The Ars Electronica Festival, formed in 1979, is one of the world's oldest and foremost festivals on digital art and research. The Campus Exhibition has been part of the official festival programme since 2001.
The Campus Exhibition presented Media Lab Helsinki and a curated selection of over 20 works by Media Lab's MA, DA and alumni students and its four research groups. The exhibition presented a fresh and interesting selection of digital design and media art from Finland.
Visit the official Ars Electronica Festival site more details on the whole event.
Student works
Here's an overview of the works presented by Media Lab Helsinki at the Campus Exhibition in Linz.
Never Ending Credits
2005 Xin Li, Eirik Fatland
The sight of movie credits on television is usually taken to signify the ending of one program, and the beginning of another. "Credits NeverEnding" are credits for a movie that never existed, and hold the viewer in suspense for a program that never comes. All names and titles on the list are input by viewers through a web interface. Credits NeverEnding is shown regularly on Finnish television channel Dina TV.
Emotions in Man
by Kati Åberg, choreography, dance: Jyrki Karttunen, music: Anna-Kaisa Liedes
In this interactive contemporary dance dvd, the viewer decides, which of five basic emotions - joy, sorrow, anger, love or fear - to give to the dancer. These decisions determine how the choreography evolves. The viewer must make choices or else the dancer gets bored, walks out and the piece end. The piece investigates the use of interaction as a means of enlivening the viewing experience for recordings of performing arts and also ways of using interactive functions in a dvd. Shall we dance?
Animaatiokone
Mikko Lindholm, Perttu Hämäläinen, Ari Nykänen
Animaatiokone is an easy-to-use, futuristic installation that turns you into a master animator. The custom software and technology make experiencing clay animation quicker and more fun than ever. All you need to start is a piece of plasticine. Animaatiokone combines technological and user interface innovations into a novel collaborative storytelling tool. Animations are captured one after another, each animator continuing from where the previous one stopped. All animations are presented on the Animaatiokone web site at www.animaatiokone.net
Aquatic
Marianne Decoster-Taivalkoski
Aquatic is an enveloping, interactive water soundscape. As visitors step in the empty but sensitive space of the installation, they hear the soundscape as the accurate feedback following their bodily movements. Aquatic proposes an immersive, poetic multisensorial experience of imaginary water worlds playing with kinaesthetic sensations and sound images. A playful exploration of the soundscape reveals three emotional states: soft and quiet waters, refreshing streaming waters and tempest waters.
QuiQui's Giant Bounce
Johanna Höysniemi, Perttu Hämäläinen
QuiQui's Giant Bounce is an award-winning children's computer game that is controlled through movement and use of voice. The user interface employs a webcam and a microphone to see and hear the user. The goal in the game is to control the main character QuiQui to collect objects in various game contexts. The game uses a simple set of the physical gestures and sound commands that vary according to a physical game task guided by the storyline.
Solar Duo Project
Koray Tahiroglu, Joni Lyytikäinen
SolarDuo Project experiments with the possible sound structures that light waves can create. The project utilizes analog sounds together with the algorithms that generate changing set of sonic relations overtime. Analog sounds and computer generated sounds release an unexpected richness of the sound processing in real-time performances. In their performance they also sonify solar data, which is gathered from terrestrial and orbiting solar instruments. More info from their web site.
Dignity Nation
2006, Kalle Määttä, Wesa Aapro
Dignity Nation is a virtual nation located in the Internet and it is open for all immigrants from any social class, gender, religion, age, race and nationality. Dignity Nation is not a real country but a community that exists to concretize the idea that you belong to a group of people that calls for more dignity in our world. The constitution of the nation is based on Dignity Principles introduced in the Global Dignity project.
Equilibrium
2005, Dominic Leskinen, Lauri Huikuri
A temporal visualisation of global, political, scientific, and social trends based on real-time RSS news feeds parsed through a polarity engine using Google API to determine their influence. This information is visualised using a live flash interface, which interprets the results and categorises them using an "intelligent" PHP agent. More info at http://mlab.uiah.fi/equilibrium/eq/
The EyeSight
2005, Viara Gentchev, Viki Ølgod, Ksenia Avetisova
"The Eyesight Project" explores the archetype of total surveillance: "seeing without being seen". Since visibility in a way replaces force as a tool of control, we ask ourselves what the contemporary definition of privacy is or may become in the future. The interactive video installation attempts to juxtapose the fragility of the glass spheres with the curiosity of the viewer. Drawn into the familiarity of the image projected and the beauty of the physical object, the observer quickly faces the tension: realizing the constrain within the space, one is left to contemplate upon the subject.
