Golan Levin is a creator, performer, innovator, engineer and MIT graduate whose work has been seen around the world, and FITC gave you the opportunity to ask him anything via Reddit. Golan has answered your questions in the video below, which was created by James George (@obviousjim) and Jonathan Minard (@deepspeedmedia), artists-in-residence at Golan’s lab who are researching new forms of experimental 3D cinema.
The work of James George and Jonathan Minard explores the notion of “re-photography”, in which otherwise frozen moments in time may be visualized from new points of view. Despite the sometimes wildly moving camera, the video was in fact shot with a stationary Kinect-like depth sensor coupled to a digital SLR video camera. To compose their shots, the filmmakers developed custom openFrameworks software that aligns and combines color video and depth data into a dynamic sculptural relief.
In a process of “virtual cinematography”, James and Jonathan rephotographed Golan’s 3D likeness — selecting new angles, dollying, and zooming — to compose new perspectives on the data as if playing a video game. Fixed camerawork is thus transformed into a malleable and negotiable post-process, in which shots can be carefully recomposed to highlight and inflect different latent meanings.
This experiment developed out of concepts and collaborations born at Art && Code, a conference on 3D sensing and visualization organized by Golan’s laboratory, the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. Artist-hackers assembled to explore the artistic, technical, tactical and cultural potentials of low-cost depth sensors, such as the Kinect. As an outcome of the conference, James George, a creative coder interested in cinema, and Jonathan Minard, a documentary filmmaker interested in new-media technology, are now collaborating on the development of open-source tools and techniques for augmenting high-resolution video with depth information.
The first cycle. A visualization of a creative production process, made for fashion designer Borre Akkersdijk.
An animation where the viewer is being taken by fiction and reality into the creative concept of it’s designer.
The animation was the introduction of his fashion show ‘The first cycle’ -from the yarn to the show- at the fashion week in Paris.
This animation was realized on the Motion cabinet by Niels Hoebers.
The Emmy award-winning team at Brainstorm Digital has put together the before and after shots from season 2 of HBO’s hit series “Boardwalk Empire”. Boardwalk Empire is an American television series from cable network HBO, set in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Prohibition era.
Still Life by Scott Garner is an interactive gallery piece that takes traditional still life painting into the fourth dimension with a motion-sensitive frame on a rotating mount.
Rob Bryanton made his first record at twelve, and was host of a regional CBC-TV music series at twenty. He is the President of Talking Dog Studios (www.talkingdogstudios.com) in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, which specializes in music and sound for film and television. He has been nominated eight times in the last eight years for Canada’s prestigious Gemini Awards, four times in the category “Best Original Music Score for a Dramatic Series”, and four times for “Best Sound for a Dramatic Program”. Recent projects to which Rob has contributed his talents as a composer and sound mixer include the hugely popular CTV series “Corner Gas”, plus the historical mini-series “Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story” (CBC-TV). Rob is also responsible for the theme and underscoring on CBC’s Canadian Antiques Roadshow. While Rob has had poems and song lyrics published in several anthologies over the past decade, “Imagining the Tenth Dimension” is his first book. It represents the culmination of a lifelong fascination with science, philosophy, and the nature of reality which, as he tells in the book, began at the age of seven. Rob is also the current President of the Saskatchewan Motion Picture Association, and is an active volunteer in his community. A typical stubborn prairie boy, he is proud to have built a career for himself as a composer and sound mixer in his home town, and to have been a part of Saskatchewan’s burgeoning film and television industry for the past 30 years. Rob lives in Regina with his wife Gail and their dog Buddy. Gail and Rob have two sons, Todd and Mark. Text taken from Amazon
Within ‘Somewhere’ We are transported to a time where the boundaries between what is real and what is simulated are blurred. We live online and download places to relax, parks and shopping malls. We can even interact with our friends as if they were in the same room with simulated tele-presence. Everyone is connected and immersed in nanorobotic replications of any kind of object or furnishings, downloadable on credit based systems. Distance and time become as alien as the ‘offline’ The local becomes the global and the global becomes the local. Consumer based capitalism has changed forever. A truly ‘glocolised’ world. The singularity is near.
The film places us into this vision, observing an average inhabitant within the ever changing environment of the latest SimuHouse. From a painting to a park and from a telephone call to a shopping mall. That is until there is a leek in the system and everything malfunctions. The film concludes with the house being forced to reset, giving the character and viewer a stark reminder that nothing is ‘real’ even her dog, which re-materialises in front of her.
