TAMK Art and Media

Finnish Game Jam 2012, Part 3

2012-01-30T14:03:00.000+02:00

Sunday, 29th January

Final day starting at Tampere.

The last day of FGJ 2012. All the time left was about finishing the game in time and prepare them for the judges. It didn’t take too long that the time finally ran out and the games were uploaded to the GGJ web page.

Quick polishing before the deadline.

The judges, Suvi Latva from ManseGames and Markus Hirsilä from Gamereactor, walked around, listened to the teams’ introductions to their games and asked questions. There were 18 teams in total; I bet it wasn’t easy to pick the winner! All the games were unique and interesting in their own way.

Judges starting their job.

This is what happens when you loose.

An inventive game idea, ARoboros.

Other jammers viewed the games through the stream.

Convincing the judges is a hard job.

Eat others! Be the largest bacteria!

Suvi really liked this game's graphics.

The winning game in Tampere was the game Guardian of the Living Maze. Description from the team:
“Guardian of the Living Maze is a two-player game made for computer and iPad. Player one controls a wizard, who tries to snatch an ancient artifact from the maze's center, while the other player is the Guardian, who tries to stop the wizard by placing traps for him. However the Guardian have to place gifts in order to place traps, and the wizard has to use levers and find a key in the maze to get to the center, while trying to keep himself alive using the gits placed by the Guardian.”

The winning team.

Judges will also decide the best game in Finland. This will be announced in the next IGDA meeting in Helsinki.

All the games in Tampere can be found here. Some of the games are either not finished, board games or need special equipment, so all of them aren’t available online to play. Some of them have gameplay video online, so just click on the Youtube icon to see how the game’s are!

This year two board games were made.

The Global Game Jam was finally in many many different countries. This is a nice way you can visualize how large the event actually was.

In the evening some brave people (some of whom hadn’t slept since Saturday) went to Plevna for the after party. It was a really nice experience to spend the last few hours after the whole weekend together with a bunch of nice game developers. It was the perfect way to finish the event and wait for the next year’s jam. I can’t believe it’s all over now.

After party at Plevna.

In conclusion I would say that it is really interesting to participate in making games. But by organizing you can also see everything close and feel the atmosphere of enthusiastic game development around you. I’m glad I got to the organizing group this year instead of making games like last year. It was an awesome experience! Let’s see what happens next year.

The person behind the stories and camera :)

I would like to thank especially Annakaisa Kultima for being the main organizer and coordinator! All in all, great job, everyone! See you all next year!

Story and photos: Emma Kiiski

Emma Kiiski is running Score Game Development Community, also a student of our Media Programme.
Read more stories by/about Emma
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

Art Café ERO at Ikuinen Gallery

2012-01-30T10:36:00.000+02:00

Ikuinen Gallery turns into an artcafe at Feb 4th 2012. Graduating art students invite you to taste baked goods and see some art. Masterpieces in form of cheesecake, carrot cake and chocolate cake available! Come to meet artstudents and enjoy the atmosphere.

Art cafe ERO gives you a taste of upcoming spring.

Opening hours: 10.00am- 18.00pm

Cash only, please!

ERO is a part of Restaurantday:

http://www.restaurantday.org/?r=taidekahvila-ero

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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 Gallery

Demola Academy Graduation Event

2012-01-29T19:22:00.000+02:00

On Thursday afternoon the first ever Demola Graduation Event began. In the event the Demola project teams pitched the ideas they had been developing since last autumn. The teams consisted of students from all of the three universities of Tampere: TAMK, TUT and UTA.

Teams eagerly waiting for the pitching to begin

Bernard Garvey officially launching the event

Over 30 graduating teams were divided into several pitching groups according to their development areas, for example Games and Machinery. Every team had 5 minutes to convince their audience that their pitch was the best, and after that people could ask questions that had arisen during the pitch. Finally, after all teams had had their presentations one winner was voted by all of the teams within a single pitching group, and the Demola staff picked three more Wild Cards to join the most voted teams. Some of the choices were quite surprising, but made rest of the evening more interesting.

Live-Manual ready to demonstrate their product

After the Demola staff had given some last-minute instructions to the finalists they were left to polish their pitches for a few hours before the evening Gala. You could feel the excitement fill the halls of Demola. The evening finally continued at six o'clock one floor above the normal working spaces.

Team Mini Mega Fun discussing how to improve their
pitch for the last round

At the Gala we, in addition to the great pitches, heard one keynote about Crowd Sourcing. All of the finalists were great, my personal favorite was Mini Mega Fun's presentation. Other members of the audience seemed to think so too according to the amount of cheering! After all the teams had pitched their projects a special panel of judges had a meeting over who should win. Surprisingly a wild card team Live-Manual was announced as the winner of the event and given the Grand Prize of 2000€. Congratulations to the winning team and all Demola Academy Graduates!

Winner of the day: Live-Manual

Thanks to the people at Demola for arranging this great event, let's hope the next one will be even grander!

Story and pics: Heidi Mäenpää

Read more stories about the IMPs
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Finnish Game Jam 2012, Part 2

2012-01-29T13:55:00.003+02:00

Saturday, 28th January

The second day showed that the jammers should get some sleep during the weekend. At least a little bit. There was no real hurry at this time yet. All the programmers’ problems and graphical dificulties look a lot better when you take at least a couple of hours of good sleep in the back of New Factory area, Protomo. It was silent in the night for a few hours that people could sleep on mattresses and sofas.

Frontside Ol -- snake.

Maipop!

The best team photo!

Last and first man.

They know FGJ is awesome!

Testing is necessary for board games, too.

In that place were also recorded some totally cool sound effects! One game needed death shouts and screams, preferably also in other languages. The organizers could join too. Ever wondered how it sounds when Andy shouts in German? Let’s see how this will sound in a game!

Andy and the FGJ Tampere mascot.

Be sure to check out some other videos as well, all from FGJ! Be warned, many of them are hilarious! Click here!

This man approves the videos.

In the evening we got a crazy idea to take a group order from Subway. Collecting all the information (what everyone takes and pays) took a lot longer than expected. We almost didn’t get anything because making the orders took so long! In the end everyone got their late night snacks, phew.

Where's the team?

After being in the center of all this hassle, I have to consider my opinion. Is it really worth it to be organizing the event? It would be so easy to just be a jammer; eat, drink and make games. But then again, after going through all this stress about organizing food for people I can tell how precious these actions are. In the future I will definitely appreciate the organizing team’s work a lot more than I did before.

Info desk!

There was also a reporter from a Finnish magazine, Ilta-Sanomat, to interview Annakaisa Kultima and Suvi Latva about the event. Then the reporter walked around to film the teams. It was a really nice thing for the publicity of the event and the organizers. By the way, the video can be seen in here already. Only in Finnish, sorry!

Ustream from other sites.

Organizers need some rest, too!

In the evening of Saturday there's a little bit of hurry. The time is slowly running out! Sunday is near. Will everyone finish their awesome games on time? Stay tuned for the third and final report of Finnish Game Jam in Tampere!

Story and photos: Emma Kiiski

Emma Kiiski is running Score Game Development Community, also a student of our Media Programme.
Read more stories by/about Emma
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

Finnish Game Jam 2012, Part 1

2012-01-28T17:14:00.000+02:00

Friday, 27th January

This is it. It’s starting. The largest global game developing event. This year we expected even 10,000 jammers to create games in 48 hours. It's a huge number of people! About 44 countries all over the world at the same time. Already in Tampere site, there were at least 60 jammers in the New Factory premises, ready to create the best games and have incredibly much fun over the weekend! Finnish Game Jam for the win!

All the jammers gathered in the early afternoon.

After registration, the event got launched with some presentations. The Tampere site host, New Factory, was presented with new cool Demola projects by Antti Salomaa. There is going to be quite many game projects this time. Especially interesting were the three cases from Wooga, a game company in Berlin that creates mainly Facebook games with huge success. Two important Score members, Teemu Haila and Eevi Korhonen, are by the way working at Wooga at the moment!
The main coordinator in Finland, Annakaisa Kultima, also shared a couple of words as usual. She also made a nice greeting video for whole Finland to see a bit later, presenting this year’s theme for the games.

The theme was something quite new this year: a picture. It usually has been a word but this year they wanted to give a brand new challenge to the jammers. I find this change great, it gives a different approach to the theme and can be understood in so many different ways, making it possible to create loads of awesome ideas!

And then something quite different. We had awesome Pecha Kucha presentations by various people, including one of our organizers and some people from the Tampere game industry. The presentations were really enjoyable and fun, created with delicate taste of humor!

Sohvi Sirkesalo telling her amazing story about intuition in decision making.

How to grow chili peppers by Timo Nummenmaa.

Karoliina Korppoo told us about lol cats!

Time travel is possible. Henri Sarasvirta.

We watched the global keynote that had four speakers from all around the globe. They gave really nice tips about the event and game development in amount. The video can probably be found in Youtube if you’re interested!

