The EU has accepted the proposal EVA (European Virtual Academy) submitted for the Erasmus Programme under the Lifelong Learning Programme Call for Proposals Call EAC/41/09 (2009/C 247/09) and selected the project for the EU co-financing.

EVA is a collaboration project among the following learning institutions:

• Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania
• University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
• University of Applied Sciences Tampere, Finland
• University of Applied Sciences Mittweida, Germany
• Sapientia Hungarian University of Transilvania, Cluj-Napoka, Romania

The Virtual Academy is a learning environment that will stimulate the skills of the current generation of students. Young people are increasingly rooted in the visual culture, based on video games, learning through the Internet, online tutorials, multimedia, etc. The new vision of teaching will be implemented in all the participating countries to start. The project is designed to provide a platform later to be transferred to all interested European higher education institutions.

Prof. Wierzbicki presented a paper “Digital Houspaint – A New Class of Ambient Media” at this year’s IADIS VC2010 conference in Freiburg.

The functionality of visual communication has been underestimated as photography and cartoons claimed artistic autonomy rather than being submissive to the explicit message to be conveyed. Commercials and pervasive messages in ideological campaigns are early adopters of visuals. Since 3D image spaces in Virtual Reality have been introduced it is a must to meet between scientific researchers, art directors, photographers and illustrators.

“Creative industries” is the epitome for critical applications like social software, gaming and cultural documentaries. This IADIS VC conference opens the landscape for those who bring overlooked messages from theory and practice and those who have the intuition that the visual languages prevail in attitudinal and affective communication. Multi cultural projects demand a high of sophistication in semiotic awareness. Especially this aspect is a fast-growing domain for communication specialists.

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Thomas Schmieder presented the preliminary results of the GAMECAST project at a poster session at EURO iTV in Tampere, Finland.
Prof. Wierzbicki presented a paper Media Pedagogics in Converged Environments of the Future.

Prof. Wierzbicki will present a paper “Media Pedagogics in Converged Environments of the Future” at this year’s EuroITV in Tampere, Finland.
ABSTRACT:
Our life patterns and culture increasingly find their roots in visual media: film, video games, internet and multimedia. Visual media shape the image of our world and our society, thereby being, however, somewhat detached from reality, portraying the bold and the beautiful as role models. Entertainment has become a driving force in the creation of films, television programs and the design of computer games. Education and pedagogical aspects are often neglected. Values and norms in our society seem to be continually losing importance. Our society appears to be getting poorer, both financially and intellectually. In this article we demonstrate the potential that can be found in media forms of the future in repect of education and discuss a number of aspects of reader response and aesthetic response in connection with media and violence.
Conference Programme

Professor Artur Lugmayr, renowned expert in the area of ambient media, visited Mittweida in March, 2010. Different topics associated with the GAMECAST project were discussed.
Prof. Lugmayr gave a lecture on Ambient Media and presented the winning projects from the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards.