This year they really put effort into the creating this event. You might wonder how long it takes to organize an event like the International Week and the answer is that no one really knows. It’s an ever-changing situation where problems will always arise but fortunately the team this year has been incredible and has managed to overcome everything they’ve encountered.

Especially the performances and installations/exhibitions in the United Studios have been well thought and organized. So much to see and experience and luckily you had the whole week to go around. The variety of the acts was also a good thing, a little bit of something for everyone.

The "Citizen journalism in the age of live streaming" - by Yuwei Lin workshop had its participants live stream their day. On the video, you can see a part of the Musical: No one’s rib that took part in the United Studios in the morning. The participants went around the Mediapolis campus visiting other workshops and reporting live on what was going on. They talked to other people and asked what they had been doing and what they thought about the workshops. The general atmosphere is overwhelming while people are working on their projects and assignments for the workshops.

And here are the last of the summaries of the workshops, do enjoy!

"Sound, Emotion, and User Experience" - by Antti Jylhä (The Hague UAS, NL), only on Thursday from 9 am till 1 pm.

This workshop deals with the relationship between sound and emotion in regards to user experiences. In the workshop, the participants will practice the art of sketching emotional sounds with their voices and by listening understand the emotions behind different sounds. With engaging exercises, they will uncover a massively disregarded potential of sound in user experience design.

"Environment Art" - By Jakub Malinovski (University of Arts in Poznan), Tuesday to Thursday from 9 am till 4 pm.

This workshop aims to use the creative strength and the ideas of students to go through the existing ideas and thoughts around everyday environment of the city and surrounding nature. There are many visual, social and urban phenomenon hidden around us. The idea is to form groups and process ideas and thoughts together. The goal of the workshop is to come up with propositions of artworks locate in real space using imaging tools such as AR visualization.

"The Entheogenic Machine" - By Fabián Barros (ORT University, Uruguay), only on Wednesday from 9 am till 3 pm.

The entheogenic machine workshop explores the popular religious art on the Internet in its most basic visual expression: animated gif and jpg. These images are interpreted and contextualized to facilitate contact with one's inner divinity by using digital technology. It is not very complex and uses mostly obsolete and low-cost technology. The result of the workshop could, for example, be a multimedia installation that will be shown during the International Week.

The presentations are over for the day and thing are being wrapped up in the United Studios as well. Tomorrow there will be the Friday Seminar which will be answering to the question “Who do we think we are? IDENTITY, DIVERSITY, EQUALITY –co-creation, smart cities with human beings” hosted by Albert van der Kooij. There will be several speakers sharing their experience, so do come and listen.

Thank you for being a part of this and see you again next year!

The second day of the iWeek started with the continuation of the workshops from the previous day. In the United Studios the students from the Game Academy showcased the games they have been working on. Later you could try the games in the orange lobby where also the Virtual Gallery could be experienced. Some of the games shown were about jousting, breaking stuff as a cat, a multiplayer FPS with water guns and being a thief.

During the day in the United Studios there has been quite many musical performances by a variety of artists and bands from different countries as well as poem reciting. There has also been some lectures about music related topics such as karaoke diplomacy. Today is definitely full of music and chilling to the tunes.

You can find amazing exhibitions and installations all over the school. The second floor showcases most of the exhibitions. The installations of the advanced sound design workshop 2018 can be found in both the first and the second floor. 

The installation by Aaro Arvola named Rough mixdown can be found on the first floor in the orange lobby. On the second floor there are the Disco box done by Eetu Tähtinen in the rooms 20019 and 20018 and the Disorder simulations by Polina Hameltoja and Pauli Ondruska in the room 20011. 

There’s the UNPOLISHED exhibition which features photo art from the photography minor and takes place in the 2nd floor corridor during the iWeek. In the photography study module students created a photo art book on a topics chosen by them. Themes of projects vary from a haptic taste of chocolate to the existence of human in the universe. 

The other exhibition WET PAINT showcases drawings and paitings in Mediapolis 2nd Floor, rooms 20012, 20034, 20063 and 20064. The pieces of works are done by the students in the Drawing and Painting minor.

“Like wet paint, we are fluid and unfixed. Fresh and new, anything is possible.”

A quote from the students.

The last performance of the day is by none other than our very own Eeverest, Niko Mansikka-aho. He’s a Finnish student at TAMK Music Production study path who has been working as a DJ and a producer and is based in Tampere. So hope everyone is ready to dance to his music!