CREDITS:
Directed By: Paul Nicholls
3D, 2D, Tracking, Post Production, Compositing, Camera Work: Paul Nicholls
Cast: Indre Balestuta, Iffy
Sound Design: Jesse Rope
Narration: Robert Leaf
Greek Vocal Talent: Lia Loanniti
Serbian Vocal Talent: Mina Micevic
Store Voice: Guillaume Nyssens
System Voice: Anita Shim
Music By: Kourosh Dini, Twighlight Archive, Pete Berwick http://www.factoryfifteen.com/
For “10,000 Pixels”, artists were asked to create three artworks using a 10,000-pixel “allowance”. The extremely low resolution becomes an aesthetic and conceptual challenge, resulting in ultra-low-resolution photographs, carefully crafted digital abstractions, blocky representations of physical objects similar to early Atari and NES sprites, or other unexpected solutions.
The Aesthetics of Low-Res
10,000 Pixels is about the creative strategies that emerge from limitations. For this exhibition, artists were given an “allowance” of 10,000 pixels and asked to create three images using only those pixels. The results range from tiny geometric forms, hotdogs/shit, tiny animations, and reminiscences of NES graphics and the early web.
We experience digital images in a kind of bracketed time. Current technologies look clean and crisp, whereas images from a few years ago seem inadequate and embarrassing. When looking at a video I made only a few years ago, I noticed the huge differences in quality between the older piece and more recent projects made in HD. Yet as a two-dimensional surface, even a seemingly low-resolution image contains a gigantic amount of information. A crummy YouTube video might have had 320×240 pixels, but even such an unacceptably low-resolution image contains 76,800 pixels [1]. The works in this exhibition explore the limitation of resolutions that are several orders of magnitude lower, having more to do with historical influences than the promise of 4k projectors.
Art Micro Patronage is an experimental online exhibition space enabling you to view and support artwork that is ideally experienced on the internet. Built on the generosity of people like you, AMP is a vehicle for a new generation of art patrons, who are willing to associate their appreciation of great work with actual dollar amounts, no matter how small.
Super Art Modern Museum (SPAMM) has recently opened its doors. The first exhibition is featuring 50 artworks from 50 artists for only 1 Super Art Modern Museum!
SPAMM Manifesto
“Visual arts have entered a new era. It’s a place where immediacy rules, where visual arts becomes virtual, a place that links the world together. A new era for artists who have invented new concepts, using digital medias, from video to graphism, static, animated or even computer-programmed. They have created a flamboyant design for a super-society created in the Web’s image.
Therefore, if “contemporary art” isn’t “from today” anymore, but just a continuing period of the XIX° century “modern art”, we can proclaim – without hesitation – the existence of the Super Modern Art. It has existed for 10 years now across the web and new technologies. Super-modern art is a virtual museum.”
By creating the Super Modern Art Museum (SPAMM), Systaime, Thomas Cheneseau and the Silicon Maniacs’s team, merely made up for the the indifference of cultural authorities and the need for society to understand the MUSEUM in another way. In 2012, the Museum has to tackle new issues as to the place of art, questionning the way to SEE it and to BUY it. The SuPer Art Modern Museum is an experiment to answer all those questions.
This is the reason why SPAMM takes up theses challenges. SPAMM is not only a new form of museum, it would like to encourage new forms of digital creation.
The Art of SPAMM is the art of Museum, the art of SPAMM is the eye of the collector, the art of SPAMM is the scream of an artistic movement, the art of SPAMM is collaborative and generative, it’s an art that gets out of homes and lives in the heart of machines, a new art for a new generation of artists, collectors, gamers, geeks, buzzers, actors and amateurs alike.
In the midst of this stream of creation, Thomas Cheneseau, Systaime and Silicon Maniacs select SPAMM artists. Systaime, Thomas Cheneseau and Silicon Maniac’s team travel the world of virtual creation, from the Venice Biennale to lafiac.com, and they gather all their experiences together in a single place : SPAMM, a museum and an art manifesto.
Black hole extravaganza in 1080p. From ESOcast. Not long ago, watching something being ripped apart as it falls towards a giant black hole would be science fiction. This is now reality.
Observers under dark skies, far from the bright city lights, can marvel at the splendor of the Milky Way, arching in an imposing band across the sky. Zooming in towards the center of our galaxy, about 25000 light years away, you can see that it is composed of myriads of stars.
