Chris Hales - the Interactive Film Doctor and our frequent visiting professor - gave last week a workshop on Visual Styles to our students where the student made movies illustrating metamorphosis. While the students worked with their films Chris decided to show what he can do and made this lovely film "Toy Town Tampere" We actually live in a wonderful city, don't we?

This is a screen shot, please find the film at the end of story

Chris' work adds to the series of brilliant creations promoting Tampere made by TAMK Art&Media guests and students.

24 hours in Tampere, the video installation created by Richard Vickers and James Fields & our students  has been screen and awarded at many festivals. The work now features other cities as well.

Our exchange students Dan Castro & Nick Rowley won the "My Tampere Award" in 2008 with their animation Tampere - A Truly British Guide. Franziska Emhardt & Kathrin Muessigmann (also exchange students) won a honorary mention in the same competition with their piece Our Tampere.

Some weeks ago seven Tampere region promotional movies by our Film&Television students were published:
Here are four of them and their series of the now famous swearing man from Tampere films (Stop the nonsense 1-3) are here.

Enough history, time to see Chris Hales' Tampere style:


It’s almost 4 months ago I left Finland to see what the games industry in Germany has to offer. This meaning I’m currently doing a part of my practical training aka internship at one of the world’s biggest social game developing companies, Wooga. Right now I’m also working on my thesis and got my original plan of 3 months extended to 8 in total. I’m not the first Finnish student here, not even the first TTVO student. I’ve also met some guys from Kajak, which is really cool.



All in all Berlin is a really nice and international city. Knowing German helps a lot but you can get things done with English as well.


Big things happen at Wooga! Releasing a game is worth of setting up
 a huge banner on the side or the office building!
At Wooga the language is English. There are a lot of people from outside Germany so it is kind of natural that everyone should speak the same language. In the game industry English seems to be the main language anyway. I think that is great; it makes it easier for people to move from a country to another!

Wooga is not like any other company I’ve seen so far. They have quite an awesome spirit here and I really like it. It is serious business in developing games but the people have still good humor, are friendly and enthusiastic about games.
Strange stuff happens at Wooga. Especially on Halloween!

If you have a chance to go abroad to work, maybe an internship or something else, I highly recommend it. The experience you get is valuable both on your CV and in your life.  

Be active. That takes you far!

Story by: Emma Kiiski
Emma Kiiski is a member of Score Game Development Community, also a student of our Media Programme.
Read more stories by/about Emma

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Text/Photo by Erika and Rosanna

Demola Academy fall 2012 Final pitching event was held on Thursday  17th of January. All Demola Academy teams proudly presented their final pitches. It was quite amusing seeing what other teams have done during these 4 months.


Each team had 5 minutes to present their works. It was quite a tight time limit to tell/show people the result of our hard work, but we all made it on time. After all teams presented their stuff, we gathered in Demola to see which teams are finalists. There was another pitching session for finalists later right before the gala starts. It was a great chance for people who missed their precious presentation.

After finalists’ presentation, finally, Demola graduation party began! Some IMPs game project teams were there presenting their games so we can see and try their game. I must say, they all were really well made already. Can’t wait to see the final result!

While we were busy partying, networking, juries decided a winner. The winner was- YLE ‘Capturing motion’ team. Congrats! and good job you all. Peace.
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The authors are students of our Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about the IMPs, our International Media Programme students
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Demola is the joint innovation and project platform of universities and companies in Tampere
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Petri Ala-Maunus - the painting lecturer at TAMK - opens two exhibitions this week, a solo show Übernatur in gallery Sculptor, Helsinki and a group show Sublimate Sublime Subliminal curated by Alan Rankle in London.

La-la land, 2012, 170 x 170 cm, oil on canvas

Petri is known for his use of iconic images in art history and popular culture and creating ambiguous work though his approach.

SUBLIMATE SUBLIME SUBLIMINAL is a group exhibition presented at two London venues : Underdog Gallery and Lloyds Club, international exhibition curated by Alan Rankle
A4 Paradise, craphite on found a4 papers

Following the SUBLIMATE SUBLIME SUBLIMINAL opening at Lloyds Club on Thursday 24th, Underdog Gallery is hosting a simultaneous exhibition of the featured artists who are bringing major paintings, photographs, sculptures and specially created installations to this important new London venue close to London Bridge starting with an opening at which artists will be attending on Friday 25th January.

