the tracked movement to Blender a skeleton (with epic moves) brought a ready-modeled character alive smoothly with only a few adjustments.

Skeleton and character slowly starting to cooperate

Arriving straight from the Game Design workshop the IMPs were very eager to hear if the program could also be used when creating characters for games. Jussi didn't say it was impossible, so perhaps we will see some characters being brought to life by using this program! Of course for most people it is more convenient to use it when creating normal animations.

Some Tiko people from the main campus also joined us

I can honestly say I enjoyed Jussi's presentation, and will definitely want to try this out on my own! After all Score has their own Kinect which members can test this program out with! I was glad when Jussi agreed to send us some instructions on what to do and how to make things work. Here you can find detailed instructions and things you should download! And also, don't forget to install Blender or some other 3D program similar to it.

When everything has been installed, remember to tick the Motion Capture Addon!
Blender -> File -> User Preferences -> Addons

Here is also a short video of how everything went, make sure you check it out as well!

Story and pictures: Heidi Mäenpää

More stories about IMPs

More info about Score Game Development Community

We Make Game Concepts!

The Game Design Workshop - Part 1

The Game Design workshop is the coolest event for TAMK’s annually held online course in game design. The first day began with a short presentation of our dear Demola. After Antti Salomaa finished the PowerPoint (with some awesome information about upcoming projects!), our visiting game industry expert Gareth Noyce held a presentation about making games. He recommended the students to start to make games and showed some different ways how you can reach the topic. With Gareth there was also a game consult Lassi Kurkijärvi giving feedback for the concepts and pitches.

Gareth Noyce telling us about the different ways to make games.

The first ones presenting their idea was the team Well Played. They must have been excited to kick off the event from the student side, not knowing what to expect! They made a game concept about a dog sled and dog racing. We learned that you should make more research about the competition; it turned out that there is already an MMORPG about dog sledding. So better check out what already exists and do some research.

Gareth's comments were not as harsh as I had imagined. We were told before that some of the teams went off the stage crying previous years!

Well Played presenting their game mechanics.

.There were some really cool and unique ideas in the Game Design teams in amount. There was for example a game about climbing. One team figured it to be cool to make a game about some sort of Frankenstein's monster that you can create and then wander around with it. Another idea was about a woodpecker that has to survive in the hard world and try to find a partner. That way the game had a really nice circle and you can always start from the beginning; the egg! The last but not the least the team presented us an assassination game with a lot of information about history.

Gareth and Lassi gave some really nice advice for us students about game development in amount. They both challenged the students to think their game idea through again and suggested improvements. Gareth also encouraged us to really make our own games since as students we have free time and you will need some demos to show if you’re applying to a job.

Lassi and Gareth discussing about one game idea.

The most awesome thing was something that also Johanna Lievemaa (10IMP) mentioned during the second presentation’s feedback round: This event brings programmers, designers and artists together from different campuses and even internationally.

Stay tuned for the second day report, will be written by Heidi Mäenpää! Also the photos are taken by her.

Special thanks to Toni Pippola and Pasi Pekkanen for organizing the course and to Gareth Noyce and Lassi Kurkijärvi for giving such constructive feedback!

Story: Emma Kiiski

Emma Kiiski is running Score Game Development Community, also a student of our Media Programme.
Read more stories by/about Emma
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Two graduating Fine Art students exhibit in YOUNG ARTISTS 2011

From the Family Act by Laura Rytkönen

YOUNG ARTISTS 2011
2. December - 8. January, 2012
Kunsthalle Helsinki
Nervanderinkatu 3
Tue, Thu, Fri 11–18
Wed 11-20
Sat-Sun 11-18
Mon closed

YOUNG ARTISTS 2011 exhibition opened for public in Helsinki Kunsthalle on Saturday 3.12. The exhibition is a biennal that shows works of artists under the age of 35-years. Over 430 artists applied for the exhibition with some 1200 works, and 56 of the artists were selected by a jury appointed by the Finnish Artists Association.

Two graduating Fine Art students were selected to the exhibition, Anne Lehtelä with her work Tanssi (Dance) and Laura Rytkönen with her work Perhe-esitys (the Family Act). Former Tamk students also appear in the exhibition, artists Jukka Silokunnas, Laura Konttinen and Anastasia Lobkovski (who has graduated from the media programme).

From Dance by Anne Lehtelä

The Young Artists exhibition has a long history; it was established on 1939 to focus on promoting the works by artists in the beginning of their careers. It’s an important merit for an artist still establishing their career to be chosen for juried exhibitions. It’s a good way to get to bigger audiences and get your work known on the field.

Find more information on the exhibition on the site of Helsinki Kunsthalle.

More info on the artists:

Anne Lehtelä
Laura Rytkönen
Laura Konttinen
Anastasia Lobkovski
Jukka Silokunnas

Story: Laura Rytkönen
Read more stories by/about Laura Rytkönen 
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Read about the young artist 2009 exhibition
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Antti Haapio: SEGUES in Gallery Emil Studio 2.-18.12.

Opening of Photo Art exhibition SEGUES by lecturer Antti Haapio was 1st of December 2011 in Gallery Emil Studio.

A theme of Segues exhibition is movement of the time. As a child I do

not stop to wonder what is behind a border where universe is expanding. What happened before the Big Bang. What time actually is - when it starts, when it end. Is time limited at all?

Photography is with special relation to the time. When a moment is stopped in to a photograph it give us possibility to analyse a flow of events. In the Art Works of Segues exhibition I test can I remove myself from the time when I take photos from same subject on different moments. Can I photograph time as if I am outside of the time? Is it possible in that way sketch something about a substance of the time, something what I do not sketch when I am inside the time? I guess I get a result when enough time has gone from the period recorded in the Art Works. Is this the situation now for example with triptych 2002?

Galleria Emil in the internet

Awarded Whistle While You Work now online!

The directional debut of Jussi Sandhu and Ville Hakonen, "Whistle While You Work" can now be seen on Vimeo with English subtitles.


The movie tells the story of Tommi Virtanen, a brave workhorse who doesn't mind doing any extra hours earning his managers trust. However, he doesn't intend to get stuck in his current position but wants to ascent in his career. One day Tommi has an idea. 

Whistle while you work is a film about work, family and obsession - in short, a film about Finns.



Best Student Film | Helsinki Short Film Festival 2010
Best Film | DobleClick Film Festival 2010
Special Jury Award | DobleClick Film Festival 2010
+ official selection of many festivals around Europe




Helvetin hyvää työtä (Whistle While You Work, 2009) from Saku Seilori on Vimeo.