Ubimedia Award: Submit your project by June 15 2011

One of TAMK's coolest annual international projects is again kicked off!

Call to participate in the 5th Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards Competition 28th – 30th September 2011 Tampere, Finland

Competition deadline: June 15th 2011

The Ubimedia competition seeks to broaden our understanding of where and how ubiquitous media will influence our future life. We are looking for disruptive artistic visions as well as clever near-to-market solutions off the beaten tracks! This includes any range of innovative ubimedia, pervasive, or ambient products and services. The Ubimedia Award is a highly interdisciplinary competition and we invite Designers, Computer Scientists, Artists, Economists and Engineers to take a stand on the following questions with their entries:

• What is the particular aesthetic experience opened up by the rise of ubiquitous and ambient media?
• What constitutes the specific intelligence that drives future media environments?
• How will location- and context-aware media services change our social life?
• How will our future lives look like in the era of ubiquitous computation, and how can society benefit from these advanced technologies?

The total award sum for the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award is 6 000€.

The Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award is a category of the 2011 MindTrek competition. The category is organized collaboratively by MindTrek, Tampere Region Centre of Expertise in Ubiquitous Computing, New Ambient Multimedia Group (NAMU)/Tampere University of Technology, the Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Nokia, and the Ambient Media Association (AMEA). The award is funded by Nokia and the Tampere Region Centre of Expertise in Ubiquitous Computing.
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MindTrek Diary, Day Two: Celebrating Aleksi, Joost and Frank

MindTrek is a world class conference with famous keynote speakers and sessions that deal with the most important issues of the digital future. If you want to learn more, check out the MindTrek website.

TAMK is one of the proud key institutions behind MindTrek, we are really happy to be a crucial part of this stunning event.

This blog does not however monitor the big stars of the global event, we keep in touch with the grassroot level.

IMPs, the international Media Programme students of TAMK School of Art and Media were there having breakfast in time before the shows started. Aleksi, one of the IMPs (in center), had his birthday, all the fellow IMPs sung the birthday song, and Aleksi's muffin was powered up with whipped cream and strawberries,

Our previous post presented the Innovator project, showed this week at MindTrek and next week in Cannes.

Pictured find Pauli Kopu, the driving force of the Innovator project, and Director Jukka P. Saarinen from Nokia Research Centre in Tampere, the Brain behind Demola and God Father of the Innovator at the Innovator stand at MindTrek.

Matti Särkilahti and Tuomas Rinne, Business Information System students and Antti Salomaa, Interaction Design student at TAMK UAS, who have been envolved in successful Demola projects, presented their work to MindTrek participants.

The day was wrapped out with the MindTrek Awards Ceremony. Here you see the winners of Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards, from right to left: Third Price winner Jan Roters, Traffic Light Detector (Germany), second prize winner Katrina Bekessy, PING, the Smart Trash Bin (USA), and the winners with Donkeypedia Frank Alsema and Joost van Eeden, the Netherlands.

Mirette Kangas (left) from YLE New Media and Hanna Puro, Zento Interactive are frequent MindTrek visitors, but surpricingly they met today for the first time at MindTrek after they worked together at the EUROPRIX jury in 2002 in Salzburg.

MindTrek
Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards

Donkeypedia
PING: The Smart Trash Bin
Traffic Light Detector

MindTrek Diary, Day One

One of the exciting and inspiring reasons to enjoy working at TAMK is the annual MindTrek Conference we arrange together with other Tampere universities and companies every year since 1997.

MindTrek always has a state of the art content in ICT and digital media with world class speakers and tracks. The best part however in my opinion is that 800 wonderful people from all over the world gather here, a lot of old friends and partners, and so many new people to make friends and contacts with.

In the morning I escorted Swanhilde de Jong to TAMK main campus to meet our Head of the International Office Riku-Matti Kinnunen.

Swanhilde is exchange lecturer from one of our partner universities in the Netherlands, the NHL-university in Leeuwarden. She is teaching our MA in Screenwriting programme this week, I will write a story about this later. It is easy to attract visiting lecturers to our university during the MindTrek week, they love to come, because they have also the option to be a part of MindTrek.

