Monthly Archives: June 2010

'SPOT ON – locative media' seminar

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Time: September 23rd 2010, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Place: Media Centre Lume, Aalto University School of Art and Design (Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki)

The seminar can be viewed in YLE Areena http://areena.yle.fi/haku//uusimmat/hakusana/spot+on

Locative media are digital media that concentrate on social interaction with a place and with technology. The focus in the SPOT ON seminar is on location data and its possible uses in journalism and storytelling. The seminar is organized by YLE New Media / Future Lab and Aalto University Media Factory.

The keynote speaker of the seminar is digital strategist and freelance journalist Kevin Anderson. He has been an online journalist since 1996, designing, editing and creating content for websites in both broadcast and print media. He has more than a decade of experience with the BBC and the Guardian.

“Location is like RSS. As a technology, it’s invisible to most users but it opens up a huge range of opportunities for publishers and audiences. – There are new services and revenue streams attached to location technology”, says Anderson. ”Location is about enabling the delivery of more relevant information to audiences. In a sea of information, relevance is valuable to audiences and to publishers wanting to increase revenue from digital content.”

Program:

9.00 Opening words: Mikko Villi (Aalto University)

9.15 Keynote: Digital strategist & freelance journalist Kevin Anderson

10.30 Panel discussion on the possibilities of location data and media: Kevin Anderson, Teemu Kurppa (Huikea), Mikko Hämäläinen (Grey Area) and Mika Raento (ZenRobotics), moderated by Tuija Aalto (YLE)

11.30 Lunch: Discussing locative media services over sandwiches.
Each panellist acts as “head of table” and facilitates discussion about certain aspects of locative media and storytelling. Participants may freely seek their choice of group.

12.30 Developer’s Wish List. This We Could Do With Your Data?: Ilkka Pirttimaa

13.00 Augmented reality. Wikitude app and other cool stuff: Mark A.M. Kramer (mamk.net/)

14.00 Spatial data – enabling services for citizens and consumers: Antti Rainio (National Land Survey of Finland)

14.30 Generating and using location-based data in citizen participation: Joanna Saad-Sulonen (Urban Mediator)

15.00 Closing words: Mikko Villi

The seminar is free to attend, but requires registration in advance. The seminar is targeted for YLE staff, Aalto University students and staff, specialists in the locative media field, independent developers, and members of the general public who are interested in the theme.

Please register to the seminar by Monday 20th of September in the following web address: https://www.webropol.com/P.aspx?id=456778&cid=13678773

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Uneton 48 lopputapahtuma

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Finaalitapahtuma
Uneton48 Finaalitapahtuma ei ole pelkästään finalisteille, vaan tapahtuma on tarkoitettu kaikille elokuvantekijöille, muusikoille ja asiasta kiinnostuneille. Kaikki mukaan!
Aika: Perjantai 18.6. klo 17:00 – 21:00
Paikka: Aalto Mediakeskus Lume, Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki

Ohjelmassa mm.
– Finaalinäytös (10 parasta)
– Palkintojenjako – sekä erikoispalkinnot että koko kisan voittajat
– Leffaideoiden pitchausta
– Rustik-bändi

Liput: Ovelta 6€, etukäteen 4€ (käytä alla olevaa formia)

Newsletter 4/2010 (June)

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Dear friends,

Just before leaving on our summer vacation we want to share some glimpses of our doings the past month as well as introduce you to what the autumn will bring.

Media Factory’s open call

We have had three deadlines for applications for funding of media-related projects. In all we had approximately 30 applications. The funded projects are found here:http://www.aaltomediafactory.fi/?page_id=548

Uneton48

Our partner Uneton48 has reached the point where the 10 finalists of the competition have been chosen (can be found here http://bit.ly/acuhrA) and when the gala festivities are close at hand. It has really been great to follow how the organizers Enni and Sami Tuomisalo together with their team have succeeded in coordinating this huge event with all its inspiring learning and networking possibilities as well as moments of true experience. Congratulations already at this point. Next Friday on the 18th the Uneton48 gala party starts at 5 p.m. and will be held in the Sampo Hall, Lume Centre. See you there ;-).

Media Factory was tracking Aalto on tracks

Media Factory documentarists Anna Berg and Ina Mutikainen traveled with the Aalto on Tracks posse on train to China in May. During the trip the passengers shared many fantastic experiences and made many good new friends and of course saw exotic sights through the train windows. A short video made by Anna and Ina about the trip was shown in Shanghai World Expo Finland day on 27th of May and in YLE morning-tv on 10th of June (http://areena.yle.fi/video/1050887). Later this autumn there will be a longer film about the tracks available, so stay tuned! Before that, you can explore the trackers’ adventures in the AoT-blog: http://aaltoontracks.com/