It wouldn’t be FGJ without social exercises. This year there were a couple of new ones, one of which was speed dating. The point was to write the thing that makes you tick about games, like game mechanics, explosions or whatever! Then everyone got into two circles around demola and started dating; telling about their favorite things about games and trying to combine those two together into a game.

Speed dating!

Are you sure it'll work?

Janne's style impresses us all.

The arriving of these huge pizzas disturbed some jammers' idea creation process.

Some jammers were working hard anyway.

Designing an awesome idea!

Out of ideas or just resting a little?

In the end there were a great amount of cool ideas on the wall.

After pitching everyones’ ideas, all the jammers had to find their group. For some it was easy but some had to think real hard whether the idea was good enough or not.

Is this idea good enough?

Searching for the perfect team!

Groups formed and everyone on their places. The games didn’t have to wait too long to be created. All the jammers were enthusiastic about starting and many continued late in the night, even though the brain might not work so well after staying awake for so long.

Jammers at work.

The coolest FGJ jams!

You can watch us at Ustream through the weekend, just click here! Let’s see if we do something crazy!

Story and photos: Emma Kiiski

Emma Kiiski is running Score Game Development Community, also a student of our Media Programme.
Read more stories by/about Emma
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

Game Schools in Tampere and Around the World

2012-01-27T13:09:00.000+02:00

A whole new course complex on games is starting at TAMK. I was thinking of game studies here and elsewhere.

Tokyo Game Show

Last September I got to visit a very special event: Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, Japan. One of the things that attracted me to the event was the huge amount of local game school exhibitions. I wanted to see how different the scene in Japan is from our cozy little study circles in Finland.

The school booths were almost as fabulous as those of the big game
industry names

It was very different. Naturally they have more schools than we do, so there was a whole section of one of the four halls reserved for the schools to present what they had done. They had many different projects to show, many new ideas and even wacky shows. People could try their demos and admire all the wonderful art made by students. All of them had eager staff giving out brochures their schools.

Tokyo Communication Arts and their playable demos

The event, even though they say it has become smaller and some big names skipped the whole thing, was huge to my eyes. There were almost 200 exhibitors with over 700 titles. There were so many people it was hard to stop or turn around. To be exact, 222 668 visitors in 4 days. Navigating through all the large halls was a good workout. Dragon Quest seemed to be popular.

Enthusiasts lining up to play the new games

One of the halls at Makuhari Messe

This year it was nice to learn of the new game study module right here in Tampere, arranged between our Media programme and the Business Information Systems. There are three parts in the module, each doable separately or as a whole.

N-AM81 -2000 Game development (10 cr)
N-AM80-2000 Game design and production (10 cr)
N-AM82 -2000 Game project (10 cr)

Game design and production (kickoff today) looks at games from the perspective of storytelling, of the meaning of characters and teaches game mechanics and rules you need to know when designing a game. Game development concentrates on techniques and platforms and teaches the student about different skills needed in producing a game, such as programming, graphic art, animation and sound design. Game project is independent work on game design and production.

I have already had the pleasure of doing 15 cr worth of game studies before this new module. Last summer we did the 5D3 project where 3 total newbies and a sound guy produced 5 whole games in just 5 weeks. I hope there will be 5D4 this year! There are already a few existing themes around which it could evolve, emerging from the projects we have had so far and connections we have made with new partners during this year. There were also some gamifying projects and some really interesting Wooga internships available at Demola this spring.

Our school advertised itself as a game school at Summer Assembly 2011 next to KAJAK, and 5D3 was strongly present. We only had one iMac with all the games of two previous 5D-projects and no posters, though we did have a flyer for Score. Ramine Darabiha (who used to study at TAMK, btw) from Rovio came by and played our games and encouraged us to apply for a job in their team! For next time me and Emma thought we could steal the idea from some other sponsors who had graphic artists doing concept art while a mirroring screen was arranged so that passers by could stop and marvel at the progress.

How to sell games 101

Every booth at the Tokyo Game Show had girls in skimpy costumes promoting their products. One even had pole dancing and a ninja! Usually the girls were dressed as something from the games, and they sure attracted a lot of photographers. Of course some of the visitors were also cosplaying (surprisingly many of them young men in maid costumes). Even the schools had their own cute promo girls. I wonder if our game projects will copy their Japanese counterparts in this marketing strategy? Could Score use a team of cheerleaders? In any case, it would be great to see such concentration on the appearance of our projects at future gaming events.

Higashi Nihon Computer & Design College and the promo
girls from Arts College Yokohama

Global and Finnish Game Jam starts at Demola today!

Story by Johanna Lievemaa
Johanna is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
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To brainstorm or not to brainstorm?

2012-01-26T10:05:00.000+02:00

Here is an interesting link I just came across: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-power-of-introverts

The article is about introversion, and it basically states that if you want to foster creativity at school, or at a working place, then brainstorming in groups is not necessarily the best way. According to the text, the best ideas come to people who take time for themselves to think and jot their thoughts down, and who don't have any social pressure to be accepted by the other members of a group.

From my own experience in both brainstorming alone and within a group, I'd say I could concentrate better alone. On the other hand, there is also some merit in group think, if there are low social barriers between the group members.

What do you think of this?

Visual styles workshop with Chris Hales

2012-01-26T09:21:00.008+02:00

A punch of international students joined the intensive course Visual styles by Christ Hales to learn more about the way of shooting a video and its post production.
The course was a mixture of theory about visual styles, the basics of films and film production but also practical exercises where we had to present different visual styles and produce a video, using different styles and editing it in post production.
The group split up in several smaller groups and decided a theme for the movie they were going to produce. The timeline was quite tight, the equipment and the ideas were interesting even if vague in some cases, but the outcome of all of them was fantastic.
One project was about creating a music video, another one made the topic about post production to its main theme. A third group was experimenting with HDR, some were taking snow and liquids as their main theme, also a pinhole camera has been produced for one of the movie and more.

Here a short introduction of some of the movies produced during the workshop:

Time in motion...
by Povilas Daknys & Lilly Mörz

... fast cutting experimental film of different movement stills. The hectically motion of different objects are accompanied by their sound- which gives u the feeling of hurry or escape. The whole film is shot at the Finlayson Campus.

Trisaster
by Alexandra Ostasheva, Vesa Rantanen, Sabrina Seidl & Markus Turppa

Trisaster it's a video mainly done in post production, which tells a story in three different screens. The first one shows, why you should not be to slow in life, the second one tells why you also shouldn't be to fast and the third screen explains you why.

Luonnotar
by Klemen Krulec & Aino Yrjänä

Luonnotar is a mystical woman of nature. She does not like intruders, especially when dose want to harm her nature. Therefore, lightheaded guy faces her wrath when he tries to catch a “forest light”.
About the project: This video vas created in HDR stop-motion animation. Therefore photos used for it have strong range of colors and bring details to live.

Story by Sabrina Seidl

The Finnish Game Jam Pre-Event

2012-01-24T15:13:00.001+02:00

Since the Finnish Game Jam (FGJ) http://finnishgamejam2012.com/ and the Global Game Jam (GGJ) http://globalgamejam.org/ are held from the 27^th to 29^th of January (this week’s Friday) in over 40 countries around the world, we in Tampere decided to arrange a pre-event in the New Factory a week before the actual jam. The event was organized by three active Score members and we provided the event with some snacks for everyone. This was the first time we ever had an event like this before the FGJ. The meaning was basically to hang around, meet new and already familiar people and to hear about some things like Score, ManseGames and Highscore. The whole event was streamed to the internet and could be viewed the whole evening. Some people have been following our talks all the night!

Score members, misters Andy and Lukas, preparing the snack for the event.
It was serious business.

During the event we also heard some presentations. At first I explained what we are and do in our beloved game development club Score. Some important things about FGJ was explained pretty clearly by Annakaisa Kultima. Suvi Latva introduced the New Factory shortly to everyone, since they are hosting both FGJ events. She also talked about ManseGames. It was especially interesting for us Score members to hear about Highscore. What they have is a quite nice way to publish games and help people that want to try publishing. Our game club should have some co-operation with them in the future. To me it sounded pretty fair; they make it possible for us to gain some money by offering licenses for game development tools and the chance to publish the games.

There were also three jammers from previous years to tell about their experiences in the FGJ. It was cool to hear about their fails and successes. There’s a lot to think about when you’re making a game in 48 hours: you should at least have one real programmer in your team, apples as snacks and audio kit from home since there’s always less music specialists than others. Think about that!

Henri Sarasvirta explaining about his experiences in FGJ 2010 and 2011.

The idea about this event came when I thought about the new people in for example Score; some have never made a game before and have no experience how the process might work. The FGJ Pre-event could then provide them information about the actual jam and help them to see if they have enough skills to be able to participate. Game jams are pretty good experience about game development. This first tryout of FGJ Pre-event was held after the registration had been closed, but we will see about the next year! Would be nice if people still have a chance to make up their minds about joining after the Pre-event.

Hanging around tha snack table.

Story and photos: Emma Kiiski.

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Read more about Score, Game Development Community

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A Practical Use Of My Education?

