Partners

University of Art and Design Helsinki

The University of Art and Design Helsinki gives education and pursues research in the fields of design, audio-visual communication, interactive media design and production, art education and the arts. TAIK is the largest art and design school in Scandinavia. Relevant for this project is the TAIK’s experience in developing education in the area of new media as well as in many research and development projects carried out in the Media Lab faculty and the Media Centre LUME including considerable efforts in many IST projects in recent years.

The Media Lab is one of the 5 faculties of the university and has grown to become the leading department of its kind in Finland focusing on design and production for the New Media. In 2003 it was awarded the top educational unit award by the Finnish universities’ evaluation council. The mission of the Media Lab is to explore, discover and comprehend the new digital technology and its impact in society; to find and exploit the possibilities it opens to communication, interaction, education and expression and to evaluate, understand and deal with the challenges it poses to design and creative production. The information society with its converging media is a complex environment that requires an interdisciplinary approach to design. This is reflected in the cooperative education and research projects of the Media Lab.

ARKI is a research group within the Media Lab faculty, with an important position in the faculty’s strategy to fill a national role as the only source of MA and doctoral level education and research in the design of digital technology based systems and applications. ARKI has focused on understanding the process of digitalization in society, and the emerging and possible role of digital design in that process. ARKI focuses on everyday life and people, and develops design for more humane technology and more useful applications, to unleash the creative and constructive powers of ordinary people in the information society.

ARKI collaborates with research units all over the world, but is selective based on whether the collaborations can operate on a compatible “wavelength”. We now have an active network in about 20 countries, including European, Latin American and Japanese partners. We also organize international events that reflect our approach and help to form a community, for example, the conference “The Good, The Bad and The Irrelevant” in 2003. Examples of the networks we participate in are COST 269, “User aspects of ICT’s” (concluded this year, new follow-up action proposed), and Wireless World Research Forum, where Kari-Hans Kommonen is the TAIK representative.

ARKI aims to develop a role for design to be an effective new resource that can bring valuable insight into digital technology development, by incorporating insights from technology users and more holistic, ecosystemic points of view – contributions that are in useful ways different and complementary to those presented by traditional technology developers with a technological/ scientific/economical background.

TAIK uses the AC model and will employ 2.5 FTE researchers on the project, who will be reinforced and supported by the permanent specialists of Media Lab and Arki.

Media Lab: http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/
ARKI research group: http://arki.uiah.fi
ICiNG web page: http://arki.uiah.fi/icing