This internet-action wants to involve young people between 12 and 16 years. Those are connected via internet with the Microsoft software NETMEETING. At the same time two or more persons can paint together in the WHITEBOARD, the drawing part of this software.

During the first week from the 21th until the 24th of July, a team of the youth from Taivalkoski will find each other and inquire the possibilities of NETMEETING. With Email they try to get in contact with pupils of the Hamburg schoolnet for a PAINTGAME event.

On the website the project will be introduced in finnish and german with all dates. Interested people can get all informations about the ongoing action there. The website provides every user with a short introduction about NETMEETING (Whiteboard and Chat) and includes links for downloading the program out of the internet. It shows the email-adress paintgame@nextlevel.de, later on also the netmeeting serveradress and helps to connect Finland with Germany.

At fixed dates the participants of PAINTGAME are using the NETMEETING-server to chat or draw together. From monday, the 28th of June until thursday, the 1st of July, each day between 2pm and 5pm MET (3pm and 6pm EET) the exchange can happen.

The PAINTGAME drawings will be saved as files, published on the website and shown in a specific place of exhibition in Taivalkoski together with a description of the event fon non-participants. The results could be printed out and exhibited in Hamburg as well.

The software NETMEETING allows two or more people to communicate with each other via internet. The program contains applications for text (chat) and image (whiteboard), audio or video, even the share of for example browsers is possible. NETMEETING is a freeware and part of the Microsoft Internet Explorer or could be downloaded:

http://www.microsoft.com/netmeeting/ (english/german)

http://www.arenanet.fi/huoltoasema/index.html#netmee (finnish)

The program needs the windows-system and an internet connection. PAINTGAME will work with the ressources comparable to the 4.xx generation internetbrowser.

The "Taivalkoski Workshop. 99" includes 25 international artists, who are invited to work in this lonely small village in the northern part of Finland. Taivalkoski is sited near the polar circle with its specific climate, which means hard winters with snow from september until may and teperatures to -50 degrees celsius. But in the months june and july the sun never sets and the nights are nearly as bright as the days.

PAINTGAMES is an internet action for teenagers between 12 and 16 years from Taivalkoski and Hamburg, which tries to enable the participants to communicate verbally or nonverbally whith the "un/wellknown". As though the youth in Taivalkoski is living geographically far from the center of western europe, they are inhabitants of a state which belongs to the E.U. and are confronted with its mass media culture products. Every finnish pupil has to learn at least one foreign language, mostly english or swedish, therefore the language of PAINTGAME will be english. It will be an interesting questions at the results of PAINTGAME, if there are a lot of differences in the interests and forms of articulation between the young people from Finland or Germany.

I was born in Finland, living already a lot of years in Germany. I studied at the university of Hamburg. I am a conceptual artist and I organized several happenings, which want to initiate communication and emphasize reflections about images or different media. Since 1996 I am working professionally also as a concepter in a company for new media.

http://www.video-ergo-sum.de/tuija/vita.htm