2012-01-24T10:08:00.003+02:00

My name is Trent, and I'm an IMP.

Since August of 2011 I have been studying in the beautiful TAMK Finlayson campus, where I have met many wonderful people, seen many intersting sights, and learned many useful things.While I am sure that this is true of most students in their first year, here is the exception: I have already been able to apply these things that I am learning in a USEFUL and PRACTICAL way to my own personal endeavors outside of the classroom.

You seee, I have my own business. Because I am a student as well, I have been trying to do as MUCH for myself as I can, opting to create my own website, design my own logos and print material, and do all of my own marketing. In just two quick semesters as an IMP, I have been able to apply a lot of what I learned about using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in my business. Not only have I learned the "practical" side of how to use these programs, but I have also learned theories about visual design, typography, print design, etc, that have helped me to do a good job of it too.

I just wanted to take a brief moment to throw out a big thank you to the TAMK International Media Programme. I look forward to learning a lot more.

Thanks,

Trent

Apply within three weeks to study Media in Tampere!

2012-01-23T16:12:00.000+02:00

Degree Programme in Media - 20 seats available!

The joint application for degree programmes run in English of Finnish universities of applied sciences will be open until February 14th 16:15 Finnish time.

Applicants to the Degree Programme in Media of TAMK (Tampere UAS) will complete and send a pre-task in addition to filling in the application form.

They started in 2009

Don't wait no more! Download the pre-task and start working!

The designers of the sixty best pre-tasks are invited to participate in the one day entrance exam April 17 and 18. Twenty applicants will start the studies on 14th August 2011.

The four year studies lead to the Bachelor of Culture and Arts degree.

The Degree Programme in Media, also known as IMP (International/Interactive Media Programme) has students from 23 countries.

The main focus areas of the programme are visual design and interaction design. The students work with web services, games, animations etc.

They started in 2010

Read more:

Application specifications
Home page
On Facebook
#tamkmedia on Twitter
Read about studies and free time activities of IMPs
What kind of jobs graduated students have

They started in 2011

About the tag clouds you see

On day one of the studies students tell their main study field of interest, predict their work title after eight years and name their main hobby. Wordle does the rest.

Katti Hellman's 'Sing to Me' now online

2012-01-22T11:21:00.001+02:00

The experimental film 'Sing to Me' directed by Katti E. Hellman is now online on Vimeo. This Kino TAMK production is a fruit of the cooperation between students of degree programmes in Fine Arts and Film & Television.

Sing to me is written, directed and produced by Katti E. Hellman, Turkka Tervonen is the cinematpgrapher. See all credits...

This is one of the films made on the Cinematic Artwork course last year. The teachers of the course are Fanni Niemi-Junkola and Sari Tervaniemi.

Sing to me was seen on Tampere Art Factory Festival 2011.

Sing to Me from Katti Hellman on Vimeo.

Unforgettable Video Technique workshop

2012-01-19T11:47:00.000+02:00

We had a Video Technique and Expression workshop from Jan 9 – 15, 2012. It was an intensive course between Christmas break and spring semester. So we all met at Finlayson Campus (TTVO) café 10:30am on Monday. The lecturer was Ville Salminen from Obscure Entertainment.

I was waiting for this workshop for few months because I already heard from other students about this workshop and heard that this course is really cool and useful. And the main part that made me excited was that the lecturer was Ville Salminen. I was so excited more than ever since he was the director of this experimental short film 'Kun Liikun (When I Move)' which is my favorite Finnish short film ever. (Read about the film...)

Even though it was one week intensive course, I can say that I learned really a lot from this workshop. I've been having interests in photography and videography, but just didn't know where and how to start. So this workshop was really a great opportunity for me in so many ways.

The very first and most useful we learned was film grammar. They were the basic stuff we need to know before we actually start filming or directing. It was really easy to understand. He explained about every shots we should know showing the camera angles. Then he let us try to set the camera angles by ourselves. Not only this basic theory about filming, but we also learned about setting the lights.

I got to say that I learned a lot from this workshop. The lecturer Ville Salminen had a really good teaching skill. Everything he said and showed were very clear and easy to understand as a beginner. I want to thank the lecturer Ville Salminen for giving us a lot of inspiration and thank to Cai for giving us an opportunity to have this awesome lecturer and to have this helpful workshop.

Now we have a photography task and group task that we should make 3 minutes short film and return it in 2 weeks. I'm so excited about this tasks as well.

Thank you all again!

Story and photos: Erika Kim
Erika is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students
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Quite an international year again it was - 33 countries at Artmedia!

2012-01-17T17:54:00.000+02:00

One of the central goals of the school of art and media has always been to offer a truly international environment for our students and staff. Lately we have succeeded in this; in 2011 the people learning and sharing their insight in our class rooms and workshops came from 33 countries.

Evelin Urm from Tartu Art College and Chris Hales from Smart Lab, UK at Evelyn's
TAF exhibition last year. At the moment Chris is again here with his "Visual Styles"
workshop

There are many reasons to this development. The students of our international Degree Programme in Media in its third year come from 22 countries. We had a record of exchange students and also the international students of MA in Screenwriting. Tampere Art Factory (TAF) international week again attracted 50 international participants, MindTrek brought also our campus visitors and teacher exchange was working well in both directions.

TAMK Finlayson Campus, the Artmedia international campus countries in 2011 were:
Albania, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mexico, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, UK and USA.

This year has started well, we host 30 exchange students who come from ten countries, and we have 27 countries represented alrady in January. Our TAF International Week will be celebrated this year May 7-11, and we look forward to hosting international guests already during Tampere International Film Festival March 7-13.

The application time to our international Degree Programme in Media runs until February 14. Twenty new seats available. Read more...
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Alpo Nummelin: LIGHT SPACE EMOTION in Ikuinen Gallery

2012-01-16T14:04:00.000+02:00

Lisää kuvateksti

Alpo Nummelin

LIGHT SPACE EMOTION

18.1 – 3.2.2012

mon-fri 12am-4pm

Ikuinen Gallery

Light determines our perception of the visual space. Space as a concept in turn determines our understanding of the reality. Light adduces all the three dimensions of a space which helps us perceive our existence in a certain place. The consciousness of oneself as a part of a certain reality separates us from the animals. We are in a lit place therefore we are in touch with our humanity.

LIGHT SPACE EMOTION – explores the experience of light in a space. What is the practically intended ambience light’s relation with estheticed ligh? Is the ambient light intrinsically a premise which existence we understand just in a case of a power failure or are all the millions of fluorescent lights in our ceiling unconsciosly the world’s biggest meta-artwork? The mother work that enables all the other visual arts.

The exhibition is part of Alpo Nummelin’s diploma work at TAMK – Art & Media.

The work is dedicated to my mother and father.

www.alponummelin.com

Opening on Tuesday, 17.1. 6-8 pm. Welcome!

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Celebrating the Sauna

2012-01-14T10:25:00.000+02:00

When abroad, it’s very typical to encounter parts of one’s own culture in surprising situations. For the Finnish people, it’s often a glimpse of a Marimekko design somewhere or discussions about Nokia cell phones with foreign people. Sometimes, though, the encounter is so intense that it really forces you to see familiar things through someone else’s eyes.

Alexander Lembke giving a tour through his photography exhibition

This was the case for me, when I visited the sauna photography exhibition by Mr Alexander Lembke. The exhibition was located in the Kunsthaus in Erfurt. I’ve had the pleasure of taking part in Mr Lembke’s photography course in the Bauhaus-University Weimar and visiting the exhibition was part of the course studies. Since we had had some conversations about saunas already during the course, I was aware of the passion Mr Lembke has for the sauna culture. He visited TAMK International Week last year and he has also been the contact person between these two universities.

As a Finn, I must admit first it felt weird to step in to the exhibition rooms. The big board stated the sauna prices with clear Finnish and the exhibition prints were very... well, Finnish. Naturally there are saunas also elsewhere than Finland, but for this project it’s exactly the Finnish sauna that Mr Lembke concentrates in. He has spent for the last four years visiting Finland from time to time and spent countless hours in different saunas.

The exhibition itself was very charming in its simplicity and uncomplicated sense of humour. There were some extra props in every room, e.g. birch benches and Finnish beer cans (unfortunately they were empty). Outside the building, there was also a big sign for a sauna that apparently had attracted a couple of people to come inside and ask how much would it cost to come and enjoy the steam. During the opening night there really had been a tent sauna on the roof of the building, it had been also very popular.

It is impossible for me to say what other students thought about it all. For a Finn, a sauna is so normal, that one doesn’t really pay much attention to it. That’s why it was interesting to see it from a foreigner’s point of view - especially from one who is so passionate about it. There is a photography book coming out later this year and the exhibition is also coming to Finland later this year. So, the project is not going to end for a long time and there are many reasons for that. For one, Mr Lembke states that there are not that many sauna books out there. (Probably we Finns are just looking at our saunas from so close that we forget how special they actually are.) Mr Lembke also says that he wants to continue making the photos for a few decades so that he can see what will happen with the Finnish sauna culture. But I think the real main reason he is doing this project is that he’s just having so much fun while doing it...

