14 Art Media takes over Rajatila for a while

Text by  Alexandra Mitiku
Photos by Lavinia Colzani & Alexandra Mitiku

5 days and 1 empty gallery. This is what we were given to realize our projects for the course ‘Art and Environment Workshop’. I had never worked in a gallery before, so it was a wonderfully new experience.

It was a different atmosphere to create something – a recycled space that had seen many different
artistic settings.

Although it cut into our autumn holidays and we couldn't be physically present during all of the days, we managed to put together a unique exhibition-type event in Rajatila.




Creating the title for our event was a bit tricky, since we were not sharing a common theme. After an
hour of brainstorming, cookies and playing word games, it came down to ‘Fleeting Space’. Lavinia took the photo for the flyer, instructing us to walk around aimlessly and throw the pillows around. It felt silly, but we got the image we wanted!



During the event itself, we presented our works-in-progress and the audience was welcomed to give
suggestions and feedback. Our event had a handful of guests, besides our class, and it was interesting to hear their opinions of our pieces.




Jade Vesto created a magazine consisting of photos from her film camera and poetry that she had
written, exposing her vulnerabilities and nostalgic moments with her friends. Her written pieces were all in caption and punctuations were left out, giving the viewer a unique reading experience.



Lorenco Soares here is explaining about his installation, a video of leaves falling to a composed rhythm. The piece is meant to be viewed from outside, giving us an insight on nature in different space - and goosebumps for those who went to see the video without a jacket..



Annina Pasanen presented a political, yet playful, painting of a bear having a victory tea party after the defeat of humans.



Konsta Koivisto had a vision to create his own fashion brand made solely from recycled fabrics. His long term plan was to sell his company and use the money to buy a forest. Here he is showing some of his designs..which were pretty impressive considering he had never sewn before!



If you are interested in more about what our class is up to, look us up on one of these social media

channels:

Facebook- Art Media TAMK

Instagram- art_media_tamk

30sec gesture drawings

By Róbert Frankó
It all started on a cold February night while I was walking my dog in the forest. Almost full moon and no clouds in the sky. Listening to the newly discovered song All alone from David O’Dowda, when I literally saw (at least in my head) a little light monster coming out of the woods walking to the hillside of Mustavuori and singing his lonely melody to the moon. By the time I got home the image got so clear and visible that it didn't even let me sleep, it stuck in my head the whole night and by the morning the story was done.

A couple days later we found out that the animation assignment can be anything we like, so I sticked to my idea. The rest of the group also liked the story but had concerns about the implementation even though the storyboard made all the scenes clear. The animation itself is a stop motion video about a devil looking monster roaming the Finnish land looking for it’s home.

The method of creation was light painting. For those who are not familiar with this technique the shooting is quite simple. With a DSLR camera you set the shutter time longer than a second (as long as you need), the ISO and the exposure should be the lowest possible. You also need darkness to accomplish your goals, indoor, outdoor, doesn’t matter.


When everything is set and the shutter is pressed you can start light painting the figure you want. You need a flashlight, a torch, fire or whatever that gives light and you have to draw the shape you wish. Sadly you will only see the result when you check on the camera display, so if you did something wrong, or the lines won’t match, you have to start it all over again. As it was for a stop motion video we had to shoot and draw all the movements and motion. Just like in a hand-drawn animation.

The first night was half success and half disaster. The fact how well the images turned out with the DSLR I have (Canon 1100D: the most basic DSLR ever) and how big portion of the story could be done during one night was uplifting. But -25 °C and no proper clothes can do their magic. Frozen fingers and knees, bleeding nose and such awesomeness. But the result that you see when you check out the pictures make you completely forget about all the pain and difficulties. The only thing you realize is that you need a remote shutter and a camera with a better (live) display. And that is why God created AV Kioski.

The second night went much better (more clothes and hot drinks) except for the rest of the group that was not as prepared, despite all the warnings. Anyway, the pictures have got to be taken so there were no excuses.

After seven frozen nights your body starts a riot, refuses to work properly and the knees give up, which makes you stay in bed. Although you are happy with the result, your smile is not honest anymore and the excitement starts to fade away. Specially, when Tuomo, your teacher comments on the story-line  “it might need some extra shots. Maybe just one more night... And it would be so cool to see the light from under the ice...”


This is the moment your body 100% disagrees the comment, but soon we realized we do need extra footages, so going out again is not an option. Result: 91 pictures of the moving stars in 4,5 hours, 20 frozen fingers and toes, and one tired dog. Totally worth it.

