mobile blog notes
Pervasive gaming field day
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
This week there is the second annual review of our IPerG research project. It involves much theoretical and strategic discussions, as well as some running around in the Nokia Research Centre corridors, as our evaluators here demonstrate. In Wednesday more people will participate, as the Open House presentations will take place in Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum. Welcome!
Edit: you can find more photos in Flickr, with ‘iperg’ tag.
Mikko Lehtonen’s half-centennial seminar
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Professor Mikko Lehtonen, one of the leading figures in Finnish cultural studies turned recently fifty (congratulations!) and the network of colleagues and students had edited a book (Tutkimusten maailma – “The World of Studies”) and organised yesterday a seminar to congratulate him, and to stop for a moment to celebrate the growth of this interdisciplinary field. In the attached shot professors Hanna Suutela, Anu Koivunen and Seppo Knuuttila ponder; other speakers included Kaarina Hazard, Sanna Kivimäki and Teemu Taira. And of course Mikko himself, who decided to confuse everyone in the end by reading a work-in-progress paper that discussed the need for non-substantive, more process-oriented cultural studies (if I understood him at all correctly).
IST 2006
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
This day and tomorrow will be spent in IST 2006 conference, which is the annual get-together of eurocrats and us “information society technologies” people. Full with ambient intelligence, social media, tangible bits and all sorts of other marvels, IST is a curious hotbed of activities, few actually ready for the streets, most staying eternally in prototype, or beta.
dark falls
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Now that rain has melted away the snow cover, it is apparent that we have entered ‘marras’, the season of death. Dark falls, tiny lights are set up to fight its domain, only accenting its depth.
stuck in snowstorm
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Even though Finland is a northern country, our climate is one of the steady ones. Thus, when a snowstorm hits the country, it is something of a spectacle. Irritated, bemused, thousands of Finns struggle today to access their meetings or seminars (me supposedly heading for Ubicom in Espoo) as the physical infrastructure suddenly stops functioning. Nature strikes back?
medi@terra on multilayering of land
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
The tightly packed days of medi@terra/Gaming Realities conference include many interesting presentations about reality and place becoming multiple, mixed, multilayered, hybrid. I’d actually claim that our reality, and lands we inhabit are always this kind of chimeiras; sites half-imagined, half put together by pieces we recognize from elsewhere. Athens is obviously a city to evoke reflections of this kind, pasts, presents and futures colliding constantly on its crowded streets.
deep pockets
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Work phone, personal phone, iPod, Tom Tom navigator — it is just obvious that in these days of mobile technology, one of the most important things you need are deep pockets? (A test shot with Canon S3 IS.)
juha arrasvuori’s phd defence
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Today there is the PhD thesis defence of Juha Arrasvuori in University of Tampere. Juha has worked on digital music, mobile media and games for numerous years, long working in Nokia Research Centre. When I first learned to know Juha in the DAC study group of digital culture he was researching synthetizer music of Jean Michel Jarre, but, today his finished thesis discusses the interplay of games (and game studies) with the playful creation of digital music. The opponent, professor Paul Théberge from Canada started by giving Juha credit for developing a consistent framework for discussing music composition and game play in close contact to and informing each other. The opponent also expessed concern about the possible culturally or artistically restricting consequences if ‘music games’ would become the major means for learning to create music.
nokia games day
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Trying to send this out from a new Nokia E70; there was the Nokia Games Day 2006 on casual and pervasive (well, and mobile) games in Helsinki. I liked several of the presentations, even if is difficult to say if even the fundamental conceps were defined with any agreement in the end.
frans goes blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.