Picto Synthesis

CNN's The Moment is probably the first official use of Microsoft's Photosynth technology for a major event. It was appropriate that its first use would be for the inauguration speech one of the most tech savvy administration to date.

Since the collection of images is spread over time, the experiment is more than just 'a moment'. It allows exploration of the scene from both multiple points of view and multiple points in time.

The result is a fascinating experience straight out of a scene from Blade Runner.

Keep an eye on this site - it will only get better as more images are submitted.

Update: As a bonus, here is a satellite view of the crowd assembled in front of the Capitol.

Artist Chris Jordan shows a powerful way to give back meaning to often desensitizing numbers that are thrown in our faces on a daily basis. His goal is to make these issues matter more once we can feel an emotional attachment to them - like distorted images in a huge mirror.

More examples of his work are available at Running the numbers , An American Self-Portrait.

From time to time, it feels good to indulge in a silly self evaluation test. This one is a harmless game involving Flickr and a small list of personal questions.

The result is a personal mosaic supposed to represent ... you ?

Here were my answers to the questions :

1. Steven Meisel - Yves Saint Laurent - Spring Summer 2001, 2. O-toro Nigiri Sushi, 3. le chateau de l'Emperi a Salon de Provence, 4. ♫ YO Yo yo, there's no place like a green penthouse... so i told the genie i wanted to be well hung. ^o^ ♫ nah... wildlife from singapore♫, 5. Amelie On Ubuntu, 6. Ritas, 7. Vista de Machu Pichu - Cuzco, Perú Julio'07 - Ruta Inka 2007, 8. Flan, 9. Dad Painting, 10. ...beauty is everywhere..., 11. Follow the red line, 12. agiel

Continue reading "The Game" »

I just came across this remarkable series of light graffitis. Long before the latest round of Nextel ads, people were having fun with lights sources and long exposure cameras...

More examples of light doodles on flickr.

Tuesday - Up bright and early for a press conference before the opening of the Exhibition. This is where serious stuff begin.

On the way, quick stop to hail the imposing guard of FJORG!... this year's Iron Animators event pitting teams of animators working non stop to produce an original movie during the time of the conference. Their followers are everywhere, easily recognizable by their viking helmet.



The Exhibition is as much of a visual overload as usual. Colorful booths, goodies, loud demos and people running everywhere. And sometimes, around the corner of a booth, an unexpected cool piece of hardware like this car simulator.

The events of the night were not as wild as some other attendees will tell you (I heard rumors of interesting things going on at a party on the airplane carrier Midway). Mine started with the Electronic Theatre, which featured the best if this year's animation movies, including a sneak peek at Beowulf, a photo realistic motion capture movie that will certainly set a new standard for the idea of actor's performance for 3D characters.

During the pre-show, special guests tried their hand at a giant video game, projected by lasers on the screen of the theatre. Here, Computer Graphics pioneer Jim Blinn showed a remarkable mastery of Astroids !. After the show, I turned out to be too late to attend the 2007 Unravel Cyber Fashion show, hosted by the Siggraph Chapters party. Fortunately, both models and designers stayed for a while to discuss their work and answer questions.

Here is an example of an LED bracelet, shining with a built in game of life.

Continue reading "SIGGRAPH 07 - Day 3 (evening)" »

Monday is the last day before the chaos of the main Exhibition begins.

It is a perfect occasion to walk through the other exhibitions. First, Emerging Technologies. This year featured both technology submitted to Siggraph and curated content, selected by the Program Chairs for that exhibition. Among notable technologies presented are the XO (One laptop per child), a 'transparent' car viewed from the driver's seat, electronic hair for machines with a sense of touch, Microsoft's Surface table and fantastic screens with e-Ink.

The Surface table had, among other applications, a cute Puzzle game where each piece is made of a fragment of a video, displayed under transparent square tokens laid out on the table.

The screens showcased by eInk have a built in smoothing property, allowing them to display extremely fine prints. They come in color and in flexible sheets and best of all, they keep displaying their content after being powered off.

Sunday night was marked by Flash Forward, the review of all the papers presented at the conference, by their authors, in 50 seconds each. The pace is quick, and creativity and fun run high. We saw new techniques to make fire and water, a way to build your own plush animal, amazing image manipulations and most of all, everything you want to know about how to torture a Bunny.... a 3d model of a Bunny that is.

 
This model of Bunny is rapidly replacing the venerable Teapot as one of the most widely used standard model for research in computer graphics, with a mutant armadillo coming close second.

Sunday - Relatively quiet.

I only have a couple of courses to attend in the morning, including Introduction to Siggraph. It may sound strange to attend this session after years of practicing computer graphics (and a few siggraphs already under my belt) but it turned out to be packed of tips and reminders about what it is we are areally doing here. Celebration of Computer Graphics in all its manifestations.

