As we're are now officially over with the first period of our semester, the students of 09's Media Degree Program are naturally eager to get busy with their new and improved skills as well as to gain more. So what do a bunch of aspiring designers do to get networked, create and develop their skills? "A Group" would be the answer.

Christmas Bazaar
December 17-20
Open 12 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Ikuinen Galleria
Finlaysoninkuja 3

Finland and Tampere are to host the Karate European Championships in 2014. The Finnish Karate Federation contacted Tamk in order to have a competition for the logo of the event. The competition was organized as a part of the visual design course for International Media Programme.

Finnish Karate Federation rated highest an entry by Danko Pantovic.
Congrats Danko!

Read Danko's interview here.

Degree Programme in Media

Story: Jukka Siltanen
The Hub is an initiative to build a network of places around the world where entrepreneurs, innovators and changemakers can meet and work together to tackle the world's most pressing social, cultural and environmental challenges. A place is needed to inspire and support imaginative and enterprising initiatives for a radically better world.

TTVO Festival 2009
Thu 17.12. 9:30 p.m.
Jack the Rooster

Experience the last and the best party of the year! The traditional School of Art and Media festival and the best school bands and performers are at Jack the Rooster for you Thursday night.

Two IMP 2005 students; Micaela Paiva and Ricardo Meneses from Portugal have visited Tampere again this week, yesterday they came to School of Art and Media. In Autumn 2005 they participated in the Interactive Media Programme (IMP), a special course for exchange students.

The eight Animateka film festival in Ljublajana, Slovenia, December 7-12 has focus on Finland this year. One of the short films representing Finland is the graduation work by Hannaleena Hauru "If I Fall".

December 7-11
4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Virpi Viljamaa: The Opening (performance)
Ikuinen Gallery
Finlaysoninkuja 3,
Tampere, Finland

Story by Anna Tikkanen
Last Friday the IMPs gathered at one of the student's apartment to spend together a great "Nightmare Before Christmas" party. The offerings were great; delicious Greek food and home-made sweets along some of their traditional drink, Ouzo. Even though — on behalf of the food — the party was very Greek, we did not forget the typical Finnish mulled wine consumed during the Christmas time. Glögi was enjoyed as a delicate treat after the filling dinner.

Young Artists 2009
December 5 - January 6 Kunsthalle Helsinki Nervanderinkatu 3

The Young Artists exhibition is a regular event that has acquired a legendary status in Finland. The first show was held in 1939 in the Kunsthalle, 70 years ago. Young people have always caused a stir, and the work of young artists has presaged future trends.

WRITTEN BY TIINA RINKINENGreetings from Sparkling Ink, the food and home blog! I'm Tiina, the author and editor of Sparkling Ink, and I'm also a media production student in TAMK Media department. Sparkling Ink is a Scandinavian style blog in English about food and home related topics, with a focus on seasonal food and living. I just recently completed my thesis about lifestyle blogging and publishing my own blog. Developing as a blogger and my studies have really worked together perfectly for me.

DETVET (Development of Educational Techniques in Vocational Education and Training) is a Leonardo da Vinci Programme funded partnership project which started August 2009 and will last until July 2011. Partners are from Lithuania, Sweden, Denmark, Czech Republic, Italy and Finland.

Leeuwarden video workshop from joonas tikkanen on Vimeo.

Earlier we published an illustrated story by Veera Niemi about the Brick by Brick installation our student made together with Academy of Popculture students in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.

Now we are happy to present a video by Joonas Tikkanen, which documents the trip and installation.
Read the report by Veera Niemi
Academy of Popculture in this blog

This year's IMPs had their first dip in the professional pool these last few weeks when we were asked to design a logo for the 2014 European Karate Championships that will take place right here in our lovely Tampere.

The championships are organized by the Finnish Karate Federation in colaboration with the European Karate Federation and there are more than 600 competitors from 50 countries attending. The games will also be broadcasted in more than 30 countries.

I have spent my autumn semester as an exchange student in Toronto, Ontario College of Art & Design on The Faculty of Art. Studying in another country has been an eye-opening experience that has helped me to concentrate to develop the content of my artistic work as much as improve technical part of artistic process.

The students of the international Degree Programme, the IMPs, have courses like Visual Design, Animation and Multimedia, Web Design, Programming and Print Design. But this is not all, they also study media culture and languages.

The Electrician won the Audience Award in the Up-and-coming International Film Festival, Hannover, Germany last night.

Next application time for our BA programme run in English is January 11 - February 12. For the Media Programme it is not enough that applicants fill in the online form, they also have to complete and send by the deadline a pre-task with three assignments.

Sari Tervaniemi: Memento Mori
2.-29.11.2009
Gallery Alkovi
Helsinginkatu 19
Gallery Alkovi is located in Helsinki at Kallio district as a window gallery.

EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival, now third time in ever so wonderful and hospitable Graz, was once again unforgettable. Populated by members of the 20 nominee teams, digital media industry representatives, lecturers and students the three days were filled with energy and creativity plus all other fun stuff.

Our fine art students are an active part of the fifteenth Forces of Light Festival in Helsinki November 11-15.

TAMK´s two day Game Design Workshop was organized for the second time in DEMOLA. This time we were able to experience how it works to have a virtual lecturer as one participant of the workshop.

The Electrician won the Gold Panda Special Jury Award at the 10th Sichuan International TV-festival in Chendu, China last weekend. Simultaniously the film became winner of the Vimma09 (Fury09) competition at the Arctic Fury Film Festival in Rovaniemi, Lapland. The Electrician was also winner of the Favourite of the Audience award in Rovaniemi.

