synchronicity
While researching sacred geometry last night, I came across the shape Vesica Piscis (which makes up the Flower of Life). When horizontally-oriented, the fish-like symbol was used as the Ichthys by early Christians.
After finishing reading and contemplating these entries, I checked CNN before going to bed and came across this article about the unearthing of the floor mosaic of possibly the most ancient Christian church still in existence:
Razilo was shocked to uncover the edge of the mosaic. The inmates worked for months to uncover all the parts of the mosaic -- the floor of the church, he said."We continued to look and slowly we found this whole beautiful thing," said Razilo, who used a sponge and a bucket of water to clean dirt off the uncovered mosaics Sunday.
Two mosaics inside the church -- one covered with fish, an ancient Christian symbol that predates the cross...
12:05 PM November 7, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Video Feedback Fractal Genesis
Interesting video feedback setup that reminds me of a Pepper's Ghost.
Also a gallery of non-computer generated fractals created using video feedback, and an interactive generator named Tracktal that is inspiring towards my thesis.
Neat videos by Joel Cadman.
via the Ultimate Video Feedback Page (beware of the dead links)
This all helps to give greater perspective on how algorithms generate morphing imagery, and reminds me of the wonderful results Erin and I stumbled upon through feedback experimentation and Jitter.
4:13 AM November 1, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Paul Laffoley
Another inpirational and crazy-awesome site (as well as another Paul). This one by Michael Aaron Coleman has some wonderfully dense documentation of art and theory of visionary and future art, included details of Paul Laffoley's work, which I've only known about loosely (An existing influece, Alex Grey, is definitely from a similar school). In some ways, the work is about as post-modern as you can get, which adds wonderfully to my mix of contradicatory artisitic influences. I would love to see these works brought to interactive life.
2:36 AM October 1, 2005 Comments 1 TrackBack 0
Paul Prudence
Just came across his art ( transphormetic ) and blog ( data is nature ) . Both excellent and very inspiring as far as visionary, genrative art, etc go. He contributed to the Flash Math Creativity book.
His works are very inspirational towards what I've envisioned my thesis being.
http://www.transphormetic.com/t4/_rota04.htm
http://www.transphormetic.com/t4/_calliscope01.htm
http://www.transphormetic.com/t4/_17sketches.htm
2:26 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
New Media Art / Tech Links
I've been doing some more focused research into emergent systems and generative art for my thesis, which in a short elevator statement (to be elaborated on later) is shaping up into a "mandala-like generative puzzle/labyrinth" In doing so I found the extensive links pages of Kenneth Rinaldo:
more artists and links to come when I'm not suppose to be working for the government.
3:31 PM September 30, 2005 Comments 6 TrackBack 0
Processing links
3D Vector Class by David Huebner
OpenGL issues in Processing.
Class PGraphicsGL (Implementation of the PGraphics API that employs OpenGL rendering via JOGL)
2:59 PM September 6, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Research material to pick up sometime
The Interactive Dance Club: Avoiding Chaos in a Multi-Participant Environment
3:35 AM July 17, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
links (notes to myself)
Jesper Juul's DiGRA 2005 Impressions
Daniel Shiffman's Nature of Code temp site (while ITP server is down)
processing + flash via flosc (and an interesting project)
http://karma-laboratory.com/petridish/2004/11/general_overvie.html
processing libraries (mostly re-posting of what's on the processing lib page:
osc
http://www.sojamo.de/iv/index.php?n=11processing + max/msp
http://jklabs.net/maxlink/blob detection
http://v3ga.net/processing/BlobDetection/Library/blob detection in action
http://classes.design.ucla.edu/Spring05/152BC/projects/burdette/final.phpAmit Pitaru's: Sonia - sound lib
http://pitaru.com/sonia/Krister Olsson's: ESS - sound lib (supposedly more features than Sonia, and doesn't require JSyn)
http://www.tree-axis.com/Ess/
Inspiration:
Robert Hodgin
http://www.flight404.com/version7/index.html
(Probably one of the best Flash sites I've ever seen, with some wonderful Processing works exhibited. He's the creative director at The Barbarian Group: responsible for Subservient Chicken, among others.)Tatsuya Saito
http://users.design.ucla.edu/~tatsuyas/Amit Pitaru
http://www.pitaru.com/
Joint site between him and James Patterson
http://www.insertsilence.com/James Patterson
http://www.presstube.com/Mario Klingemann
http://incubator.quasimondo.com/
flash + processing in browser communication (only works in IE)
Video tracking to produce halosKarsten Schmidt
Toxi
processing work
Digital Human Body Communication
ETRI's BAN (Body Area Network)
article
homepageRedtacton
article
12:25 AM June 19, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
contemplace
I've begun research into flosc, a java server that allows flash, max, processing etc. to communicate with one another. In doing so, I came across the work of Eric Socolofsky (ITP alumni). His thesis is interesting, particularly the technology setup which has processing communicating with max via flosc.