This is a pretty impressive sight, but much is hidden from view by interstellar dust, and astronomers need to look using a different wavelength, the infrared, that can penetrate the dust clouds. With large telescopes, astronomers can then see in detail the swarm of stars circling the supermassive black hole, in the same way that the Earth orbits the Sun.
The Galactic Center harbors the closest supermassive black hole known, and the one that is also the largest in terms of its angular diameter on the sky, making it the best choice for a detailed study of black holes.
This black hole’s mass is a hefty four million times that of the Sun, earning it the title of supermassive black hole. Although it is huge, this black hole is currently supplied with little material and is not shining brightly. But this is about to change.
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, a team of astronomers has discovered a new object that is heading almost straight towards the black hole at vertiginous speed. The object is not a star, but a cloud of gas.
“The cloud consists mainly of hydrogen gas, gas which we see anyhow in the galactic center all over the place. This particular cloud weighs more or less three times the mass of Earth. So it’s a rather small and tiny blob only, but it glows very brightly in the light of the stars which are surrounding it .”
As the astronomers watch, the cloud has been picking up pace as it gets closer to the giant black hole. Its speed has doubled in the last seven years and it is now speeding towards the black hole at more than 8 million kilometers per hour.
The astronomers have already seen the cloud’s outer layers becoming more and more disrupted over the last few years as it approaches the black hole. But the exciting part is yet to come.
“The Black hole, imagine it sitting here, has a tremendous gravitational force and the cloud, as it comes in, it will be elongated and stretched, it will become essentially like spaghetti. It will be elongated and falling into the black hole.”
“The next few years will be really fantastic and exciting because we are probing the territory. Here this cloud comes and gets disrupted, but now it will begin to interact with the hot gas right around the black hole. We have never seen this before.”
No one knows what will happen next. The cloud will probably heat up and may start to emit powerful X- rays as it gets disrupted. In the end the material will eventually disappear by falling into the black hole. For the scientists, this event is truly a unique chance to probe the hot gas around the black hole.
“But this process of how material gets into the black hole really is not clear to us we don’t understand it in any detail. And here in the galactic center we have an opportunity so to speak to have a probe of this process. How material really gets added to the black hole, and what the physical processes are, how the interactions happen in this very central region. That’s a fantastic opportunity.”
This animation compares the X-ray ‘heartbeats’ of GRS 1915 and IGR J17091, two black holes that ingest gas from companion stars. GRS 1915 has nearly five times the mass of IGR J17091, which at three solar masses may be the smallest black hole known. A fly-through relates the heartbeats to hypothesized changes in the black hole’s jet and disk.
Data from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite has identified a candidate for the smallest-known black hole. The evidence comes from a specific type of X-ray pattern — nicknamed a “heartbeat” because of its resemblance to an electrocardiogram — that until now has been recorded in only one other black hole system.
Named IGR J17091-3624 after the astronomical coordinates of its sky position, the binary system pairs a normal star with a black hole that may weigh less than three times the sun’s mass, near the theoretical boundary where black-hole status is first becomes possible. Flare-ups occur when gas from the normal star streams toward the black hole and forms a disk around it. Friction within the disk heats the gas to millions of degrees, which is hot enough to radiate X-rays.
Many black hole binaries show distinct and highly structured patterns of X-ray changes, which scientists distinguish by Greek-letter names. But to date only IGR J17091 and one other system, named GRS 1915+105, exhibit so-called rho-class oscillations that astronomers describe as a ‘heartbeat’ reflecting the accretion and ejection of matter.
It’s thought that strong magnetic fields near the black hole’s event horizon eject some of the gas into dual, oppositely directed jets that blast outward at nearly the speed of light. The peak of its heartbeat emission corresponds to the emergence of the jet. Changes in the X-ray spectrum observed by RXTE during each beat in GRS 1915 reveal that the innermost region of the disk emits enough radiation to push back the gas, creating a strong outward wind that staunches the inward flow, briefly starving the black hole and shutting down the jet. This corresponds to the faintest emission. Eventually the inner disk gets so bright and so hot that it essentially disintegrates and plunges toward the black hole, re-establishing the jet and beginning the cycle anew.
In GRS 1915+105, which at 14 solar masses is by for the more massive of the two, this cycle occurs in as little as 40 seconds. It occurs eight times faster in IGR J17091.