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Gallery Sculptor
SUBLIMATE SUBLIME SUBLIMINAL (on Facebook)
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TAMK Fine Art senior lecturer Minna Suoniemi opens two shows this week, in The National Photography Museum of Norway and The Khyber Centre for The Arts in Halifax, Canada.


The exhibition Bodies, Borders, Crossings curated by Leena-Maija Rossi and Kari Soinio was seen in New York 2011 and will continue to Pori Art Museum  after this exhibition in Preus National Photography Museum of Norway. Minna Suoniemi is showing Miss Kong from 2008.

In the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Halifax Suoniemi shows a newer piece, Little Red Riding Hood and Wolf from 2012. The exhibition Ahead of the Now is curated by a Canadian artist duo Johanna & Jared.

Preus National Photography Museum of Norway
Khyber Centre for the Arts in Halifax
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Our 26 exchange students for this spring have arrived and have been busy on courses for two weeks now. First week most of them participated in the one week intense courses Video Techniques and Expression, Script Writing Workshop and WEB Workshop or started the two month Video Art course.

On left our international coordinator Sohvi Sirkesalo
On right the Visual Styles workshop professor Christopher Hales

Last week they started the Game Design or Future Film Studies modules and other courses.

Here you can find all Art&Media courses for exchange students this spring.

We haven't been able to catch them all for a group photo, but here you can spot half of them after the show of the awesome movies they made at the Visual Styles Workshop, the first part of Future Film Studies.

The exchange students this spring come from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom.
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by Teppo Nieminen

Look at all these games!
Correct use of iPad

Sometimes Christmas arrives a bit late but when it does, it’s all the sweeter!
TTVOs Game club Score got many new equipments, games and accessories from Gaming Santa so that the proud TAMK Game developing could tackle the new year with even more possibilities than the previous one. Some of the new items included:

  • a new XBox 360
  • a brand new iPad and Apple game developer licence
  • new gaming mouses, mouse pads and headphones
  • new coffee maker and water boiler
  • new games like Assassin’s Creed III, Borderlands 2, Dishonored, Rayman Origins, Mario Party 9 and many more!

Come and see by yourself!
Score welcomes all gamers and non-games. Just come to chat and enjoy the coffee if nothing else.

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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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Score on this blog
Mouse and mouse pad
Coffee maker and water boiler
ALL the new stuff
Yep, it works

By Teppo Nieminen

Everything doesn’t always go as planned. On intensive course week on October many students chose Video techniques and expressions and excitingly listened how our lecturer, Mikko Uimonen told us about the meaning and purpose of shots and angles and gave us a task of making a film the following days with a ready script he had made. Our enthusiasm became even greater later that day when we got to see the equipment we’d be working on. We couldn’t wait for the next day!

Then things started to go downhill. Mikko told us he was sick and wouldn’t be teaching us on Tuesday. He, however, encouraged us to start on our videos and said that he would be back the next day. He wasn’t. And not even the day after that. Some people found interest to make something out of the materials and equipment but most of to applied people dropped out from the course and it was officially cancelled. Or was it?

Couple of weeks later Mikko contacted the few still wanting to participate and asked if we wanted to have couple of evening lectures and then make a video and report to get the credits. So we did. We had four evening lessons in which we learned about the camera and the handling of it, the video styles, audio and lighting. Then we got the instructions to do two films, one more difficult and scripted than the other one.


You need a lot of stuff for filming

The second (the bigger and scripted) film of our group, including the author, Yonathan Wolowelsky, Joanne Wong and Jungsoo Moon, was shot on the last weekend of November. Before that we had serious discussions about the script, storyboard, actors, roles and scenes we would make and in which order. Going to the weekend, everything was looking great. I mean, how hard it could be?

A Serious conversation. Really!

Very. From start we had problems with props and lighting, things that would continue to annoy us trough whole of the weekend. There was arguing and there was some disagreements but we overcame our disagreements and filmed it on two long days. In total it took us 16 and half hours to shoot footage for 4 minute film.

Welcome to the film world, I guess.