The colours of Swanhilde matches excellent with the autumn colours of Tampere.

Going back to TAMK School of Art and Media Campus at Finlayson I realized one reason why MindTrek attracts people from all over the world. Tampere is just fantastic in the beginning of October.

Today was the MindTrek pre-conference day with partner events. Most of them were at Rosendahl, but some also at Finlayson.

The Chair of Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards Artur Lugmayr is here opening the nominee presentations event of the competition at Demola, Finlayson. The nominees did great presentations, and I was happy almost all of the IMPs, the students of our international Media Programme were present.

In the evening I participated in the Open Media event get-together. "The rivals", the nominees of Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards finally found each other at the same table. Who will win the first prize? My lips are sealed, but the secret will be revealed tomorrow 16:45 at Rosendahl.

From left to right: A member of the Traffic Light Detector delegation, sorry, I didn't get his name yet, Joost van Eeden, DonkeyPedia (Netherlands), Kirsi Lindfors, co-chair of the Ubimedia contest (Finland), Katrina Bekessy's mother, Frank Alsema, DonkeyPedia, Katrina Bekessy, PING, the Smart Trash Bin (USA) and Jan Roters, Traffic Light Detector (Germany).

MindTrek

Ubimedia Competition Deadline August 21!

One of the three focus areas of TAMK University of Applied Sciences research and development activities is Digital Services and Technologies. Ubimedia is one of the most interesting future area of digital media applications. Organising a worldwide competition in Ubimedia enables us to analyse the newest trends and innovations in this field.

The Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award is a worldwide unique competition to award the best ubimedia products. The award ceremony takes place during the annual MindTrek Conference in Tampere, this year October 1-2. The competition is open to artists, producers, researchers and companies everywhere.

Ubi(quitous) Media is a form of human-computer interaction which is integrated into things and environments. It is technology that is embedded "everywhere".

The Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards is arranged by TAMK University of Applied Sciences, MindTrek, Nokia, EMMi Lab. – Tampere University of Technology (TUT)and the Tampere Region Centre of Expertise in Ubiquitous Computing.

The purpose of the competition is to encourage makers of digital media to generate ideas and develop new and innovative ubiquitous media products & services. The entries are expected to take a stand on the question, how ubiquitous computing affects intelligent media environments and what the future of location-and context aware media services might look like.

The entries are expected to take a stand on the following questions, for example:

• How does ubiquitous computing affect media environments?
• What are intelligent media environments like?
• What will the location- and context-aware media services of the future be like?

MindTrek Conference
Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards
Download the Ubimedia 2008 report
Wikipedia about Ubiquitious Computing

Pictured: In the centre 2008 First Prize Winner Peter Frohlich (Point-to-Discover, Telecommunication Research Centre, Austria), on left Head of Jury Björn Stockleben, RBB, Germany and on right Competition Chair Artur Lugmayr, Tampere University of Technology.

Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award 2009 Launched

The third Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award is now open. The purpose of the award is to encourage makers of digital media to generate ideas and develop new innovative ubiquitous media products and services. The most innovative products coming from artists, practitioners, and industry are awarded with a price sum of 7.000 Euro.

Deadline for entries is August 7th.

The competition is organized collaboratively by MindTrek, Tampere Region Centre of Expertise in Ubiquitous Computing, New Ambient Multimedia Group (NAMU)/Tampere University of Technology, TAMK University of Applied Sciences, and Nokia.

Photo: In the centre 2008 First Prize Winner Peter Frohlich (Point-to-Discover, Telecommunication Research Centre, Austria), on left Head of Jury Bjoern Stockleben, RBB, Germany and on right Competition Chair Artur Lugmayr, Tampere University of Technology. This year the competition will be co-chaired by Cai Melakoski, TAMK School of Art and Media.

Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award
MindTrek

Find the Animal - Win a Two-Day Ticket to MindTrek

MindTrek is the most important annual digital media award, conference and festival in Nordic countries. It has been arranged since 1997, when cd-roms where the multimedia platform and webmedia young and innocent.