Director: David Wilson
Producer: Tamsin Glasson
Prod co: Colonel Blimp
Director of Photography: Tim Green
Gaffer: Steve Finberg
Focus puller: Matt Wesson
DIT: Jay Patel & Ben Worthington
Motion control: The VFX company
Art Direction: Andy Kelly, Clem Miller, Ashley Dando, Shaun Fenn, Sarah Ascroft, Fiona Russel, Arthur deBorman, Die Mortal, Max Halstead
Breasts: Die Mortal
Make Up: Lynda Darrah
Boys: Billie, Hank, Noah and Dylan
Editor: James Rose at Cut and Run
Edit Assistant: Sam Ostrove at Cut and Run
Edit House Producer: Kirsty Oldfield at Cut and Run
Post Production: Andy Godwin at Hogarth Worldwide
Post Production Producer: Lauren Jones at Hogarth Worldwide
Telecine: James Bamford at The Mill London
Telecine Producer: Cath Short at The Mill London
Commissioner: Emily Tedrake
Record Label: Polydor Records
‘Re-Thinking Progress’ explores how through a change in perspective we can re-design the way our economy works – designing products that can be ‘made to be made again’ and powering the system with renewable energy. It questions whether with creativity and innovation we can build a restorative economy.
Courtesy of Randy Buckner and Bruce Rosen of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Visualization group, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
A pair of initiatives to improve brain imaging is revealing how its structure differentiates humans from other animals and could lead to cures for mental illness.
Anita Slomski // The MGH Research Issue 2011: Using a new technology called diffusion spectrum imaging, scientists are able to see for the first time—and in stunning detail—how neural fibers crisscross the brain and connect its regions. The imaging technique, developed at Massachusetts General Hospital, greatly increases the power of conventional scanners and uses mega-magnets to map the way water molecules move in the brain’s gray matter, delineating in real time which neurons are activated and in which direction they are sending impulses. Continue HERE
Carlos Veron: Cinematographer
Kevin Zimmerman: Editor
Ritu Paramesh: Producer
The Mill NY
Colorist: Damien Van Der Cruyssen
Producer: Cat Gulacsy
3d Artist: Navdeep Singh, Thomas Bardwell, Joshua Merck
MassMarket NY
Producer: Marcus Lansdell
3d Artist: Aldrich Torres, Entae Kim, Yuheng Chiang,
Juan Cristobal Hernandez.
Compositing: David Parker, Cole Schreiber.
Sound
Original score: Peter Lauridsen @ Stimmung
Sound design and Mix: Lindsey Alvarez @ Lime studios
Perhaps a take on our wasting energy habits. On another note, this video reminds me of Raoul Sinier’s EV.Panic in terms of an ominous luminous body growing slowly to take over public space.
BLR_VFX: Directed by Carl E. Rinsch, ‘The Gift’ Belongs to the “pararell Lines” Phillips Cinema campaning. Placed in Russia, The Gift is a Sci-Fi short with a savage Chase sequence on it. We made more than 20 full CGI shots for the short. Check out the animated pictures to see how it has been done. We also made the vechicles and some characters desings. We enjoyed creating such an unusual atmosphere and sense. Not the regular Sci-fi film we are used to see…
PlayStation: No SFX, no post production, no cuts, everything you see here is 100% for real.
We were funded by the Video Store of PlayStation® Store (http://www.greatfilmsfillrooms.com) to make a series of movie related videos using ‘Immersive Imaging’ which takes 3D projection mapping as its starting point, but gives the viewer a supercharged experience with the help of the PlayStation Move controller.
In the past, projection mapping worked only from a single, static view point, and thus was very limited. By attaching the PlayStation Move to the camera, we can track projections to screens in real time, enhancing the effect of spatial deformation and false perspective on the projections and allowing viewers to look round (virtual) corners, bend walls, create a hole in the wall, or remove the walls altogether to reveal vast expanses of virtual worlds.
Music: Fleet Foxes
Album: Helplessness Blues
Director: Sean Pecknold
Animators: Sean Pecknold & Britta Johnson
Character Illustrations: Stacey Rozich
Art Assistant: Natalie Jenkins
Producer: Aaron Ball
Multiplane: Greg Pecknold
Post/Edit : Sean Pecknold
Particle FX: Britta Johnson
AE Assist: Austin Wilson
Sound FX: Shervin Shaeri
Story: Sean Pecknold
Labels: Bella Union & Sub Pop
Made in Portland, Oregon
friendlondon.tv
Made with Dragonframe
Marcin Ignac: My experiments for writtenimages.net – a generative book. All these creatures were generated by an algorithm controlled by number of parameters that can be randomized and animated. The look was inspired by amazing works of Ernst Haeckel.
