2015

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Free

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CREATIVE NORTHERN ENERGY

Games

ELINA DOBELE, MAREUNROL’S, KETA GUTMANE, RIJADA

N WIND SHOWCASE: RIGA

N WIND SHOWCASE: RIGA is proudly supported by

10 21–11 04 THE STRONGEST IN LATVIA

North wind brings new stories and wintry beauty. Come and experience the open

showcase, a space for exchanges.Latvian design pop–up store at V2 CONCEPT

STORE in Vilnius, Dominikonų st. 5

N WIND ENCOURAGES EXCHANGES OF CREATIVE NORTHERN ENERGY

Free magazine about culture and creative business in Northern Europe.

ISSN 2351–647X2015, No. 8Circulation: 7000

Published by JSC BLACK SWAN BRANDS

AddressVilkpėdės g. 22, Vilniuswww.nwindmag.euhello@nwindmag.euwww.facebook.com/nwindmag

The project is partly financed by Lithuanian Council for Culture.

CoverPicture from the creative Latvian duo MAREUNROL’S 2016SS collection.Photo: Martins CirulisModel: Mairis Karklins

AuthorsGiedrė Stabingytė, Karolis Vyšniauskas, Tautė Ber-notaitė, Justina Rutkauskaitė, Judita Malininaitė, Agnė Tuskevičiūtė, Monika Lipšic, Emilie Toomela, Tadas Svilainis, Victoria Diaz.

DesignLaura TulaitėTomas Mozūra, tomas@nwindmag.eu

Printedby Lietuvos rytas print, www.print.lrytas.lt

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Is it the optimum way to learn? Do we choose to hide from reality? Are we immature or is it an innate attribute of competitiveness?

We play because it’s fun! This motive is solid enough, everything else is just an outcome. The entertainment factor is of major importance whilst playing – we become more open, more perceptive, more positive. And not necessarily when we’re winning. New ideas are born during playtime, we communicate and are able to find links with almost anyone. Every game has rules that we can change, perfect, adjust in a way that would suit us. Improving the rules (or the surroundings) makes them more complex, thus the fun factor will increase. Trying something inside a game enables us to try it in “real” life later.

The concept of agreeing on the rules of the game and standing by them is a sign of civilisation. Money with no backup, state borders, tolerance, multiculturalism, diverse measures, morals – it’s all arbitrary, and it exists until we keep the principals and settings of the game. The surroundings alter inevitably over time – there’s no other way around it and there won’t ever be. If we’re crummy players with an even crummier imagination, this may very well lead to our environment changing in a manner that wouldn’t makes us happy. By the way, civilisation is also a game, therefore sometimes it comes to an end. What happens, happens – a few civilisations, due to poor imagination, have already left us. The same might happen in the future, that’s why we must cherish and develop our imagination. At least that’s what Albert Einstein believed.

The line between the given and the desired reality of a game is often particularly thin, and the smaller it gets, the better. Will it ever vanish? Maybe it wasn’t even there? Think about it – we gain skills during a game and then use them in “real” life. Our subconscious makes notes of everything and so anything that occurs around us is real to us. Unified by the passage of time, we’re united in one reality as well.

Openly yours,

N WIND

why DØ wE PLAY?

P. S. One of our favourite games is “Live forever or die trying” – it’s a hard one to win, but someone will make it one day. Soon.

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is just a consequence. I often talk on optimism and pessimism in my bu-siness lectures: many people belie-ve that optimism is an outcome of success, and I say it’s the other way around, it’s more a way of thinking, a way of examining the future. Positi-ve emotions use different systems of our brain than negative ones do, it’s like our brain has a rainy and a sun-ny side. Having that in mind, which one should we focus on? Neuroscien-ce tells us that positive experiences get our neurons “shining”, and the longer they’re active, the stronger the current of our brain’s happiness will be. It’s just like a river – more water means a wider stream. That’s exactly why positive thoughts are so useful to us.

Is this also why you experiment? On “Instagram”, there’s a picture of you strolling with Hare Krishnas without a care in the world. Experimenting and surprising your-self is crucially important! It sets us free to feel profound joy. Of cour-se, it’s also worth taking the time to consciously capture these moments in your head – it’s what I do every evening before going to bed.

PLAYING fOR A bETTER wORLDGIEDRĖ STABINGYTĖ

“The world is the playground” – it’s how a man that I came to Riga for started a creative workshop, all part of a social business event named “The Happy Happy Joy Joy Festival”. Fionn Dobbin was wearing – like in most photos of him – a hat, while he wears several of them at the same time in life: one of a social bu-sinessman, another of a consultant in international projects, an owner of companies, a creator of industri-al design, a lecturer and director of SSE Riga – programme for creati-ve industries and entrepreneurship. This festival is one of Fionn’s pro-jects: he greeted the participants in an old house of Riga, filled with miraculous combinations of woo-den floor, palatial walls, a room full of hey, organic juice studio, techno-logies of virtual reality and positi-ve ideas of social business. Ladies and gentlemen, no scepticism insi-de, please.

“Talking about creativity is like dan-cing about architecture”, Fionn spills it for N WIND, speaking fast and with lively energy. I ask him what was he like as a kid in a children’s play-ground. “I wasn’t that different from what I am today – always an experi-menter and a creator for as long as I can remember. Now, in most pro-jects I’m involved with, I’m a star-ter”. Fionn has his hands on a lot of initiatives, to name a few – a soci-al fashion an design consulting com-pany MAMMU that employs mothers, a social business accelerator SO-CIFACTION, and the newest thing – NOT PERFECT EDUCATION, wor-king with training in the fields of de-sign thinking and entrepreneurship. I would propose that Fionn is a highly valuable player in Latvian and also international communities of busi-ness and creative industries. All pro-jects are built upon a strong group of friends and associates, which Fionn identifies as “game partners”. By the way, he sees constructing tan-gible local bonds as a prime way for the Baltic countries to grow. So what brings good players to your team? “The chemistry of joy, it opens our hearts up”. Thus we start our talk by addressing fun and games.

It feels as if you were born to work happily. Many communication chan-nels know you as HAPPYDOBBIN. What’s the role of joy in your pro-fessional and personal life?HAPPYDOBBIN is a tribute to my Irish great-grandfather. He used to orga-nise greyhound races and thought his dogs were the fastest in the world – that made him immensely happy!

To me happiness is firstly a decisi-on and then a struggle to be in this state. Dedication and passion drives me to do the things I do, and money

Unlike many believe,

optimism is not an outcome of success, it’s

the other way around

KITcHEN TAbLE AS A mANufAcTORY MAMMU was first created as a social entrepreneurship brand that lets Latvian moms with financial troubles be in charge of the manufacturing of clothes. However, in the recent years MAMMU has changed its strategy and now the company is often referred to as “the wiki of fashion”: it develops design and makes products for clients, giving them the chance to have MAMMU in their stories (projects with designer Philippe Malouin, a design studio LLOT LLOV, a live communication bureau CIRC in Germany, etc.). Today the MAMMU community consists of over 30 moms, with Fionn’s wife Ivi leading design and manufacturing works. Photo my MAMMU

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And then you lie down wearing a smile, much like how Marilyn Mon-roe wore perfume? Ha! Exactly right.

You’ve said that social problems must be dealt with joyfully. Yes, it helps people to be better-con-nected to the dynamics of modern life. It’s already hard as it is, and if we address the relevant problems that create tension in our society with a serious face and super strict methods, the decisions we make this way won’t get a lot of support from the people. As I’ve mentioned be-fore, the chemistry of joy opens our

PLAYING fOR A bETTER wORLD

Fionną Dobbiną socialiniuose tin-

kluose galima rasti HAPPYDOBBIN sla-

pyvardžiu. Ivitos Grimenės

nuotr.

I feel committed to show gratitude to my society for all opportunities that I’ve had and to contribute to the positive energy that’s

changing it

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hearts up. I believe in social busi-ness creating a positive energy that can change a society.

During the workshop, you’ve refer-red to a playground as “the begin-ning of creativity and innovations”. What does the game mean to you? Well, playing lets you lose the fear of being judged if you fail. For instance, creating prototypes is quite the playful activity! You come up with ideas, test hypotheses, then give what you have to other people to try out. They bring your toy back and you see that they’ve improved it. Back and forth, again and again. Creation is the dance of creativity.

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Fionn Dobbin: “A play-ground is a space for cre-

ativity and innovative thinking to flourish”.

At first MAMMU used to create shawls of exclusive design whilst collaborating with Latvian designers. Photo by MAMMU

A LOT Of HATSSocial businessman, consultant, owner of companies, lecturer, director of SSE Riga – a programme for creative industries and entrepreneurship. When asked for the secret of successfully wearing all these hats at the same time, Fionn replies: “You need to know your strong and weak sides very well”. Photo from personal archive

Methods of the game allow you to train, but we don’t train muscles this time, we train our potential to get out of the box.

What I do with my students in SSE Riga is I get them out of the city for a week. The surroundings don’t even resemble their usual work environ-ment. Everything is carefully planned all the way from breakfast to the end of the workshop, so they don’t have time to care about anything. The ac-tors, psychologists and innovators that we invite create a platform for games which has no space for com-peting or evaluating. Step by step, we help the students to show us their true creativity. One of my missions is to help people create.

Game partners. How are they diffe-rent from regular partners, collea-gues?When I’m consulting various compa-nies, I often see “tribes” form inside the organisations. This lets compe-tition and rivalry enter the internal culture, and it’s almost never useful

for business. When we start seeing partners and colleagues as players on our team, that’s when hierarchy and fears vanish. Games break the barriers that prevent us from creat-ing together.

You are a strong believer in combi-nations and intermixture of ideas. Isn’t there a chance that a particu-lar idea might dissolve in the mix and lose the attitude that the aut-hor had? Correct, I think that ideas become stronger in teams, yet successful teams can only be formed in a crea-tive and enabling environment. I’m not an opportunity chaser – I’m usu-ally led by passion, therefore it’s

easy for me to share what I do.

How can we get from the play-ground to a place of establishing business processes?Why get there? Creation must take place in real situations, I don’t be-lieve in simulation games. So the playground CAN witness real busi-ness processes – anything from coming up with ideas or solutions to manifesting them though prototypes, testing it all out on the street, iter-ation. Sooner or later it will lead to real success.