Eeva-Kaisa Ahlamo
IMP09 in her study exchange
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INTAC - International Art Collaborations - Fall 2011

2012-01-10T10:35:00.000+02:00

It's always nice working with people you have never even heard of before. Quite a bit doesn't go as planned, but fortunately it brings distance to what you have got used to in your little circle of acquaintances. With the technology at our very fingertips any problems of physical space and state borders can be dealt away with easily.

Skype meeting under way. Photo: Juha Suonpää

Around twenty students each from three different schools around the globe take part in collaborations within the INTAC framework. The emphasis is on photography and video art. We communicate with each other through a Tumblr blog and other electronic means: introduce ourselves, search for potential collaborations, ponder on projects, tune our concepts and hopefully bring them through. The results will be exhibited in spring 2012 in the 1<3 exhibition in Toronto.

The three schools taking part in INTAC are TAMK Tampere University of Applied Sciences, the OCAD University from Canada and new this year the Chung-Ang University from South Korea. The initiative for the collaboration originally came from Peter Sramek, the OCAD U chair of photography, and the Torontonian students Pat Navarro, Melissa Clark and Joanna Glezakos.

In late November, before getting on with the INTAC projects the students from Tampere and Toronto took part in Collective Body: another collaboration project involving six schools from five countries. The concept was simple: each created a profile of themselves on the web platform, seeks interesting people to collaborate with through the profiles and realizes a piece or work of art with them. We had two weeks. This was a shorter version of what INTAC too will be this winter.

Collective Body was an effort which came on top of everything else the participants were doing. For us Finns it was a bit of a surprise. Many did more than I, but even for me Collective Body was a success. Just trying to throw around ideas with a stranger is fruitful, even if problems with the platform made it a bit frustrating. For many the plans in INTAC were put on hold for the duration of the Collective Body.

Communication over the web has its own peculiarities, strengths and weaknesses, and these we are trying to learn. The social medias are indeed necessary tools and important for many artists as ways to communicate their ideas. Nevertheless most of the problems we have had thus far have had more to do with differences in how things are organized outside the digital environment rather than with any technical matters themselves.

INTAC international online Christmas meeting. Photo: Anna Knappe

My own experiences of the beginning have been more tiresome than I expected. The web platform didn't work in Collective Body as I had expected and getting used to INTAC's platform took its time. Yet it feels as if everything is starting to roll, and the knots are fast unravelling.

The collaborations are worth following. Personally I'm interested in quite a few projects other participants are doing, and my own collaboration doesn't look hopeless at all. This will be something fruitful.

The students from TAMK taking part in the projects are Kirsi Hellman, Mikael Kinanen, Anna Knappe, Tuomas Koskialho, Essi Laurila, Anne Lehtelä, Jaana Ristola, Ismo Torvinen and Elsa Trzaska.

In TAMK the collaboration is led and guided by our beloved teachers Juha Suonpää and Sari Tervaniemi.

Story: Mikael Kinanen
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Application began today - Where do our Media students land?

2012-01-09T11:57:00.000+02:00

Jan 9 - Feb 14 application time, international BA programmes of Finnish UAS
TAMK Degree Programme in Media aka Interactive Media Programme IMP:

Application specifications
Home page
On Facebook
#tamkmedia on Twitter
Read about studies and free time activities of IMPs

Degree Programme in Media! But how to answer briefly what do they really learn? Journalism? Advertising? Broadcasting? Multimedia? Print Media? Mass Media?

Interaction Designer
- vision by Ville Salminen

No curt answer here. When setting up this programme we proposed the name would be Interactive Media Programme, but it did not suit the ministry. Interactive media, digital media, hypermedia and multimedia come closer but do not offer a comprehensive answer.

We explain: "The focus of the four year programme is in interactive media content design and production. The students learn about current digital media issues and they specialise in visual design, interaction design or project management." Not exhaustive.

We try: "The main focus areas of the programme are visual design and interaction design. The students work with web services, games, animations etc." This comes closer.

Visual Designer
- vision by Ville Salminen

But how about telling what the geraduated students do? This would illustrate the outcome of the studies. There is however a slight problem here: Our programme is in its third year, and nobody has graduated yet. But no worries, let's look at the titles of the predecessor of IMP, the Media Programme in Finnish.

LinkedIn is a very handy resource for handling contact information. I print the titles of my contacts who are School of Art and Media interactive media graduates to a list, sort it, and here is the result:

The highest frequency of occurrence of titles is (in alphabetical order): 2D Artist, 3D Artist, Account Manager, Animator, Art Director, Consept Designer, Creative Director, Freelance, Game Designer, Graphic Designer, Interaction Designer, Journalist, Photographer, Producer, Product Manager, Project Manager, UX-Designer, Visual Designer, Web Designer.

Project Designer
- vision by Ville Salminen

Owner, CO, Director, Managing Director, Specialist are also very popular titles and quite many have "Senior" before their title.

Cai Melakoski
Head of Degree Programme in Media

MindTrek 2012 - The 15 yrs old will again reincarnate

2012-01-06T17:22:00.002+02:00

Other early digital media events and competitions have faded away, but MindTrek is still alive and kicking. MindTrek has not got into a rut but regenerated many times.

MindTrek was first time arranged in 1997 - that's 15 years ago - under the name Tampere Multimedia Festival. In October we will experience the 16th MindTrek. The last five years at Hotel Rosendahl have been excellent, but now we will go back to city centre and see what possibilities the Finlayson area offers.

MindTrek is many competitions. Pictured our students Juhani Hujala and Vilma Pekola,
winners of MindTrek Indie Games Award 2011 with Carrotia

Mark your calendars for October 3-5

MindTrek will again be an international conference, competitions, workshops, seminars, parties for three days. The strength and special characteristic of MindTrek lies in the involvement of all the players in e-media and services, the designers and the producers, researchers and students, start-ups and multinational companies, public bodies and civil society communities. The working language of most events is English, because MindTrek is a truly international enterprise with participants from some 30 countries every year.

MindTrek home

Call for papers

Academic MindTrek Conference calls for tracks and workshops are already open. Submit your own track or workshop proposal by 29th January 2012.

Download the full call text
Submit papers
Track proposals and workshops due: 29th January 2012
Long/short/poster/extended abstract papers due on: 30th April 2012
Tutorials due on: 1st June 2012

MindTrek is arranged by MindTrek Association and friends. TAMK is a founding member of the association.
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Our Lighting Design students climax the Light Festival

2011-12-30T15:42:00.000+02:00

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!

2011-12-28T10:51:00.000+02:00

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.

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

2011-12-21T08:18:00.000+02:00

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 Tummat Tunnit 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!

2011-12-20T10:18:00.002+02:00

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

2011-12-19T18:35:00.003+02:00

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

2011-12-19T05:13:00.006+02:00

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

2011-12-18T13:22:00.001+02:00

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

2011-12-15T18:44:00.000+02:00

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 organiosation 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

2011-12-14T13:34:00.000+02:00

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

2011-12-12T11:41:00.000+02:00

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!

2011-12-10T23:38:00.000+02:00

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

Testing Motion Capture with Kinect

2011-12-08T01:00:00.000+02:00

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

We Make Game Concepts!

2011-12-07T14:22:00.001+02:00

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
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students
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Two graduating Fine Art students exhibit in YOUNG ARTISTS 2011

2011-12-06T09:20:00.001+02:00

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.

2011-12-05T12:51:00.000+02:00

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!

2011-12-04T11:45:00.000+02:00

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.

Media Programme application pre-task online!

2011-11-30T15:16:00.000+02:00

In 2009 they planned a global tenth anniversary celebration of mankind’s presence in Mars.
In 2010 they created a concept for a digital sports game.
In 2011 they designed a campaign to fight overweight and obesity.
In 2012 they will arrange a global 24 hour party before the disastrous astroid hits Earth.

They are applicants of IMP, our international interactive media programme.

Application period for the international degree programmes of Finnish UAS is January 9 to February 14 2012.
For the Degree Programme in Media it is not enough that applicants fill in the online form, they also have to complete and send by the deadline a pre-task with two assignments.

The 60 eligible applicants having most points will be invited to the entrance exam 17th or 18th April, and finally 20 of them will start their Bachelor of Culture and Arts studies at Finlayson Campus right in the centre of Tampere in August.

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

2011-11-30T10:33:00.001+02:00

As I was teaching scriptwriting to the Film & TV students last Monday and Tuesday, I noticed something strange. The assignment was to write a short dialogue scene between two unnamed people, A and B. Each student could decide what kind of people these two characters were.
To my surprise, most of the students wrote scenes between two male characters. One group of about 20 students, for instance, had only two scripts with a female character. I asked the students if they had noticed the invisibility of women in their scenes, and they themselves seemed also surprised by the result.

