Two player body movement game
2018 | Aalto University School of Arts
Hip Pong is a two-player game of pong controlled with hip movement. The movement is detected using two Kinects. The image of the game is projected from the ceiling to the floor with a projector and a mirror. The game was programmed using Processing program.
The guiding theme of the project was proxemics. It was implemented using game mechanics that moves the player’s paddle closer to the other player’s side every time a player scores a point.
Hip Pong was the final project for the course Bodily Interaction and was made by Nicola Cerioli, Juhani Halkomäki, Kevan Murtagh, and me. My role and learning outcomes in the project were mainly creating the concept, looking into sounds and how to project, investigating the possibilities of spatial sound and enhanced visualization for instance projection to smoke, and use of lasers, testing, learning Processing.
Despite the fact that Chocolate News Tonight is a functional application, it is primarily intended to be an art piece that comment the way we consume the news these days. For instance, Facebook’s algorithm favors videos, which is why we see them so much in our news feed. It is easier to watch short videos about great research results than to read a thorough article on the same topic.
With this piece, we wanted to study and show, how easy it is to make a credible looking video that does not actually say anything. The piece also explores the potential of non-linear narrative. Every generated video has eight 5-second long clips taken randomly from an array. Every video clip can take any slot in the video and have any text plate, subtitles or graphics on top. The viewer’s chance to see two exactly similar videos is very small.
Chocolate News Tonight is the final project for the course Interactive Cinema and Non-linear Narrative and was made by Janne Koivisto, Antton Nuotio, and me. My role and learning outcomes in the project were mainly creating the concept, doing research, programming, testing, finding and editing the video clips and music.
Chocolate News Tonight video generator app was programmed using Processing. Unfortunately for copyright reasons, the app is not online.
Short form fake news video generator
2018 | Aalto University School of Arts
Short form video is often used on social media by news companies. Videos, regardless of the publisher, follow similar structure: informative text plates, subtitles, and infographics on top of short video clips and library music.
Chocolate News Tonight collects these elements from multiple sources and combine them to generate random 45 second-video which is different every time.
L8_Nite_Volley was programmed using Brackets text editor, JavaScript language, and P5 JS library.
L8_Nite_Volley is the final project for the course Software Studies for Media Designers and it was made by me. The idea of the course was to learn basics of both Processing and JS and then make a project using either one. The main learning outcomes were vectors, arrays, variables, conditional statements, loops, functions, keyboard controls, and implementation to Glitch.
Link to the game: l8-nite-volley.glitch.me
Two player two-dimensional volleyball game
2017 | Aalto University School of Arts
L8_Nite_Volley brings back the legendary game that was popular in the 2000s (at least in the middle hours of a certain Upper Secondary school of Southern Finland). It has been inspired by Slime, a two-dimensional volleyball game for two players.
The game mechanics is simple: Each player tries to put the ball in the other player’s field. Each hit gives a point and the first player who has ten points wins the game. Players can jump and move left or right. Ball and players are affected by the gravity, and collisions between players and ball are realistic, which was the hardest part of coding. Movements are made by using vectors.
Heart rate based poem generator app
2017 | Aalto University School of Arts
The idea of Boem app is to generate poems using biometric technology to select different moods of words. User’s pulse is measured using phone camera’s flash, and poem is generated as long as user measures pulse. App can be used alone or in a group. In a group mode a poem is generated based on multiple heart rates simultaneously.
We wanted to design an app which allows user to interact both with the machine and with other people. The finished poem can be shared.
To make the concept idea more tangible we created physical version of it for the Glance exhibition in Otaniemi, Espoo. In Glance exhibition a user first sits down on a chair and measures the pulse using blood pressure meter. Then, based on the measurement result, the user picks one magnet word plate from one of three boxes, each of them for different pulse ranges (low, medium, high). Then, the user adds the word on the board which has printed poem structure with missing words. During one-week exhibition, visitors create collaborative poems.