New students in the MediaBizLab minor studies program

17 Aalto students will begin their studies in September in the new minor studies program MediaBizLab – Commercializing Media as Services. The students admitted to the program share a similar enthusiasm towards media, yet their differing backgrounds will enable them to develop and produce new solutions for future media services. The MediaBizLab program is organized in cooperation between Media Factory and the Department of Marketing and Management (Aalto School of Economics). More information on the program is available at mediabizlab.fi

Media Facades festival in August/September

Media Factory collaborates with the Media Facades festival (http://www.mediafacades.eu) that takes place in Helsinki as part of the Helsinki Festival (Helsingin juhlaviikot) and also in six other European cities in August and September. The festival “explores the networked possibilities of urban screens and media facades via internet and the new technologies on a European level”. The kick-off of the festival with public screenings and street art happenings is in the Night of the Arts (27.8.) More information in our August newsletter.

Changes in the office team

The project manager in Media Factory, Maria Suokannas, will leave Media Factory at the beginning of August. A challenging new position as a principal lecturer within well-being services at the Laurea university of applied sciences, is waiting for her.

Also Mikko Villi, the coordinator of educational operations at Media Factory, will move to a new post in September. After receiving his doctoral degree in June, he will start his new work as a post-doctoral researcher at the Aalto School of Economics, the Department of Language and Communication.

Dates for your calendar

* SPOT ON – a seminar on locative media will be arranged at Media Centre Lume at TaiK on September the 23rd. The main organizers are Media Factory and Yleisradio. (more information later on on our website).
* A seminar on typography and type, next(con)text on the 18th of November (more information here http://www.aaltomediafactory.fi/?p=606).
* Magazines in the era of e-reading –symposium 1.12.2010 (more information maija (dot) toyry (at ) aalto (dot) fi)

And last…

Maria: As I won’t be co-writing the next newsletter I want to wish you all the best for the future and a lot of inspiring encounters with Media Factory. I am really grateful for everything I have learned during my year within the Aalto university.

Wishing you an energizing summer and remember, there shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart :-) (Celia Thaxter).

The Media Factory Office Team

TestiKaista – Exploring Media Practices at Arki

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Arki (http://arki.mlog.taik.fi/) is a multidisciplinary research group that is part of the Media Lab Helsinki (http://mlab.taik.fi/) of the Aalto University’s (http://www.aalto.fi/en/) School of Art and Design (http://www.taik.fi/en). It focuses on the co-evolution of digital technology and the practices of everyday life with a design perspective. Arki’s activities include researching people’s media practices and experimenting with the opportunities provided by new digital tools in the context of audiovisual media. One of Arki’s recent experiments is TestiKaista (http://arki.mlog.taik.fi/2010/05/21/testikaista-boxee-application-prototype/) application prototype, which was built for studying how TV experience could expand to include media from Internet and computers at home. The prototype is built with the Boxee (www.boxee.tv) media center open-source platform, and provides Finnish TV content, using the feed from TVKaista service. As Boxee enables viewing media from a variety of sources from the couch using a remote control, the experiment has enabled studying how more traditional and online media content and practices get mixed in current media ecosystems. The work carried out is part of the FinLab project, co-funded by TEKES.

The TestiKaista source code is published in Google Code (http://code.google.com/p/tvkaista-boxee/) with MIT Open Source license, so you are free to explore it. In case you are interested to know more about TestiKaista, please contact Aapo Rista (aapo.rista[at]taik.fi).

Media Factory morning meeting

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Media Factory wants to invite you to a morning meeting where we will be informed about EU:s framework programme and its different stages of preparation with an emphasis on ICT and media. In this way we can be part of the development from the very beginning. Senior eu r&d adviser Eija Auranen and senior technology adviser Hannu Nurmi will present the future FP8 and also the ongoing FP7. You can forward this mail to those who you think could be interested in these issues.

Please register by sending an e-mail to me on the 10th of June at the latest

Time: 16th of June 9- 11.00 a.m.
Place: Aalto University School of Economics main building, Runeberginkatu 14-16, Helsinki, room 206

Programme:

Morning coffee
9.00-9.15 Philip Dean, Director of Media Factory presents Media Factory’s activities
9.15-10.00 Eija Auranen, TEKES: Towards the FP8
10.00-10.45 Hannu Nurmi, TEKES: ICT in the Framework Programmes
10.45-11.00 Discussion

Welcome!
Maria Suokannas

Newsletter 3/2010 (May)

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Hi everyone,

May is often one of the busiest months within academia and a month where the academic year ends and plans are made for the autumn. If you want to experience how the ending of an education process feels like, please visit the Masters of Arts’ exhibition”City of Senses” at Aleksanterinkatu 16-18 and Katariinankatu 3 in Helsinki. Find more information here: http://www.mastersofarts.fi/moa2010/

Our Factory agent

The three Aalto factories have decided to employ a factory agent to connect the factories more. We are glad to introduce our new Factory-agent, Juhani Tenhunen to you. Juhani Tenhunen is a doctoral student at Media Lab of the Aalto University School of Art and Design Helsinki. Previously he has been working as a producer at a new media department of the largest publisher in Finland, Sanoma-WSOY, and before that as an entrepreneur at New Media – AV production companies.