This reminded me of many of the projects made by the media students. Not that females are altogether missing in those as a potential target group, but in many projects all people over 35 years have seemed to be strangely absent as intended users.
Again, I have asked for the reasons for this phenomenon. The answers I got were mostly that middle-aged and elderly people do not use computers, or mobile devices, or tablet computers. They don't read or write blogs either, or play casual games, or flock in social media such as the Facebook. It seems that this mysterious group is not watching television, either. Perhaps they really don't exist at all?

Okay, perhaps I've made my point clear.

I know that it is a big temptation to run along and do exactly like all others are doing, especially if you're in a hurry and the deadline is getting near. But there should be always a little time to step back for a while and to think things over. Is this really my target group? Am I missing or not seeing something that would or should be worth noticing? Are the things the teacher or some other authority is telling contradictory to my actual experience?

I really do expect you to tell me that I'm wrong or very inaccurate with these observations.

Tahra&Ylhäisi - Working space part 3: Lunch break

2011-11-30T10:16:00.001+02:00

Art act "Tahra&Ylhäisi - Working space part 3: Lunch break" was performed at Finlayson campus cafe on Tuesday November 29th.

"Tahra&Ylhäisi - Working space part 1" was performed last February by Tea Tahra and Elina Ylhäisi at Ikuinen Gallery, where these two second year Fine Art students worked for one week. Gallery space was transformed as a working space and art exhibition space at the same time. Presence of the two art students pushed the event towards an art act or art show.

The duo continued working together and in spring 2011 their second production "Tahra&Ylhäisi - Working space part 2" was performed at a cultural club called "We were strangers", which took place in Tampere Klubi. In that art show / act Tahra&Ylhäisi brought their working space for a couple of minutes to the centre of a club evening.

In their third event the duo had lunch with other people in the cafe.

Tahra&Ylhäisi have made experimental shows combining different two-and three-dimensional art forms.

More info: http://tahraylhaisi.blogspot.com/

IMP now on Facebook!

2011-11-29T14:43:00.001+02:00

Our international media programme (Degree Programme in Media) students have always had several groups on Facebook, but the programme has not until now had an official page on Facebook.

But now we are there! Media students Tuomas Lecklin and Mikko Haverila did the great job to create the page, which is now welcoming you at https://www.facebook.com/tamkmedia

The page contains information about the programme (and more will come), twitter feed, blog feed and photographs. The page was created for at three reasons:

to give all editions of IMP a general insight of what other media students do
to give applicants a window to IMP and an easy forum for questions
to give our partners an uncomplicated way of seeing what our students can do

All Artmedia blog readers are warmly welcome on our page! Please try clicking on the Like button :-)

Ikuinen Galleria's Christmas Sale!

2011-11-28T10:18:00.001+02:00

7.-11.12.2011

Every day 12-18

Finlaysoninkuja 3

33200 Tampere

Traditional Ikuinen Galleria Christmas Sale will be 7.-11.12. This is a great time to buy individual gifts and support local art.

There will be paintings, crafts, cards, photographs etc. All prices are decent.

Opening Wed 7th of Dec 4-6pm

There will be hot glogg!

Cash only!

Welcome!

PS. This year we will take part for Aamulehti`s Christmas Sale at Tamperetalo on Sat 10th of Dec 11am-3pm.

Christmas Sale on Facebook

Ikuinen Gallery on Facebook

Ikuinen Gallery

--------------------------------------

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.

More info:

ikuinengalleria@tamk.fi

IMP Pikkujoulu-Party report: my absolutely fabulous students

2011-11-27T09:58:00.001+02:00

"Pikkujoulu" is a Finnish pre-Christmas party tradition. All companies, associations and other communities arrange their Pikkujoulu-parties during the four weeks before the Christmas break.

Our International Media Programme does not have ancient traditions because only third year is running, but arranging an IMP-Pikkujoulu is the self-evident obligation and privilege of first year students.

Having participated in some hundred Pikkujoulus over the decades I'm not too exited about them anymore. But this party made a difference, the ambience was something really special. Good humour, welcoming atmosphere, friendship was tangible. Many Pikkujoulu-parties rely on excessive use of alcohol and a show routine. This party succeeded leaning on good food and lovely people.

Noora Honkaniemi, Laura Räsänen and Lukas Kallenbach of the muffins team

The 11IMPs prepared the party for weeks, and all Friday you could feel the tempting aroma of baking at Demola and TTVO café.

No snow yet, but the Kuusivooninkinen building was very welcoming

The party was arranged at Demola, where IMPs daytime work in multidisciplinary teams in cooperation with companies. Demola is at Finlayson, next to TAMK School of Art and Media.

The cakes were fantastic, "took the tongue with them" as Finns say

The spring rolls were genuine Chinese!

Good food is essential for well-being, the 11IMPs have discovered. With the exception of gingerbread everything was self-made with love. Being a vegetarian I often leave parties hungry, but not in this case. I must remember to ask for the spring rolls recipe to be able to surprise my family and friends!

Christmas hats was the dress code, but ladies also surprised with their gorgeous dresses

Happy faces Caroline Liu Chang, Lukas Kallenbach, Emilia Kwiatkowska
and Heli Härkönen

The exchange students were of course also invited

Analysing photos and music, testing

This party didn't require games and shows. But since IMPs consider learning and working is fun, we spent happily 15 minutes to do testing for one of the 30 projects run by our students and exchange students at Demola.

Minna Eloranta was one of the main producers of the party
and also celebrated her birthday. "Thank you all for the GREAT party!
It was amazing how the whole class worked as a team to organize a
fantastic xmas-get together :)" she wrote on the 11IMP FB wall.

Also interaction design students of the old Media Programme in Finnish
were there. Pictured Juho Jorhonen and Juha Tapanila and the Arcade Games

Three IMP editions selecting the music: 11Daria Adamitskaya, 09Antti Kareinen
and 10Mikko Haverila. And they found Rolling Stones to please their professor!

More photographs to see here.

So thanks 11IMPs, other IMPs, old Media Programme and exchange students! I'm already looking forward to participate in the pikkujoulu hosted by the 12IMPs!

Story: Cai Melakoski
Head of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students
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Sleepless in Prague

2011-11-25T07:13:00.001+02:00

In September 2011 ten TTVO students joined a team of ten fellow students from College of Media and Journalism in favor of attending History is not Silent -workshop held in the spectacular city of Prague.

There is a blog story about the workshop, which was written earlier by Vesa Rantanen. However, I felt like putting some of my Prague photos together and make a causal video clip just to recall those days working hard and having some good nights out. One more big Thanks to our wonderful Czech hosts.

Pump up the volume, set the video on HQ and see the video here.

P.s. I lost some of my materials due to an accident. Please forgive me if any student’s photo is missing from the clip. Two big kisses if that is the case XX

Story: 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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"24 hours in Tampere" in Istanbul, Graz, Novi Sad

2011-11-22T08:11:00.001+02:00

GUEST POST BY RICHARD VICKERS

24.hours.in Tampere (www.24-hours.in) is an interactive documentary project exploring new opportunities for participation, collaboration and the potential democratisation of documentary production. With reference to Dziga Vertov’s seminal 1929 documentary film ‘Man with a Movie Camera’, the aim is for the project to document the city, the people that live there and their daily lives.

The initial 24.hours.in Tampere prototype was produced at the Tampere Art Factory International Week, hosted by TAMK School of Arts & Media in April 2011. I ran an interactive documentary workshop, working with students from TAMK, to produce a collaborative, participatory, experimental documentary project centred on 24-hours in Tampere.

At TAF Tampere
The workshop participants were encouraged to embrace Vertov’s pioneering avant-garde approach to filmmaking, utilising camera phones and available devices to capture “life caught unawares”. IMP students Jani Ilomaki, Robert Niva, Vaidotas Ambrozaitis and Guanjun Liu strolled the city, capturing scenes of everyday life, the cleaning of the streets after the long winter, going for lunch, political elections; providing a fascinating insight into aspects of everyday life in Tampere for viewers wide and far.

At ISEA, Istanbul
I presented the initial project and a paper on the democratization of documentary at the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Istanbul in September, the project was very well received by the audience and the feedback was fantastic.

Trent Pancy, Richard Vickers, Anna-Kaisa Nässi, Erika Kim

At MindTrek, Tampere
In September I returned to Tampere to attend the Mindtrek conference and demonstrate the 24-hours.in Tampere project. During my visit I had the opportunity to once again to work with IMP students, Anna-Kaisa Nässi, Trent Pancy, Vesa Rantanen, Erika Kim and Tuomas Mikola enthusiastically taking on roles as documentary filmmakers. It was a fantastic opportunity to get more footage of life in Tampere, adding more video content to the project and continuing to build up a collective view of the city.My colleague at the Lincoln School of Media, James Field, has continued to develop the infrastructure for the project and since my first visit we have implemented FFmpeg on the server to automate the encoding process of the videos.

At WSYA Festival, Graz
Despite a few technical problems the new content was added using the online submission and encoding system and the updated version of the project is now viewable online. The project was recently presented at the EADiM Academic conference in Graz, Austria during the WSYA event there and continues to gain lots of attention around the world.