Emotional Communication
2005, Michihito Mizutani
The Emotional Communication project provides a series of communication tools. They don't mean to substitute the existing communication tools such as mobile phones. The Emotional Communication tools are subtle and quiet tools. They are useless when you need to give a clear message to others. We can use mobile phones in that case but the Emotional Communication tools will help you feel others who you want to be connected to.
Painted into air
2005, Wille Mäkelä
"Painted into air" is an immersive fine art exhibition, first presented in Kiasma, Helsinki, in 2005. Spectators can step in the stereo display of a two-screen corner and move among three-dimensional free hand traces, painted by Wille Mäkelä and ten guest artists. At the astonishing new experience of painting into the air, each of the artists found a personal way to study the depth. Exploring the traces in immersion, spectators may now find a bridge between the new medium and traditional handwork.
Joutokäynti - Idle Running
2006, Kristian Simolin
Joutokäynti - Idle Running is an animated media art work by Kristian Simolin and Pauli Laine. The centre stage is given to a group of workmen, who have been placed in simplified, industrial surroudings. Each of the workmen repeat their individual, restless and inward movement, which changes only a little when repeated. The characters are in constant move, but the movement does not have a goal. The stagnated characters in the animation represent an opposite to the traditional optimistic and energetic American can-do cartoon characters.
Ruby
2005, Meeri Mäkäräinen
Ruby is a computer program that brings life to a gemstone, combining organic dynamic behaviour of elastic membranes with the polygonal angularity of a gemstone. The program simulates vibration of two membranes in an environment where the laws of physics have been modified. Instead of losing their kinetic energy due to resistant forces, the membranes gain energy when they vibrate. When the membranes are rendered with polygons and their vibration is animated, variety of emergent patterns appear.
UMBRA
2005, Markku Nousiainen
Umbra is a dance performance where live performers meet a virtual world. It's a fantasy tale inspired by old innovations and the aesthetics of magic lanterns and early cinema. "My motivation for the project was to experiment with different elements in storytelling: live dancers, virtual characters and virtual scenography, and a remote-controlled robot. I wanted to create a performance reminiscent of the pre-cinema magic, but with today's digital tools. Umbra is exhibited as a video installation."
Snowman in Hell
2004, Miikka Junnila, Tanja Bastamow, Janne Kaasalainen, Miska Natunen, Jürgen Scheible
Snowman in Hell is an experimental computer game. It shakes the foundations of the traditional platform game genre by mixing in various unexpected elements: an intertextual story loosely based on Dante's Inferno, schizophrenic dialogue during the levels, peculiar puzzles, graphics made from garbage and clay, adapted physics simulation... It's worth a try. Play it online at http://mlab.uiah.fi/snowman
Molly | Case
2004, Miikka Junnila, Andrei Khrupa, Anssi Mutanen, Noora Ojala, Karoliina Talvitie-Lamberg
Molly | Case is an interactive short film inspired by William Gibson's Neuromancer. Two people are longing for a connection with each other in a little hotel room of the future, but the different realities of the world as we know it, cyberspace and the world of dreams don't allow real contact. A mirror acts as a gate between the subjective realities of Case and Molly, and the user can change his/her point of view whenever he/she likes.
Head Quarter
2004, Helena Hyvärinen, Reka Kiraly, Cvijeta Miljak, Susanna Liukkonen
Päämaja/Headquarters is an interactive film on a DVD platform. The story is situated in a surreal world of elevators, and introduces a liftboy being challenged by an almost invisible antagonist - a flea - in a quest for power. An interactive point in the film reveals the possible outcomes of their struggle, and leads to three different conclusions. In general, the film explores aspects of the omnipresent theme of human relationship to power and plays with ideas of hierarchy and self perception.
Sankari Show
2003, Petri Kola & Minna Nurminen
Sankari ('hero' in Finnish) is a new type of improvisational show. In the Sankari Show members of the audience make up and perform the lines for Elias, the main character, as he tries to navigate his way through everyday life's rough patches. Sankari is both media art and a TV-format. It received an honorable mention at the Transmediale05 digital art festival in Berlin and took the top prize at the 2003 MindTrek event. Currently, Sankari is being developed as a TV-show.
Johnny Crash & Johnny Crash Stuntman Does Texas
2004-2005, Teemu Kivikangas, Sumea Studio, Digital Chocolate, Inc.
