Get ready for INTAC - International Art Collaborations Course

Intac was born in 2010 as a tandem project between two schools, TAMK University of Applied Sciences and OCAD University in Toronto, Canada.
The core idea was that students from the two universities would ideate and realize art projects working together, using skype and other social media to communicate, and at the end they would organize a joint art exhibition.

Five years passed by, and Intac is stronger than ever. Six universities are taking part in the project right now(TAMK, OCAD in Canada, Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Osaka University of Arts in Japan, BTK from Berlin and NID from India)and for the first year this year, the international students from the new Fine Arts study path are taking part in the project.

Intac is a non conventional course. You might find yourself working late in the night as there might be seven time zones in between you and the person working on the same project.
Even lessons have  to be scheduled according to other partners availability, as we're dealing with the full extension of time zone, from extreme west to east(and I might add we and the guys at BTK are the lucky ones, as we all live roundabout in the middle).

It was pretty exciting to meet all the other people from the other universities! Here you can see our first contact with the students from Canada:

The annual New Factory open event is 500+ participants, state of the art keynotes, exhibitions, pitches, competitions, a party. From our point of view New Factory Open is above all a show of the Demola projects IMPs (Art&Media International Media Programme students) have been working in this spring.

The exhibition and the pitches are among the most rewarding moments in a lecturers life: you can see that the students have been busy working and learning, created and delivered excellent results and are able to present the awesome projects brilliantly. It's a wow wow wow day!

All nine projects involving our regular and/or exchange students were shown at the exhibition, three were among the three selected to competed for the best Demola project award and one represented Demola in Demola international competition. The number of Demola projects this spring is 28.

Bernard Garvey and Ville Kairamo from Demola, jury representative Kim Dotto, Dean from British Columbia Institute of Technology) and Trent Pancy on behalf of Demola International winners

"The Best Mobile Game Ever" (Client Tampere University of technology) featuring Trent Pancy won the competition between the Demolas. New Demolas following the Tampere model are up and running in Oulu, Skåne (Sweden), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Budapest Hungary.

The Avatars team, Rosanna Salminen speaking and Erika Kim managing the slide show

The Adaptive Avatar Music Experience (Client Nokia) project with Rosanna Salminen and Erika Kim from IMP won the best project award.

Laura Räsänen speaking

"Digital Picture Book For Learning Foreign Languages" (Client Tampere University) with Laura Räsänen was one of the top three Demola projects

Visualize it team with Martin Kleinberns presenting, Joanne Wong and Lubos Rezler behind the desk.

VISUALIZE IT! create new ways of bringing YLE’s strategy to life (Client YLE) is the third projects chosen to pitch at the event to compete for the title. Joanne Wong represented IMPs, Martin Kleinberns and Lubos Rezler our brilliant exchange students.

Lukas Kallenbach lures people to play his game

Tampere Machines game (Clients Cargotec, Sandvik and John Deere)  is a Demola project with Lukas Kallenbach. I never have time or patience to try games when running trough an exhibition, but Lukas got me hooked. (But never made it to next level.)

Yonatan Wolowelsky shows how it works

iSee! - New ways to visualize information (Client Metso) project team includes Yonatan Wolowelsky and Tuomas Lecklin from the IMP


Two projects I didn't manage to catch with my camera:
Future of eCars (Client ABB) with Mikko Haverila
and
GOLFi - a state-of-the-art golf service (Client Talentworks) featuring our exchange student Justyna Gogolin

Last but not least a project with our Jungsoo Moon with the demo below on YouTube,
Gesture-Based Kinect Game For Museum Exhibition (Client Guidesi)



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New Factory Open
Demola
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By Cai Melakoski
The author is principal lecturer of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
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By Erika Kim
During the international week, participants visited Demola and my Demola project team was honored to present our project there.
We explained shortly what our project was about and offered a students’ point of view on how Demola works. The internationals students and teachers were really excited about Demola and many of them asked if it’s possible to have it in their home countries. So obviously they’re doing something right!

This is Erika's team mate Rosanna Salminen introducing the project Photo: Joanne NH Wong

We also got a lot of positive feedback about our project and more pitching experience for the Demola final pitches, not to forget free snacks and international glory:)

One of the guest lecturers of the international week, Ruth Dockwray from UK was also willing to give us private consulting about the project. Being a lecturer in popular music she really gave us a lot of new and valuable ideas how to create our project, which is about visualizing different music genres and eras.