Uneton48-our partner

Our partner Uneton48 is energetically preparing for the next weekend when approx. 100 teams compete about who makes the best short film within 48 hours. We are glad we can be part of this organized passion for making short films. We are certainly looking forward to the gala night in Lume’s Sampo-sali on the 18th of June. Read more about uneton 48 here: http://www.uneton48.com/

Media Factory is tracking Aalto on tracks

Media Factory’s representatives Anna Berg and Ina Mutikainen started their journey to Shanghai with the Aalto on tracks community on Friday the 14th of May. They will be documenting highlights from the journey. To follow how the journey is proceeding please visit the following website http://aaltoontracks.com/

MediaBizLab’s kick-off

The kick-off for the new minor subject MediaBizLab was arranged on the 22nd of April. The seminar was a success although the ash cloud prevented the keynote speaker Gerd Leonhard from coming. To feel the event visit MediaBizLab’s website http://bit.ly/dyHPom or see the video on http://www.aaltomediafactory.fi/

Digital Visuality Network

A new network within Aalto University, the Digital Visuality network had its first meeting and was thus established on 6th May. It brings together people with an interest in visual communication and media technologies to initiate joint projects in research and education, and in organising events, industry collaboration and networking. There will be shortly more about the network on Media Factory’s website, and an email list is being established. For more information please contact Markku Nousiainen (markku dot nousiainen [at] taik dot fi).

3D Animation Minor Subject Program

A new minor subject program will begin next fall in the Department of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design at the Aalto School of Art and Design. All Aalto students are eligible to apply. In the program the students learn how to create a 3D computer animated short film and work with professionals of the different areas of the production (sound, designer, composer, editor). More information at http://www.aalto.fi/fi/studies/mobility/art_and_design/

Mobile app developers network next meeting May 25th

The next meeting of the Aalto mobile app developers network will be in Otaniemi on Tuesday May 25th, at 09:15 – 11:15. The location is meeting room Edison (Otakaari 7 A, behind Restaurant Electra). Guest speakers are Michihito Mizutani and Abhigyan Singh. More information at http://www.aaltomediafactory.fi/?p=573

Dates for your calendar

Please put the 23rd of September and the 18th of November in your calendars. On the 23rd Media Factory is arranging a seminar about locative media in co-operation with Yle. The seminar will be held in Lume Sampo-Sali, Aalto university School of Art and Design. On the 18th of November Department of Media/Unit of Graphic Design arranges the next(con)text seminar which will discuss the future of typography and type. This seminar will also be held in Lume and Sampo-sali.

When writing this we are totally overwhelmed by the beauty and warmth the month of May can bring. Enjoy every minute :-). Let’s hope that this lasts and that no media in the world will bring us bad weather forecasts.

The Media Factory Office Team

next(con)text: Seminar on typography and type

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Seminar on typography and type, Media Factory & Department of Media
Lume, Sampo-sali, 18th of November 2010

For over the past five hundred years, typography has been bound to paper, to the printed page. Not anymore. A growing part of our communication happens in the electronic world of the Internet, and more and more of the typography we read is pixels instead of ink. The screen  be it laptop, TV, tablet, e-book, mobile  is the next context for text. What does this paradigm shift mean? Should we re-think typography? Which are the new kinds of fonts to be used? Which are the new kinds of font licenses for Web page use?

Our one-day seminar will cover several of the key issues of the future typography. There will be a diversity of speakers: some concentrating on technical issues, some on the aesthetical aspects of type  and some even covering both. Jukka K. Korpela, a researcher and writer, whose book on web typography and layout is soon forthcoming, presents the possibilities of web page layout and typography. PhD researcher Harri Heikkilä is going to talk about e-readers and different ways of producing content and visuals for screens. Teemu Suviala, creative director of Kokoro&Moi, presents creative ways of doing typography on the Web. International speakers include the legendary type designer Gerard Unger, especially famous for his work on legible typefaces for newspapers, like Coranto, Gulliver, and Swift; and Peter Bilak, a pioneer in extensive OpenType fonts for wide range of languages as well as a forerunner in web fonts. The third type specialist is Sami Kortemäki, the graphic designer of the year 2010 in Finland, our own type star of Underware, the makers of fine-tuned, popular fonts like Liza, Sauna, Auto, and Bello. Saku Heinänen, designer and lecturer of Aalto University, acts as the MC for the event.

The seminar is intended for professionals in design, publishing and advertising as wells as for researchers and of course to all students interested in these areas. The day includes morning coffee, a light lunch and afternoon coffee.

For more information please contact Saku Heinänen saku.heinanen ( a ) aalto.fi

The link to our registration form will be available as from August

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