PROGRAMME

13.00 WELCOME and final thesis news
Philip Dean

13.20 GIANT STEPS
Kai Lappalainen

13.25 SEMANA SANTA IN CARÚPANO AT NORDISK MUSEUMFESTIVAL

Presented by Lily Díaz and Taina Myöhänen

Semana Santa, in Carúpano, Venezuela culminated with the participation of the exhibition in the Nordisk museumsfestival held in Stavanger, Norway during September 4-6, 2000. The group that travelled to Norway included representatives from the Media Lab student body and faculty. As a delegate in this event, the exhibition competed for the Fenix award with 28 other projects from museums throughout Scandinavia.
The project was put together by the Displaying Culture group at Media Lab.

http://mlab.uiah.fi/semanasanta/

13.30 FUTURE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT 2 (FLE2) STUDY PROJECT

Presented by Giedre Kligyte, Marcel Kuster, Tero Mäkinen, Isaac Tuffour, Otso Virtanen; tutors Teemu Leinonen and Andrea Botero.

The new features designed by the students are Fle2 Agent - The Bug (working name) and Knowledge Discovery Tool.

Fle2 Agent - The Bug
The Fle2 agent, an animated a bug look -a-like character, would facilitate communication in the group and by being of amusing nature itself, would make a learning process more exciting. The Fle2 agent wouldn't be a learning agent in its conventional meaning - it wouldn't offer answers and solutions, not even questions (the students define their individual problems themselves). The primary task of the Fle2 agent - The Bug is to help the student to orient herself in the learning process and to help her to interact with other group members.

Knowledge Discovery Tool
The Knowledge Discovery Tool helps students and tutors to analyze their activity in the group, or to overview the whole learning process from multiple perspectives. At the moment it is very easy to get lost among numerous notes in the Fle2's Knowledge Building, because there's no way to distinct the importance of the note. The Knowledge Discovery Tool is a marking system, which would allow the student to mark out the main points in each note and offer the possibility to come back to them later. It would also function as a tool, helping to collect summaries at the end of the learning process. The possible usage of summaries' database offline could be explored too.

Some of these features designed by the students will be implemented to the Fle2 in the near future.

Contacts:
Gierde Kligyte, giedre.kligyte@mlab.uiah.fi

http://fle2.uiah.fi

13.45 CAN-GO

Can-go is a new way for sharing transportation. Can-go is not a singular system, but a web of servers connected to each other. It is also a network of people trusting each other and arranging rides with each other. Can-go operates in real time with mobile devices. Communication with Can-go is transparent so that finding out persons who share the same route is easy and convenient.
Project group: Kiia Kallio, Markus Norrena, Riikka Puustinen, M. Koray Tahiroglu; tutors Andrea Botero and Kari-Hans Kommonen

http://www.can-go.org, feedback@can-go.org

13.55 ASUMISEN ARKI JA UNELMAT

Presented by Maria Koskijoki, Iina Oilinki

The research project Asumisen arki ja unelmat (On everyday practices and future dreams of living/dwelling) is a collaboration of Future Media Home research group and VVO, a limited company providing housing services. The project explores the possibilities of involving end-users in the discussion of the development and design of digital applications, here in the context of home/locality. We are presenting some of the feedback we got, with emphasis on is it/how is it possible to discuss envisions with non-experts.

14.15 10TH CITY : SHARE LIFE

Presented by Petri Kola

10TH CITY : SHARE LIFE is an Internet game. The objective of the game is to document and exchange mundane acts of life, performance-oriented actions and playful and courageous experiences.
During the fall 2000, people's video clips and pictures were gathered in the 10TH CITY : SHARE LIFE web. 10TH CITY : SHARE LIFE was produced by media art collective katastro.fi with the help of the Cafe9.net organization. In November 2000 it became a part of Nordic netart project n2art.
Media Lab MA students: Petri Kola, Ville Martin, Leena Saarinen + more
Producer: Hanna Suomalainen
Some others: Juha Huuskonen, Anu Karjalainen, Essi Aittamaa

http://www.10city.net

14.25 THE INTRODUCTION OF WEBPAGES FOR THE RUOTSINPYHTÄÄ ECOMUSEUM

Presented by Tarja Toikka ja Päivi Romppanen

The website project is a part of Ecomuseum project of Ruotsinpyhtään Ruukkialue Oy. This is a study project to create emotionally affecting media narration for local history and study rich means of audiovisual narration in the web. Particularly challenging is to study the drama aspect in the museum context, which traditionally has stuck strictly on facts. Our aim is to create a modular structure and a visual grammar, that can be applied for various content.
Ruotsinpyhtään Ruukkialue Oy has collected and scanned old photos (about 1300 photos and short descriptions for them). The prototype for the application is already seen in the web.