Games break the barriers that prevent us from creating together

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How to bring s**t from A to bOne of the first projects of Fionn for solving global problems was “Toi-let Unplugged”, a mobile system of toilets. “2.6 billion people live with-out secure sanitation. For me, social business was always a commitment to use your freedom to create and your knowledge to deal with real is-sues. I dedicated my master’s thesis to this problem”. Soon after start-ing to work on the prototype in his home in Berlin (“most prototypes weren’t good. Also, my friends stopped visiting me – I was feeling quite lonely at the time”), Fionn and his partners realised that they have a big question to answer – how to motivate people to move s**t from A to B? The solution is to use biodigestion to turn organic waste into energy: “A person’s stools of one day has the energy that an iPod needs to play for four hours”. The project was tested for two weeks in India, then became a thesis and a business plan. You can find a fun presentation of it online called shitvideo.

uNITING A TOwNUpon hearing about a Latvian town called Krimulda, where 95% of the population are unemployed, Fionn went there with the most talented students of SSE Riga and international lecturers. “We’ve found true potential. People were growing fruits and vegetables, making great jams, yet had no idea how to approach the market, had no business plan or brand. A business concept, ideas for products and “The Locals” brand was created in cooperation with the local community”. Photo from personal archive

Fionn accepts social business as a possibility to “create mega happi-ness”. One of his first projects in this area was a master’s thesis on in-dustrial design, where he and his game partners were trying to find new ways to make living conditions in poor communities better. Then came the introduction to Dr Mu-hammad Yunus, one of the pioneers of microcredits, world-famous for the “Grameen Bank” project that snatched a Nobel peace prize in 2006. Fionn joined Dr Yunus’ social business accelerator “The Grameen Creative Lab”. It’s obvious that this experience was substantial for Fionn – “The Grameen Creative Lab” is a part of most projects of his, and he quotes Dr Yunus with respect and admiration, especially when stress-ing that social business is the miss-ing link in the theory of economics. “Resources-based economy is turn-ing into a knowledge economy, and it enables us to share our knowledge much easier than we could share our resources. The spread of information and knowledge-related solutions can help us solve such problems as pov-erty”.

“I feel committed to show gratitude to my society for all opportunities that I’ve had and to contribute to the positive energy that’s changing it”, Fionn continues. Hence we resume our conversation on the potential that social business has to create well-being.

You’ve noted that one dollar in cha-rity has a single cycle of life, where-as one dollar in the social business has several cycles. Can you com-ment on that?

Social business, much like a regu-lar one, aims to create a sustainable model of operations, and this model can be more helpful in the case of so-ciety’s tension centres. Social busi-ness grants us a way to create bigger value also because of its main prin-cipal – to invest profit in the develop-ment of such businesses. There are, of course, problems that should be solved by social support institutions.

What triggers social businesses to grow? It depends on a given business mod-el. Many people would be encour-aged by smart uses of technolo-gy, although a lot of social business-es have complex structures. Invest-ment capital may also not be the way to go as another crucial principal of social business is that the investors only get back as much as they’ve in-vested.

Thus the growth, in my opinion, could be stimulated by other factors, for example, the dedication and mo-tivation of individuals or prosumers. There is an increasing tendency of investing in transparent brands that add to the value of society, so the fu-ture of social business can be enter-ing mass markets.

“TEDxRiga” saw you give a speech on “connecting the unconnected”. What ties your different work prac-tices together?The opportunities given to people and the fact that I’m in search of a dedication- and passion-based mo-tivation.

Our newest project NOT PERFECT EDUCATION is a boutique consultan-

cy firm, providing people with train-ing of design thinking and entrepre-neurship. We’ve created it togeth-er with the Not Perfect agency in Latvia, it’s kind of a mutual umbrella brand of ours that connects all op-erations. NOT PERFECT EDUCATION has a main objective which is to cre-ate an environment of possibilities for the teams, help them discover and solve problems with numerous

Lastly, let me ask you about the fes-tival I’ve met you at – will it take place next year? By the way, the name is really uplifting. Ah, we were inspired by a German artist Joseph Beuys’ concept of “so-cial plastic” that explored the po-tential of art changing societies. The festival brings people togeth-er, and these gatherings provoke in-novations. So yes, the festival will

take place next year, and Art & Cul-ture projects will be added to the programme. We’re also planning to take it to Great Britain, Spain and, of course, Germany.

thehappyhappyjoyjoyfestival.comsocifaction.commammu.lvgrameencreativelab.comnotperfecteducation.com

tools of design. We work with com-panies like COSNOVA and GRANINI, but also with social businesses, uni-versities and think tanks. I truly enjoy this! Once again, it’s re-lated to empathy – how to observe, examine, approach people and fo-cus on actual problems that cage them by not letting their true busi-ness potential show? Additionally, each project is very specific, so the routine is gone and that makes it in-teresting!

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GIEDRĖ STABINGYTĖ

Let‘s make it a game. The game starts when the player decides to play. I decide by turning the pag-es of a photo album, one by one (the anxiety of first example!). I let watching take over – it might exhibit more or less, but it conceals a great deal of things. When I’m finally im-mersed, photos intermix and con-vert into stories, into hints that only I get, into emotional impressions.

The album “Public Secrets” (“Viešos paslaptys” in Lithuanian), a collec-

DEVELOPING 57 SEcRETS

tion of city experiences, was pub-lished by photo artist Visvaldas Morkevičius, who urges us to play the game of an explorer: “My big-gest pleasure and passion is to dis-cover”. The exploration covers ele-ments from city nightlife to highly personal spaces. Intimate, subjec-tive, minimalist – the surroundings are resettled in the world of public stories and private truths. Privacy, however, is not infringed: the out-lines of secrets can only be seen as much as it is necessary to expose eloquent details – hints. The pho-tographer believes that the read-er-observer is “the same sort of ex-plorer like the author, just in terms of situations that did already oc-cur; if I don’t stage the moment, the spectator has the freedom to invent his or her own rules”.

“This photo book started off by playing – “Public Secrets” are situa-tions that I’ve found myself in while exploring. I showed the archived bits to my wife Milena and an art critic Aušra Trakšelytė, it’s when we began to work on the whole series – we then had to go through all the photo films and digitalize a couple of boxes of them. 96 pages contain 57

Vilnius-based photographer Visvaldas Morkevičius works and creates in the

areas of art documentary, fashion and portrait photography, visual arts.

Photo by Marius Trajanauskas

Visvaldas Morkevičius and Aušra Trakše-lytė – authors of “Public Secrets”. Desi-

gner – Tomas Mrazauskas. Photo by Visvaldas Morkevičius

DEVELOPING 57 SEcRETS

57 secrets were developed and sewed into 96 pages with orange threads. Photo by Visvaldas Morkevičius

photos, yet much more of them are in my memories – I simply plunge into the moment when I don’t have the opportunity to capture it”.

“Public Secrets” were presented in the Berlin bookstore “Motto”, in the Arts Printing House in Vilnius and told in “Unseen Photo Fair” festival in Amsterdam.

www.visvaldas.com

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NO cHILD’S PLAY (ANYmORE)KAROLIS VYšNIAuSKAS

Everything you knew about video games is no longer true, and it’s good news to all of us.

No, computer games are not for children who have too much spare time. In fact, compu-ter games don’t even require a computer – their world is now the world of phones, tablets and Fa-cebook.

Yes, many games that the entire world plays were created in the Baltics. Yes, Lithuanian universities and state institutions don’t see games as a waste of time anymore, they accept the industry as a promising business sector that needs knowledge and investment. If we keep the pace up, Lithuania may become the next Finland – a place where the game “Angry Birds” was born.

Some of us haven’t even heard of all this, because creators of video games are mostly quiet intro-verts. Much like an artist paints on canvas, they spend countless days perfecting the games, yet they struggle to tell the stories of their games to others, and there aren’t that many listeners so far.

games and speaks about the whole industry to outsiders, those who show interest or those who still are a bit sceptical. The Ukrainian lives here since 2008, knows the language and he became one of the first people in this country that under-stood the value of games for mobile phones.

At the moment Oleg is a member of the “Game In-sight” team. The company works with both mo-bile and social games, has over 800 employees worldwide, over 176,000 followers on Facebook and a reputation of a significant part of the global industry. It was a pleasant surprise that “Game Insight” is based in Vilnius, but this was only one of the many surprises from the chat with Oleg about computer games in the Baltics.

So, computer games vs mobile games. “If a person is 30 years of age and he hears the words ‘computer games’, he instantly thinks about a desktop computer and the games that were there when he was a teenager. If he’s 20, he’s already thinking about mobile games, the ones that we talk about when we talk about games in general today – not PC or gaming con-sole ones.

How do we look in the worldwide market of games? Like talented youngsters.

We meet Oleg Pridiuk in the centre of Vilnius. The man has a kind of sacred duty – he’s an evange-list of the games industry. Oleg promotes various

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NO cHILD’S PLAY (ANYmORE)Games for mobile phones got big quite recently. In 2005, the most popular smartphones were No-kias with an integrated “Symbian” system. They were expensive and had screens of relatively poor quality; the devices didn’t have a proper vid-eo card. “Apple” changed everything by present-ing the iPhone – it had a powerful video inter-face that was suitable for games. This didn’t hap-pen on purpose – “Apple” wasn’t thinking specif-ically about games, the company just wanted the phone to have a pretty menu. Soon “Apple Store” was born, and creators could easily upload their games onto it, the gamers could download them.

Nowadays mobile games are very popular among both children and adults. Moms with kids, busi-nessmen and absolutely anyone else – if they have a spare minute, they play”.

Who creates games in the Baltic region?“I would mention “Game Insight”, “NordCurrent”, “Tag of Joy”, “On5” – these are the main compa-nies in our country. Since their headquarters are in Lithuania, they see themselves as Lithuanian businesses. These companies create games that

are hits throughout the world and have millions of people playing them, for example, “Cloud Raid-ers” – a strategic action game that enables you to literally conquer the sky using your own army. Estonia has a company named “Creative Mobile”, Belarus has “Wargaming”, and both of these are also very impressive.

Lithuania contains only 3 million people, yet there are around 50 companies that create games. It may be small games, not always successful, but these are great statistics and definitely an admi-rable start. Most of these companies are young and they need to fail a few more times to make it.

If we keep the pace up, we could become the next Finland, a place where “Angry Birds” and “Clash of Clans” were born. A few success stories made Finland’s game industry into a magnet for invest-ments”.

