8/4 Fusion members from the media lab of UIAH, Finland

Since late July of 2008, Kari-Hans Kommonen and Sanna Marttila, the project coordinator and project manager of P2P-Fusion project, and also members of the ARKI (ARKI means “everyday” in Finn) project in the media lab, University of Art and Design Helsinki of Finland, has visited Japan.
Kari-Hans Kommonen and we have known each other since 2000, have done several research events together and shared the possibility of participatory design activities on information technologies and many other matters.
This time, they visited “Zu-Ji workshop” of Yokan Kenkyujo in Kagaku Miraikan, and had travelled to Osaka and Sapporo.
On August 4, we got together at the Fukukate Hall of the University of Tokyo and had a discussion about the future collaboration between Fusion and Media Exprimo. I was very interested in their concept, “co-design”, software “toolkit” for community people. In 2006, they had exhibited some design arts in ARS Electronica. We could get some advices from them for our “Keitai Trail !” workshop at the city of Linz in this September.
Meeting remote friends who shared many many matters encouraged us very much !