Participants of Media Lab UIAH: Marjo Mäenpää, Tarja Toikka, Päivi Romppanen
Participants of Ruotsinpyhtään Ruukkialue Oy:
Annika Malms-Tepponen, director,
Härö arkkitehti Oy, Merja Härö architect
Eeva Rista, photographer, editor

14.35 MULTIMEDIA FOR THE NATIONAL MUSEUM

Presented by Marjo Mäenpää

UIAH Media Lab has produced the multimedia solution for the Finnish National Museum. The work realized by the Media Lab consists of designing the overall multimedia concept and networked solution, through which parts of the programmes can be updated by the museum staff. In addition, the Media Lab designed and produced 4 local multimedia programmes, the first ones in the museum's plans for an extensive series of exhibition multimedia.
Project group: Marjo Mäenpää, Maari Fabritius, Tomi Knuutila, Hanna Haaslahti, Karri Laitinen, Petri Kola (Media Lab UIAH); Sini Sopo, Juha Huuskonen, Timo Lukumaa, Marko Wallgren, Riikka Sarvas, Panu Heikkilä. Producers: Minna Tarkka, Marjo Mäenpää (Media Lab UIAH); Ritva Wäre, Kirsti Melanko (The National Museum)

14.45 INSIDEOUT - Constructing Character as a Space for Action

Presented by the "Drama Between Real and Virtual" study project group Sami Haikonen, Katri Palomäki, Egon Randlepp, Simona Schimanovich, Ville Eerikäinen, Riikka Pelo, Hanna Harris and Sami Haartemo, tutored by Mika Tuomola.

In the course of the Fall term, the study project has taken a critical look into the nature and the representation of virtual communities in the context of real world social structures, as they appear in various cultures, while attempting to develop a new dramatic form interlinking the real and the virtual and thus revealing the currently hidden value structures of globally networked media

The group presents a "text video" to demonstrate some of the central thoughts, while keeping the rest of the project necessarily in secret for now...

http://mlab.uiah.fi/insideout/

14.55 COM.PASSION CLUB

Presented by Mika Tuomola

The 1st rule of the Com.passion Club: TALK about the Com.passion Club.
The 2nd rule of the Com.passion Club: TALK about the Com.Passion Club.
The 3rd rule of the Com.passion Club: Appeal to the technocrats' predilections for machinery and tactics and subvert their paradigm, while you talk about the Com.passion Club.
The 4th rule of the Com.passion Club: TALK about 1 through 3 again.

15.30 LINK-O-MAT
- a small project work for the Info-Aesthetics workshop

Presented by Anna Maria Joakimsdottir, Markku Nousiainen

Internet appears as inexplicable and untransparent, we don't seem to get a grasp of it. Yet we navigate in a seemingly rationalistic manner, finding something neatly packaged and preprocessed for us. Link-o-mat is a small project work showing a possibility for alternative topologies. What happens if geographical coordinates of crime scenes are input to search engines, and resulting URLs are used as starting points for investigation of local 'Internet terrains'?

http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/~markku/link-o-mat

15.35 INTERACTION AND SOCIAL NARRATION (I-SON)

Project leader Raimo Lång

The study project tackles the issue of collective interaction as shared production of content and meaning, which is seen as a dialog between the author and user(s). Interaction is this context is defined as mediated social storytelling.

Interaction and Social Narration studies in theory and practice the varying modes and models of human interaction and seeks for electronic/semi-electronic adaptations that can provide sources for social events/processes that has qualities of a ritual and social play.
The project aims towards building up structured and directed/hosted prototypes of interactive electronic rituals that can be formulated later to program formats for different media platforms such as interactive television, real-time networked environments and applications, remote installations, textual environments etc. The project tries to launch new (sub)genres of communication to computerized, networked and often mass-mediated IT-culture.