For the film:



For the production diary:


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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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The 7th annual international ubiquitous media competition, NUMA2013 (Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards 2013), seeks for novel ways to combine ubiquitous computing to media.
The interactive plant interface, Botanicus Interacticus, won NUMA2012

We are looking for disruptive artistic visions as well as clever near-to-market solutions off the beaten tracks! This includes any range of innovative ubimedia, pervasive, or ambient products and services. NUMA2013 is a highly interdisciplinary competition and we invite equally Designers, Computer Scientists, Artists, Economists and Engineers to take a stand on the following questions with their entries:

  • What is the particular aesthetic experience opened up by the rise of ubiquitous and ambient media?
  • What constitutes the specific intelligence that drives future media environments?
  • How will location- and context-aware media services change our social life?
  • How will our future lives look like in the era of ubiquitous computation, and how can society benefit from these advanced technologies?
The ambient audio navigation service Oh Music, Where Art Thou
won the second price 2012

The total award sum for the NUMA2013 is 6 000€. The sum can be awarded to one entry, divided between several entries or not awarded at all if the award criteria set by the jury are not fulfilled.
Valid competition entries include:

  • Pervasive and ubiquitous games
  • Ambient installations
  • Artistic works related to ubiquitous media and computation
  • Business models and management strategies
  • Ambient and ubiquitous media technology
  • Ubiquitous and ambient media services, devices, and environments
  • Context aware, sensing, and interfaces for ubiquitous computation
  • Ergonomics, human-computer interaction designs, and product prototypes
  • Software, hardware and middle-ware framework demonstrations
  • Ambient television
  • Any other inspiring work in the broad context of ubiquitous media
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NUMA2013 is organized collaboratively by TAMK, MindTrek, Tampere Region Centre of Expertise in Ubiquitous Computing (Hermia), Entertainment & Media Management Lab. (EMMi Lab, Tampere University of Technology), Nokia Oyj and the Ambient Media Association (AMEA).
The flying running companion Joggobot got
the third price last year




by Emilija Veselova

During the first year of my studies I got interested in the Adobe After Effects and what I would be able to do with it. I was very pleased to find out that in our evening course “Animation and Visual Design Workshop” for mostly meant for 2nd year students and exchange students we are going to work with motion graphics.


Instead of making a motion typography based on a song or movie scene or something like that I chose to work on the showreel for the new study path on our Media programme.
Here is the result:



The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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Our international Media Programme run in English offers 30 seats instead of 20 until last year for applicants this year. The increase comes from Music Production merging with our interactive Media Programme. The main subjects you can study are (in alphabetical order): Event Production, Game Design, Motion Graphics, Music Production, Music Business, Sound Design, Visual Design, Web Design.

There are four TAMK degree programmes in the present
application round for programmes run in English

The designers of the 90 best pre-tasks will be invited to the Entrance Exam and 30 of them will start their studies in August.

The schedule:

  • January 7 to February 12 4:15 P.M. Finnish time application
  • March 15 invitations to Entrance Exam + notifications to applicants not invited this time sent
  • April 9 and 10 - the one day entrance exam
  • May 27 (earliest) results of the Entrance Exam announced
  • August 13 the new media students start at Finlayson Campus


On the upper left corner of this blog you can find (until Feb 12) all relevant links an applicant might find useful.

On this blog there are several posts giving you more useful information about the programme and application, please click on the links of your interest:

If you want to read stories written by Media students about the studies and other activities follow this link
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Our 3rd year Film & Television programme students have made seven promotional films for the Tampere AllBright! campaign of Tampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredea. Also many Media programme students supported production of some of them.


The goal was to make something different compared to traditional promotional movies. Looking at the feedback it seems the students have succeeded in this, but judge yourself. We publish the videos in two parts. Here's three of them all titled Stop the Nonsense:








The four published earlier on our blog please find here
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Tampere Allbright! home 
Tampere Allbright on Facebook 
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by BoKyung Kim

Here we proudly present our game project, Snowflake Factory, for the Programming course (IMP-35-Programming course by Juha Ollikainen).

Here is the link: http://grmmph.com/snowflake/snowflake.html

After 2 months of severe coding training, each student was assigned to develop their own games. Our team, me and Yonathan Wolowelsky, got an idea for the game from Pikkujoulut (annual pre-Christmas party among the all IMP students).

