The first exchange students from Brazil and Lebanon

Mateus Engels Henke from Brazil and Fabio El Khoury from Lebanon have the honor to be the first TAMK exchange students presenting their home countries. Mateus is studying Paper Technology and Fabio is studying Film & Television at TAMK.

 Mateus Engels Henke and Fabio El Khoury in TAMK main campus during the orientation week

The students are from very different parts of the world but the reasons why they chose TAMK in Finland as their first option were the same: they searched information and they noticed that the level of studies is high in Finland and the education system works well thanks to the investments of the government. Fabio also got recommendations about TAMK from his Head of Degree Programme in Saint-Joseph University who had been a visiting lecturer at TAMK earlier. In addition, Fabio was tempted by the peaceful lifestyle in Finland so the desicion was easy to make.

The first impression of Finland was also similar for both: lot of trees and lakes, lot of space and a language which is really different from the other languages they know. Mateus was suprised to see how the cities are planned and Fabio noticed how everything is so well organized.

Mateus is a scholarship student of  Science without Borders programme which is a large-scale mobility programme primarily funded by the Brazilian federal government. Thanks to this new way of cooperation, next spring there will be more Brazilian students joining TAMK for the exchange studies.

Altogether, around 170 exchange students from 30 countries will do the exchange studies or training at TAMK this semester.

A bunch of exchange students and international tutors getting to know each other on Viikinsaari island

Text: Kaisa Merilahti, TAMK International Services
Photos: Kaisa Merilahti and Annika Dillenburger

Art&Media International Week attracted 70 guests

Tampere Art Factory International Week 2012 attracted a record of 70 international visitors: 30 academic and other staff members from 22 institutes of higher education, 25 students from three universities and five staff members of three enterprises. The International Week featured nine workshops lead by our guests, four seminars and one show of our student works & International Week workshop results, six exhibitions, one networking sauna event, visits to Demola and (Angry Bird) Rovio, one reception and one evening party, countless project and partnership meetings.

Group photo in front of Marttilan pirtti. Noora Järventaus from
TAMK International Services hosted the Networking Sauna evening

The guests came from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, South Korea, Spain and the UK. In addition many of our international degree and exchange students participated in the events, so over all 30+ countries were represented.

Workshops were a vital part of the week

The International week was quite well documented, here you have links to blog posts showing a rich collection of photographs from the International Week events:

• TAF Workshops and seminars - what, when, where?
• Our International Week kicked off
• TAF International Week Day 2
• Producing with the audience workshop (By Heidi Mäenpää)
• TAF International Week seminars, day 3
• TAF International Week seminars, day 4
• TAF International Week special programme 

On the seminars teachers and professionals exchanged fresh ideas.
Yuwei Lin (University of Salford) on right presenting

Also our guests reported frequently on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Here links to posts about International Week on Yuwei Lin's (Salford University) blog:

• Erasmus exchange
• Researching the Openness
• Day 3 at the TAF International Week 2012
• Space and Creativity 
• Visit to Rovio’s Tampere Studio

The hosts, our degree programmes in Film&Television, Fine Arts and Media want to thank all international guests, who really made the International Week happen. Special thanks goes to the week coordinator Sohvi Sirkesalo and project assistant Emilija Vasiljeva, who organised everything.

International Week page at TAF home
On Facebook
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Art&Media International Week kicked off today

The first fifteen out of 70 TAF International Week participants came this morning to Finlayson Campus, and the first workshops started their work.
Tampere Art Factory (TAF) international week will run until Friday, when the actual Tampere Art Factory Festival will begin.

Pictured above at the end of the tour of our premises you can find Andrzej Syska (University of Arts in Poznan, Poland), Mieke Laansma (Stenden University, Netherlands), Sheila Robinson (Gatlin International, UK), Amy Sampson and Steph Comley (University College Falmouth, UK), Yu-Wei Lin(University of Salford, UK), Danica Mast and Joey van der Bie (The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands).

Max Neupert (Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany) started his four day workshop Audiovisual Real-time Programming for Artists, Cyrille Bloemers and Johan Rijpma (Utrecht School of the Arts, Netherlands) their two day workshop Producing with the audience and Jan Pier Brands and Hugo Engwerda(Hanzehogeschool Groningen, Netherlands) their two day Conditional Pop Culture Designing.

New guest and new workshops tomorrow, we will learn a lot!

Read more:
The workshop schedules
Workshop teachers and contents
The seminars
TAF International Week 

The diploma films on Plevna screen on 11th May!

TAMK spring 2011 diploma works by film students are ready to show. We proudly invite you to see those films. The screening will be 11th May 5:15 P.M. at Finnkino Plevna 2, Finlayson. Free entry! The producer of the event is Ilona Tolmunen.