Two critically acclaimed mobile games about a teenager who has watched way too many episodes of certain reality television shows and is determined to become a celebrity himself by doing crazy stunts. Your goal as Johnny is to perform stunt flights as a human cannonball - for an example try flying inside a thundercloud and be electrocuted by lightning or crash land into a cactus. Game play is simple and quick to learn, you need only one button to play, yet highly addictive and hard to master. More info.
MobileArtBlog
2005-2006, Jürgen Scheible
The MobileArtBlog is a blog of digital art images created with a mobile phone. It is the travel journal of artist Lenin's Godson. Instead of ordinary images and text, this blog holds a collection of popart images, each in phone screen size, which the artist creates and uploads on the spot during travels when stimulated by things he sees and experiences, simply turning them into memorable art pieces sharing them with fans and art lovers in real time.
Word in Space
2005-2006, Jürgen Scheible
Word in Space is an audience participatory art installation that invites people to use their mobile phone to post a word or image into a 3D space onto a large public display. The posted words float slowly in the screen space as 3D text, images as textures on small cubes, rotating around their X or Y axis , retreating gradually from the picture plane over time. The idea of this work originates from the German idiom "Ein Wort in den Raum stellen" meaning to "put a word up for discussion and thought".
MobiLenin
2005-2006, Jürgen Scheible
MobiLenin is an audience participatory art installation that allows people to interact simultaneously with a multi-track music video shown on a large public display using their personal mobile phones, effectively empowering the group with the joint authorship of the video. MobiLenin provides a new form of interactive entertainment for pubs and other public places.
Consumer Gadget
2006, Wesa Aapro
Consumer Gadget is a consumer's new best friend. It is an application for mobile phones that helps consumers buy ethically better products, using bar codes as the key to ethical information.
Metamorphosis
2006, Teemu Kivikangas, Richard Widerberg
An audiovisual performance based on recordings of ice in both the Northern and the Southern hemisphere. The sounds used in the work are recordings from the movements of the ice of an isolated lake in Northern Sweden. Visual material contrasts the same element, ice, in a very different context - South American megalopolises in the blazing heat of the summer. The audiovisual material is manipulated and re-interpreted in real-time to craft an image of transition, transformation and adaptation.
Tikki
2006, Heli Ellis, Laura Palosaari, Anne Dahlgren, Anne Parkkali, Liz Lehtonen, Ville Raitio, Taneli Bruun, Maria Palaväki, Katja Pällijef
Being trapped in comfortable routines and moral obligations is a situation difficult to change; especially for someone who spends all their time sewing a straight black stitch onto a never-ending fabric. Tikki is an animation about what happens, when a bright red tempter suddenly appears.
IMPROVe
2006, Richard Widerberg, Zeenath Hasan
IMPROVe is an aural architecture for socio-cultural exchange. When you IMPROVe your mobile phone, it turns into a music making device. Capture sonic material from the ether that surrounds you. Play it back in an improvisation session with your friends. Share your everyday soundscape and create new forms of music.
What You Do Is What You Hear !
2006, Kalle Mäntsälä & Matthieu Savary
An interactive, audiovisual installation designed to provide a meaningful environment for better understanding the major properties of sound and mainly aimed for children to use, in an educational purpose. The user interface is based on a self-evident metaphor : the sound object, where graphical shapes incarnate sound sources that the user can manipulate on the virtual stage by moving his/her hands in front of the screen (one hand each in case of two people playing together).
Research group projects
Our research groups have selected a sampler of their projects for display. Many of these involve our students, too - osmosis is evident.
Accidental Lovers
Crucible Studio research group
ACCIDENTAL LOVERS is a participatory, black musical TV comedy that explores variations of a deadly love relationship between 61-year-old cabaret singer Juulia and 30 years younger pop star Roope. Viewers affect their drama by sending mobile text messages to a system that triggers story events based on keyword recognition. This new interactive TV genre is developed in partnership with the EC research project nm2 (new millennium, new media) and the Finnish National Broadcasting Company YLE. Image by Kebede Mergia. More info: http://crucible.lume.fi, http://www.ist-nm2.org
Tulse Luper Journey
Crucible Studio research group
There is no such thing as history, there are only historians. TULSE LUPER JOURNEY is a European artistic research production challenging storytelling in online game worlds. Peter Greenaway's cinematic language and his Tulse Luper Suitcases film trilogy is re-mediated into a complex story world of dozens of authors. Interactive puzzles deconstruct the mystery of Tulse Luper, an encyclopaedist, who experienced 20th century European history in prisons and documented it in 92 suitcases. Image by Cvijeta Miljak. More info: http://crucible.lume.fi, http://www.tulseluperjourney.com
Bot Alchemy
Crucible Studio research group; Douwe-Sjoerd Boschman
If man improvises within a set of rules, then her nature can be described by a bot. In BOT ALCHEMY the ideas of new media alchemists developing non-linear narratives intermingle with each other and those of the Norms, a linear thinking tribe. Crucible Studio researchers have themselves scripted their bot representatives to the world of the Norms. The user can mix characters to have conversations that evolve through each encounter, as the bots learn each other's vocabulary. Image by Douwe-Sjoerd Boschman. More info: http://crucible.lume.fi.
