A glimpse behind the scenes of the International Week

Now that this year’s International week is over we can only wait until next year to experience this eventful week again. The iWeek has been a long tradition in TAMK and each year it has only gotten better. We learn from previous years and aim to improve the event so that all students, visitors, participants, and teachers can enjoy it to the fullest.

The first International week was organized year 2008, then named Tampere Art Factory, TAF. The idea for this type of international event came from our former Head of Degree programme and International coordinator Mr. Cai Melakoski and Head of Fine Arts, Mr. Juha Suonpää. Thanks to them and other active people from those days, TAMK Art, Music and Media is today more international than ever!

-Sohvi Sirkesalo, iWeek blog 2017

 

The atmosphere on the Mediapolis campus has been inviting and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. The guests have especially complimented the installations, exhibitions, and performances as it’s interesting to see what the students have worked on. Plenty of stuff was to be seen during the week from games created by the students of the Game Academy, several musical performances to exhibitions and installations all over the campus. International Week is about trying out and experiencing new things and getting a glimpse into other parts of art and creativity.

I took a look at all the exhibitions around the university (paintings, photography and installations), which I found innovative, creative and interesting. They inspired me to work more on my personal "art skills".

               -Tom Busam

More than half of the quests have taken part in iWeek before and a few have participated every year after the event was organized for the first time. The visitors have genuinely enjoyed the experience and keep coming back for more. The iWeek is full of possibilities to get to know people from different countries and create meaningful and useful relationships with others. You get to learn from them and also share your own expertise. 

There’s almost always room for improvement and the possibilities are quite literally endless. Many projects and partnerships can be extended and altered to fit other study path’s needs and so create more opportunities for the students. The workshops were interesting this year and here are some comments from the students about their experiences with them.

The video clips shown in the performances were a mixture of royalty free material & video loops built by the students. Swäg brought along an eclectic mix of television sets, vintage video mixers and VHS cassettes to build the performance rig. It took 3 of us at a time to operate the gear during the performances & I hope that the visuals matched the mood of the music. Anna from 'La Marciana' was very complimentary!

-Andrew Frankton on “Building a visualization system for a live music performance” held by Markku Laskujärvi

I chose this workshop because the topic of social media and the use of social media platforms for business is close and relevant to me. The lecturer, Yuwei Lin, has a broad range of skills and expertise she uses in her position as a senior lecturer of communication, media, and culture. She balanced the workshop well with the equal amount of theory and discussion, and hands-on practice of live streaming.

-Alisa Komendova on “Citizen journalism in the age of live streaming” by Yuwei Lin

This was an interesting workshop with a lot of useful knowledge. We were taught about the art of vocal sketching and also listening different types of sounds at the same time trying to analyse how it made us feel. Some sounds made us feel happy and made us laugh whilst others made us feel uncomfortable and at times irritated.

-Sam Gurung on “Sound, emotion and user experience” held by Antti Jylhä

This workshop was brilliant, Olli was a very helpful leader and really helped you ask what can you do, not what should you do. I can say that workshop was a lot of fun and was a really nice change of pace, from the other work I have been doing this semester. I have worked with electronics before and this was a really nice way of bringing some old skills to the forefront again. This workshop was helpful as I will experiment with using the sounds I can create in my advanced moving image video because it is an easy way to create unique sounds for a weird video.

-Jonathan Keogh on “Circuit bending” held by Olegtron

During the screening of our video’s a compilation of all the work was shown to a jury of three. Afterward every participant had to come to the stage to receive feedback about their short film. I was really a bit overwhelmed by the size of this event but thought it was quite nice to see our works on such a big screen and with good audio. Even though we already had seen most of the video’s, it was a different experience to have them up there. I was nervous to get on the stage, as I didn’t expect it and so hadn’t prepared anything, but the feedback was really good and I was happy to hear that they understood all the different aspects of our video very well.

-Julia Kammen on the screening of the Moving Image minor works

I really enjoyed this workshop as it was not only about creating something new and useful, but mainly about the idea of using trash. There are so many things that can be repaired or built by using the stuff other people would throw away.

-Ronja Bachofer on “Jugaad: Create or transform basic objects using trash materials” held by Tibor Kecskes

One of the development ideas concentrates on the visibility of the event. Not only do we wish that the students join the event, we also want people all over to take interest in it. Internationalization is one of the hot topics in the world at the moment and even though it might seem small in Finland’s scale it has profound consequences for TAMK. People have already heard about Finland so now it’s the time to continue down that road and sell our expertise and innovations. We have a lot to offer in TAMK and it’s something we should pursue.

Another topic of concern is the scheduling. This year the United Studios was bursting with amazing performances and talks but unfortunately, as many of them took place during the day, the people who were taking part in the workshops missed them. There are several possible solutions for this that will be considered for next year’s event. Even so, this year was a success!

This year was the first time that the United Studios was focused on as its own ensemble. The success of the performances was a happy surprise as for many years the people creating the iWeek have thought about what could be organized there. At the Mediapolis campus, we have amazing facilities and spaces at our disposal so it was inspiring to see how they were used in the exhibitions, installations, and performances.

At video screening, I liked how space was organised and also it is really inspiring to see your work screening on the big screen in front of the audience.

               - Konstantin Fedorov

Everyone who worked hard for and during the International Week deserves a wholehearted thank you. Many of the people have been involved for many years now and they know the tricks of the trade and can overcome any problem should any arise. They are prepared and willing to work to make the event memorable for everyone. Students, teachers, lecturers and international visitors all have their part to play in making the event what it is today.

Hope to see you all next year and please as always help us make this event even better!

(Pictures from the iWeeks Facebook page.)