To VIEDOMEDEJA, Novi Sad
The most recent good news we have received is that 24-hours.in Tampere has been selected for the 15th International Video Festival VIDEOMEDEJA, in Novi Sad, Serbia that will take place in December http://videomedeja.org/

Kiitos to everyone who has been involved so far, there is still more video footage to add and the project is in continuous development, we hope that more students from TAMK will become involved with 24-hours.in Tampere – an interactive documentary!

Best wishes from England, hope to see you all soon

Richard

Richard Vickers
Lincoln School of Media
University of Lincoln
United Kingdom

www.24-hours.in
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IMPD printing shirts with silk screens

2011-11-20T23:00:00.000+02:00

On Thursday evening the IMPDesign people held a highly anticipated silk screen printing session. A few of us had already been to the demonstration lesson to know what to do with the equipment, and the rest learned as we worked on the designs.

First the desired design was printed on a transparency

Tero was ahead of us and already printed at a good pace

Test paper became a statement...

Washing the paint covered equipment

Making sure that the transparencies are aligned

Adjusting the shirt straight before printing

The newest designs ready to be "light exposed"

Washing older designs clean of paint

Lukas keeping watch while others wash...

And of course, one shouldn't forget to use gloves (or which hand is which)!

Another shirt ready to be printed

Hair dryers helped the paint dry faster

After the paint was dry, it was time for ironing!

Awesome shirts were now ready to be worn!

The IMPD will probably hold another printing session next week for those who missed the first one. Be sure to check out our Facebook site to keep track on what's going on!

Story and pictures: Heidi Mäenpää

Photography Workshop Exhibition

2011-11-20T15:45:00.000+02:00

A number of IMP(Media) students and many from other degrees took part in a Photography Workshop recently. It was a one week intensive course and the results of it were many nice pictures, abused school equipment and slightly more educated students. So, work well done, I'd say.

We learned more about the use of lighting in a studio and also how it affects shooting outdoors. The 15 best pictures were chosen by each of the three groups created within the course and we had a feedback session on them, describing how they were shot, what changes we made in Photoshop afterwards as well as the idea behind them.

3 from each group were chosen as the very best and that means you now have 9 pictures to look at when you enter the Finlayson campus. Our exhibition is right there in the "Washing drum" of the building's main entrance. It's free and it will remain there until December 3rd. Welcome!

What we've come to call "The Baboon Shot". Although it looks more like a gorilla.

Exhibition Info:

                 Photography Workshop Exhibition
                 "Washing Drum" of the TTVO campus
                 Finlaysoninkatu 7
                 Open Mon-Fri, 8 AM to 6 PM

Story: Vasia Tolou
Picture: Vasia Tolou. The Baboon Shot was taken by someone in our group.

Sanna Kuisma's post on the Workshop: Goodbye to camera's automatic settings at Photography Workshop!

Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

Winning the Demola mid-term pitching event… Why not?

2011-11-20T14:35:00.001+02:00

From Demola Academy kick-off in September

Shaking hands, sweat of fear and trembling voice were the things you could see a lot yesterday during the Demola Academy NADC pitching event.

All the projects currently under development in Demola were divided into five groups. My team that is working on “New Factory – How did the story go?” a.k.a. making a video for Demola project was placed in the public services section with 5 other teams – “Open Light – Movie teaser”, “The Story of Heikki”, “Utilization of FC Haka stadium”, “Local food from your local store” and “Kampuskauppa”. It was a nice and warm feeling among all of us, many familiar faces, lots of IMP students and Media exchange students.

With such good competition Ilkka Sallinen and I had to step it up and first of all relax because everything is so much better when you are just having fun with the pitch. Seeing our team members Lena, Benedikt and Lauri in the audience and some preparation in advance made us confident and eased us out.

By the time we had to step on the finalists’ stage my head was clear. We had nothing to lose. No stress, no sweat, no shaking hands. Overcoming the lack of a working clicker we started and in 1 min 31 sec gave it all. We had fun. And we won.

Story: Emilija Veselova
Emilija is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students
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Demola
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Mama Africa

2011-11-20T10:30:00.001+02:00

Friday was another beautiful day to be a TTVO student. Cai arranged a FREE (to TTVO students) screening of Mika Kaurismäki's Documentary, Mama Africa. The story of Miriam Makeba, a singer from South Africa who, through her music, brought together the hearts and souls of South Africans, Black Americans, and countless other members of Caribbean and African spirits.

Over 70 students and faculty gathered to watch and learn about Miriam's story of music, exile, foreign success, and her impact on people throughout the world. The movie is not simply any other documentary, but it is a story about a passionate person, told through passionate and moving images.

For all of the IMP's, Media Exchange Students, and TTVO Staff, we were all moved. We all left the theater with a song in our heart, and a little bit more appreciation for music that comes from the soul. Anyone who has seen the movie will be singing "Pata Pata" all night long.

Another successful outing with the IMP Department. Lets hope they keep happening!

Story: Trent Pancy
Trent is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

IMP @ TechNet

2011-11-19T09:24:00.001+02:00

TechNet is an event organized by Microsoft and it was held on the 15th of November at the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki. The place was crowded with the professionals of the ICT industry and everyone seemed to be excited to learn new things at the seminars as well as meeting both old and new friends! The main theme of the day was, not so surprisingly, Windows Phone as a platform.

In the beginning of the day you could either choose a track to follow for the rest of the day or switch between seminars according to your interests. I followed a track called the Windows Phone UX Tour, and I could not be happier for doing so!

First the lecturer introduced many interesting and useful design principles, brainstorming techniques and ideation methods. Then they were applied to a real Windows Phone application to enhance the user experience of the product. It was amazing to see how much just the design can change the usability experience of an application. And let’s face it; no matter what features your application has, nobody wants to use it if it is badly designed and has a poor user experience. In the afternoon we were also shown the process of creating a Windows Phone application from scratch to finish. Much information to absorb for one day!

Before I headed back Tampere I also visited a consumer event organized by Microsoft, Hello Helsinki! at the Vanha Yliopistotalo. There I met our street team from TTVO and also got to play around with the brand new Nokia Lumia 800! Boy had I been waiting for that moment… I thought I loved Nokia N9 over everything else, but this one really puts down a tough fight! I also got to test the Halo Anniversary Edition which was both epic and beautiful as I had expected.

All in all Microsoft TechNet was an awesome event and I am really happy that I was able to attend it! Special thanks to Juha Ollikainen for providing the tickets to me and other interested students. Now I just cannot wait for Microsoft TechDays which will be held in March 2012…

Links:
http://technet.microsoft.com
http://microsoft.fi/geeksonwheels

Story: Anna Narinen
Anna is student of our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

Ikuinen Gallery: Elsa Trzaska: SummerDelight2011

2011-11-18T12:00:00.001+02:00


Elsa Trzaska: "SummerDelight2011"
Ikuinen Galleria 21.11. -2.12.2011
mon-fri 12-16

My summer starts in spring when I get a crush on someone. And then of course you must get yourself a Summer Delight. Then the whole summer is all about adventures. At least until you realize that summer has turned to autumn, Christmas lights are on and your Summer Delight is gone. That’s the way it goes, I guess; in spring you have a lot of fun, in summer it’s quite fun and in autumn it’s no fun at all. Haha. But you mustn’t give in! Waiting for the next summer, or what ever.

I dedicate this exhibition to all Summer Delights and other delighted dudes too.

-------------------
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 gallery

"SummerDelight2011" in Facebook

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Previous Ikuinen Gallery exhibitions

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Youth Award Festival in Graz - day three (and four)

2011-11-18T11:48:00.001+02:00

Waiting for the Gala, the climax of the festival, to start

The third festival day was workshops, second keynote session and the Gala. On Sunday we traveled back to Tampere via Vienna. Most of us were home after 4 on Monday morning.

The report is again composed of the Twitter content generated by IMPs, the media students.

Tuomas Lecklin preparing workshop report

Workshops

is exactly average in every single way RT @daniol_ The average age of the world's population is 27 :) #YouthAward
#Hangover is a good reason not to come to hold a workshop...? May I use that in the future? #YouthAward #ttvo #tamk
Governments need to redefine the term 'literate' because of mobile phones. -Osama Manzar #youthaward #tamk #ttvo
Calvin has passion! RT @DhTier You need passion for being entrepeneur. We noticed that with @CalQuest #youthaward #ttvo
You can't be a remaining activist if you don't learn English. (Better start learning ?? too!) #ttvo #tamk #youthaward #chinese

Alexandra Ostasheva pitching workshop results

The problem with bringing new technology to developing countries is not the money - it's the "how?" that remains unanswered. #youthaward
#DEFindia Promotes traditional weaving skills enhanced with modern technology defindia.net #youthaward #tamk #ttvo
Second workshop starting soon at #YouthAwards. Now I also have a wifi connection! #tamk #ttvo
19 hours ago
The teams of InnoEvent are presenting their awesome ideas at #YouthAward workshop! #tamk #ttvo
Normal day, saving African lives (on paper) in Austria #InnoEvent #YouthAward
Two workshops almost done, interesting stuff. Although presentation stage fright and hence loss of coherence is akward. #youthaward #ttvo
Congratulations to the workshop winners!! #youthaward #ttvo #tamk

Anna Narinen's team won the InnoEvent workshop creativity price

@SpionChick won the second prise in InnoEvent at #youthaward #ttvo Congrats!!
InnoEvent made international groups think about how to decrease dangerous abortions and female deaths while giving birth #youthaward
Our team just won the award for most creative concept at #YouthAward #InnoEvent! Congratz! #tamk #ttvo
#youthaward People are not poor due to money but down to lack of information.
Really good point at #youthaward that youth should tell their parents openly about what they are doing with technology #tamkmedia #ttvo
In India you can call free to a service to know more about HIV/AIDS. Good system! Raise awareness! #youthaward #ttvo
We're in #graz at the #youthaward learning about how Calvin could make the world a better place!