15.55 CULTURAL USABILITY
-preliminary research project

Presented by Minna Tarkka, Heidi Tikka

Cultural Usability is a preliminary research project on culture-driven design of new media. The research maps out ways through which knowledge from the fields of cultural studies and media theory could be brought to bear on new media design and development. In doing this, project also aims at creating links between the networks of cultural studies, social theory, technology development and media design.

The Cultural Usability Seminar approaches these questions through readings, discussions and presentations. A selection of the seminar papers will be published in the research project's online report in March 2001. The project is funded by the University of Art and Design UIAH and carried out at the Media Lab with professor Minna Tarkka and researcher Heidi Tikka as coordinators.

Seminar participants: Andrea Botero, Giedre Kligyte, Petri Kola, Jokko Korhonen, Ellen Kotanen, Cilla Lönnqvist, Misha Mantere, Ville Martin, Markku Nousiainen, Riikka Pelo, Leena Saarinen, Rasmus Vuori

http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/cu (is not public yet)

16.05 CONTINENT AND MOBILE CONTINENT

Presented by Minna Tarkka, Cilla Lönnqvist

The CONTinENT artworks were exhibited in September-October 2000 both in Brussels and in Helsinki simultaniously as part of the programmes of these two Cities of Culture for the year 2000. In Helsinki, the exhibition took place in the Lasipalatsi Media Centre, and for that show UIAH Media Lab, Elisa Communications and Hewlett-Packard realized wireless interfaces to the media art. The Mobile Continent -project included voice, sms, and wap applications for interacting with and learning more about the works on display.

Continent
Concept: Yves Bernard (Magic Media, Brussels), Minna Tarkka (UIAH Media Lab, Helsinki) and Jean-Louis Boissier (ENSAD, Paris)
Finnish artists: Jan-Erik Andersson, Laura Beloff, Maari Fabritius, Hanna Haaslahti, Mia Mäkelä, Kristian Simolin and Tuomo Tammenpää
Exhibition and material design: Tuomo Tammenpää, Isabel Debry

Mobile Continent
Concept: Cilla Lönnqvist, Jokko Korhonen, Minna Tarkka (UIAH)
Design: Cilla Lönnqvist, Jokko Korhonen, Reetta Pietiläinen Taina Myöhänen (UIAH), Timo Sippola (Elisa), Ville Taka (Hewlett-Packard)
Technical design and implementation: Seppo Parkkila, Timo Sippola, Mikko Nikkanen (Elisa); Karri Hautanen, Juho Peltomaa (Hewlett-Packard)
Scripts for WAP and voice services: Cilla Lönnqvist, Minna Tarkka, Reetta Pietiläinen (UIAH)
Web design: Giedre Kligyte
Voice service: Content Union, Elisa Communications
Virtual guide: Tom Wentzel
Producer: Cilla Lönnqvist (UIAH)
Direction: Petri T. Salmi (Elisa), Peter Vesterbacka (Hewlett-Packard), Minna Tarkka (UIAH)

http://www.continent-imaw.net
http://mobilecontinent.uiah.fi

16.15 FLASH4 WORKSHOP
- Theme: City 25.9-9.10.2000

tabula.katastro.fi arranged a two week Flash4 workshop for the students of Helsinki University of Technology, University of Art and Design and Helsinki Institute of Arts and Media. Students with different backgrounds learned Flash4, visited each other's schools, took pictures and recorded sounds in Helsinki and realized their final projects of the theme "City" in small groups.
Teachers: Anu Karjalainen, Juha Huuskonen, Juha Hytönen

http://katastro.fi/tabula/

16.30 VALTAKUNTA

Presented by Kimmo Kari, Sampsa Nuotio, Toke Lahti, Minna Papinniemi, Riikka Kevo

Valtakunta is a New Testament based psychological interactive (multiplatform) movie made in collaboration with Department of Theology in Helsinki University. More than 100 panoramas and lots of 16 mm material. The whole work will be finished by the end of summer 2001.

http://www.helsinki.fi/~merenlah

17.00 Party on in the Media Lab

Entry * Media Lab * Studies * People * Facilities
Media Launch * Beta Lounge * Research * Internal