new millennium, new media
Crucible Studio research group
NM2, a project under IST-FP6, is about creating a new media genre. The project willdevelop new software tools for the media industry for easy production of non-linear personalised media, based on sound and moving images, suitable for transmission over broadband networks. As well as innovative production tools, NM2 will create a new mechanism for retrieving media content and creating personalised stories. Eight different media productions will provide the test cases for the NM2 production tools. Image by Kebede Mergia. More info: http://www.ist-nm2.org.
In the Hood
Crucible Studio research group
Within the IntelCities EU project, Crucible Studio researches city planning by the means of storytelling. Inhabitants of Arabianranta answer thematic questions about their neighborhood in the web tool IN THE HOOD. According to their preferences, they become playful animated characters. The Citizen, the Consumer, the Resident and the Worker communicate and compare ideas about the neighborhood and its desired future with other characters and simultaneously promote participative city planning. Image by Tiina Paju. More info: http://crucible.lume.fi, http://www.helsinkivirtualvillage.fi, http://www.intelcitiesproject.com.
RuneDance
Crucible Studio research group; Maureen Thomas
RUNEDANCE is a chance-based multimedia work based on Finnish mythology and the traditional Singing of Tales. Live performance (Kuopio Festival June 2006) collaboratively developed with advanced students from Sibelius Academy, Theatre Academy & University of Art & Design, Helsinki, is recorded on video, and uses recombinant poetics (music, voice & image) to explore myth characters & tales interactively, creating a contemporary digital experience of Finnish cultural heritage & oral storytelling. Image by Ksenia Avetisova. More info: http://crucible.lume.fi.
Young Digital Creators
Learning Environments research group
The UNESCO YDC Educator's Kit helps teachers and educators working in schools, youth clubs, community centres, and training institutes to generate and manage project-based learning activities with young people. The focus is on the creative and artistic use of ICT, global challenges of development, cultural diversity and inter-cultural dialogue. The book comes with a CD-ROM that contains a selection on Open Source software that can be used in creative projects. More info: http://unesco.uiah.fi/ydc-book.
MobilED - mobiled.uiah.fi
Learning Environments research group
MobilED initiative is designing learning environments that are meaningfully enhanced with mobile technologies and services. The MobilED platform offers Audio Wiki, usable with mobile phones. With MobilED platform you may use MediaWiki server as the Content Management System of your audio information system. More info: http://mobiled.uiah.fi.
LeMill/CALIBRATE
Learning Environments research group
LeMill is a web community for finding, authoring and sharing learning resources. You can download the LeMill engine (lemill.org), install it on your own server and put it online. LeMill is "do it yourself" learning resource website engine. LeMill is developed in a CALIBRATE (calibrate.eun.org) project funded by the European IST program. More info: http://lemill.net.
Art, Design and Technology in the Arab States
Learning Environments research group
UNESCO, in cooperation with several universities, is offering an online master module on Art, Design and Technology for students in Arab States. The project aims at bridging the gap between academic disciplines of computer science and that of creative practice. The master module combines computing, design and creative practice. The instructional design and the online learning environment is made by the LeGroup. Image by Laudia Awad. More info: http://moodle.uiah.fi/unesco/.
Map of Mexico 1550 (Digital Facsimile)
Systems of Representation research group; Lily Díaz
Digital facsimile of the 16th century map of the city of Mexico by Alonso de Santa Cruz, Royal Cosmographer to Emperor Charles V. The content layer includes an anthology of Legends of the Historic Center of Mexico City. The project won 1st Prize in the 2004 Digital Storytelling Competition sponsored by Art Center Nabi in South Korea with the collaboration of UNESCO. The project is a collaboration between University of Art & Design, Helsinki University of Technology, Uppsala University Library in Sweden, and Universidad Iberoamericana de Ciudad de México. Image:Detail of the Digital Facsimile of the Map of Mexico 1550 attributed to Alonzo de Santa Cruz, Cosmographer to His Majesty Charles V, of Spain. From the original in the Uppsala University Library, Sweden. More info: http://sysrep.uiah.fi/map_of_mexico.