Background
Recently I was working on a project about underwater life. In this case we used 3d models so the immediately when I heard about Written Images I thought “Let’s make something more generative and organic”. I did some research and was amazed how big jellyfish can grow so I decided to make one. At the beginning I was aiming for super realistic look but after stumbling upon works by Ernst Haeckel and his amazing book “Kunstformen der Natur” I knew that this is the way to go. The most difficult part of the project was to find a way of controlling the layout on the page because when you generate something randomly it’s hard to predict it’s shape, size and position. I dealt with that with some smart transformations and iterative algorithms.
Short algorithm description:
The base for the whole creature is the head made out of deformed sphere. When I generate it I also output some connection points. These joints are later used as starting points to generate tentacles and hair. All that is controlled by bunch of parameters like length and number of features that can be randomized and animated over time. No predefined geometry or textures are used.
To output images at hi-res print quality I decided to use OpenGL and new library called Cinder. This allowed to achieve near realtime performance (we are talking about 4000 x 3000 px animated pictures) and prototype very fast. See More HERE
95% of the geometry is generated on GPU using vertex and geometry shaders.
The United States, Canada, Australia (which was incorrectly animated in a previous version of this graphic) and Russia span several time zones. The most populous zones were used to represent these countries. Broadband use by country sourced from Wikipedia. If you don’t see anything happening above, you may have better luck with a more HTML5-aware browser like recent versions of Google Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.
HERE
Due to the good public transportation in the Netherlands distance has become irrelevant. We can reach almost any destination by train easily and relatively quick. In our busy lives we now think in time rather than distance. Therefore the current maps, as we know them today, are obsolete. Thinking in time affects a map and hence the shape of the Netherlands also depending on the perspective from which we look. From the perspective of Eindhoven, for instance, the Netherlands is relatively small because of the quick and easy connections to other cities. At the same time, seen from a more remote and small village such as Stavoren the Netherlands is much bigger. Not only the location from which one looks, or travels, but the hour of the day is very important. At night the map will expand because there are no night trains and in the morning it will shrink once trains will commence their schedules. The map of the Netherlands will never be the same again.
This short movie shows a quick demo of TIMEMAPS and how the map will shrink and grow during 24hours in Eindhoven.
This Oscar®-winning animated short from Chris Landreth is based on the life of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian animator who produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Ryan is living every artist’s worst nightmare – succumbing to addiction, panhandling on the streets to make ends meet. Through computer-generated characters, Landreth interviews his friend to shed light on his downward spiral. Some strong language. Viewer discretion is advised.
This film is available in HD. To select this format, click on the “Internet Speed” (quality) tab located at the bottom of the player. See it HERE
+
Made by Studio Shelter studioshelter.co.kr
shelter.animation@gmail.com
facebook.com/studioshelter
++
Staff
Director : Ha Juan
Animation : Ha Juan / Lee Sunghwan
Rotoscope : Ha Juan / Park Taejoon / Yang Jungwoo / Lee Sunghwan
Kim Young seok / Han Jihea / Yang Minji / Kim Daiho
Cast : Park Taejoon / Jung Hyunjung / Lee Hyein / Lee Jihyun
Park Namyoung / Lee Yoonjeong / Ha Juan / Lee Sunghwan
Photography : Ha Juan / Lee Sunghwan
Assistant : Choi Seongsu
Sound Design : Lee Sunghwan
Music : Park Taejoon
Equipments : K’ARTS
Curated by Rachel Clarke, Claudia Hart and Michael Rees
University Galleries, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ
Monday October 24-Friday December 2, 2011
Reception: Thursday, November 3, 4:30 – 6:00
Panel Discussion: Thursday, 11/17, 12:30
Artists
Kari Altmann (Baltimore), Jose Carlos Casado (NY), Rachel Clarke (Sacramento), Claudia Hart (Chicago), Spencer Hutchinson (Chicago), Yael Kanarek (NY), Brian Khek (Chicago), Alex Lee (Seoul), Lenox-Lenox (Chicago), Alex McLeod (Tornonto), Jon Rafman (Montreal), Michael Rees (Montclair), Lou Regele (Chicago), Timur Si-Qin (Berlin), Yemenwed (NY), Katrina Zimmerman (Chicago), Zeitguised (Berlin)
鳳凰 / ほうおう / Ho-o by Alexander Peverett
Courtesy of Randy Buckner and Bruce Rosen of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Visualization group, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
....................................