The films:

Metsästysmaa - The hunting ground
Director: Nalle Mielonen
13 min
Read more

Kaunis kuolema - A beautiful death
Director: Minna Korhonen
10 min
Read more

Sudenveistäjä
Director: Aino Suni
13 min
Read more

Muutos meitä johtaa - Change of State
Director: Jussi Sandhu, Ville Hakonen
14 min
Read more

Laulu sieltä missä tyyntä on - A Song From Silent Waters
Director: Outi Tienhaara
14 min

Tunnevammoja - No Heart Feelings
Director: Markus Aaltonen
54 min
Read more

TAF International Week guests went to smoke sauna

TAMK organized its fourth Tampere Art Factory International Week on 11 - 15 April 2011. During the week TAMK received guests from all over the world. The guests participated in various events, including seminars, lectures, and workshops and of course, leisure activities.

One of the highlights of the week was on Wednesday 13th of April, when the international guests were taken to Hangaslahti sauna premises. There they enjoyed dinner, drinks and good company. Probably the most memorable event was the chance to go to an authentic smoke sauna and then taking a dip in the semi frozen Lake Näsijärvi. Some were brave enough to try their luck in the water which was approximately +6 Celsius degrees.

The TAF guests were accompanied by nice clear weather which made this outdoor photo possible.

Some of the guests were TAF veterans and had been before at Hangaslahti. However, the sauna never gets old and the extreme heat made everybody feel refreshed. The atmosphere during the whole night was very relaxed and people were clearly enjoying their time in Finland.






The guests quickly realized it will be extremely hot in the smoke sauna.








On behalf of the TAMK International Services and TAMK Art and Media Programmes, we’d like to thank everybody who participated in this delightful week full of events. The sauna evening went so quickly and we almost missed the bus because it was impossible to get out of the sauna in time.

Remember, next year will come soon and hopefully we will meet again.

More pictures can be found from TAMK Flickr

Text: Elias Suominen
Photos: Elias Suominen

Tampere Art Factory kicked off

From left Sabrina Seidl, International Week project manager and
registering Lenno Veerhoog, Utrecht School of Arts
and Zsofia Ruttkay, Moholy-Nagy University
of Art and Design Budapest

The fourth edition of Tampere Art Factory kicked off yesterday with the International Week. TAF is a demonstration of the skills of TAMK art and media students. The International Week hosts 50 guests from South Korea to USA and Kanada and all over Europe.

The first of the ten International Week Workshops started yesterday morning, the series of six seminars will kick off today. The climax of the week will be the open day and opening of the exhibitions on Friday.

The week offers TAMK members and friends a good chance to be familiar with Finlayson degree programmes and many TAMK partner universities and institutions. Below please find a collection of events which wish you warmly welcome:

Seminars at Spede, Finlayson Campus 2nd floor

• Tue, Wed and Thu afternoons 1 to 4 PM Awesome Art&Media seminars 1 to 3. Topical talks about current art and media issues and partner university introductions
• Wed 9 to 12 AM Triple Helix - Innovation and Academic/Public/Private cooperation
• Thu 9 to 12 AM Higher education promoting social development
• Fri 9:30 to 12 AM Highway to Entrepreneurship - People and Stories Behind the Statistics (at café, 2nd floor)

Films, animations, games and web projects:

• Thu 4 to 6 PM Kino TAMK, Café
• Fri 10 AM to 5 PM Demos, games, animations, Donner and Café
• Fri 12 AM to 5 PM 12-17 Cinema screenings, Teatteri and Kuvaopetusluokka

Exhibitions:
P.S. a pic would be nice
Graduating Exhibition of fine art students of Tampere University of Applied Sciences
April 16 - May 3  Mältinranta Artcenter (Kuninkaankatu 2)
April 16 - May 15 TR1 Kunsthalle (Väinö Linnan aukio 13)

• April 7 - 17 Soft Values, installation, Ikuinen Gallery
• April 8 - May 15 Graduation exhibition of TAMK Specialization Studies on Photography students Tessa Ojala and Annu Salminen
• April 12 -15 The outputs of socialist advertising in Soviet Estonia by Evelin Urm (Tartu, Estonia)
• April 16 - May 15 Polyamoria, Gallery Nottbeck featuring works by students from Canada, South Korea and TAMK students

More information following the links:
International Week guest organisations and the workshops
International Week Seminars Tue-Thu
TAF seminar Highway to Entrepreneurship
TAF home

Highway to Entrepreneurship - People and Stories Behind the Statistics

Pauli Kopu is one of the speakers

Welcome to Tampere Art Factory 2011 seminar on young entrepreneurship
Time: Friday April 15 9:30-12:00
Venue: TAMK Finlayson Campus café
Language: English

Some 15% of TAMK Art&Media students become entrepreneurs after they graduate. Compared to national statistics this is a high figure. The average share of TAMK students starting their own business at the time of graduation is 4%. What kind of businesses incubate in the fields of culture? Come, hear, see, learn!

