Perry Hoberman

Here's a cleaned-up version of the OCD camera example that we worked on in class.

Link

I changed/added a few features:

1. I switched from using the modifier keys to specific letter keys to change modes - there weren't enough modifier keys for all the modes. 'l' for lookaround, 't' for travel, 'f' for forklift, 'o' for orbit. Added 'z' for zoom, 'w' for walk, 's' to toggle stroke.
2. The 'a' key (for auto) toggles between automatically returning to 'lookaround' mode when you release a key, or staying in the last mode selected.
3. I added two new methods to OCDCamera.java (truck_walk and dolly_walk) so that you can walk (keeping a constant height) instead of flying (the default, in which you travel towards the lookat point, changing your height as you move).
4. I added a second (fixed) camera for two heads-up information displays. You can toggle the HUD strips with the 'r' (for readout) and 'h' (for 'help') keys. 'Readout' reports the current camera parameters, and 'Help' reports the current camera mode and settings, along with a list of keyboard shortcuts.
5. To enable the camera readout, I added some 'get' methods to OCDCamera.java.
6. I added a mouse tracking factor, which you can change using the '-' and '+' keys. The higher you set it, the more quickly the camera moves, and vice versa.

(big thanks to Kristian Linn Damkjer for his excellent OCD library.)

Posted by at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amazing story in today's LA Times.

Link

This guy - a broadcasting engineer with no degrees, no medical background whatsoever - is diagnosed with an incurable cancer. He has a brainstorm about using radio waves and bits of metal to kill cancer cells. He starts tinkering around the house with pie pans, antennas, hot dogs. And guess what? It actually works.

The story's got everything, including a Nobel-prize winning chemist who gets involved and endorses the project just before he dies of cancer.

Oh, and it turns out the process can also be used to extract hydrogen from salt water (a chemist at Penn State calls it "the most remarkable discovery in water science in the last century"), but that's just a little added bonus.

Posted by at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speaker: Toni Dove
Time: Wednesday, November 7, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Since the early 1990s, Toni Dove has produced works that redefine forms of traditional narrative through interactivity. Her pieces are embodied hybrids of film, installation art, and experimental theater, in which performers or installation participants interact with an unfolding narrative, often using minimally invasive interface technologies, such as speech recognition and motion sensing, to allow users to "perform" their on-screen avatars.

Dove will be speaking about Spectropia, a new cinema-scale interactive film/performance event that premieres at REDCAT on November 9th. Spectropia is a sci-fi hybrid featuring time travel, telepathy, and elements of film noir. Projected on multiple screens and performed as an interactive experience with the participation of audience members, Spectropia is the second of a series of interactive fictions on the unconscious of consumer economies. The first, Artificial Changelings, debuted as an interactive installation at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 1998, and was featured in the groundbreaking exhibition Body Mecanique at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 1999. Stephen Johnson, author of Interface Culture has praised Artificial Changelings for using "technology to advance a genuine artistic vision".

TONI DOVE / SPECTROPIA
REDCAT
Friday 11/9 and Saturday 11/10 at 8:30pm
$12/students, $15/general

"Not only sets a new mark for interactive works, but opens the door to a new form of aesthetic experience..." Artbyte

Live performers orchestrate onscreen characters through an original mix of film, live theater and Toni Dove’s unique system of motion sensing technology that serves as a cinematic “instrument.” This interactive new media event allows Dove and her collaborator, software designer Luke DuBois, to take viewers behind the characters’ eyes and reveal their interior thoughts, and to engage the audience in direct conversations with their onscreen doubles. A hybrid sci-fi drama is at the core of this experiment to enlist new technology in creating a narrative form that is part video game, part feature film and part VJ mashing.

Toni Dove's interactive films and installations have been presented in the United States, Europe and Canada, in print, on radio and television, and at such venues as the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Zentrum for Kunst und Mediatechnologie, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Montreal International Cinema & New Media Festival and the New York Video Festival. She has received numerous grants and awards, including support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, the Langlois Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, The LEF Foundation, and the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from M.I.T.

Posted by at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Redefining Animation
Thursday Nov 1, 2007 • 7:00 - 9:30 pm
Davidson Conference Center, Embassy Room

Panelists include:

World-renown historians: Giannalberto Bendazzi (author of Cartoons: 100 Years of Cinema Animation, among many other titles), from Milan, and Jayne Pilling (editor of A Reader in Animation Studies, Animation: 2D and Beyond, among others), from London.

Award-winning emerging talents: digital artist and animator Greg Araya and multi-media performance animator Miwa Matreyek, both from the Los Angeles area.

Accomplished artists and educators: Kathy Smith, Christine Panushka, and Sheila Sofian, all from the John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts.

These speakers will be showing examples of innovative animation and discussing the aesthetics of their personal work. Issues to be covered include the new contexts for animation and related perceptual, social, and technological issues. During the reception, you will have the opportunity to meet and talk with the panelists.

For more information and parking details related to “Redefining Animation,” visit the event’s web site.

Posted by at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)