Keynote Session 2

#Youthaward Keynote session 2 starting, first up: Dr Martina Roth! #tamk #ttvo
Yaaaay! RT @SpionChick Our team just won the award for most creative concept at #YouthAward #InnoEvent! Congratz! #tamk #ttvo
Don't pay for calling; the amount of rings indicates e.g. that husband is at home or children went to school #youthaward #ttvo
What will happen with computers in the future? A good question.. #intel #youthaward #ttvo
@DhTier I liked the Terminator idea the most #youthaward #ttvo #tamk
I'm pretty sure that the computers won't be the big thing.. It's mobilisation! #intel #youthaward
@heidi_maenpaa Stop reading my thoughts :D terminator it is.
No new technology in the world is enough if there are no creative minds working with it! #youthaward #tamk #ttvo
It has been 40 years since the invention of the first micro processor. What will be invented after the next 40 yrs pass? #intel #youthaward
How are you going to use technology to fight hunger in Africa..? #youthaward #ttvo #tamk
Invest in kids, especially in girls. Just don't forget the boys! #YouthAward #tamk #ttvo
Everyone seems to work for the edudcation in developing countries here #youthawards #ttvo
Accelerating pace of technology - where will it eventually go? When will it stop? #youthaward #ttvo #tamk
How will YOU change the world? Strange. How could I do anything alone..? I'm not special #youthaward #ttvo
@DhTier It's a trick question! You simply don't! #youthaward #tamk #ttvo
Will the digital revolution leave too many people out to properly succeed? #youthaward #tamk #ttvo
Will the technological revolution live up to its expectations in the end? A good question. #youthawards #ttvo #tamk
Keynote by Martina Roth from Intel, how innovation connects the world and furthers development. #youthaward #ttvo
I feel bad for the poor machines. Why should they do all the work when we just enjoy ourselves? #youthaward #ttvo #tamk
15% of the popumation possess 70% of the landlines which seriously compromise the internet access for all #ttvo #YouthAward
Industrial revolution did not benefit everyone... Will the digital? #youthaward #ttvo
How will the digital revolution play out? Some countries benefit, those who don't prepare will be left out. #YouthAward #ttvo
Will all the countries in the world be able to catch up on the digital age? Some countries will always be more developed than others. #ttvo
James H. Poisant: "Throughout the course of human history there has never been a better time to change the world." #YouthAward #ttvo
Internet was created to be a highway that is owned and used by everyone. #youthaward #tamk #ttvo
What will my grandchildren say about me? Have I changed the world..? Scary. #youthaward #ttvo
What could be the next big thing after the invention of Internet? Ideas, anyone? ;) #youthaward #ttvo #tamk
No one knows what the session's name is :D #youthaward #ttvo

Calvin was there too. And Dorothy Gordon made a fantastic keynote

Amazing.. Dorothy Gordon says that all the world would fit in Africa #youthaward #ttvo
Take any other continent and you will realize that they all can fit into Africa -Dorothy K. Gordon #YouthAward #tamk #ttvo
National competitiveness now depends on ICT, and this enables changing the world: spread ICT innovation. #youthaward #ttvo
All Africans don't just play drums and dance all the time! #YouthAward #ttvo #tamk
Have to say I admire Dorothy K. Gordon for her spirit and humor. A serious topic but a really powerful speaker! #youthaward #ttvo
RT @DhTier Have to say I admire Dorothy K. Gordon for her spirit and humor. A serious topic but a really powerful speaker! #youthaward #ttvo
#Swedes don't drive their own cars! They have drivers! #Youthaward #ttvo #tamk#
It's true that it's easy to talk about hunger in other countries as long as your things are well.. #youthaward #ttvo
Dorothy Gordon believes we have the leaders we deserve. #YouthAward #ttvo #tamk
If you're a data sheep, you should be sheared. Speaking about the data you give to Facebook, for example. #YouthAward #ttvo
How to make a killer app? Use birds! #YouthAward #tamk #ttvo #angrybirds
Simplicity is one of the most difficult things to achieve. #youthaward #ttvo #tamk
Keynote homework: ICANN, the USSR of the internet? Slightly older interview, but anyway: bit.ly/t1AhPA #youthaward #ttvo
Misery is easier to bear when you have some money! #youthaward #tamk #ttvo
Great keynote by Dorothy K. Gordon. Already looking for more info about what she talked about. #ttvo #YouthAward
RT @haverila Great keynote by Dorothy K. Gordon. Already looking for more info about what she talked about. #ttvo #YouthAward
Impressive project results shown by Mario Franco #youthaward #ttvo #tamk #portugal epractice.eu/en/cases/escho…
Mario Franco presenting 21st century skills: critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, communication, collaboration. #YouthAward #ttvo
Into the mountain we go! (Cavemen style...) Time for #YouthAward Gala!!! #tamk #ttvo
Had a chance to brnstrm with WSYA winner Alexander Ojo about maternal mortality. He had some info about the subject;) @innoevent #youthaward
#youthaward gala tonight!
Had a great day in workshops at #youthaward in #graz . There was also goo insights to maternal mortality in Africa. Soon off to gala!
really enjoing my time @graz #youthawards but Im not sure if my company is.... #ttvo
good workshops today at #youthawards really interesting to hear about Indian rural areas and innovative societies there.. #ttvo
pönthööö!!!! #ttvo #youthaward
Great workshop today by Suzanne Stein: imagining the world in 2050 and finding solutions to the MDGs #youthaward #ttvo

Anna-Kaisa Nässi and Maria Haere interviewed Heba Habib for IMP travel
blog at the party after the gala

The Gala and thanks, #YouthAward!

The World Summit Youth Award Gala 2011 has just started! #youthaward #tamk #ttvo
WSYA 2011 gala begins now, excellent. #youthaward #ttvo yfrog.com/h2gpzygxj
At #youthaward gala, winners getting their awards.
We're at #youthaward gala. Amazing place, nice punk rockers in the garderobe and wsya winners on stage! #ttvo #tamk
Congrats once again Girls only radio! Pro human rights go go! #ttvo #tamk #youthaward
Thanks for everything you offered, #YouthAward! It's the final night for the IMPs in Graz, in the morning: Vienna! #tamk #ttvo
#Youthaward was a great experience! Met nice people and learned about important projects! Thank you all and have a safe trip home! #ttvo
Great experience in the WSYA in Graz pretty inspiring to hear about projects from people who hope to change the world #ttvo #YouthAward
@EdGen receiving the #YouthAward in the Gala last night, with @EileenKnowles and @MilaLukic twitpic.com/7drd5h
@heidi_maenpaa @EdGen @EileenKnowles @MilaLukic #YouthAward cool pic you took there Heidi :)

IMPs in Vienna. Photo by Heidi Mäenpää

On the way home

A few hours (too little) to spend in Vienna after WSYA in Graz. #TTVO #TAMK
RT @windyafternoon A few hours (too little) to spend in Vienna after WSYA in Graz. #TTVO #TAMK
Enroute to Finland with #ttvo students.
At #Vienna airport, ready to fly back to Finland. And hoping that all IMPs fit in, since we are overbooked! #ttvo #tamk
Time to fly back to Helsinki. Thanks @Melacai for arranging the trip! #YouthAward #ttvo #tamk
little drama for the evening; almost lost my seat in the plane and almost missed the bus
Just landed in Finland after a great trip at the WSYA 2011 in Graz. Thanks to all at the #YouthAward ! #ttvo
Thanks to all for the amazing #YouthAward in Graz! Especially @Melacai and #TAMK! I hope everyone had a
My #YouthAward pics are now online, check them out! :D #ttvo #tamk goo.gl/photos/53p1dkW…

Read also the travel blog of the students: http://imps-wsya2011.blogspot.com/

World Summit Youth Award home
Read all the WSYA stories on this blog

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From TTVO to Hello Helsinki!

2011-11-17T09:34:00.001+02:00

Street team getting to know their hardware.

TTVO has been acknowledged also in Helsinki! Few of our students were invited to participate in creating content for Microsoft's Hello Helsinki-week. Among other, the tasks included the following: creating audiovisual content for the events' blog, interviewing visitors, IT professionals and celebrities, and dressing up as Mesebuddies. We have been out in the streets and in the venue, Vanha ylioppilastalo.