We are happy to announce the MindTrek Conference 2009 will be arranged October 1-2 with the pre-conference workshop day September 30. Last year MindTrek Conference had 900 participants from 30 countries.

You can ensure your free seat at the conference by proposing the best theme animal of the conference:

"MindTrek will have a theme animal of the year, and you can be the one that suggests the perfect animal to us. What animal represents MindTrek best and why? Last time it was the geese. We somehow felt they represented well what was going on in the world of the internet and social media. What animal would do that job this year? The person who has the best idea will win a two day conference ticket to the MindTrek 2009 Conference. Fire away! Send your suggestions to info (at) mindtrek.org"

TAMK has been one of the key organisers of MindTrek from the very beginning.

MindTrek

Photo: MindTrek Conference 2008 flyer with the MindTrek 2008 animal

The Last IMP Premiere

The ninth edition of the Interactive Media Programme made the IMP 2008 DVD premiere. This attractive DVD with a hilarious user interface presents the shortfilms, interactive movies and other art work made by the students over four months of hard work and intense learning.

This year the 17 students came from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

The Interactive Media Programme is a special one semester study programme at TAMK School of Art and Media, run in English, designed for exchange students. IMP has been arranged every autumn since 2000. This was the last IMP in its present form.

In 2009 the current BA Degree Programme of the School of Art and Media run in Finnish will split into two new Bachelor's programmes: The Degree Programme in Film and Television (in Finnish), and the Degree Programme in Media, completely run in English. The new Media Programme focuses on interactive media, and will host future exchange students. Another option for exchange students is also under construction: The Film and Television Programme and the Fine Arts Programme will jointly offer a one semester course on Hybrid Movie.

The IMP students were again active not only in school work, but also participating in the international social life in Tampere. No, it was not only the parties. To name an example, many students took part in the My Tampere contest of MindTrek Awards. Dan Castro and Nick Rowley took the first price with their animation "Tampere - A Truly British Guide".

Thank you, IMPs! Fly safe back home! We will miss you, but we know we will see you in Tampere again.

The New Media Programme
Tampere - A Truly British Guide

Hello from Europrix, Graz!

The Operaatio Hurrikaani women team headed off to Graz, Austria 27.-30.11.2008 to present the project and TAMK University of Applied Sciences School of Art and Media.

The festival took place for the most part at Kunsthaus Graz, a modern art centre located in the heart of the city. Graz was full of Christmas atmosphere and we fell in love with it totally!

During the festival, the Kunsthaus was full of seminars and nominees from all across the Europe. All 23 Top Talent nominee projects presented their work on Saturday afternoon, and in the evening the winners from all categories were celebrated at the Multimedia Awards Gala 2009.

The overall winner of the Europrix 2009 was a French project called mü. It’s an fairytale based interactive multimedia device targeted to kindergarten kids. Pretty cool!

The winner of our category, Interactive TV was Kika & Bob from the Netherlands. We were even more happy to be nominees, and will still keep on working hard with Operaatio Hurrikaani. The production will continue and we will make the new series even better and bigger.

During the festival we heard that Tampere is almost the capital of Finland, at least when it comes to multimedia & culture. Maybe it has something to do with MindTrek? The new TAF festival’09 is also awaited.

So, stay tuned….

Greetings,
Riikka & Kaisa
aka The Hurricane Angels

Pictures:

Picture 1: The Exhibition of the projects took place in the Kunsthaus’s ”Needle”. Kaisa is checking out some cool project.
Picture 2: Riikka is testing some touch-screen technology by Amigos from Germany.
Picture 3: RoboVox has a little brother, RoboVoice who made it to Graz. The Robot speaks based on SMS messages you send to it. 8 meters heigh installation can be spotted for example at the marketplaces.

See all Europrix nominees
mü-project
Robovox

Operaatio Hurrikaani
Operaatio Hurrikaani (In English)

MindTrek
Tampere Art Factory (TAF)

Riikka Hiekkaniemi studies Media Production, Kaisa Hakala has completed interaction design studies at TAMK School of Art and Media. Both work with the Operaatio Hurrikaani, Riikka is assistant producer and Kaisa web-designer at YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.