And as in the last post, here are some summaries about the ongoing workshops. Hope everyone is enjoying and gaining information and skills from the ones they are participating in!

"Connected Neighborhoods: diverse_CITY" - by Graham Cooper, Martyn Thayne (University of Lincoln, UK) and Anne Karen (Academy of Pop Culture, Hanze University, NL), from Wednesday to Thursday between 9 am and 4 pm.

This workshop is about exploring the global / local landscape and look at the key players / participants / neighbours in a collaborative manner. The landscape is ever expanding and increasingly diverse. The participants of the workshop will use design and discussion to explore and celebrate the different aspects of the cities. The task is to use playful and creative means to showcase the diversity within our surroundings.

“Jugaad: create or transform basic objects using trash materials!” - By Tibor Kecskes (TK Studio), from Tuesday to Thursday between 10 am and 4 pm.

Jugaad is a wide spread activity especially in the developing countries for upcycling broken constructions or creating basic objects using trash / simple materials. The idea is to support upcycling / repairing items instead of throwing them away. The results of the creative minds and able hands of the participants will be shown in the form of an exhibition and / or presented. It’s interesting to see if they can see the hidden potential in so called trash objects and materials!

"Citizen journalism in the age of live streaming" - by Yuwei Lin (University of Stirling, UK), Tuesday to Thursday from 9 am to 12 pm.

If you have ever wanted to learn how to report an event live this workshop is for you. The event can be anything and in the workshop there will be used a variety of social media tools to explore the possibilities. The participants will go through how to prepare, what to cover, how to source the content, maintain audience interests and ethics around live reporting.

Be sure to follow the Facebook page of the TAMK 11th International Week for more live updates during the week. Also, there will be a summary posted about the daily activities every evening in the TAMK Arts and Media blog.

https://www.facebook.com/TAMKartmusicmediaweek/

Posters at the entrance to the Mediapolis campus.

In the United Studios there’s plenty of great pieces of work to see even if you are not participating in the workshops. The morning was spent setting everything up from the exhibitions to the Virtual Gallery and making sure that the preparations for each act and performance happening later were ready. It is always a joy seeing students from different study paths and teachers working together as a team to make something amazing come true.

We’ve had a screening of the final works of the Fine Art Moving Image course and the feedback session. All the works were shown before the commentators gave their feedback individually to each artist or artists. The feedback came from Jonna Kina (visual artist, Finland), Azar Sayjar (AV-Arkki, Finland) and Fabián Barros (digital artist, Uruguay). In the afternoon there will be a MeKu Platform launching, a social media platform created by students for the students of Media and Arts, and a Spanish musician Carmen playing a ukulele and covering different songs.

Alisa Komendova's Moving Image final piece shown in the United Studios during the screening of the Fine Art works.

Here are summaries of a few of the workshops happening, more to come during the days and look forward to the final report on the event.

“Building a visualisation system for a live music performance” - By Markku Laskujärvi (SWÄG), from Tuesday to Thursday between 10 am and 4 pm-

Two VJs from SWÄG (Tampere-based art, music and event organizing collective) have come to the iWeek to guide the participants on how to make a great visual performance quickly. They will give you tips and help you work through your own footage you were supposed to bring with you to the workshop. The final result is a system for performing live visualisations done be using live programming. The system will be used later in the iWeek to visualise live a musical performance.

"Mixed Reality Experience" - by Jens Herder (HS Duesseldorf, University of Applied Sciences) happening on Tuesday and Wednesday from 9 am till 4 pm.

Starting from explaining the technology behind the different VR applications and continuing with discussing the experiences of viewing the recorded footage. The mixed reality can be used for example in real-life applications like education, entertainment, e-sports, tutorials and cinematic trailers. The idea of the workshop is to hands on produce a demonstration video while thinking about how to convey the experience in a virtual environment to third parties.

"Circuit bending" - By Olegtron, only on Tuesday from 10 am till 16 pm.

Olegtron is bringing us an experimental method of modifying electronics sound devices. The idea is to experiment with discarded sound toys and giving them a new life and a playable interface. The toys are torn apart and fiddled around with to find interesting spots.

Be sure to follow the Facebook page of the TAMK 11th International Week for more live updates during the week. Also, there will be a summary posted about the daily activities every evening in the TAMK Arts and Media blog.

https://www.facebook.com/TAMKartmusicmediaweek/