This is how Poland and Sweden rank in the global market in relation to income from video games. The economic forecast for income from this market in 2015 is: Poland – 408 million US dollars, Sweden – 346 million US dollars. It’s worth noting that Sweden has almost three times less gamers in its inland industry than Poland does.

GAmES IN NumbERS

Second to last: according to the 2012 numbers, the whole circula-tion of 28 EU countries was 16 bil-lion euro, which is one of the small-est out of eleven CCI (Cultural and Creative Industries) sectors. 2

IDATE and “Gartner” have forecasted a 9% growth in global income of vid-eo games from 2012 to

2015, which is one of the highest in CCI sectors. +9

The EU holds third place in video games production after the USA and Japan. Historically speaking, countries that had a quality back-ground in games hardware were stronger in terms of market com-petition, but open selling and com-

munication platforms for computer and mobile games allowed European companies to secure a third position.

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The mobile games mar-ket will double in size ×2

2013 – 17.5 billion US dollars2015 – 30.3 billion US dollars2017 – 40.8 billion US dollars

Global games industry income from mobile games

Source: “Newzoo” and “AppLift”

Sources: An audit company EY has published a full-scale analysis on the economic state of the European CCI in December 2014. www.ey.com

“Newzoo”

Dynamics: two EU mobile games developers earned more money in 2013 than the whole mobile games industry of EU did in 2012.

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Games on the Internet are free – where does the money come from?“Yes, like most things on the Internet, the games are now free – downloading them doesn’t cost anything, but the model of microtransaction was created. The game is free of charge, however if you become attached to it and wish to purchase an additional supplement for it – this will cost you a dollar, two, maybe ten.

Let’s say you’re playing a war game. You have your army ready and you’re fighting a digit-al opponent or your friend, suddenly realising that your soldiers are too weak. You can then buy stronger soldiers and win the battles. When you’re emotionally attached to the game, it’s hard to resist that. And the game puts pressure on you to purchase things – this is the model used in or-der to make money, to get real profit from virtu-al things. A player might pay 10 dollars a month, but he also might spend 100 dollars a day.

Obviously, there is now a risk that big spend-ers will always win, so the creators try to find

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the balance – players that buy less but spend more hours playing the game can still have the same chances of winning”. If game developers in Lithuania are so success-ful, why don’t we hear much about them? “It’s irrelevant where people are if everyone up-loads their games onto the same “App Store”. You can be in the Bahamas, you can be Turkish or In-dian – you just require a fast Internet connection to give your game to the whole world. Anyone can buy and play it. That’s the reason people don’t usually mention where they are, because this in-formation is just not important. It’s completely natural that you might be playing a game creat-ed in Lithuania and not know anything about the Lithuanian industry behind it.

Game developers, unlike other start-up people, don’t think about money that much. Most games are created because of a simple reason – the pleasure of creating games. Many individuals aim to make an entertaining quality product, not to make money, kind of like a sculptor who creates art without thinking about profit”.

How do we look in the worldwide market of games? “Well, we look like talented youngsters, and ‘youngsters’ is the key word here. There were al-ways people in Lithuania who tried to create something, then left the country for a place that allowed them to really create, not just try. Unlike in other progressive countries, game education was absent here, so was the overall understand-ing of the market.

The Netherlands is a good example. They have games incubators next to universities, and mas-sive companies reside there. An ecosystem was

constructed to help a young person or a pupil to get into the business of computer games. There was space to fail, so before you start working on something big, you already had relevant experi-ence and a bunch of important contacts.

The ecosystem in Lithuania is just about to spring up, and it’s all happening so fast. I already hear people talking about games incubators. We now have the education matters covered, even an as-sociation for game developers. We’ve started a dialogue with state institutions. If you wish to be-come an artist, designer, programmer of games or just be a part of the process, you can go to the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics in Vilnius University, to VGTU, to KTU or to Mykolas Rom-eris University. The latter even offers a course that has you living in Vilnius for two years, and in South Korea for the other two”.

What’s next? “Games are being taken seriously in Lithua-nia. It’s now obvious that the industry of games is a business sector, and it’s no child’s play. And that’s a crucial change.

I had people from “Invest in Lithuania” visit me two years ago – it was their idea. They said: “We have Barclays, Western Union and other big names here that have created a lot of jobs. But often a young person that could become a profi-cient programmer ends up at a helpdesk”. There is no helpdesk in the games industry – everyone creates solid value. The government of Lithua-nia has finally realised that and things started to happen. It became evident that games are cool, and that it’s all cool for both the people and the country – after all, this is business.

If we look to our neighbours from all directions – Russia, Belarus, Ukraine – game education is le-gally impossible there, and that’s the legacy of the Soviet era. Lithuania is much more liberal about it. Estonia also has amazing things happen-ing, but it’s a tiny country, so they progress a bit slower. Latvia has other markets that are a great deal stronger than the one of games, so it leaves Lithuania as the most powerful country in terms of game developing in the Baltics.

But we only need to take one glance at Poland and we’ll realise how much work is still ahead of us, and even more so if we look at Scandinavia. On the other hand, especially among our neigh-bours, we’re the strongest, we’re very fast-grow-ing. The education in the relevant field will hope-fully help us catch up to other countries. We have a pace that we must keep. People will finish courses in universities and create games. Statis-tically, at least one of those games will become very successful. So far we can only be proud of the growing community of developers – we don’t yet have our super hits, but let’s be patient”.

There is no helpdesk in the games industry – everyone creates solid value.

“Enterprise Lithuania” association:

“wE NEED mORE SPEcIALISTS Of GAmES”We see the clear potential of the games industry and we aim to help Lithuania become a valuable and global player in this market. We promote ga-mes through the communication of success sto-ries during relevant events. The number of parti-cipants shows that the interest is high, thus the industry has huge potential, even though the main challenge for our progress is the lack of dedicated professionals – from specific programmers to the ones good at story telling.

P.S.EXCEPT FOR SHARKS, THEY’LL KILL YOU. IT’S NOT WORTH THE RISK WHEN NOT READY.

AND YOU CAN’T BE READY FOR SOMETHING IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE RULES OF THE GAME THAT’S ABOUT TO BE PLAYED. YOU MIGHT BE SPECTACULAR ON THE TATAMI, HAVE ALL THOSE BELTS, DANS, TITLES, BUT OUT

IN THE STREET… THE SURFACE IS SLIPPERY, THERE ARE NO REFEREES, THE LIGHTING IS BAD, SO YOU’LL HAVE YOUR TEETH KNOCKED-OUT. WHY? THERE ARE RULES IN SPORT, YET NONE ON THE STREETS.

WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE ABSENCE OF REGULATIONS, ABOUT SURVIVING IN CHAOS. NOT WINNING, SURVIVING. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE DOBERMAN IS NOT ABOUT WINNING UNDER ARTIFICIAL CONDITIONS, IT’S ABOUT ACTING UNDER

NATURAL ONES. THE STREET ALWAYS PLAYS A TRICK – ACTION WITHOUT RULES MEANS TREACHERY AND SURPRISE. IT’S BRUTAL, THAT’S WHY IT’S SO DREADFULLY CLOSE TO REALITY. THE PHILOSOPHY STARTS WHERE THIS QUESTION ARISES – AM I IMPORTANT TO THE WORLD? NO, YOU’RE NOT. HOWEVER, AS AN INDIVIDUAL, YOU ARE A WORLD. AND IF YOU’RE

IMPORTANT TO YOURSELF, THERE’S A SLIGHT CHANCE THAT THE WORLD WILL NOTICE. THAT IS, OF COURSE, IF YOU WON’T GET EATEN BY SHARKS AT YOUR SOLID JOB IN A BANK OR IN ANY OTHER GRIM HELLHOLE WHERE THEY PAY “FOOD MONEY”

AND LET YOU WEAR A SUIT WHILST BLABBING ON ABOUT ECONOMIC PROSPECTS.

YOUR PARENTS CONTRIBUTED TO YOU BECOMING A LAWYER, BANKER OR DOCTOR – THEY HAD A POOR IMAGINATION AND WANTED A SAFETY BLANKET FOR THEMSELVES, THUS THEY INVESTED IN ALL THAT. I

DON’T REALLY GIVE A RAT’S ASS WHETHER YOU DO HAVE A DOBERMAN IN YOU OR NOT – NOBODIES USUALLY SQUANDER IT IN THE FIRST YEARS OF STUDIES. IF BY ANY CHANCE IT’S STILL ALIVE IN YOU – USE THAT

POWER, IT WILL BECOME EXTREMELY HANDY IN THE STREET. OH, MY APOLOGIES – YOU WON’T GET INTO STREET FIGHTS, BECAUSE YOU NEVER FIND YOURSELF IN OFF-THE-RECORD SITUATIONS. LIES! THE TIME WILL COME AND THERE WILL BE NO RULES. I KNOW YOU CAN FEEL IT IN YOUR FLABBY BOTTOM EVERY SINGLE DAY.

FRANKLY,YOUR ENEMY

W W W . D O B E R M A N - I N S I D E . E U

“WHATEVER DOESN’T KILL YOU, SIMPLY MAKES YOU STRANGER”THE JOKER

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Julita Varanauskienė Family finance expert at SEB bank

According to this duo, it’s beneficial for children to see a developing family business. Can you justify that kids who are raised by parents that have a business venture tend to manage their own finances and time better when they grow up? Is there a correlation between children of enterprising parents and the careers these kids choose?

It’s scientifically proven that parents have a huge influence on the way their children will manage the financial affairs and plan their future by ig-noring short-term benefits in order to concen-trate on long-term prospects. Firstly, parents act as role models – do they save or spend, buy things impulsively or are able to control the ex-

penses? Children intercept these patterns. Secondly, there is always advice and teaching – if kids and parents talk about financial matters or decisions, then the little ones will be bet-ter at planning, better at con-trolling personal outgoings.

Parents can also urge their children to have particular practices – open a savings ac-count or at least obtain a pig-gy bank, help them get a pay-ment card and explain how to use it and what it’s for. Final-ly, mothers and fathers have a big impact on how independent their kids will be, for instance, by letting the child decide what do to with his own allowance

Family finance expert at SEB bank Julita Varanauskienė holding a clock by INDI. Picture by Reda Mickevičiūtė

now, hence objects like these easily find their tar-get audience”, Justė notes. She stresses that cli-ents appreciate the originality of INDI products and especially the illusion created by the specif-ic fabrics. Simonas adds that there is now much more pride in focusing on national brands: “It’s wonderful to be a part of this tendency”.