Big screen outside the entrance.

The adorable Mesebuddy-videos can be found in Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/HelloStreetTeam#p/u/7/EdQLCd3zyqQ .

Text and photos: Tia Tuovinen.

10IMPs in Graz & Vienna

2011-11-15T15:30:00.001+02:00

The 10IMP excursion to the World Summit Youth Award in Graz began with us presenting each of the winning teams in the travel blog. We didn't know what to expect from the event in the beginning, since last year the IMPs went to the Europrix and not the WSYA. Nevertheless we decided to open our minds to everything new!

Thick morning fog surrounded us during the bus ride to Helsinki

Before we even knew it we were on the plane and on our way to Vienna, Austria. Even though some of us were slightly afraid of flying, and seemed very nervous, the flight went very well. The food we ate on the plane was just the beginning of an unforgettable food culture adventure...

From Vienna airport we took a bus to one of the city's railway stations. Of course our small group of 22 IMPs didn't fit into the first bus, so we had to wait for the second one, and we were able to take enjoy the surroundings of the airport. The weather was pretty much the same than in Finland, with a little less fog! Once we finally got into the bus and to the train station we noticed that the ticket office where we were supposed to go and get our tickets had closed twenty minutes before our arrival. If we had fit into the first bus there wouldn't have been any problems! But, luckily we are an adventurous bunch and we simply boarded the train without tickets. Our reservations were still visible inside the train, and when the conductor arrived our great guide Cai Melakoski was able to solve things out in fluent German!

The IMPs waiting and listening to instructions

Admiring art at Graz railway station

With the IMPs happy and with paid tickets (and sort of tired after the 2,5 hour train ride over the mountains) we arrived in Graz, UNESCO City of Design. In the darkness of the night there wasn't much to see, yet, but luckily we had time for scenery walks later. We checked into our lovely little accommodation place called Hotel Drei Raben. Some of the IMPs even felt brave enough to go out and embrace the Austrian night culture, but most of us seemed to stay at the hotel and get a good night sleep before the activities on Thursday.

On Thursday morning we had some free time to ourselves before we had any program, so we did some touring in the town centre.

Alex posing with the road workers
(They thought we were Americans...
I guess we took too many pictures!)

Town centre

Putting on our prettiest smiles...!

"How to throw leaves" by Alex

Nailed the shot!

Bridge view

The weather was perfect for taking photos

After a few hours of walking around the centre we took a tram to TAMK's exchange partner school FH Joanneum, where we were given a tour by Thomas Radeke, a lecturer at the school. Unfortunately the campus was so huge with multiple buildings that me and three others got lost trying to find our way to the "main lobby". We arrived slightly late but were still able to get all the necessary information! A few of us said right away that they might even be interested in coming there for the exchange period. We'll see!

Beginning of the presentation

Listening and Tweeting at the same time!

Our tour manager Thomas Radeke

A robot that shoots out vodka shots... Why not!

Tuomas handing out school leaflets

Emma and Anna posing in front of FH Joanneum

After an afternoon spent in FH Joanneum everyone headed to eat something before the Youth Award registration. Me, Emma, Anna and Sanna decided to listen to our hotel receptionist's advice and chose a nearby local place called Zu Den 3 Goldenen Kugeln. It turned out to be an excellent idea! We got to taste the very popular schnitzels in various forms.

Sanna and Emma enjoying their spectacular schnitzels!

This food is a "must" for everyone who travels to Austria!

After a filling meal we headed to Hotel Mercure for registration coffees and teas. Because of some technical difficulties the nametags for IMPs weren't ready yet, so we had to spend the first evening without them. But since we are so unforgettable, walking around without them wasn't really a problem. After the registration we headed to the national broadcasting station of ORF for the festival opening and welcome cocktails. In there we also ran into Arnau Gifreu who held the IMPs a workshop about Intercative Multimedia last February. It was really great to see him again!

ORF station in the darkness

Opening speeches

Winners' projects in a nutshell... Lightning pitching!

Yummy bread!

On Friday morning the IMPs headed to listen to the Youth Award winners pitch their projects at Karl-Franzen's University. We also finally got our nametags! After a very interesting lunch hour there was also some speeches, or Keynotes, from guest speekers.

The University looked magnificent inside and outside!

Kaisu's nametag indicated that she is from Denmark
instead of Finland... Hmm? Suspicious says I!

Enjoying the lunch

I have no idea what it was. Still don't. Kinda scared of it even now!

Interesting topics were discussed throughout the evening

The evening also included a guided Design Walk across Graz, but at least me and Sanna decided to take a longer tour instead and climb up all the way to Schloßberg.

Graz Art Museum at night, from the Design Walk (by Alex)

Schloßberg steps at night. Had fun climbing them!

Graz looked like a starry sky

A slightly creepy tree on top of the mountain

On Saturday morning we had four different workshops we could attend with the other WSYA participants. Unfortunately one workshop was cancelled because the person responsible for it didn't show up after all. Aside from that everything went well. During the final workshop Anna Narinen's team was awarded for the most inventive product idea. All IMPs felt proud! When the workshops were done some final speeches were made by partners and ambassadors, such as Mathias Haas from SuperSocial Marketing.

Ready for the final day in Graz!

Waiting for the first workshops to begin

Making notes? Or playing games? Can you guess?

Joonas and Tia discussing

Our Internet café... With free condoms!

Alex presenting her group's idea of pregnancy control

The judges thought hard on who should win the prizes

Congrats on the most inventive idea!

After all the hard work it was time to finally party! The WSYA Gala was held inside the Schloßberg mountain, in a popular clubbing place called Dom im Berg. All winners were presented once again by the hosts Nkemdilim Uwaje and Anshul Tewari, and awarded with flowers and trophies. The awarding ceremony lasted for a couple of hours, and afterwards it was time to dance and make final connections with people. IMPs know how that works!

The big cave was an impressive setting for the gala

Education Generation receiving their award

Sanna at the party

Maria and Anna-Kaisa looking very pretty!

Cai enjoying his time in the Gala

SuperSocial afterparty

IMPs connecting

We just couldn't stop making new friends!

On Sunday the IMPs left Graz with slightly wistful feelings and began their journey back towards Vienna. The train ride offered breathtaking views of the mountains, valleys and little towns in between. We even saw a sheep or two!

Beautiful frost covered trees along the way

And of course, what would an IMP do without a laptop!

When we arrived in Vienna we checked in our bags beforehand so that we could enjoy the town without heavy luggage. With Cai leading us we walked through the city and into the town square, where Vienna Christmas Market (Wiener Christkindlmarkt) was being held. We went around tasting strange delicacies and buying souvenirs.

St. Stephen's Cathedral

IMPs at Stephansplatz

Paparazzi number one!

Paparazzi number two!

Pretty horses! (My favourite picture by Alex)

Walking towards the Christmas market

Let's just say that we weren't the only ones going there....

A few people indeed!

Yum yum!

The market just got prettier as the time went by!

Time for the last pictures before heading home

It was now time to get to the airport and fly back to Finland. With relative ease we all found our way to the plane (even though some arrangements had to be made because the flight was overbooked) and safely arrived back in Helsinki.

Waiting for the subway

All and all this was a great chance for the IMPs to see what is happening in the New Media business and get new contacts from all over the world. Thanks to Cai and the school for making this possible, let's hope next year the 11IMPs enjoy their trip as much as we enjoyed ours!

Story: Heidi Mäenpää

Pictures: Heidi Mäenpää, Alexandra Ostasheva, Mathias Haas

Read more stories from/about IMPs, the Media students

IMPD visiting SIGGRAPH

2011-11-13T17:20:00.005+02:00

Last weekend, a few IMPs ventured to Helsinki to see what’s happening in the Finnish computer graphics scene at the Aalto venture garage. SIGGRAPH is an event about exactly that, and it takes place twice a year. It was an afternoon full of more or less interesting presentations from technical ways to compare two images to beer mat displays. Although most of us lacked the background knowledge to fully understand every presentation, there were quite some interesting points:

What would you do after developing an air guitar game using technologies like Kinect? Of course, create a Kung Fu game where you actually have to do the moves yourself! Teemu Mäki-Patola from Virtual Air Guitar Company presented fun and interactive game concepts which could even be tested during the break. Unfortunately, the Kung Fu game won’t have a multiplayer version.

Another nice way of keeping the audience’s attention is have a huge 3D animated bunny copying ones movements on screen throughout the whole presentation. The impressive part, however, was that the presenting company had actually implemented live animation in Blender from Kinect input. They also demonstrated a different use for this technology: Playing Angry Birds with gesture control. Movement recognition games clearly seem to have a future!

A completely different approach were the beer-mat-displays. Paper that shows additional text when getting wet, which is quite convenient e.g. for advertisement on beer mats. Cool stuff!

There were also further, interesting(some more, some less) presentations, and free beer and pizza. Which made SyysGraph 2011 all in all a trip worth going on!

Blog post by Lukas Kallenbach