She showed us some academic studies about genre rules and we had an exciting conversation about different signage in popular music and how they can be implemented in our project. All in all, she was just a wonderful person and we want her as our full time teacher!:)

The international week has offered us a lot, new contacts, new experiences and awesome workshops. It’s been nice to see how interested the people have been about our school, Demola and various projects within these premises. TAMK international week has definitely exceeded our expectations! Thank you!
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Adaptive Avatar Music Experience project home
The client of the project is Nokia
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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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By Emilija Veselova

Just hours ago 16 participants of Camp Berlin shook up the worlds of Finnish broadcasters. 

Television has been in the life of many people for years and still it has not changed in decades. So 16 young people (average age 25) taken to Berlin for a week. Seems quite stupid. None of us had any idea what they are in for.

Campers never knew what is going to happen next. Marko Kulmala giving the brief for Day 6

There is one word that describes the whole camp - SHARING. With every day I believe in this stronger and stronger. During the 9 days I had worked in 4 different groups, almost every day coming up with new things.

Andres and Hannu sharing a very plausible revenue f or Backstube idea

Almost every day we were sharing with each other. Only a clash of two, three, sixteen ideas and ways of thinking made everything happen. In all three concepts: TVJ - Prime time, all the time , Touch - Feel. Share. Unite., MINE! - Every one counts - are a sum of the ideas of all of us. Sharng inspired us. Sharing helped us. And sharing shaped us.

Campers working hard

There is no point of holding in your ideas, because no one can steel them. People around you can only enhance them.

Andee presenting concept MINE!

On the train back to Tampere I realized that in these 9 days I have made an impact on how the future of television, I have grown up and most importantly I have gained at least 20 new friends.

Share and you will gain!

Hemppa presenting the TVJ concept

Emilija presenting the Touch concept

Webpage
On Facebook
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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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Video:
Julliette Powell, guest coach at the camp, shares her thoughts about concept created at CampBerlin

by Emilija Veselova
On the 6th of February started the most extravagant project I have ever taken part in. So far I have survived the pre-camp, and 3.5 days at Camp Berlin and could not be more exited and tired at the same time.

Camp Berlin re-thinking television is an ambitious project brought to life by Digita, company that transmits radio and television programmes to all people living in every corner of Finland every day of the year, along with 15/30 Research, RayQ and Insano

Campers leaving to the Helsinki airport to catch the flight to Berlin

In December 2012 in group interviews 15 young people were chosen to join the crew for a 9 day long journey to Berlin, Germany where they would have to re-think the concept of the television. I was lucky or unlucky enough to be selected.

Elina, Jenni and Martins listening to the first briefing

At the moment, it is the morning of Day 5. We work hard every day for hours. Connecting started by working in groups of 5, then we were switched into pairs and in a few minutes we will be pitching our ideas to the CEO of Digita. Very exciting.

So far we have had 3 visitors. The most memorable has been the lead singer of band OK, Go Damian Kulash, who visited all the team and gave hints and his insides to the process.

Damian Kulash giving his opinion about concept to the team Sneaky Warriors

This camp is not about someone telling us what to do and how to do. It is about guidance,  mutual help between participants and the crew and sharing ideas.

There are a lot of things I have learned so far. The main one - TRUST THE PROCESS.




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Twitter:  #campberlin
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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
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Text/Photo by Erika and Rosanna

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

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

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

While we were busy partying, networking, juries decided a winner. The winner was- YLE ‘Capturing motion’ team. Congrats! and good job you all. Peace.
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The authors are students of our Degree Programme in Media
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Demola is the joint innovation and project platform of universities and companies in Tampere
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Our 3rd year Film & Television programme students have made seven promotional films for the Tampere AllBright! campaign of Tampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredea. Also many Media programme students supported production of some of them.

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








The four published earlier on our blog please find here
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Tampere Allbright! home 
Tampere Allbright on Facebook 
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Our 3rd year Film & Television programme students have made seven promotional films for the Tampere AllBright! campaign of Tampere Region Economic Development Agency Tredea. Also many Media programme students supported the production of some of them.

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










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Find the next three videos
Tampere Allbright! home 
Tampere Allbright on Facebook 
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By David Marin

There is something more behind the color, the paths and the letters, all together create a story, a fresh experience to the user. This is the story of the development for the Immigrant Advice Center in Tampere  Finland.

Four months ago the opportunity to develop a new image from the Immigrant Advice Center was presented as a part of the Design Management course.

A group of students from several countries dealt with the problem and came out with one result that was officially presented in the first week of December.