INDI has found its clients quite early, and that’s

TAuTĖ BERNoTAITĖ

Minimalism. That’s the style behind their pieces named “Kaba”, “Tiksi”, “Buda”, “Tumba”, “Cita-ta”. And that’s how you should see them today – as the authors of thrifty yet spacious ideas. Justė Kubilinskaitė and Simonas Tarvydas are more than just a duo, they’re a tandem, a couple and a family that’s going in the same direction for over 18 years. And, two years ago, their design brand INDI was born.

INDI is mostly associated with the design of illu-minators and “Kabo” in particular – a hanging, half-round, monumental shell that resembles a rock made from stone, but is actually light as pa-per. In fact, “Kabo” is literally made from paper – not only the duo has found a unique voice, their process of working with fabrics is also authentic. Heavyweight-looking monolithic figures are airy paper objects, much like papier mâché. Simonas has carefully perfected a technique that makes the products long-lasting and sturdy.

The eco-oriented brand gives used fabrics a sec-ond chance – most INDI items are made from old newspapers. This method is convenient in terms of costs as well. “We get the principal materials for free, so it’s very favourable business-wise. By the way, the sustainability and an environmental-ly friendly approach gives additional value to our products. People take consuming more seriously

Ideas as light as paper

A mutual feel of aesthetics saves energy

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DuETSwhy Justė and Simonas see it more than just a self-expression practice: “INDI wasn’t a busi-ness venture at first. The desire to create and work on our own ideas acted as a stimulus to start the brand. People have noticed and appreci-ated it eventually, we were invited to various ex-hibitions and have received many offers to begin selling our items. Therefore the satisfying activ-ity became a source of income, a business”. INDI ensured financial stability to the duo a year after

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DO YOU CREATE TOGETHER? HAVE SOME PLANS?

Register for the personal consultation about financial aspects at SEB.

– spend it or save it for something important? These things can be taught by any parents – free-lancers, employees or the ones that have their own businesses, however it’s obvious that this re-quires time and honest communication with the children. Scientific literature tells us that if the parents are businesspeople, the chance of kids becoming businesspeople is 1.3 to 3 times great-er, they may even end up working in the same sector. And not only because the children will in-herit the family business or get the very need-ed initial funding, but because they learn how to be enterprising from the actions of their parents, they get specific knowledge of a particular in-dustry, they have access to a bigger network of contacts, they get (genetically) or acquire (while growing up) relevant skills, character features and a certain system of values.

The couple takes care of their children’s future funds. What practical advice would you give

starting-out businesspeople who have a fami-ly and wish to secure a safe financial future for their kids?

The fact that they put money into investment ac-counts shows a rational intention to ensure a fu-ture where their daughters don’t depend only on the family’s creative business. Early efforts to save money and to invest in your children’s upbringing can lead to pretty good results, at least better results than those of parents that start thinking about it all when their kids are al-most adults. As important as accumulated funds are to the children, it’s also crucial to help your child find and nourish his talents, prepare him for adulthood by spending your time with him, share the knowledge and be a solid example.

form and texture that sort of look like the Moon. The couple received a “Good Design” award from the Ministry of Culture in May 2015, so the stu-dio that has been active for two years already has a product that deserves some of the best lau-rels in the country. The duo made the right choice to work not solely on illuminators: “When a crea-tive idea comes across, it doesn’t matter wheth-er it will be a lamp or any other element of inte-rior. We didn’t want to cage ourselves with only one product group – that would limit the flow of creativity”.

Three daughters that the couple is raising seem not to limit their creative abilities either. The bal-ance between family and family business is kept by avoiding tension: “Our weekends and evenings are usually dedicated to family time. Maybe we’re not true businesspeople since we don’t sacrifice all of our time to work. INDI is a part of our exist-ence that also naturally fits in to our daily life”. Justė and Simonas believe that a family business is a valid example for their children who watch how parents work, how they make money, plan their time and share responsibilities: “It urges our kids to start thinking about their future and a path that they might choose later. A profound and sincere way of communicating is the best mean of upbringing”. Does this business enable the couple to save for their children’s future? “Actually we’ve been taking care of this long before we had our own business – each month we put payments into investment funds for our daughters. Since we’ve started doing that some time ago, we’ve chosen the monthly payments to be relatively small”, the duo explains.

Simonas, one of the two captains of the tandem’s ship, created the method of working with fabrics that makes INDI stand out. He met Justė in the academy of arts, and later went on to work in an advertising agency, but gave up that position and concentrated on creating a family business. INDI is now the main activity for Simonas – he gener-ates ideas and creates design. Justė works as a fashion editor and stylist for 15 years, and late-ly is teaching the basics of style and image. She applies her skill set and knowledge by promot-ing the INDI brand and looking after the overall conceptions behind it. The daughters are not just passive observers, they also suggest own ide-as. “Most of our weekends are spent in the sum-mer house, and sometimes we all just hold hands and take walks through the Old Town streets of Vilnius. Every few years we arrange a bigger trip abroad – last time we rented out a castle in Southern Italy. Holidays like these give you re-markable experiences and memories”. The duo believes that design objects should trigger sim-ilar reactions – they should stimulate the imagi-nation, induce discussions and foster the unique-ness of Lithuanian design.

the brand was launched.

11 illuminators, 2 clocks and around 10 other de-sign objects – including an instrument to hold the book while reading in the bathtub or a small house for cats without any bolts or screws – are in the creative portfolio of INDI. All items have the same genetic code, it’s Baltic minimalism with a Nordic feel. “We’re northerners, so we tend to praise moderate forms, natural materials and pu-rity. That inspires us to create a distinctive kind of

aesthetics, based on brightness and witty ide-as”, Justė says. She agrees that a couple that creates together needs to have a similar un-derstanding of aesthetics – it saves time that would otherwise be wasted on arguing.

Even though INDI is famous for lighting ob-jects, “Tiksi”, a round clock made from the same paper mass, received a lot of atten-tion as well. It’s almost as mystical as time it-self. No numbers, two reticent arrows, plus a

SEb × N wIND:

Picture by Reda Mickevičiūtė

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NATuRE‘S cHESS SETJuSTINA RuTKAuSKAITĖ

“So you’re playing God, aren’t you?” – when you’re a representative of the natural scienc-es, you tend to hear this rampant mantra of so-ciety quite often. Humans have always felt an ir-resistible desire to get to know nature, under-stand it and control it, create it according to our own rules. We have cross-bred plants and ani-mals, sometimes even very different species, we got new and surprising results and kept looking for ways to produce artificial life. The develop-ing technologies of genetic engineering became a weapon in the hands of scientists. A weapon that could make the impossible possible.

According to data from ISAAA (The Internation-al Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Ap-plications), the territory of genetically modified crops in the world was 1.815 million square kil-ometres in 2014, 40% of which was in the USA, 23% - Brazil, and 13% in Argentina. Genetical-ly modified organisms are so far pretty contro-versial and, for many people, are associated with fear. This fear, however, usually originates from the lack of knowledge or the excess of shallow, scandalous and skin-deep information that soci-ety receives about the matter. For more than two decades scientists have been working on plants that would be extreme-conditions-resistant and which would give us twice as much crops.

Genetically engineered plants can produce var-ious materials that humans require, for example, “golden rice” synthesizes beta carotene and pro-tects us from going blind while also reducing the risk of children dying from Vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. Such plants are used in the manufacturing of plastic, renewable biofuel and even pharmaceuticals – a group of Norwegian scientists led by Jihong Liu Clarke are now work-ing on a Dengue fever vaccine.

Scientific experiments with animals and hu-mans are strictly regulated by laws. Until now, clinical research that involves modifying genet-ic information of humans was only allowed if the cells were somatic (that means the changes will not be passed on genetically). Recently professor Junjiu Huang and his colleagues used “CRISPR/Cas9” for the first time – it’s a technology that acts as “molecular scissors” and edits the “inac-tive” zygotes in the human genome. The aim of this project was to change the mutated gene that determines beta thalassemia into a healthy one. Unfortunately, the procedure wasn’t that effec-tive and caused additional mutations in other lo-cations – the research is stopped until the tech-nology will be safe and reliable.

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The CRISPR system is also used in the project of cloning a mammoth. The technology humani-ty has does not yet allow us to recreate this or-ganism that went extinct thousands of years ago, thus the cut-and-paste principal is used to trans-fer the essential genes (that determine mam-moth’s physiology) into a closely-related Asian elephant. It is expected to create a genetical-ly modified animal that would look, behave and adapt to cold environments like the mammoth.

Another interesting and novel sector that’s get-ting more and more attention is synthetic biolo-gy. The goal here is to create organisms or bio-logical systems that don’t exist in nature or can’t originate naturally. For instance, a group of sci-entists from the USA led by Craig Venter change the genetic code of pigs so that their lungs could be transplanted to humans (xenotransplantation).

However, such research causes scientists to end up walking on very thin ethical ice: it’s difficult to ascertain whether we as humans should be cre-ating artificial life, bringing back extinct spe-cies, changing the DNA of our children and hav-ing influence on the genetic changes that can be passed on. Won’t a person’s identity and dignity be infringed, won’t genetic diversity be reduced and won’t it become just a tool for commercial medicine and eugenics?

Working in genetic engineering requires scientif-ic knowledge as well as creative thinking. A ques-tion was brought up – can we combine art with flasks, test-tubes, petri dishes, microscopes and other lab equipment? The Australian duo Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr proved that the symbiosis of contemporary art and science is possible.

The project of these bioart pioneers called “Tis-sue Culture and Art” became very popular. Some of the most impressive works were named “Vic-timless Leather” – a thumb-sized jacket made from mouse tissue inside a glass ball, “Pig wings” – three pairs of wings grown from pig tissue, “Semi-Living Steak” – an artwork grown from em-bryonic stem cells of sheep and frogs, served as dinner in the “L’Art Biotech” exhibition in France. These Frankenstein-like pieces provoke internal confusion and almost erase the boundaries be-tween “alive” and “dead”. Also, a strong mes-

sage about the relevant questions for the socie-ty is being sent to the observer – for example, is commercial biotechnology and eugenics a real threat?

