Tuesday, 16 May 2017

Platinum Project Workshop 3


Last week we finished with one of the workshops of the Platinum Project! We had supervising teachers and project team members visiting us from Beijing and Hong Kong. Last time in Hong Kong we had formed four groups, and recently we had also received new team members from an university in Beijing and the university of Tampere. All in all the teams were formed from at least four different study paths! Within the teams we had many roles, and managed to split the work for everyone. The different team roles included programmers, UI designers, web designers, project coordinators, sound designers and of course, 3D artists. 




In all the teams we had made our own plans on how to merge virtual reality and nature elements together in a way that we could improve the player's well being. In total we have now had three different Platinum workshops. Last time in October we focused on designing the game concept while visiting Hong Kong, and this time we had an intense developing workshop here in Tampere, where the aim was to create working demos of our concepts. We can proudly say that all the teams succeeded in this challenge!

Screenshot of VR game project Magic Garden.


During the week, we had a chance to spend a lot of time with the students from Hong Kong and Beijing, and get to know them. The schedule was tight and most of the time was spent on building our game demos at Mediapolis, but the first day was a little bit different… We went to Flowpark! It was a fun challenge and a great way to bond with our new team mates. After the Flowpark adventure, we spent the evening in Varala, where we had sauna reserved. All of our visitors were very brave, and most of them took a swim in the still freezing lake in between sauna rounds. We feel that the workshop was a great success, and hope that our visitors had fun during the workshop and afterwards on their few days off exploring Finland. Our next stop will be Beijing, where we will have our fourth, and final workshop in August.




Text & screenshots: Eve Kyllönen and Tiia Viitanen 2017
Photos: Carita Forsgren 2017

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Thursday, 18 August 2016

The Platinum project


Riku Roihankorpi of UTA explains things for people at Hell's Gate

This project started with planning and team forming at the Tampere University OASIS premises. We went through the Hero's Journey model and talked about character types, but what I think made this project special, was how we were every day somehow connected to the nature. After all, our goal was to create a virtual reality app or game that would advance well-being and relax people with help of a forest-like experience.

Prof. Hanna Wirman from Hong Kong Polytechnic (left), at Lake Halimasjärvi with students
Lake Halimasjärvi in Tampere, climbing towards the Hero's Reward?
Meeting an Archetype: The Lake's Guardian (who measured the water quality)

I think the highlight of this project was the trip to Hell's Gorge, which is located in Helvetinjärvi (Hell's Lake) National park in Finland. 

Using our senses, sensei
Our guests from Hong Kong and Beijing universities were able to experience real Finnish nature and pick up some berries and mushrooms. Our task on that day was to experience nature with our senses and I think that was a nice way to think about the different aspects of the nature. For example, nature wouldn't feel the same if it did smell like a city centre.

Photo: E.Kyllönen

Photo: E.Kyllönen
 
Are these symbols of an ancient culture?

Lots of cute little Hell froggies!


Our whole week was an intense mix of walking in nature and building games and apps prototypes in our teams. 

We had abnormally good weather

A moment of relaxing at Hell's Lake (Helvetinjärvi)

This is NOT why they call this place Hell, but the climb feels like it anyway

The Heroes have returned from Hell, and are now Masters of Two Worlds. A moment of Dao
But it was also a great way to meet new people and work in international team while trying to build something different. I'm excited to see what happens when we go to Hong Kong and have our second Platinum workshop, in October 2016.

Platinum is more than just walking in forests

Text: Eve Kyllönen 2016
Photos: Eve Kyllönen, Carita Forsgren
Edits & Photo captions: CF

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Friday, 4 September 2015

EARS Helsinki 2015 / Part 2

EARS – Europe-Asia Roundtable Sessions is a platform supporting creative industry collaboration between Europe and Asia. A place for creative professionals from different cultural settings to meet, connect and share ideas. EARS on Helsinki, took place on August 27-30 in YLE Pasila, catered a blend of keynotes, roundtables and networking sessions with topics ranging from virtual reality to Asia’s festival boom. Tailor-made sections are featured for design, music, performing arts, literature, marketing and media.

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EARS Helsinki 2015 / Part 1. Stories continued...

Day 2 of EARS conference, I started my day with cup of coffee and croissant at Yle Pasila studio and then headed to the morning session 'Spotlight on Performing Art Venues'. Anna CY Chan, Head of Artistic Development of West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, Stuba Nikula, Cultural Director of City of Helsinki, Austin Wang, Director of Taipei Performing Arts Center, Lauri Törhönen, Chairman of the Board of Cable Factory and Keizo Maeda, Program director’s board, Promotion & marketing director of Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre introduced art performing venues in their cities from 4 countries. Although I am not involved in performing arts, I have surely seen performing arts before which it was interesting to hear from people who are working in the fields and how performing venues are important to these arts.

(From left to right) Keizo Maeda, Anna CY Chan, Austin Wang, Lauri Törhönen, Stuba Nikula and panel moderator/ program director of EARS, Jani Joenniemi discussing performing arts related topics. (Photo taken from EARS Helsinki, by Hemmo Rättyä)

After lunch and a good hour of exchanging conversation with Sami Arola about games and virtual reality, and also general discussion about Finnish cultures as well together with local dancer/ choreographer, Johanna Nuutinen, the afternoon session went on with me attending 'Creative Cities and Hubs' which Mediapolis was mentioned during the roundtable session! Anssi Komulainen, Chief Partnership Officer of Yle talked about Yle's strategies of creating new creative hubs all over Finland and Tampere's Mediapolis is one of them. I sincerely hope for Mediapolis to have more creative collaborations between students and professionals to fully realise the purpose of this concept of Creative Hubs.

The 2-day conference ended with great surprises which the organiser announced that EARS conference participants are entitled to attend Modern Sky Festival for the weekend! Refreshment were served and Kikagaku Moyo, one of the band featured in Modern Sky Festival Helsinki, performing for the closing ceremony of the conference. I was so happy to have attended the conference and learnt new perspectives about art and cultural scenes in Finland and around Asia, as well as meeting so many talented and professional people working together for better cross cultural collaboration.
Kikagaku Moyo performing at the closing ceremony.

Modern Sky Festival Helsinki is organised in co-operation with Helsinki Festival and the Live Music Association ELMU ry, first time for the festival taking place in Europe. It was happening in the never before used venue of the Hietalahti shipyards. Modern Sky Helsinki showcased a mixture of Asian and Nordic artists, food and cultural phenomena with a mixed genre line up including indie rock, pop, electro and alternative acts, as well fresh new DJ’s from asian and nordic countries.
Top Chinese Indie band, Nova Heart performing at Modern Sky Festival, Helsinki.

Bass Sekolah from Malaysia playing electronic music at one of the festival stage in Nosturi. The band that is from my home country!

It was really awesome two days participated in the EARS conference and ended in Modern Sky festival listening and discovering great music from Nordic and Asian countries. Definitely a very cultural weekend for me immersing myself in arts, music and people!

Listening and dancing to Drippin, DJ from Norway.





Read EARS Helsinki 2015 / Part 1 here.
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Curious about what happened in the conference? Look at the pictures captured on the 4-day EARS conference.

Stories by 
Student of 12MEDIA
TAMK Media and Arts
Tampere University of Applied Science

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