TAMK’s interaction design student Vappu Leinonen has studied in her final thesis “Interaction Designer in Agile World” how the shift from traditional waterfall process models towards agile methods in software development affects the work of interaction designers.

University of Liepaja in Latvia, by the Baltic Sea, is one of TAMK's partner universities. Last week they had the opening of the New Media Art study and research environment and International New Media Art Week with workshops, presentations and lectures.

Photo and story: Antti Haapio
A group from St.-Petersburg Informational Center FotoDepartament visited our Fine Art Programme today, to meet our students and review their portfolios.

The most international project of TAMK School of Art and Media has turned out fine. Ania Ciuba from Poland, a multimedia student from our partner school SDE College in Odense, Denmark, made a web site for Tan Minh Single Woman's group, Vietnam, during her exchange period in our school.

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

The English admission pages for the new TAMK have been launched.

The pages mainly serve foreign applicants, so they focus on marketing the English degree programmes and giving information about TAMK and Finland. The application period for the English degree programmes is 11.1. – 12.2.2010.

This is a note from director of Electrician Miina Alajärvi, sent to members of the Electrician group on Facebook:

Heihoi!

I'm writing from my vacation in Sweden. Good news reach even here! The Electrician keeps on compeeting around the world!

Demola is seeking enthusiastic adventurers to research and development projects.

Act now, and gain:

• company contacts
• project experience
• credit points on learning by doing
• multidisciplinary teamwork
• business opportunities
• reward from the job well done

Arctic Fury Film Festival
4.-8.11.2009 Rovaniemi Invited School of Art and Media Films:
Alone
The Electrician
Rain Must Fall

The international MindTrek Conference 2009 is now over. While waiting for the 2010 conference next October, you can enjoy the contents of the 2009 online. Even if you were one of the 800+ participants, you could not be present on every track of the conference nor the many parallel workshops on the pre-conference partner's events day.

The kick-off session of the DETVET project was rounded off late Thursday afternoon with a tour to Klaipeda's old brewery.

Story and photos: Anna Tikkanen
On Wednesday afternoon, students of the International Media programme took part of manSEDANse, an annual festival of electronic music, art and culture taking place at Tampere. Even though the festival also consists of various club nights and workshops, we only attended the "Play!" seminar, a lecture and a panel talk about game development and research.

Hello from Klaipeda, Lithuania! The TAMK delegation travelled here today via Riga, Latvia. Soon we will meet our partners representing educational institutions from Lithuania, Czech Republic, Italy, Denmark and Sweden.

"manSEDANse is a festival of electronic music, art and culture taking place in Tampere, Finland. In it's fourth year, manSEDANse keeps gaining momentum and magnitude to bring forth electronic culture of the highest order!"

Swanhilde de Jong made a staff exchange last week to TAMK School of Art and Media. The students of our MA in Screenwriting Programme work with a course on genres, and Swanhilde brought the expertise of documentary scriptwriting to this course. She said she enjoyed her work very much, the students showed a very professional attitude.

MA in Screenwriting is a joint programme of TAMK UAS and University of Salford, UK. The third edition of the programme started in September.

Diary of a Person with Asperger’s Syndrome is a documentary film written, directed and produced by Kristiina Lehto. She made this documentary, because Asperger's syndrome is present in her family. Kristiina wants to help people to understand what Asperger's syndrome is about. Every day person's with AS experience much injustice, because people don't understand their behaviour.

MindTrek is a world class conference with famous keynote speakers and sessions that deal with the most important issues of the digital future. If you want to learn more, check out the MindTrek website.

IMPs, the international Media Programme students of TAMK School of Art and Media were there having breakfast in time before the shows started. Aleksi, one of the IMPs (in center), had his birthday, all the fellow IMPs sung the birthday song, and Aleksi's muffin was powered up with whipped cream and strawberries.

October starts today and that means two awesome events. First MindTrek at Tampere. And next week: The MIPCOM at Cannes.

One of the exciting and inspiring reasons to enjoy working at TAMK School of Art and Media is the annual MindTrek Conference we arrange together with other Tampere universities and companies every year since 1997.

Joost van Eeden from Amsterdam is this week in Tampere to visit the MindTrek Conference - like 800 other MindTrekkers from all over. But Joost has a special reason: he represents DonkeyPedia, which is one of the three nominees of the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award. Donkeypedia is also nominated for the online category in EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards, so Joost will attend also the EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival in Graz in November.

Lend n 2009
26. 9.—18.10.
Tartu Art College Graduation Show 2009Galleria Emil
Old Library, Keskustori 4, Tampere
Open Mon-Fri 10-18, Sat-Sun 11-17

VIII Open St.Petersburg Student Film Festival "BEGINNING" took place this week in St.Petersburg, Russia. The global contest of the festival invited again this year two films from TAMK School of Art and Media to be shown in the category for Fiction films.

Text and photos: Anna Tikkanen
Students of the Media Programme had a chance of attending the largest event in the graphical arts industry in Northern Europe, and obviously many of them took advantage of it.

Text and photo: Rolf Achrén, Technical Supervisor
Best greetings from Amsterdam. We were lucky to attend the IBC-show. The most attracting thing was the develpomet of 3D-stereotelevision. 3D-videopicture was visible on several stands and it was quite natural to view.

A couple of weeks ago Rosa Pons and Cristina Perales from University of Vic, Barcelona, did their five day staff exchange at the School of Art and Media. They did a workshop with our students, who loved it. The visit once again showed that carefully prepared and implemented visits of lecturers really make sense and pay off.

16.9. – 2.10.2009
Vera Arjoma: Closed But Open
Ikuinen Gallery
Finlaysoninkuja 3, Tampere, Finland
Open Mon - Fri 12 a.m. to 4 p.m.