One more pioneer or bioart is Eduardo Kac, who provoked a huge social discussion in 2000 by re-vealing Alba – a genetically modified, green-glow-ing bunny. During the collaboration with a French geneticist Louis Marie Houdebine, the animal got the GFP-coding (Green Fluorescent Protein) gene of a medusa (Aequorea victoria) inserted into Alba’s genome. Kac wanted to introduce the soci-ety to this new and controversial form of art, also to encourage discussions about existential mat-ters. Of course, some scientists and protectors of animal rights were angry – they said the art piece was biologically unethical.

2009 saw the artist do an experiment that was equally radical – he created “Edunia”, a hybrid of a human and a petunia, it’s basically a “planti-mal”. The DNA that controls human protein was extracted from the blood cells of Kac himself and inserted into the genome of a plant. Genetic man-ifestation takes place only in the red “veins” of the rose leafs, similar to the blood-vessels peo-ple have, so this was the artist’s way to portray closeness between lifeforms.

Life sciences are becoming a source of inspira-tion for more and more individuals, yet this kind of creation needs specific conditions and labo-ratory equipment, which is usually very expen-sive and hard to obtain. That’s exactly why artists tend to get together into groups, organise a kind of “garage workshops” and are looking for labs to collaborate with. The demand for similar creative spaces stimulated bioart centres and communi-ties to grow.

An art laboratory “SymbioticA” was the first one of its kind in the world, managed by the men-tioned O. Catts in Australia. Practical workshops and the development of creative ideas is of cru-cial importance here, especially when combining it all with scientific evidence. The creators should be ready for the critical attacks on their work and they must be profoundly informed about any pos-sible cultural or ethical problems that might oc-cur when manipulating lifeforms.

NATuRE‘S cHESS SET

Humans have always felt an irresistible desire to get to know nature

“Victimless Leather” is a thumb-si-zed jacket made from mouse tissue

inside a glass ball. Authors: Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr.

Photo from www.drewwylie.net

The closeness between lifeforms reveals itself in the project “Edunia” by Eduardo Kac: the DNA that controls human protein was extracted from the blood cells of Kac and inserted into the genome of a plant. Genetic manifestation takes place only in the red “veins” of the rose leafs, similar to the blood-vessels people have. Photos from www.ekac.org

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Alba is a genetically modified green-glowing bunny. Artist Eduardo Kac, in collaboration with a French geneticist Louis Marie Houdebine, inserted a gene of a medusa (Aequorea Victoria) into the genome of this animal. Photos from www.ekac.org

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Justina Rutkauskaitė has graduated from mo-lecular biology and genetics at Vilnius Universi-ty. She continues studying and researching at the university’s Institute of Biotechnology, in the Li-nas Mažutis’ laboratory of microfluids. By collab-orating with the ETH Zurich (one of the leading international universities for technology and the natural sciences), Justina works on a system of microflow that’s based on drops – it searches for cells that secrete single monoclonal antibodies.

TERmS uSEDGenetic engineering – transferring one or sever-al genes from one organism to another. Beta carotene – the predecessor of Vitamin A that is used to produce Vitamin A in the liver. Dengue fever – an abrupt disease carried by mosquitos, caused by the Dengue virus. It’s very dangerous and is spreading in the tropics. Somatic cells – any cells of the body except sperm and egg cells.

Beta thalassemia – a genetic blood disease that causes disruptions in the production of haemo-globin. Xenotransplantation – the transferring of live cells, tissue or organs from an organism of one species into a one of a different species. Eugenics – a pseudoscientific theory which states that life sciences can improve the qualities of a person that are passed on genetically.

“The Semi-Living Worry Dolls” are sculptures created in an “artificial womb”, a bioreactor that grows McCoy cells on top of degradable polymers and is sewed up with surgeon threads. The dolls are like a modern ver-sion of the Guatemalan “trouble dolls” – kids used to take them into bed to solve any problems they had. Photo from www.biofaction.com

Finland stands out in Europe – in 2008, a bio-art society was created in Kilpisjärvi, it supports projects of art and nature sciences, provides lab equipment, organises talks on bioscience, bio-technologies and bioethics.

Actually, Lithuania is quite advanced in the field od biotechnology as well, its sector for life sci-ences is one of the strongest in Central and East-ern Europe, with product exports reaching 80%. Additionally, due to high intellectual potential and qualification of employees, favourable business conditions and European Union’s financial sup-port, the country is attracting more and more foreign investors, and young/future scientist feel substantial here.

“Mobile bioclass” was a very successful project of Vilnius University and “Thermo Fisher Scien-tific”. It’s the first mobile laboratory in Lithua-nia that introduced pupils to the freshest info on life sciences and gave them a chance to experi-ment. Furthermore, there is a Joint Life Sciences Centre in “Saulėtekis” that’s about to be finished – not only will it ensure great work conditions for scientists and students, it will create non-stand-ard spaces too. It’s a new place for communicat-ing, finding partners and coming up with innova-tive ideas for research and business.

Bioart is taking its first steps in Lithuania, but the interest of the society in nature sciences is growing. The first ones to take this path were

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JuDITA MALININAITĖ

Arts Printing House in Vilnius will hosted around 300 Lithuanian teachers on October 15th, even more people will listened to the discus-sion via Internet. A mutual goal here is finding new ways to teach crea-tively, hear new ideas out and take a glance at the innovations of this sector.

A Finnish company SCOOL is taking courageous steps into the world by helping the education system. Be-ing a start-up, SCOOL was creat-ed by some of the most successful Finnish TV producers Saku Tuom-inen and Juha Tynkkynen, also “the father” of Finnish Internet banking – Pekka Viljakainen. 1 million USD was invested in the company in 2015 by a leading Northern media group Sanoma. More and more teachers gather each year to experience the system that helps them do their job. The “Campus” programme is where exclusive seminars for teachers are organised, with the freshest infor-mation being presented and a prop-er amount of attention dedicated to this profession in terms of fostering communication. We’ve met an ex-ecutive producer of “Campus” sem-inars, Mr Lasse Leponiemi, to chat about the project and the education system.

ScOOL – A NEw PLAYER IN EDucATION

“Mokslas ir menas”, a public institution that in-itiates and organises international projects, in-troduces science in an authentic and interest-ing way.

Biotechnology is developing faster and faster, so it’s crucial to educate scientists about responsi-bility, and also about the respect for research ob-jects. A social evolution should take place as well – the society needs to be constantly updated and their consciousness should be fostered, leading to an open discussion. Isaac Asimov once noted: “The saddest aspect of life right now is that sci-ence gathers knowledge faster than society gath-ers wisdom”. It’s exactly at this particular point that bioart could implement a significant mission – provide undistorted facts about the possibili-ties of biotechnologies and the achievements in this area. Rather than just shocking the observer, this should be done in a comprehensible manner that would trigger solid discussions about rele-vant problems.

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Can SCOOL be called a platform for playing whilst also learning? Or is it more a social game? A social net-work? Yes and no. We don’t create games or games-related products, we don’t aim to develop a social net-work or anything like it, yet our ex-isting system of teachers created it-self, and did it rather accidently. Our mission is to help teachers and schools change. Everything devel-ops so quickly, and it’s hard to keep up. This creates enormous pressure for schools, and dealing with it may get very complicated. We wish to give teachers innovative education-al material to work with and to make their job easier. We believe that we’ll see vast changes in education next year, and this will happen on three different levels.Firstly, studying itself will change its philosophy. Previously, learn-ing something meant learning it by heart – now all the info we need is around us. A teacher’s role will be to guide young people in understand-ing this data, create schemes and select elements in accordance to their needs. Often these skills are referred to as “21st century skills”. SCOOL talks about thinking, simpli-fying the skills and making it all ac-cessible – “Triplet”, a service we provide, was created exactly for that purpose. Secondly, digitalisation and new

technologies are finding their way into education really fast. Recent years saw schools of various coun-tries invest millions in gadgets: tablet computers, smart boards, etc. Technologies allow us to have new learning experiences, such as “flipped classroom” or “blended ed-ucation”. A good example of that is “Dreamdo Schools”. Thirdly, education is now more glo-bal than ever. Anyone, anywhere, at

any given time, with the help of an Internet connection, can access an endless amount of scientific sourc-es. Pupils and students have more opportunities to find quality materi-al, and our “Campus” seminars pro-vide the same opportunity to teach-ers in order to keep the teaching process advanced.

Tell us about “Campus” semi-nars and “Dreamdo Schools” pro-grammes. How does it work? By the way, you’ve mention in past in-terviews that two additional pro-grammes are coming this spring. “Campus” seminars help teachers to fully understand the changes outside schools: 3D printing, robot drones, biohacking, political and financial af-fairs, sexuality, pop culture, brain science and so forth. “Campus” con-sists of three parts: seminars all around the world, video lectures for teachers and “Campus Change Re-port”, an Internet magazine. “Dreamdo Schools” is a tool for teachers, allowing them to docu-ment various projects that students work on in classes – this makes the learning process a bit simpler and more fun. Projects – big or small – can be easily put into a system and shared with pupils, other groups or parents. For instance, it’s a great way to capture a drama play being created and then presented to an audience. Our new project “Triplet” was launched on September 14th in Fin-land. It’s a service that will turn evening news into learning mate-rial for tomorrow. Everyday Finn-ish teachers are able to use a fresh injection of news as a part of their plan for the day. It makes studying much more relevant and helps pu-pils to understand the world better.And the fourth project… well, let’s talk about it in November.

Seminars in Poland and Finland were very successful. Others will be organised in Atlanta, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Vilnius in 2015. How is it going here? Are people in-terested? “Campus Vilnius” is fully booked, and teachers will be able to see it online, through our website. We wanted to create a programme that would interest, excite and be academic at the same time. We will hear speeches on jobs of the fu-ture, music careers, joy and psychic health, social press, propaganda and sexuality.

Prior to proposing your idea to a country, you probably examine the education system there. What’s the situation in Lithuania?Many countries should appreciate the profession of a teacher more as they are people that form the per-ceptions of our kids. Overall, the Lithuanian education system gives good results with lim-ited resources. Youngsters eas-ily find solid work in other coun-tries after graduating from educa-tion institutions here. It can be a pro and a con at the same time, with the main question being “do these sharp-minded people come back, do they start businesses here or from here?”