During Pikkujoulut, there were various marvelous paper snowflakes made for decoration, and they definitely caught our eyes. Once we got the idea, everything went so well. Thanks to our great professor Juha Ollikainen, we could develop our game without being frustrated.

Basically, in this game you have to guess what kind of shape you should have to get certain shape of snowflake. You can drag small pieces from the bottom of the screen into a right-angled triangle and you can also rotate small pieces. Once you finished positioning all the small pieces, click ‘GO!’ button, and you will see whether you made a correct guess or not!

So far, we’ve made four levels and the last level might be quite challenging for some of you. Try it! Hope you enjoy and if you have any feedback or comment, feel free to let us know!

Here is the link again: http://grmmph.com/snowflake/snowflake.html
Contact: erui33[atsign]gmail.com(BoKyung Kim)
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The author is a TAMK International Media Programme student.
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the Degree Programme in Media students
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Our 3rd year Film & Television programme students have made seven promotional films for the Tampere AllBright! campaign of Tampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredea. Also many Media programme students supported the production of some of them.


The goal was to make something different compared to traditional promotional movies. Looking at the feedback it seems the students have succeeded in this, but judge yourself. We publish the videos in two parts, here's the first four of them:










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Find the next three videos
Tampere Allbright! home 
Tampere Allbright on Facebook 
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By Heidi Mäenpää 


Last summer Fazer and Rovio held an art work competition in which I participated before heading to the Netherlands for my exchange period. A couple of months later I was notified that in addition to winning the monthly prize of August I had been selected as one of the three main prize winners. The main prize included a tour at the Rovio headquarters in Espoo and the Fazer Chocolate Factory in Vantaa, and I was allowed to take one person with me. I chose the biggest Angry Birds fan I know: my cousin Niilo, who also had helped me with the drawing by providing excellent feedback. 

The winning artwork

So at the end of October I flew from the Netherlands to Finland and after a couple of days of rest at my parents' place me and my cousin headed to Helsinki, where we stayed for the night and in the morning joined all other winners and competition representatives at the Rovio headquarters. After a cup of coffee we sat down in one of the video rooms and were given a few presentations. The most interesting one, in my opinion, was the presentation of the animation department because they showed an in-production episode of their new animation series. I really liked the style! Unfortunately we had to sign an NDA when we entered the building so much that was shown can't be shared in here. 

Niilo enjoying a game of Bad Piggies at Rovio

The video room was cozy (and a great place for gaming!)

After receiving wonderful prizes to take home (the plushies were oh-so-cute!) and having lunch at Rovio we finally headed to the Fazer chocolate factory. There we were treated to wonderful Angry Birds themed cakes and given a presentation about the factory and the Angry Birds Sweets campaign.

Cake! A lot of cake!

When everybody had had enough cake we headed to the factory area. There we were given special clothes to be allowed to go inside the production areas of the factory. And we got to wear the greatest red caps the entire day! We walked through the history exhibition, which was actually very interesting! Do visit there if you get the chance. We got to see chocolates being made, huge machines cooling chocolates, a recently malfunctioned Geisha machine (so much filling. Everywhere. I am glad I am not the one cleaning that up!) and of course got to decorate our own chocolate bars. Everybody had a wonderful time, thanks to our great guides.

All the winners posing in fashionable attire
My awesome self-decorated chocolate bars


Here is a video of our day at Rovio and Fazer:


Afterwards we got treats and a gift card to the Fazer store within the factory. I was able to get a few packages of Salmiakkisuklaa to take back to the Netherlands. Most Dutch people are crazy about that stuff!

A picture with all our Angry Birds & candy booty!

It was a wonderful day, and I think both Rovio and Fazer did a great job with the arrangements. I thank especially Satu Räsänen from Fazer for making sure everything worked out as well as it did. And I wouldn't have made it if it wasn't for the Media programme, it has taught me a lot about creating digital art!

If you are an IMP, I suggest you participate in as many competitions as possible! And if you are not an IMP... The application time is now! What are you still waiting for?


Read more about the IMP students
Degree Programme in Media (International Media Programme, IMP)