Boem app concept was made by Helmi Domínguez Vanha-aho, Bilen Gerawork, Fanny Haga, and me. My role and learning outcomes were mainly creating the concept, researching, designing and writing texts, building an exhibition, and making music for the showcase video.
The 1939-40 Winter War is an iconic event in Finnish history, in which the country stood alone against the Soviet Union and secured its independence. Finland’s role in the Second World War is an important part of the nation’s mythology.
To commemorate the 75 anniversary of the conflict Yle wanted to bring the history to life in a new way using social media platforms. The idea of #Sota39 (#WinterWar39) is to tell the events of the war in real time as they would happen now. Tweets draw on historical documents, speeches, letters from the front and war-time news reports.
Narrators in #Sota39 are characters the team set up on Twitter. Characters include for example war-time ministers who live the war. Twitter platform is used like a stage in theatre.
In addition to core characters Yle created, audience and a few Upper Secondary school study groups also played along and set up own war-time characters. The uncontrolled freedom to talk and interact with others and thus affect the story seemed to be meaningful to the public. The one-way Twitter story became an interactive role-playing game.
#Sota39 was made by the team in Yle which I was part of. My tasks were mainly ideation, writing script, adapting script, creating characters, live-tweeting, scheduling tweets, keeping up project’s website, writing articles, making quizzes, finding war-time photos, and writing the report after the project. I was also representing #Sota39 in a panel discussion about crowdsourcing the content creation in Crwdpuisto event, Helsinki, May 2015.
#Sota39 won Koura Award for the Best Weekly Factual Programme in 2015. The project was also translated into Swedish and English.
Live-tweeting historical event
2014—2015 | Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company
#Titanicilla (#LiveTitanic) is a real-time role-playing game, which depicts the most famous marine disaster in the world in a new way. The Titanic’s maiden voyage is told from the point of view of Finnish emigrants.
The platform for storytelling and interactivity is Twitter where fictional characters based on real people tweet their journey. Anyone in the audience can join the story by creating their own character and start communicating.
#Titanicilla uses the same idea as #Sota39 year before but focuses more on interacting with the audience and encourages public for role playing. Also, characters are more written: they are fictional but based on one or many Finnish emigrants on the Titanic. Characters are reflecting those 1910s times when emigrating from Finland to America was popular. Playing with the characters were at least as important part as telling the facts and main events of the Titanic voyage.
#Titanicilla was made by the team in Yle which I was part of. My tasks were ideation, writing scripts, playing with one of the main characters, keeping up project’s website and a Facebook page.
#Titanicilla won Prix Europa Online Community Award of the Year in 2017 and it was also translated into English.
Real time history role play on social media
2016 | Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company
Radio programme covering science topics
2014/2016 | Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company
Links
Programs:
5G Technology
Autonomous cars and deer–vehicle collisions
Big data and targeted advertising
Sad music
Towers, elevators, and wood as a material
Virtual and augmented reality
Inserts:
The Anatomy of frozen conflict
Better urban planning with data
Carbon nanotube technology and flexible screens
Crime scene investigators and technicians
The Most investigated murder in Finland is still a mystery
Tiedeykkönen is a 50-minute science radio program airing on Tuesdays and Fridays on Yle Radio 1, which is the second most popular public radio channel in Finland. Every show covers different topics from natural science to humanities and social science. Tiedeykkönen is often recorded in different locations and has multiple interviewees in one episode. The programmes are often audio stories combining interviews, studio recorded speeches, and audio effects.
Tiedeykkönen is made by the team which I was part of. The team has a producer and five journalists. In 2014, my task was to create up to 15-minute inserts and later, in 2016, I made my own 50-minute episodes with the support of the producer and sometimes with the of an audio designer. My responsibility was the whole process of making an insert/programme: come up with an idea, conduct interviews, write and record my own speeches, add relevant audio effects, and also edit the programme.