For my own thesis, I'm considering using Flash for the more focused and direct control of interactions and display of graphics and animation, with MAX handling sound for the most part, and Jitter for gestural controlled graphics. But I haven't ruled out processing, nor have I quite figured out how processing can communicate through flosc.
12:48 AM June 7, 2005 Comments 1 TrackBack 0
crowley on the magician's circle
re-read some of homo ludens and then re-read this. have some thoughts formulating that I'll post sometime.
10:58 PM March 25, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
pixel roller
In the first version, Light Roller, the pixels are in the form of a series of 12 ultra bright UV LEDs situated along its axis. The LEDs excite phosophescent ink and leave trails of pixels that fade with time.rAndom is developing a paint version that uses inks to paint directly onto any surface, even grass or parking area.
this strikes an interesting balance between the tangible and the virtual, as well as being intuitive. could do some interesting things with revealing imagery/clues as part of a game, or have the image burn in different shapes depending on motion and pressure...
via wmmna
1:18 AM March 22, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
thoughts - "emerge"
Been thinking about social psychology during emergencies and how during some emergencies people come together in a powerful way (ala post 9-11) and then related that to the idea of emergent behaviour in games, and decided to look up the etymology of the word:
emerge 1563, from M.Fr. emerger, from L. emergere "rise out or up," from ex- "out" + mergere "to dip, sink" (see merge). The notion is of rising from a liquid by virtue of buoyancy. Emergency "unforeseen occurrence" is c.1631. Emergent (adj.) was first recorded c.1450.
3:55 AM March 18, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
vector park
pretty amazing stuff that I find influential. reminds me of safeplaces.
1:14 AM March 9, 2005 Comments 3 TrackBack 0
earth art
I've always felt a connection with earth artists that I've been thinking more about with thesis prep. James Turrell was brought up in class. Here's a link to some cannonical examples:
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~bradleyg/u-art.html
Christo, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, and Walter De Maria's Lightning Field are of particular interest.
In 1977, Walter De Maria created Lightning Field in New Mexico. Lightning field is a series of 400 stainless steel poles covering an area of one mile by approximately one kilometer. The tops of the poles are all at the same level, and the poles average a height of about 20 feet. The human population of the region is low and the incidence of lightning is high. The conditions were ideal to achieve a celebration of the power and magnificence of lightning. ...
1:14 AM March 3, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
thoughts - dev and tech
Talked with Jarrell Pair at work about my thesis thoughts. He recommened UT for ease of use and development. I'm kind of torn on a few levels. On the one hand I'd like to think that with my own learning and help from an engineer that I could hard code something interesting in real-time 3d. Just what "interesting" means is a tricky question when talking feasibility. Does anyone actually enjoy openGL? java was raised for the usual reasons. And on top of it I'm torn on display tech. On the one hand there are the advantages of AR with HMD's, and it seems smarter to use HMD's for forward thinking tech, since CAVE's are effectively on the way out in the future. But I also love the communal experience of screens. Solitude and community have advantages. HMD's don't have to be solitary, and screens don't have to be communal...
1:31 AM February 26, 2005 Comments 2 TrackBack 0
bibliography
In process...haven't figured out formatting standards quite yet.
12:06 PM February 24, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0
real-time compositing for mixed reality
As titled, my paper centers on techniques for mixed reality, and real-time compositing, and concludes with a proposed project. An example of a stage performance that uses these techniques is the Big Art Group out of New York. The stage setup generally consists of a screen with cameras mounted on top that point at performers who are visible from the waist up on a stage behind the screen. Video of the performers is then projected onto the screen. While their show Flicker doesn’t go far beyond this simple (but effective and highly choreographed) setup, House of No More takes it to its logical next step where actors perform in front of green screens, and computer generated imagery is composited into the image.