When the images were finally ready for post production, we could proceed to the post production. First editing in Adobe Lightroom, then loading the edited images to After Effects. This is where all hell got loose. After Effects is a professional software, but if you are only in the beginning of making a relationship with each other, it can be a cruel mistress. Hidden settings you are not aware of, enormous memory usage that bans you to live track the process and some awkward ways to do the easiest tasks. So it turned out that in order to succeed we had to use 3 different softwares: After Effects, iMovie and a ringtone maker application on my phone... Not the most elegant way, but...
..but when looking at the final product, does all the complications and difficulties really matter?

Creators:
Róbert Frankó
Carolin Büttner
Markku Laskujärvi
Noora Tolvanen
Riikka Uhmavaara
Dylan Jones

|||
The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
|||
You can see the animation here http://youtu.be/D_D2Ftw4yuQ or embedded below:

Our teacher in Finnish language Senior Lecturer Marja Oksanen has enriched her excellent work with a new dimension. Her blog "Suomea oppimaan - Finnish language and culture for foreigners" has now been released: http://finnish.blogs.tamk.fi/

Marja Oksanen with some of her students

The blog is a very good example of present-day student centered education. Marja says that blog has been made for the students to give them a channel to tell about their experiences and thoughts about Finnish language, way of living and culture here.

The sidebar of the blog has an impressive collection of links to resources for studying Finnish language and culture. The blog posts are fascinating stories written by Marja's students. So far you can find Tobias Schengber's (exhange student in Environmental Engineering) "Welcome to Lapland – Tervetuloa Lappiin"; Lishan Wu's (Environmental Engineering student) "My journey of learning Finnish"; Maksym Sytnyk's, (Environmental Engineering) "Finnish language is not difficult, it’s different – Suomen kieli ei ole vaikea, se on erilainen"; Federico di Rosa's (Media student) "Snowboarding In Tampere area – Lumilautailua Tampereella"; Henry Koch's (Environmental Engineering) "Finns – special of their own way" and Carolin Büttner's (Media) Music from Finland! – Musiikkia Suomesta!

The Art&Media blog welcomes this new member of TAMK family of blogs and wishes all the best to Marja Oksanen and the students writing in it!

Fifty students and teachers from five universities in Finland, Latvia, Netherlands, Spain and UK have started their six week online learning project preparing the two week workshop in Tampere two last weeks of April.

The project works in five mixed online teams and in five local teams before the workshop in Tampere. This is the local  student team in Vic

Media Culture 2020 is an Erasmus Intensive Programme project. MC2020 will demonstrate what 21th century converged and interactive European Media Culture could be. MC2020 breaks classroom and campus walls by creating open virtual learning environments where students from different countries and fields can explore and learn together.

MC2020 has also online lectures and demonstrations. Here the lecture by Lenno Verhoog, Utrecht School of Arts is followed by students in Vic, Tampere and Hilversum. The picture from Tampere.

The participants are art, film, media and business students from Liepaja University, Utrecht School of Arts, University of Vic, University of Lincoln and TAMK.

MC2020 will have a second two week workshop hosted by the MPLab of Liepaja University in October-November this year. The project is partly funded by EU.

MC2020 is a part of the degree studies of the students and awarded with study points.

Read more on the MC2020 blog

By Samantha Conlon
as part of our video art course, our teacher, Sari, invited artist/curator Angela Washko to come visit TAMK to give a lecture and also to meet us individually and talk about our work. i was quiet nervous at the mention of it, the words 'New York' and 'curator' automatically made me feel on egde, then i googled Angela's work and felt even more anxious about our talk! turns out there was no need because within minutes of meeting Angela i felt really relaxed and comfortable, she had a really nice presence.

Angela Washko

i showed Angela my tumblr and we discussed various past and present projects i had been working on, she gave me a lot of really good advice on how to approach a new project and where to publish it to get some attention to it. my work at present works sort of in the online sphere, i had worked with chatroulette in the past and i just find that 'internet art' really appeals to me, this is why i was really excited to meet Angela as her work is a culmination of all things i am interested in; technology, the internet, 21st century, feminism. i especially liked her new work 'Chastity' which she is working on at her residency in The Cable Factory in Helsinki (so i believe) and which i got to talk to her about a little.

Angela Washko's 'My Sanctuary' in Vaasa

a strange thing happened when i showed her my blog, i included in my sidebar some links to projects i have been involved with and when she saw a link to 'Illuminati Girl Gang' she asked me to go the site, when i did she said she knew about it and in fact her best friend had been in the same issue as that i was published in and her best friend happened to be one of my favourite artists Ann Hirsch - such a strange situation that we even get to meet seeing as she's from the US and I from Ireland, even stranger then that we had people/ situations in common - it's a small world!