It was not easy to come out with a logo that manages to include everything that the IAC was trying to convey, after several ideas we pulled it off, one logo and some applications were ready, the client was really pleased about it and also our group.

At the end, this task was a great experience for me, the highlight of my exchange studies here in Finland, one think that will live for me all my life. At the end all i can say is thank you to my teacher, my team mates and the IAC.

The author studies at Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México. He did his exchange period in our International Media Programme this autumn semester.
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The teacher of the Design Management course was Simona Vitalini
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By Tuomo Joronen
One of the Mindtrek related project this autumn featured using the Nokia 808 pureview phones. Majority of the official photos of the event were shot with the device. The photographers were: Josef Pacal, Douglas Symon, Joel Forsman. Also a video of the event was shot with 808 by Tamk students Petra Kotamäki and Sanni Hujala. Click here to see the flickr photo stream : http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindtrek/sets/72157631683845612/

The project feedback session was held on Monday in Hervanta at Nokia premises. The students gave their feedback on the phone, user experience and the project itself. Nokia was kind enough to provide school with some brand new 808’s!

Cai Melakoski, Tuomo Joronen, Seija Suoniemi (Nokia), Josef Pacal, Joel Forsman, Jarmo Rintamäki (Nokia)

By Emilija Veselova

The Nokia Do Good Hackathon was a 25-hour hackathon in Helsinki with the overall theme: "Design and develop for people and planet" for Windows Phone 7.5 with an emphasis on design. 

On October 9th and 10th while most students from Art and Media department were in school, doing their tasks three media students - Emilija an 11IMP, David an exchange student from Mexico and Hanna an exchange student from the Netherlands - spent 25 hours in an isolated environment competing for great prices at Do Good Hackathon organized by Nokia. Here is a short summary of what Emilija’s and David’s group did during these hours.

Emilija presenting outcomes of 23 hours of work

Traveling and getting settled:
The team started their way from Tampere to Helsinki around 14:00 when we bought our tickets and together with the Bio-waste reduction team proceeded to our train. We were lucky to get seats all in the same place and the way there was filled with people reading, finishing school or Demola assignments and just doing nothing.
After arriving to Helsinki we walked to the location, found everything all right and once we entered the place Demola facilitators greeted us there and showed around a bit.

Concepting part:
 Team started work with a concepting part. Our Demola project is large and complicated and we had to decide what we are going to do in the 25 hours of time we were provided.
Our coding muscle was not that strong, so we divided our work into 3 stages or steps:
Step 1: Connecting two phones via NFC, Bluetooth or something else and making them hold the connection, once the connection is over it creates a trigger that would start next step
Step 2: After the length and the time of the ride are received from the level 1, this step involves counting up points and adding gamification parts to the application. People are getting points for every ride and then achieving badges and striving for a large goal.
Step 3: Once the step 2 would be done, in-between steps 1 and 2 at the moment when the connection is broken a survey appears on the screen so that the rider and the driver can evaluate one another within 5 - 10 seconds.

Coding part:
The system that we were working on was Windows phone 7. We found out that it would be impossible to create a connection between two phones via NFC and Bluetooth is not stable, so we mixed this part up and Artem was working on a part where user on a map chooses his or her location. Then system shows the cars that are available nearby. The ride is simulated and at the end of it amount of kilometers shared is displayed. This part took from Artem a significant amount of time. Thus in the morning Emilija started to code the Step 2.
In the end, both programmers finished their parts around the same time and it took a while to combine both of them.

Presenting:
Presentations started 23 hours into the work time. The team chose Emilija to be the presenter of the presentation created by the team while coders were coding. The presentation included a short powerpoint presentation about the general concept and a demonstration of the created application.
After the presentation the team received good feedback about the presentation and the concept in general.

Keynotes:
During the working period there were keynote speakers that inspired teams to do good and create good concept and solutions.
1st keynote:
representative of Finland's Microsoft development organization (i can't recall the name of it anymore) introduced the possibilities from Dreamsparks and other Windows phone application developer organizations.
He also introduced some features that should be used in the applications to ensure that they are successful in the market as well as some guidelines how the concept should be created and used etc.
2nd keynote:
the speaker introduced some shifts and trends in nowadays consumers world. Main changes that she was talking about were:
movement from “me” to “us” thinking in the society, that leads to large possibilities for overall do good concept in the world
movement from “i need more” to “i need enough” concept
movement from “i need to get stuff” to “i need a purpose” concept
3rd keynote:
Speaker from Nokia introduced to others IdeasProject - an open innovation platform lead by Nokia. In this platform people are able to give their thoughts and ideas to people who can actually execute them in their work. Usually there is a contest going on for the best idea that will be given to the project and the winner gets prizes from Nokia.