You’ve made learning into a game, helped teachers achieve their goals, attracted investors – all via Internet. Do you think that SCOOL, a start-up, could change actual schools in the future?The change itself always seems slow – it’s as if nothing is really happen-ing. But then we start noticing the results, for example, the first “Cam-pus” seminar was organised five years ago – it was a great event for the teachers of Helsinki. We never thought it just might turn into an in-ternational phenomenon after a few years. The good luck we are having now was not an overnight success. De-spite SCOOL being a relatively new company, we’re working in the ed-ucation sector for over a decade. We’re committed to help teachers in this ever-changing world. They like the work we do and I think they feel appreciated.

“Campus Vilnius” will take place in Vilnius, at Menų Spaustuvė (Arts Printing House), on October 15th. campusseminar.com/vilnius

ScOOL – A NEw PLAYER IN EDucATION

We believe that we’ll see vast changes in

education next year

11.03, 11.10-12

WHAT? Slush 2015WHERE? Exhibition and Convention Center Messukeskus, Helsinki, FinlandWHEN? November 3rd, 10-12WHY? Slush conference with the pre-events, Nordic showcase, featuring 10 most promising tech startups from the Nordics and the Startup academy, draws together a crowd of 15.000 tech entrepreneurs, VCs and journalists. The program is a compilation of firesides and talks from entrepreneurs and investors, covering meaningful topics, lessons and business cases.www.slush.org

11.07-07

WHAT? Conference of creativity „What’s Next 2015“WHERE? Loftas Art Factory, Vilnius, LithuaniaWHEN? November 6-7th

WHY? This is the biggest international conferen-ce for creative people in the Baltics, where visu-al culture meets business, science and technolo-gy. And this is the time and place where delega-tes from different industries will answer the ques-tion “what’s next?”. Also be ready for the live vir-tual reality jam with 10 different teams and one challenge.www.whatsnext.lt

10.21WHAT? Play for Real WHERE? Cinematheque, Copenhagen, DenmarkWHEN? October 21st WHY? Games are getting real! Game seminar will take a closer look at how to combine serious su-bject matters with fun, motivation and how not only engage the player but also engage in the world around them. Different game designers will focus on how games deals with a wide variety of emotions and starts serving new purposes for creators. www.dfi.dk

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Innovations are born during playtime, in the process of creation. Can we come up with ‘The Next Big Thing’ while playing? October 15th will witnessed a festival in Kaunas named “Superno-va”, and it’s the first festival of international cre-ative innovations in Lithuania. After a success-ful debut in Brescia, Italy about a year ago, the festival has moved to Turin and Kaunas. The or-ganisers can be described as moulders of cre-ative links – they run a co-working space “Tal-ent Garden Kaunas”, with Artūras Bulota as the co-founder and captain. He seems to be creating prosperous bonds between his different activities and professional interests.

“We wanted to base the festival on the same idea we based “Talent Garden Kaunas” on: to bring the community of creative industries to-gether and make it stronger by everyone shar-ing their experience. The festival is firstly a kind of desire to tear down our walls”, Artūras tells N WIND. So why the Italian “Supernova”? The or-ganisers don’t see themselves as experts of fes-

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“SuPERNOVA”. THE POwER Of cHANGE IS HERE

tivals, rather they feel like picky spectators and participants. Therefore, after seeing the success of the first “Supernova”, they bought the fran-chise of that festival, also obtaining the good know-how and an ambition to surprise the audi-ence with quality. This year the main event will only take place one day – October 15th – six peo-ple will speak and there will be six creative work-shops prior to all that. “It’s like an experiment – how many people will we attract? How will the

Luca Mascaro – designer and strategist

VANEWINDTHE

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11.14

WHAT? Madonna the Rebel Heart TourWHERE? Tele2 Arena, Stockholm, SwedenWHEN? November 14th WHY? She is Madonna for God’s sake! You can love her, you can hate her, but no one can stay apathetic for her. The worldwide concert tour celebrates a deeply self-referential record Rebel Heart. The performance is like a greatest hits run, offering a joyous, colorful and, of course, deeply unapologetic celebration of Madonna’s best musical moments. www.madonna.com

10.23-24WHAT? RIGA COMM 2015WHERE? Kipsala’s International Exhibition Centre, Riga, LatviaWHEN? October 23-24th WHY? Conference opens up new development opportunities for companies and organizations, gives an opportunity to explore the Baltic’s industry trends and test the latest solutions. Visitors will get insight into the latest IT solutions (Fair) and interactive technologies (Gaming zone), meet potential business partners (Startup zone), build up cooperation with leaders and visionaries.www.rigacomm.com

11.13-29WHAT? POFF 2015WHERE? Cinemas in Tallinn, EstoniaWHEN? November 13-29 WHY? Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, better known as POFF belongs to the 15 leading film fes-tivals of the world. Besides the main program, the festival hosts three sub-festivals and film re-lated special concerts, exhibitions, talks as well as international industry meeting Baltic Event which brings together filmmakers from all over the world. www.poff.ee

“SuPERNOVA”. THE POwER Of cHANGE IS HERELorenzo believes in the spread of knowledge and an experiential philosophy, where a person can relate the innovation to the things he cares about. This motivational idea is the engine that drives “Supernova” forward: the festival engag-es in creating relationships and giving new per-spectives.

Luca Mascaro is a designer, a strategist and a businessman. At the festival, he spoke on ex-perience design, the evolution of it and on “the survival of the strongest and the most adap-tive”. His inspiration sources include sci-fi, ar-chitecture, human experiences and the Japa-nese culture, while his strategic design com-pany “Sketchin” helps brands in creating ex-periences that would surpass all expectations (some people recall Steve Jobs saying to a con-sultant once: “I don’t want new design. I want a Bob Dylan song”). “Sketchin” has already worked with such giants as “Google”, “Ebay”, “Yahoo”, “Moleskine” and so forth.

The whole programme of the festival can be found here: kaunas.festivalsupernova.it.

Lorenzo Maternini – festival founder and innovation humanist

city’s creative community react to this initia-tive and so on”, Artūras explained just before the event and stressed that their aim for the future is to become an event of the whole city.

Lorenzo Maternini, the founder of the initial fes-tival, was in Kaunas for the conference. He can be called a business humanist – in his eyes, in-novations and their development are only valu-able if a human is at the centre of the process.

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“SENZ6” – UMBRELLAS FOR WIND GAMESThese Dutch umbrellas have showcased a great amount of endurance against a wind turbine – they keep their form even when the wind speed is up to 100 KPH. “Senz6” have been awarded the “Red Dot”, “iF” and IDEA trophies for their inventiveness and design. Found in “Vėjas gluosniuose”, Užupio str. 15 / 3, Vilnius. Price: €65

FASHION MANIFESTATIONS Scandinavian countries lead the world in areas of tolerance and equal rights. This particular subject intrigued creators at “Acne Studios” to give a role of the face of a collection to an eleven-year-old boy, dressing him in women’s clothes and high heels, also he happens to be the son of one of the creative directors of this fashion house. As for the men, “Acne Studios” have a few topical and lightly provocative jumpers ready. Found in www.acnestudios.com. Price: from €190.

“NAKED BRUCE”Own the courage to swim in the pool or stroll in the streets while wearing this captivating work of graphic art. Bathing suit “Tomas Markevičius x Naked Bruce”. Price: €69CELESTE leggings. Price: €69

THE CURLY “WEEKEND BARBER” LOAFERSCosy and resembling a lamb’s fur (the top is

covered in an imitation), these Portuguese “Weekend Barber” loafers could use a “bah”

each time you click heels. Found in “Vėjas gluosniuose”, Užupio str. 15 /

3, Vilnius. Price: €192

SHOwcASE: GAmES

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WINDY DESIGN“Anchovy” and N WIND welcome the winds in their

laboratory: the website www.fromwind.com can turn data on wind direction and speed into colours, getting

the info in real time from meteorology stations of various cities in Northern Europe. Colourful prints on large silk shawls can become a perfect tool of a wind

whisperer. Found in V2 CONCEPT STORE, Dominikonų str. 5,

Vilnius. 110cmx110cm silk shawl price: €175

PLAYING fROm ScRATcH AGNĖ TuSKEvIčIūTĖ

Creation is a game. The rules ap-pear to be not that complicated – think of something that was not yet there or improve something to make it better. This doesn’t require any special physical qualities, just running after your inspiration and keeping a fast pace of life. The am-ateurs of creativity can only ad-miringly observe the ones that are in the league of professionals. If you still don’t have your hero that you could be a fan of – here’s Ge-diminas Šiaulys, creative director of “PetPunk” studio. He has all the rules of the wild world of advertis-ing covered long time ago, so he trains the youngsters and acts as a legionnaire. Creative games have led the designer to theatre. One of

From the play “Tėčio pasaka”.

Photo by Darius Petrulaitis

Gediminas Šiaulys. Photo by Visvaldas Morkevičius

What side of the body do you sleep on? I roll around all night. What level did you achieve in the Supermario computer game? None of them. What colour do you paint the for-est?Turquoise. How do fairy tales end?The same way they end in real life. Do you go straight or around? I like zigzags. I have a goal ahead of me, but I turn left and right on the way. From 8 am to 5 pm – when does the inspiration set in?8 am. You wake up and KABOOM! Jump up and go do it. Did you look fear in the eyes?Yes. Are you born a dreamer or can you learn how to do it? We’re all born dreamers, but not everyone learns how to do it. What would you give yourself a medal for?

For “jump up and do it”. What font is best for a love letter?The one that has your fingers press-ing the pen hard and the letters in-terlacing because of emotional waves. A movie that you saw more than once:“My Friend Ivan Lapshin” by Alek-sei German. I get goose bumps eve-ry time, and a lump gets stuck in my throat. Do you press Escape often?Not often, just once in a while. The most perfect shape?“Dear reader, stop rushing, calm down, relax, close your eyes and im-agine any form…” Now that’ per-fect. Would you start from scratch? It depends on the circumstances. As a new human figure – no, but if I had my whole experience – sure, I would jump up at 8am and head straight without any zigzags!

www.petpunkpic.com

the authors and dads of an animation play “Tėčio pasaka” (dad’s tale) has not only raised the bar of quality in Lithuanian family events, but was also awarded a honourable (golden) theatre tro-phy. The creative process of both the play and the animated book “Abėčėlė” was influenced by playing with his own daughter. And the most re-cent project – toys for a well-known telecom-munications company – has completely freed his imagination and I’m sure will trigger a larger mass psychosis than pimpačkiukai (little figures that people receive while shopping) did. This time we sit down for a windy talk not about toys, but about the games of creation – please welcome Mr Gediminas Šiaulys.