Highway to Entrepreneurship - People and Stories Behind the Statistics
Host: Tiina Rinkinen, Producer, Net journalist
Programme:

• Opening by Tiina Rinkinen. "Blogging your way"
• Fonal Records, CEO Sami Sänpäkkilä, BA in Fine Arts, "Es Symphony #6"
• Zonear, Timo Pietilä: Building a start-up without capital
• Obscure Entertainment: Emilia Howells, Ville Rissanen 
• KLOK Creative Agency: Pauli Kopu 
• Hannamari Matikainen: “Business” Logic in Fine Arts – How to Survive?
• Lucas Pedersen: Modern Business Ethics
• Mediaporras: Juha Siirtola

Tampere Art Factory (TAF) home: http://tampereartfactory.blogspot.com/
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Languages Through Lenses 2010: Experiences

The Prix Europa -festival opening gala, Berlin

Third year film students Outi Hartikainen and Hannu Koivuranta took part in a shortfilm competition Languages Through Lenses last year organized by the EU and European League of the Institutes of the Arts (ELIA). The mission was to produce a 60-90 second shortfilm promoting the importance of foreign cultures and languages.

15 scripts were selected to the competition and all received a 5000 EUR production grant. Three works from Finland were selected: “Connection Lost” from TAMK, “The Forest of Babel” from Aalto university and “Pancakes” from Turku Arts Academy.

Getting selected to the competition turned out to be a bigger thing than expected. In addition to the production grant the main applicant student were sent to Amsterdam to a two-day scriptwriting workshop held by BBC screenwriting veterans Guy Meredith and Roger Gregory. During those two days students presented their projects' scripts while Guy and Roger helped to develop them even further. In the meantime Amsterdam presented a great opportunity to meet fellow filmmakers and art students.

The featured projects were very diverse. The competition had selected more art students than film students and it was clearly reflected in the projects. Several art projects found it difficult to be developed in a more traditional scriptwriting way.

"Connection Lost" team members at the Prix Europa festival. From left
director Outi Hartikainen, cinematographer/script writer Hannu Koivuranta,
sound designer Arttu Hokkanen and producer Niilo Gustafsson

After Amsterdam each project went on to develop independently. “Connection Lost” was shot in July and it employed approximately 25 people. One month was spent in post-production. During the production ELIA was kept up to date about the project and the use of the production grant. Screenwriting lecturer Arto Koskinen served as a tutor for the project.

When the collective deadline was due the final projects were supplied to Berlin on DVDs where they would take part in Europe's largest TV- and radio festival Prix Europa. Four students from Tampere went on to represent Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Art & Media: Outi Hartikainen, Hannu Koivuranta, producer Niilo Gustafsson and sound designer Arttu Hokkanen. They were accompanied by Senior Lecturer Arto Koskinen.

All the 15 selected projects competed in their own category (Languages Through Lenses). During the three days in Berlin the students had the opportunity to take part in workshops, cocktail parties and film screenings at e.g. The French Embassy.

The students and ELIA representatives rated each project in order to shortlist top three projects. Among them was “Connection Lost”, “The Forest of Babel” and “Langbeat” from MOME (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design*) ,Hungary. The stay of these students was then extended until the end of the festival and the closing gala where the festival would present the winning productions. These three days were quickly spent watching documentaries and films, getting to know Berlin and meeting new people.

The main prize of Languages Through Lenses -category went to “The Forest of Babel” (dir. Elina & Mike Pohjola) while the other two projects received special commendations.

It is important to understand how magnificent the six month journey with Languages Through Lenses was and how much it taught about handling a project with this size budget and resources. In the end the final productions were meant for use by the European Union and ELIA. Having enriched our lives with some new experiences we definitely want to encourage our students to take part in competitions – not necessarily because of the winning but because of the experience. We hope to see you in this years Languages Through Lenses!

“Connection Lost” is will be shown next time at Tampere Film Festival's Kino TAMK -screening.

Languages Through Lenses 2011 competition is now active and the deadline for scripts is 25th of March. For more information check out the link below:
http://www.languages-lenses.eu

Hannu Koivuranta

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Read the previous stories about the competition (TAMK Art&Media Blog)
Watch "Connection Lost"
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Prix Europa
ELIA
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* happy comment by the blog editor: MOME (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design) and TAMK are about to sign an agreement about staff and student exchange. Zsófia Ruttkay from MOME will give a workshop during TAMK Art&Media International Week April 11-14.