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The author is a student of our International Media Programme
Read about the Ridesharing project
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by Trent Pancy

New to the MindTrek experience for 2012 was a brand new concept called "The MindTrek Lounge".

MindTrek Lounge Lounging

The goal was to create a free space for people to come and experience the MindTrek vibe, whether or not they registered and paid for a ticket.

A group of TAMK students got together with the producers of MindTrek to take over this endeavor and make a fun, laid back space where students, professionals, and everyone in between could come to network, take workshops, relax and have fun!

We wanted the space to not only feel like a lounge, but to also be an entertaining attraction that could stand on its own as a pleasant part of the MindTrek Experience. Our goals were to include:

         - Interesting & Unique Workshops & Presentations
         - Networking Opportunities
         - An appeal for both Students & Professionals
         - Free Coffee
         - Fun & Relaxing Components

After some brief conferencing, we came up with a hearty line up of workshops and ongoing activities to offer. On stage we set up some fun improv-based workshops, interviews with some local organizations, a pitching clinic, an interview with a local movie production team, and some other new components as well.

"Inside The Box" Workshop with Trent Pancy

Off stage we offered a chance for people to play some of their favorite video games from the days of old (Super Mario Bros., Sonic The Hedgehog, etc) on the big screen, relaxing and engaging music, coffee (sometimes on the house), and a showcase of computer games that were developed over the summer by the 5D project, an endeavor of TAMK's S.C.O.R.E. group.

Playing Some Video Games

We also had an area of the lounge devoted to the international theme of MindTrek, where we hung 3 maps (Finland, Europe & The World) where people could post their business cards and represent their homelands.

Global Collaboration at the MindTrek Lounge

It was a fast and furious couple of days. We laughed. We sighed. We workshopped. Sadly, it was all over too quickly.

I hope that future incarnations of MindTrek continue the Lounge tradition. It truly felt like a place where people could come together and hang out, taking a break from the sometimes crazy pace of MindTrek.

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The author is student of TAMK UAS Degree Programme in Media
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Photographs from MindTrek's photostream on Flickr
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MindTrek

More about MindTrek 2012 on our blog:

• At MindTrek: Skoog Music Workshop 
• Meet the best of Ubimedia at MindTrek 
• Welcome to MindTrek Lounge! 
• MindTrek - what when where!?! 
• Busy and happy: run Video Art workshop, prepare MindTrek 
• The Skoog music workshop 
• The MindTek 2012 diary 
• Mindtrek 2012: “Create”-tive marketing workshop 
• Another successful 24 hours in Tampere 
• Botanicus Interacticus won the UbiMedia Award
• The MindTrek Lounge

Our Degree Programme in Film and Television has joined the campaign to spread information about tuberculosis - again topical after 80 years. All three videos are online with English subtitles.

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Our Media degree students and Media exchange students have been involved in 50 (Fifty!) design and development projects this spring. Fifteen of them have been part of Demola Academy (Read the story about the pitching contest).

Some projects were present at Media Spring Expo last week. The expo worked in two ways - there was a project poster exhibition, and also students showcasing their projects.

This spring we decided that the students can make the project reports in poster format instead of the traditional heap of paper.

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Story: Emilija Veselova
About a month ago the new projects at Demola started and probably many of new participants are facing a problem of explaining what is Demola.

Benedikt, Lena and Ilkka preparing for the interview with Petri Räsänen, co-founder of Demola

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Fruitful and busy semester is coming to an end. I have been involved in two projects in Demola. 

One of them was a Flash game named Hukkelon Aikakone, which will be published in Pikku Kakkonen –website in near future.
Story: Amir Abdi

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Eeva-Kaisa and the puzzle

One big project normally involves several smaller ones. At least that is very much the case with Tähtipäivät, the project we (me and my classmate Neil) have been working on for the past few months. The event will take place in about ten days, so it’s finally time to put the theories in practice. This week we’ve been occupied with printing and we’ve totally fallen in love with the big printer downstairs.

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Neil by the largest telescope in Finland: 1,03m reflector

Story: Eeva-Kaisa AhlamoThe Interactive Media Programme students have many projects. Some of the them big, some of them small. During their second year, many students will work in a project that will give them 30 study credits, that is equivalent to 800 hours of work.

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