SHOwcASE: GAmES

It’s a desire of ours to give you a chance to take care of your skin using products that don’t change the essence of it. Soon a fresh series of skin and hair products will be presented: this series will be expanded and integrated to serve all skin types and needs, taking the natural rhythms of your body into account. One thing will remain the same though – our compositions will combine natural and essential oils with bioactive elements, with respect to the scientific research done on vital processes of the skin.

Creating a nourishing relationship with my skin enables me to experience the world to the fullest.

Shop at www.youandoil.lt

The skin is The surface of my personal planeT –

it connects me to the world, it’s where every important link starts. it also reflects the most intimate of bonds – with my own self. i want these relationships to be sustainable and vibrant, based on a healthy exchange of energy, care and elements that work well with me.

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talks, interviews and fresh artworks. “The Deep Splash” is based on sto-ries of attempts to affect bigger au-diences, change the locations that surround you, get away from your own self or feel free in a vast city, in a different context, without ever ig-noring your roots.

More serious journalistic portraits can be found among these sto-ries, also captivating, free and im-provised discussions. Every re-spondent changes the flow of vid-eo events. Robertas Narkus is ed-ited live via Skype while sitting in a chair, Jonas Mekas answers “pro-vocative” questions – actually, there are no bad questions for J. Mekas, the producer Justė Kostikovaitė notes that he never makes you feel uncomfortable. Today “The Deep Splash” has already presented com-poser Lina Lapelytė, artist-pata-physicist R. Narkus, creators Mil-da Lembertaitė, Paul Paper, Indrė Šerpetytė, Eglė Jauncėms, theoreti-

mONIKA LIPšIc

“The Deep Splash” is an openly- and experimentally-managed vid-eo project that’s officially described as a communication platform to in-troduce Lithuanian artists that live abroad.

Scenarios with spatter – that’s what “The Deep Splash” really is. The essence is encoded in the logo of the brand which resembles a road sign – a man jumping into wa-ter is an allusion to a 1967 paint-ing called “A Bigger Splash” by Dav-id Hockney. The artist portrayed a spatter that stays still in a geo-metrical landscape after a dive into blue water somewhere in California, next to a modern minimalist build-ing. This became the main incident, narrative and metaphor of the men-tioned art piece, enabling many art-ists to relate to it and tell their own stories. The connection between the painter and California might be ex-

Robertas Narkus. From “The Deep Splash” video archives.

Salomėja Marcinkevičiūtė, iš „The Deep Splash“ video laidų.

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“THE DEEP SPLASH”

A VIDEO POOL

plained by a desire to get to know a different kind of world, different cit-ies, different settings. Visiting and then living in this state had a huge influence on Hockney’s style and his overall story.

That’s how the project of video shows about artists is built – by touching various aspects of art and personalities. Short sketches of meetings with artists in their stu-dios are published online, showing

Every respondent

changes the flow of video

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cian Tomas Čiučelis and curator Vita Zaman. “The Deep Dish” is made by J. Kostikovaitė, Johnston Sheard and their helpers Justinas Vilutis, Robertas Muravskis.

J. Kostikovaitė, the initiator, is a cu-rator now based in London. She takes care of international contem-porary art projects and over the years has curated projects in Marra-kech Biennale, Lisbon Architecture Biennale, has worked in Guangzhou, South Korea, and with the Zablu-dowicz collection in London. She’s the curator of Nida’s school for PhD students. Justė talks fast and a lot, jumping from one subject to anoth-er: “So, splash, splash…” Lithua-nian-English linguistics is quite a problem in this case. How about “the spatter of communication”?

“Yes, the Lithuanian factor is both a strength and a weakness of this project”, Justė continues. “On one hand, the context of relevant ide-

as is a bit narrower, but on the other hand, there is a chance to introduce people who create outside Lithua-nia and this way add to the histor-ic value”. Most of the presented art-ists are from London, where the composer L. Lapelytė used to live, and where the artist I. Šerpytytė lives, who creates monuments out of personal and KGB-related past. Her photographs and objects ex-plore the consequences of repres-sion and war. Some of the most fa-mous works of I. Šerpytytė are pho-tographs and models of buildings in Lithuanian towns that people were tortured in during the Soviet era. The little houses that got a lot of attention in the United Kingdom are carved from wood by Lithua-

nian craftsmen. Sooner or later, ac-cording to Indrė, the creative works start reflecting personal experienc-es and origin stories.

“However, the geography is dictat-ed by the education system – many Lithuanian artists and designers have studied in the United Kingdom or the Netherlands, but not a lot of them stay there because of the cost of living. For example, Berlin offers cheaper rent and less art disciplines in English, thus many artists choose it – Julija Goyd, Vytautas Jurevičius, Inga Likšaitė, curators Viktori-ja Šiaulytė, Mindaugas Gapševičius and others”.

The project is designed for a wide audience and is financed by pub-lic funds. So what are the pros-pects of it? Creators of “The Deep Splash” say it’s all closely connect-ed to the politics on supporting art in the European Union and oth-er countries – right now the repre-

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sentation of authenticity, preser-vation of cultural heritage and the spread of the culture and speech are the most important factors. De-spite this, the priorities for financing projects tend not to catch up to dai-ly life and art acceleration – individ-uals travel around and change their residence more often than they buy a new laptop. The development of “The Deep Splash” would obvious-ly benefit from not relying just on public financing, but then a particu-lar challenge arises – how to secure a healthy relationship with the com-mercial affairs?

What kind of people jump into the pool of “The Deep Splash”? What is more important here – the con-tent or the attractive and accepta-ble representation of modern art-ists? “Well, one source of inspira-tion was the interview book of the ‘never-sleeping curator’ Hans-Ulrich Obrist – it’s one of the thousands of projects he does, where he talks

Salomėja Marcinkevičiūtė. From “The Deep Splash”

video archives.

to artists, curators and philoso-phers who expose the ping-pong el-ement of thoughts between people. At first the aim of “The Deep Splash” was to introduce creators of a wider range – not only artists, but design-ers and architect as well, though we faced a phenomenon when talking about commercial projects to de-signers – they stigmatize their work, they don’t try to play along with the interview situation and their sto-ries become advertising pretty fast. There are, of course, people who possess a big scale of theoretical and curatorial knowledge, they can keep the interview profound and much more interesting conceptual-wise – for example, architects Jur-ga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas. Their work is discursive, it includes experiments, research, exhibitions; at the moment they’re preparing for the presentation of the Baltic pavil-ion in the biennale of architecture in Venice”, Justė speaks and verifies her thoughts with gestures.

Executives of the project plan to in-terview a Berlin-based photogra-pher J. Goyd and curator Viktorija Šiaulytė, artist Ulijona Odišarija that lives in London and studies at “Slade School of Art”, Žilvinas Kempinas – he resides in New York and plans his first personal exhibition in Bir-mingham’s IKON gallery in the UK, the Amsterdam-based curator and

These are stories of attempts to

affect bigger audiences, change the

surroundings, get away from your

own self without ignoring your

roots

Jonas Mekas. From “The Deep Splash” video archives.

artist Gerda Paliušytė, and Ignas Krungelevičius, who has settled in Oslo. Shows with curator Valentinas Klimašauskas and reciter Salomėja Marcinkevičiūtė (Athens, Greece) are being prepared right now.

More often than not, the audience for contemporary art projects in-cludes similar creators that just work in a neighbouring cultural field. The changes of the audience characterizes modern culture, yet “The Deep Splash” note that they would like their moms to see these shows on national television some time later. www.thedeepsplash.com

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wELL PLAYED, SIR!Interview with maria biilmann

bY EmILIE TOOmELA

One of the best tricks played on the audience in the history of cinema was by the notorious Danish film-maker and social scandal enthusiast Lars von Trier. His last film, “Nym-phomaniac”, an epic sex tale shown in two parts, had such a playful pro-motion campaign, that the concept of marketing received almost as much attention in the film circuits as the film itself. Famous actors’ or-gasm faces as huge posters turned out in the end to be a game that was played with cinemagoers. Dear audience, looking forward to see-ing some unsimulated sexy stuff on the big screen? In a nutshell, what Trier’s film was actually about in-stead – it told you bible stories, fish-ing tips and philosophical discus-sions alternatively. In the format of a weird costume drama and with film chapters like in a 18th Centu-ry novel.

Marketing a film is indeed a game these days. Next to “Nymphomani-ac’s” campaign, the film “Ex Machi-na”, which tells a story about a gor-geous human-like robot Ava (played by Alicia Vikander), started its mar-keting with creating a Tinder ac-count for Ava. The fictional girl chat-

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wELL PLAYED, SIR!Interview with maria biilmann

ted up people who swiped right on her photo. The result – a lot of buzz on the Internet, and disappointed bachelors as residue. The marketing of “Nymphomaniac” was even more elaborate in its prank on the pub-lic. The plan was geniously thought through and so perfectly fitting to the film, that most people didn’t even hesitate in thinking – oh yes, it was Lars von Trier himself who also asked the actors to simulate their O-faces for a steamy photoshoot. Ac-tually, this is not the case at all: the marketing campaign was created by a mischievous duo, the Einstein cou-ple from Denmark – Maria Einstein Biilmann and Philip Einstein Lipski. So, it’s time to ask Maria Biilmann the secret recipe how to market a film and how to tell a good story.

In your experience with work-ing different films, how much do the filmmakers want to control the process and strategy of creating the film’s marketing identity?Our experience is that when film-makers come to us, they expect that we are experts and they pretty much listen to what we have to con-tribute in that area. But the devel-opment of the campaign is always a close collaboration with the direc-tor, producer and also the distrib-utor. After all, it’s their baby, right? And we certainly don’t want to be the ones to dress it in clothes the so-called parents hate.

You have worked on many other Danish films besides “Nymphoma-niac”, how large was the effect of

working with von Trier on your ca-reer?It’s hard to say. The campaign for “Nymphomaniac” definitely brought a lot of international attention to our company and to The Einstein Couple brand. And we have often been invited to film events to talk about it and how we work. But we are still waiting for that cold call from an international film producer. Haha! No, actually I think that so-cial connections – more or less per-sonal – are what make your career. Our experience is that whenever we are approached by a new client it’s by personal recommendations. Den-mark is a small country, so profes-sional and personal contacts are all mixed up anyway. But as I said ear-lier, personal recommendations are what really get you new jobs.