I also did my bachelor’s thesis for Tiedeykkönen. My topic was the possibilities of a podcast for a radio program. (Tiedeykkönen started publishing podcasts later that year.) Tiedeykkönen is also one of the most popular on-demand audio programmes in Yle Areena which is Yle’s streaming service.
Yle Abitreenit is a well-known public service for Upper Secondary school students and teachers. Its aim is to help students with their studies and prepare them for the Matriculation Exam. Abitreenit publishes all Matriculation Exams in a same day after the exams and also offers an archive of hundreds of old exams. In addition to publishing, Abitreenit streams six live web tv shows every semester. In Abitreenit live show, Matriculation Exam board members, Upper Secondary school students and teachers discuss about the exams. Viewers of the live show can send their questions to the show and chat with other viewers in live chat.
A public service for students and teachers
2015—2017 | Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company
Abitreenit also creates other content for Upper Secondary school students: exercises, articles, and campaigns. In 2017—2018, for instance, Abitreenit has a big campaign Paineessa (Pressure) which helps students to deal with study related stress. The goal of the campaign is to relieve everyone’s study pressures to be able to give their best in important Matriculation Exam.
Some other important projects in Abitreenit has been developing own tool with coders to make better online exercises for mobile devices. Also, Abitreenit has covered digitalisation of the Matriculation Exam which continues at least until 2019.
I worked In Abitreenit as a journalist. I formed a small editorial team with a producer and another journalist. My job tasks during those three years varied a lot, that's why it is hard to make a complete list of what I did.
But mainly, I run a web service in general (updated website, read emails, contacted other editorial teams in Yle and so on), did editorial works (wrote, edited, photo-/videographed, published content, managered social media), organised and hosted a live web tv programme. I also assisted in recruit process and co-led a team of summer workers, co-created a campaign, and helped as a journalist a developer team to develop a web app for Yle/Abitreenit.
Humouristic quiz show for radio
2015 | Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company
Oivallusviisas (Insightful) is a quiz show that aired in summer 2015 on Yle Radio Suomi which is the most popular radio channel in Finland. The core of the show are old tv and radio clips from the massive archive of Yle. The style of the programme is humouristic. Most clips are either funny or absurd examples from the past. Loose theme for the clip selection process was Not everything was better in the past.
For instance, one sound clip is taken from the 1960s tv news insert that covers the Soviet leader Hrutsev’s visit to Finland. The clip is an absurd example of how unhealthy relationship Finland had with Soviet Russia and how foreign affairs reporting was not critical at all around then.
In every episode, two pre-selected callers compete against each other. Hosts may help the competitors or mislead. Even though Oivallusviisas is a real competition, the most important thing of the programme is chat between hosts and callers. Also, competitors memories, opinions, and reactions related to heard sound clips are playing important role.
I was part of the team as a journalist. My main tasks were ideation, finding the clips, scriptwriting, selecting the contesters, and editing. The team also included a producer, another journalist, a sound editor, and two hosts.
Link: Oivallusviisas on Yle Areena streaming service
2014—2017 | Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company
How Facebook and others build profiles of us for advertisers
Could you be a crime scene investigator?
During 3 years I worked for Yle, I published over 90 articles there. My topics varied from history and science to learning and culture. Here is a few of those articles linked.
All my published articles are listed under my Yle profile page
https://yle.fi/aihe/profiili/leo-kosola
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Two weekly published newspapers
2014 | Hämeen paikallismedia Oy
Keski-Häme is subscription based print newspaper distributed in Hauho, Lammi, Hämeenkoski and Tuulos area in Finland. Etelä-Hämeen lehti (now known as Hämeenkulma) is also subscription based print newspaper and distributed in Hausjärvi and Kärkölä area.
Both newspapers are quite small and only covering topics relevant for people living in those areas.
I worked for Hämeen paikallismedia for one summer. The team consisted another summer journalist, an editor-in-chief, two temporary journalists. My role was to generate story ideas, conduct interviews, write, photograph and both plan the structure of every paper and make the layout with other journalists.