Angela has performed her 'My Sanctuary' piece in both Vaasa and Tampere earlier this month. She will have one more performance in Finland taking place in Kiasma March 21 5-7 pm
|||
Angela Washko (web site)
The event in Kiasma March 21 5-7 pm

Samantha Conlon's Tumblr

By Sirkku Niskanen and Hanna Tullila
Photos by Sirkku Niskanen, Hanna Tullila and Elina Ylhäisi

This fall it was possible to explore forms of performance in Fine Arts program’s workshop course. 

Performance was approached by theater professional, as well as from the perspective of an artist. During the course students thought over performance and live installation interfaces.

At the beginning of the course theater dramaturge Jarkko Suhola taught acting methods by different exercises. Students began to design their own performances of personal interest basis. They worked on them ahead of teachers Björn Aho and Minna Suoniemi. Through the process students broke their own boundaries and discovered new means of expression.

The result was an art event [Party]kkeli. Saturday 19/01/2013 students were able to present their works to the public. A spectacular evening consisted of four performances: Red Coat Rack, Mirror Tower, At That Point and Barzilla.

Performing students: Hinni Huttunen, Riikka Enne, Elina Ylhäisi, Niko Sirkiä, Hanna Tullila, Sirkku Niskanen, Laura Mykkänen, Laura Lehtinen, Jemina Lindholm, Tiina Lehikoinen and Tytti Mäkelä.

by Emilia Kwiatkowska
GLOBAL CHANGE is the theme for Ice Screen Project, workshop which is now arranged for the third time.

Ice Screen Project 2011. Photo: Alexander Lembke

The workshop combines media art, environmental art and science, mixing them with animation, film making and light. The two workshops focused on art and environmental art. This year the workshop will extend towards scientific aspects with the students from University of Lapland and University of Oulu in the Oulanka Research Center in Kuusamo.

The workshop is led by sculptor Vesa Toukomaa and other great artists like for example Olav Huizer from Holland who teaches us about video mapping.

The first week of the workshop is already behind us. During that week we made preparations for a trip to Lapland which will take place between 10.02.-16.02. and will end with exhibition of our works.
We have brainstormed a lot about what we can make out of the ice and what can be projected on its surface. Very important thing which we learned during this week (except video mapping :) were safety rules when working on the ice.

It is 1/50 of the huge amount of equipment which we have to take to Lapland

Students are trying on warm overalls which are important to keep warm in cold environment

Vesa and Olav helped us to find the most suitable equipment

Challenging Thursday 07.02. We went on the Pahalampi lake where we could learn how to work with ice

Beautiful piece of ice from the Pahalampi lake, Tampere

Vesa teaches on of the students how to cut the ice

Safety first!

|||
Read more about the annual Ice Screen Project
|||
The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
|||

By Teppo Nieminen

Everything doesn’t always go as planned. On intensive course week on October many students chose Video techniques and expressions and excitingly listened how our lecturer, Mikko Uimonen told us about the meaning and purpose of shots and angles and gave us a task of making a film the following days with a ready script he had made. Our enthusiasm became even greater later that day when we got to see the equipment we’d be working on. We couldn’t wait for the next day!

Then things started to go downhill. Mikko told us he was sick and wouldn’t be teaching us on Tuesday. He, however, encouraged us to start on our videos and said that he would be back the next day. He wasn’t. And not even the day after that. Some people found interest to make something out of the materials and equipment but most of to applied people dropped out from the course and it was officially cancelled. Or was it?

Couple of weeks later Mikko contacted the few still wanting to participate and asked if we wanted to have couple of evening lectures and then make a video and report to get the credits. So we did. We had four evening lessons in which we learned about the camera and the handling of it, the video styles, audio and lighting. Then we got the instructions to do two films, one more difficult and scripted than the other one.

The second (the bigger and scripted) film of our group, including the author, Yonathan Wolowelsky, Joanne Wong and Jungsoo Moon, was shot on the last weekend of November. Before that we had serious discussions about the script, storyboard, actors, roles and scenes we would make and in which order. Going to the weekend, everything was looking great. I mean, how hard it could be?


Very. From start we had problems with props and lighting, things that would continue to annoy us trough whole of the weekend. There was arguing and there was some disagreements but we overcame our disagreements and filmed it on two long days. In total it took us 16 and half hours to shoot footage for 4 minute film.

Welcome to the film world, I guess.

For the film:



For the production diary:


|||
The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
|||

by BoKyung Kim

Here we proudly present our game project, Snowflake Factory, for the Programming course (IMP-35-Programming course by Juha Ollikainen).

Here is the link: http://grmmph.com/snowflake/snowflake.html

After 2 months of severe coding training, each student was assigned to develop their own games. Our team, me and Yonathan Wolowelsky, got an idea for the game from Pikkujoulut (annual pre-Christmas party among the all IMP students).