How was the collaboration with the actors of “Nymphomaniac”? Were the orgasmic poster faces also ta-boo-breaking to them, not only to the audience?Yes. It took some convincing with most of the actors of “Nymphoma-niac”. You have to remember that actors are used to performing for moving pictures. They are not pho-to models, so they don’t necessari-ly feel very comfortable in front of a still camera.

Your marketing campaign received world-wide praise by many re-spected journalists. In the end, why weren’t the ticket sales of “Nymphomaniac” very high?It’s a challenging film to market. It’s vast length alone is a barrier. So the box office numbers where never ex-pected to go through the roof. In Denmark, the distributor was satis-fied with the numbers, but I guess it was not the same in other markets.

You mentioned in a previous in-terview that timing is very impor-tant in your marketing strategy. In which way is it essential for suc-ceeding?You should think about marketing from the moment the film is green-lighted. Make the marketing equal-ly as important as your script, is what we say. You can make a great film but if no one sees it, it will be in vain. So make the marketing impor-tant. Think of it at an early stage. It also makes logistics easier. Like ar-ranging a photo shoot while still in production, so every actor is in the same location and they haven’t changed the way they look for the next movie. We would never have been able to produce the “Nympho-maniac” campaign after the filming had ended.

One of the key elements in market-ing these days seems to be mak-ing your project relatable to the au-dience. Several research studies have indicated that heroic charac-teristics in actors make them re-latable to the viewers. On the oth-er hand, this is not so much the case with “Nymphomaniac”. What do you see as the necessities that make a film likable and relatable to people?The same applies for the campaign – in order to market something, people need to relate to it. One of the things we always consider when we do a campaign: what is the relat-able insight in the film and how can we convey it in a poster? The poster is very important and must be com-municative to the audience. Eve-ryone who has ever been sexual-ly stimulated can relate to “Nym-

phomaniac’s” posters, which were at the core of the whole campaign. I think it’s a big mistake to think of traditional media and social media as two different things, and “Nym-phomaniac” proves it. The cam-paign was made for traditional me-dia – a poster, but it spread widely through the Internet because it was worth sharing. I think you should just think of the Internet as a new media channel that has other pos-sibilities than the traditional chan-nels. But if you want your work to spread you have to consider if it is worth sharing.

You’re not only a creative market-ing tandem with Philip, but also a couple in personal life. How does the collaboration look like – do you find enough time off from work and do you ever stop working? We’ve been together privately for 17 years and during almost all of that time we have been doing the same job. For 10 years as creative man-agers in different advertising agen-cies and now five years with our own company, The Einstein Cou-ple. When we worked at ad agen-cies we always discussed our work at home. I think married dentists or architects do the same. We are both good at what we do, so we decided that we would take the chance and jump into business together. But we do have separate offices. And that’s a good thing!

So in the end, how should one tell a good marketing story? Is there some advice you wish someone had told you when you first started?I think our background in advertis-ing has taught us a lot about telling a good story. It’s so hard to dig out the good story about a toothpaste or a laundry detergent. But if you want to make advertising that con-nects with people, you have to be able to do that. Film is much more thankful – the product is great to begin with and the audience is cu-rious to hear what you have to say. Marketing is like any other business. You should never create some-thing and then market it yourself. I don’t believe Nike would have been so successful if they had their engi-neers market their shoes. You have to have a distance from a product in order to market it. You have to be able to look at the creation as a by-stander, in order to see its qualities clearly. You simply can’t do that if you have been involved in every de-tail in the production.

facebook.com/theeinsteincouple

Picture by Audrius Solominas

Marketing a film is indeed a game these days

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TADAS SVILAINIS

Makers movement is an idea that started in the USA about a decade ago, uniting independent creators, inventors, artists and designers. Later it turned into a range of specific subcultures, such as the hacker movement, DIY furniture and toys, 3D printing and so forth. Despite the differenc-es between manufacturers, they are all intercon-nected by the same ideology: open, easy-access learning, exchange of ideas or discoveries, pro-motion of handicraft, rebellion against both mass production and boundless consuming.

Makers didn’t take a long time to get to Europe. At first the manufacturing fanatics were based mostly in the cellars of their parents’ houses, ga-rages, their own bedrooms, but soon the move-ment got the attention of the society and inves-tors, thus community clubs were formed, and specific spaces, studios, workshops of crea-tors were filled with technology. Currently there are over 15 professional workshops and a great amount of underground groups founded by friends or enthusiasts in the Baltics and Scandi-navia.

The distinctions between various workshops be-come obvious when the subject changes to the accessibility and especially the price of the tech-

GREEN GARAGE: A VOIcE fOR THE cREATIVE cuLTuRE

nology and equipment. For instance, “Aalto Fab-lab” organises weekly open days in Helsinki – you just need to attend, present your concept or idea and they will make the object for free. Other fab-rication laboratories have an individual hour-ly, daily, monthly or symbolic charge. It’s worth

acknowledging that many foreign creator work-shops are financed by the state in order to stimu-late the country’s economy.

A professional initiative “Green Garage” recent-ly took its first steps in Vilnius. The founder Al-isa Matsanyuk told N WIND magazine: “Every-one is welcome to visit our workshop regardless of their age, knowledge or skills. You can simply drop by, we’ll talk and decide how to go on from there. We offer courses and personalized pro-grammes, so that you could create your own pro-totypes in about a year or two. Another example – let’s say we have engineers of robotics or other specific specialists at our workshop. We’ll intro-duce you to them and you can effectively collab-orate. Even if you don’t have particular aims, just stop by to have a look around – maybe it’ll help you get a clear view on what you want. The main concept of “Green Garage” is to assemble a com-munity together, not only to be a location where

The good-for-noth-ing toys that people receive when shop-ping and innovative prosthetic limbs are all made from plastic and can be printed by the same 3D printer.

“Green Garage” tries to be as open to curious minds as possible. Photo by Tadas Svilainis

Alisa Matsanyuk: “I realised that it will be the next big thing in a few years”. Photo by “Green garage”

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www.brandingtomorrow.com

AKTuALumO ATEITISVIcTORIA DIAZ, mados prekių ženklų ir produktų identiteto konsultantė

Laisvalaikio kultūra kone visiškai susisaistė su linksmybėmis, šėlsmu, aukšto dažnio garsais ar dina-mišku vizualumu, tačiau gyvenimo stiliaus ekspertai visgi kalba apie ryškėjančią naują pramogavimo kryptį. Neurologų bei psichologų atliekami šiandienos suaugusiųjų „žaidimo kambarių“ tendencijų ty-rimai plinta po didžiuosius miestus. Įsivaizduokite smėlio dėžę suaugusiesiems, kurioje vadinamasis lė-tesnio žaidimo metodas skatina atsipalaiduoti ir išgryninti savo mąstymą. Idėjos formatas ir tikslai – gana inovatyvūs, todėl šis reiškinys gali drąsiai tapti svaria urbanistinės kultūros dalimi. Žaismingos mobiliosios programėlės išliks populiarios, tačiau stebinanti kruopščiai sukonstruotų pa-našių produktų išvaizda rinkoje pasieks įvairias amžiaus grupes, nes realistiški elementai visuomet nuostabiai išlaiko pusiausvyrą tarp technologijų ir pertraukėlių nuo jų.

„Rusak & Inglesby“ firmos įrankių rinkinį „Time to Yourself“ (liet. „Laikas sau“) sudaro gan primity-vūs daiktai: pieštukas, laikrodis, kompasas... Jie padeda susigrąžinti nebenaudojamas mūsų kūno galias – krypties pojūtį, vidinį laikrodį, nuotykių troškulį ir pirminius instinktus.

Prabangūs „Dominic Wilcox“ 24 karatų aukso akmenys – tobulai primenantys tuos, kurie pa-leisti lyg varlytės šokinėja vandens paviršiumi, – buvo sukurti lėtesniam žaidimui skatinti. Kita akmenų pusė atkuria mūsų meilę spaudai ir darbo kambario (bibliotekos) atmosferai.

Ir anksčiau novatoriškai į biblioteką žvelgusi di-zaino studija „Nendo“ neseniai Tokijuje pristatė projektą „Beauty Library“ (liet. „Grožio bibliote-ka“). Konceptuali parduotuvė skirta nuodugniai ir ramiai susipažinti su produktu prieš jį perkant.

Tikiu, kad vis daugiau bibliotekos tipo erdvių bus atrastos iš naujo, o prekių ženklai ir toliau tirs kam-barius bei panaudos juos klientams sudominti.

things are manufactured. People should see us like a gym. We try to be as open and help-ful to curious individuals as possible – we even have an administrator trained especial-ly for that!“

“Green Garage” is so far the only place of this kind in the Baltics, and Alisa founded it with her own funds. The project already has around 300,000 euro invested in it, yet it’s still in the risky experimental phase.

“When I left “Game Insight” and the industry of games for mobile phones, I said to myself that I’ll do nothing for six months, I’ll back away from it all and purify my thoughts, not think about what I’ll do next and allow my-self to fall in love with some activity I’m not familiar with. Everything started naturally, I realised that I’m moving towards something that I really like and that it will probably be the next big thing in a few years. I want-ed to be a part of it. You may call it intuition, but that’s exactly how I felt before I began to work at “Game Insight”, when the mobile phone game industry was growing. It sounds cliché, however you just need to start do-ing what you like. It will feel euphoric at first, but sooner or later you’ll face some troubles. It’s definitely not an easy road, yet this is a big part of life, and the challenges should motivate you. Right now I don’t know wheth-er this project will be successful or not, but I’m already happy, no matter how every-thing works out. And it inspires me. I didn’t have an analytic plan consisting of what and when should happen – now I do, but even to-day we’re constantly learning from our mis-takes, we experiment, adapt, become more and more professional. If it all goes accord-ing to plan, we’ll soon expand to other Bal-tic countries”.

It’s no secret that “Green Garage” is a prof-it-orientated business, much like most ambi-tious, courageous and innovative start-ups. The most important goal is to invest in vi-sionaries. An accelerator platform for prom-ising creators is due to be created in the fu-ture – it’ll help them find investors and pro-vide the needed equipment, also focusing on rookies and simply curious people. Cours-es of 3D modelling, robotics and video game engines are already being prepared.

By the way, it’s worth noting that the good-for-nothing toys people receive when shop-ping and innovative prosthetic limbs are all made from plastic and can be printed by the same 3D printer.

www.greengarage.me

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