CIPHER
Systems of Representation research group
Communities of Interest to Promote the Heritage of European Regions, The CIPHER project was set up as a 30-month project funded by the European Union as part of the IST Fifth Framework "Heritage for All" initiative. The project promotes public participation in heritage through the development of Culture Heritage (CH) Forums, associated to national or supranational regions. In Helsinki, the project has built resource organization and discovery tools for the Web. The tools are based on the similarity-clustering (SC) paradigm. Additionally, the researchers have developed Exploring Carta Marina, a Cultural Heritage (CH) Forum built around Nordic cultural heritage and the narratives of the Carta Marina of 1539. More info: http://cipher.uiah.fi, http://cipher.uiah.fi/forum/materials/carta_marina?lang=en.
Illuminating History: Through the Eyes of Media
Systems of Representation research group
The project created a digital archive containing representations of material culture from everyday life in southwestern Finland from the period of the late Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages (900's -1400's). The archive includes representations of the landscape and digital videos documenting hypothetical reconstructions by archaeologists. The topics of these reconstructions comprise the construction of buildings, firing of ceramics and the creation of textiles. As part of the research into aspects of digital design, the archive featured one of the first examples of liquid architecture in the form of a 3D Gallery that is built on the fly from the contents of the archive. The project also developed an ontology in the form of a classification system that describes all the items in the collection. More info: http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/mulli.
Emerging digital practices of communities (ADIK)
ARKI research group
ADIK project studies different practices of communities and how they evolve in interaction with the rapid development of digital technology. We are interested in how people, through their practices, transform and complement new tools; and how new tools contribute to the emergence of new practices. ADIK is funded by Tekes (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation), Nokia and Elisa. More info: http://arki.uiah.fi/adik.
P2P-FUSION
ARKI research group
P2P-FUSION develops a peer-to-peer system for collaborative creation, remixing and distribution of audiovisual media with appropriate licenses (e.g. the Creative Commons license), in collaboration with a number of user groups that have interesting new uses for video. It has seven partners from Finland, Hungary and the Netherlands that develop technology, create tools for building applications, work with communities, study social enrichment of media in the net, and maintain large national audiovisual archives. P2P FUSION is co-funded by the EU through the Information Society Technologies (IST) priority. More info: http://arki.uiah.fi/p2p-fusion.
Mediaspaces
ARKI research group
The Mediaspaces project aims to create insight about how the media environment changes because of digital convergence, and what kinds of new media formats and social uses of media may emerge, enabled by the new possibilities. The project has three main lines of activity: Design Vision - develop insight and illustrate, Networking - find & work with interested collaborators, and Experimental Productions - experiment with new formats and uses. Mediaspaces is funded by Tekes, Helsingin Sanomat, Nokia and Digita. More info: http://arki.uiah.fi/mediaspaces.
Enabling community communication platforms and applications (Encompas)
ARKI research group
The project's aim has been the creation of a system and converged residential services suite that will lay the infrastructure for new consumer's experiences and Telco operator's revenues. By distributing services throughout the home it has supported the communication needs of many social communities in which each member of the household takes part (school, collagues, hobbies...). The applications have been developed in close collaboration with users, in a process of co-design. The applications developed in Media lab have included media sharing tool "Kori" or Media Basket and a shared media diary for the family. Encompas is a CELTIC/EUREKA project developed by a consortium consisting of European and Finnish partners (Media Lab, Nokia and Elisa), with funding from Tekes. More info: http://encompas.org.
Intelligent cities for the next generation (ICING)
ARKI research group
ICING project will research a multi-modal multi-access concept for e-government. The model "thin skinned city" will be sensitive to both citizen's and the environment through the use of of mobile devices, universal access gateways, social software and sensors. The intelligent infrastructure will enable a public Administration Services layer and a Communities layer. The cities of Helsinki, Dublin and Barcelona are part of the project. In Helsinki we will build an Urban Mediator system for providing mechanisms for citizen-driven interactions with the city. ICING is co-funded by the EU through the Information Society Technologies (IST) priority. More info: http://arki.uiah.fi/icing.
The official Ars Electronica Festival site has more details on these and other works on display in Linz.
Sponsors
Our participation at Ars Electronica 2006 has been made possible with the great help of these partners:
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