During Pikkujoulut, there were various marvelous paper snowflakes made for decoration, and they definitely caught our eyes. Once we got the idea, everything went so well. Thanks to our great professor Juha Ollikainen, we could develop our game without being frustrated.

Basically, in this game you have to guess what kind of shape you should have to get certain shape of snowflake. You can drag small pieces from the bottom of the screen into a right-angled triangle and you can also rotate small pieces. Once you finished positioning all the small pieces, click ‘GO!’ button, and you will see whether you made a correct guess or not!

So far, we’ve made four levels and the last level might be quite challenging for some of you. Try it! Hope you enjoy and if you have any feedback or comment, feel free to let us know!

Here is the link again: http://grmmph.com/snowflake/snowflake.html
Contact: erui33[atsign]gmail.com(BoKyung Kim)
|||
The author is a TAMK International Media Programme student.
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the Degree Programme in Media students
|||

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.
|||
The teacher of the Design Management course was Simona Vitalini
|||

Read more »

By Robert Frankó
Question: -Why in the world would you apply for a one week photo course during the autumn holiday? One week? Are you out of your mind? Waking up to get to school at 9:00 holiday time to learn only for a week about something others have been studying for decades and they still suck?

Answer: -Because you are curious, bored and the plane ticket is more expensive than you can afford. In summary, these are the thoughts I had in mind when I applied. I happen to have a DSLR camera but use it as a dummy, switching to the auto settings hoping the picture will not be a complete disaster.

Ville Salminen -former student of TAMK and professional photographer- has been asked to teach us, true dummies from sketches beginning with: How to turn on the camera. His patience seemed endless, as some of us have truly had difficulties even with such a simple method.

Monday mostly passed by putting down the basics of knowledge, the dry theory part, which was sometimes strange as a whole day was gone almost without taking a single picture. ISO, white balance, exposure, shutter speed, manual settings, single shot, focus settings, quality, RAW, jpeg, lens types... things and definitions many of us have never even heard of.

Stuffing so many information into one single day seemed so impossible, but somehow Ville managed and by the end of the day everything started to just simply make sense. Around 3pm we marched to the street and started shooting. People, faces, shoes, bricks on the wall, leaves, cigarette decks... Nothing remain unrevealed on Finlaysoninkatu. We rocked, still, we had just a fracture of idea what we are actually doing.

Tuesday was all about lights. Flash, natural light, artificial lights, reflectors, direction, strength, color, hardness, and the trinity of lights: key, fill and backlight. And about our main enemies: hard shadows. Believe it or not, by the end of the day we have been building our own studio setting creating a today's fashion light setting and we have actually been shooting studio pictures. What more: we didn't suck!!! Unbelievable... We have shot quality pictures, and some of us truly looked even better on the pictures then in real life. Amazing achievement!

Wednesday we dug even deeper, learning special techniques. First topic was light painting and I must admit, this has been such an eye candy I can't really get rid of the addiction. Was hard to believe that with a simple "entry-level" camera like my Canon 1100D I could shoot breathtaking pictures. At least they took mine away...

From the first amaze we popped into the next one: super-macro. Many of us made already macro pictures provided by the owned lenses, but never tried to step to a next level, when you try to shoot your own DNA sequence without purchasing professional equipments that cost over 10.000 Euros. Do not do it at home without parental advisory, but turning two lenses against each other and getting close enough to another person's eyeball -with his/her permission- can lead to awesome experiences.


Last but not least we had an introduction to HDR photography and panorama. Ville was amazing: in such a short time he covered so many possible technical details and things you have to be aware of.

Thursday was all about Photoshop. 72% longer eyelashes, 92% sexier look by simply modifying the size of the eyes and the iris, removing unwanted chicken pots and fixing screwed up make- ups. Simply changing the light-balance and colors to achieving artistic sets of shots without becoming a ridiculous one-in-a- billion Instagram user. We also got our assignments: Ville has shown us four individual songs on youtube, and we had to shoot three pictures inspired by the three chosen ones. Bloody hell! I just had a quick introduction to photography, and I am supposed to shoot pictures by my own? Deep water after three days... Why not? As a hungry horde we have spread all over Tampere, so that on Friday we could manipulate and introduce them to Ville and to each other. And what more? Even having them printed on expensive paper downstairs in the basement. I can only hope for Ville's sake that Cai did not hear of it from me for the first time...

So, if you are interested in how we managed and what we have achieved, please do not hesitate visiting our little exhibition at Finlayson campus Pesurumpu, better known as the entry hallway of the campus.

PS: Check out the songs that inspired us shooting the pictures! Eyes closed, see what impressions they give You!
John Myrphy - Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor)
Jack Trammell - Crushing Blow
The Servant - Cells (Instrumental)
Desireless - Voyage Voyage
|||

The author is student of TAMK UAS Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about the IMPs, the International Media Programme students