While the use of green screen can be an integrated aspect of a well-designed show, for my own work I would find it to be too limiting. Visually, the green surface would need to be lit uniformly, and be fairly bright, which would likely turn it into a large and glaring visual focus and could easily become overly distracting. On top of this, the color spectrum of objects and performers would need to be restricted away from green. While this could offer some creative potentials (such as the green shoes used in House of No More), over all it’s too limiting.
Academic research by Paul Debevec at the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC takes another approach utilizing near-infrared illumination in place of green screen technology. Using an IR sensitive camera with an IR pass filter, Debevec was able to identify a fabric that absorbed most visible light (thus appearing black to the eye), while reflected most IR light (appearing white to the IR camera).
This was then used in place of a green screen material behind the performers and lit with IR LED lamps. Two cameras were employed for compositing purposes: one being sensitive to only visible light (and not IR), and the other being sensitive to IR (and visible light) with an IR pass filter placed over the lens. The IR camera sees the IR illuminated background screen as mostly white, while the figure is dark. This grayscale feed is then used to key out the figure in the RGB feed from the visible light camera.
While this helps with the problem of spill (where the green screen reflects green light back onto the performer), the background is far from completely white, and in a more complicated lighting setup, could cause the system to confuse the figure and background. This lack of robustness is likely due to the fact that the system was not designed for real-time, but rather a complicated post-production process of compositing.
A system that has many interesting possibilities is one developed at the BBC’s R&D division. Instead of a green screen, or a black IR reflective material, they use a retro-reflective material that is highly reflective (similar to the function of materials in street signs). The material is hundreds of times more reflective than white paper, and can be lit with a small amount of blue light emanating from around the camera lens.
This material in general is not new and has been used in special effects for some time, however the specific material developed by the BBC in conjunction with Reflecmedia is much more robust than it’s predecessor. Normally, retro-reflective material must be lit and viewed at near 90 degree of incidence. This new material however has a much wider reflectivity angle allowing it to be more flexibly lit and viewed.
In addition, the BBC developed a camera tracking system for orientation and translation that uses a series of circular markers with different printed patterns of concentric circles placed on the ceiling. Termed the Free-d system, the production camera has a second small camera mounted on top of it with a LED lamp pointed at the ceiling. The lamp illuminates the markers, and the camera tracks them to calculate the position and orientation of the larger camera in real-time.
This retro-reflective material and camera tracking system were employed by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to create a system for real-time compositing of CGI elements on the set of the movie AI: Artificial Intelligence.
On set Steven Spielberg was able to see a low quality virtual set composited in with the live action actors and set, and thus was able to more precisely control the movement and placement of camera, actors, and sets in relation to the future CGI.
A project idea I have is to line the interior surfaces of a room with Reflectmedia’s special retro-reflective material for use in an augmented reality performance installation, and then light the material with a series of non-visible IR lamps. I would then attach IR sensitive cameras to a conventional augmented reality setup (HMD + visible light cameras) to make it possible to use the IR camera feed to key out the retroreflective screens in the visible light camera feed and composite in real-time graphics into a feed to the HMD screens.
Camera tracking would likely take the form of an inertial tracker with a cord for orientation, and an IR LED on the top of the HMD tracked by a camera in the ceiling for translation (although a setup with ceiling markers would be interesting to attempt with some software engineering help, perhaps from IMSC). The interior would be lit with visible light as well, and allow physical objects to be interacted with on top of a virtual background. Determining the z-depth of real objects to aid in compositing real-time graphics in front and in back of physical objects would be ideal, and perhaps something possible with the Canesta system (to hopefully improve upon previous multi-video camera z-depth work).
6:13 PM February 21, 2005 Comments 3 TrackBack 0
imagery 01
Some inspirational imagery and set design. Thinking more and more that my thesis will be some form of a mixed-reality / augmented-reality physical installation.
Something about the fact that these sets aren't a perfect illusion of reality adds to the surreal and fantastical feel of the films, something Lord of the Rings lacks. Far too few Wizard of Oz and Never Ending Story pics at the moment...
Labyrinth
Legend
The Never Ending Story
The Wizard of Oz
4:04 AM February 20, 2005 Comments 0 TrackBack 0