Throughout the conference, volunteer students are easily recognizable by their red or blue shirt. outside of some paid contractors, the entiere event is made exclusively of volunteers, including the Program Chairs. The afternoon is spent watching 5 hours straight of movies at the Animation Theatre. I will have to catch up the remaining hour or so later in the week. Watching these movies in block is a great way to get into the mood of the Siggraph and get a feel for this year's crop.

- Madness session: Swimming sheep, talking balls, dead head and bone heads
- Science: Particles, liquids, cloth, GPU physics simulations, and great baby
- Music : NPR, abstract and more physics and fluids, grandpa of soul
- Creativity : striking image of a man chasing his reflection (ego), abstract, animated Escher, poetic robots and a kid, Dreammaker, la marche des sans nom (poetic – visually close to Pink Floyd - The Wall)
Missing first two
- Storytelling: Cartoon characters, simulation of paper, cardboard, stop motion animation, great stories

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures (not allowed in screening areas, even for media), but here is a link to the summary of movies presented : Animation Theatre Program

Tips

- If you have a laptop, always spot the nearest power outlet. All power outlets are not active all the time.
- Leave a little early around lunch breaks to beat the crowd
- Walk a little more for less crowded coffee stands
- Go to Intro to Siggraph course. Nice reminders even if you are experienced

David Bolinsky: Fantastic voyage inside a cell

A fantastic video about the quest for Truth and Beauty, and running commentary of the incredible movie presented by XVivo to Siggraph 2006.

WHITEHURST STUDIO : CAMERA COMPUTER

Hybrid between professional photography and computer graphics. And the best part of this - he uses Poser at a professional level.

These images are a perfect reply to anybody in the elite crowd of CG looking down at Poser users as if they were slightly more evolved than worms. What counts is the vision, the final image created. The tool used to get there is irrelevant. 

They also illustrate my point of view that digital illustrations place themselves between photography (since you always have to render a shot of elements of your scene) and traditional painting (for the composition and final details).  

Face Hunter and People I Have Asked

Two fascinating collections of portraits from people in the streets. Real life appearances, fashion and expressions. These are people you may walk by every day and never notice.

The photographers must be doing something right when they get these shots judging by the number of people haboring happy faces. 

Poetic and fascinating glimpses into the lives of tiny people on the streets of London.

Little People - a tiny street art project

data visualization & visual design - information aesthetics is a brilliant reminder of how visual information permeates an increasing number of domains, from fashion to science, from politics to cooking.

Subscribe to this RSS for a daily dose of data visualization.

Time for another wild ride at SIGGRAPH, this time in Boston.

On the menu so far : artsy cows, exotic installations to touch and play with in emerging Technologies, a less exotic but more functional Cyber fashion show, tea pots, a giant etch-a-sketch, hours of animations and short films, and an exhibit as wild as usual.

See what all this looked like in my SIGGRAPH 2006 photoset on Flickr

Here is a good article about the relationships between Realism and Style in video games.

Videogame Aesthetics : We're All Going to Die! provides numerous screenshots of old and new games that make an original use of graphics, and muses where all this is going.

Here is another seemingly endless source of weird, surprising and otherwise amazing images : Worth1000.com | galleries.

These are clearly fakes, but they are well worth exploring.

I got frustrated today by several news articles about the Gaint Squid recently photographed by Japanese scientists. Not one of these newsbites had either a picture to show, or even a link to a place where we can see the beast.

I set out to look for the picture on Google and got distracted along the way by the oddities reported by A Welsh View. Fakes or not, these news range from the funniest to the just plain weird.

And the squid pictures ? You will find them with this Deep Sea Squid sightings article from National Geographics.

I came across BBC NEWS | In Pictures while looking for more images from the recent hurricanes in the south. This site features daily picturees, photo journals, special editions and archives for about a year's worth.

Still looking for more tools to make better sense of world events... 

As with last year's Tsunami in Indonesia, the devastation left behind by Katrina is difficult to grasp. Printed press and even news Media are too focused on the drama of unfolding events to provide a real sense of the scale of the devastation. You have to go on the web to get the idea.

NASA's Earth Observatory provides a remarkable series of satellite views of the disaster, from Katrina's eye, Katrina's arrival over New Orleans, to comparative views of the flooding in Louisiana and submerged streets of New Orleans. A more detailed view of the city of New Orleans under water is also available.

Very responsive, Google provides two views of the area : Google Map of New Orleans lets you compare views before and after the flooding, and overlay streets on top of the satellite views, and Google Earth Katrina's Imagery provides frequent updates of the flooded areas beyond New Orleans.

The human scale of the devastation is as difficult to grasp as the geographical scale. Things on the ground are much more complex than the too often polarized views provided by TV news.

The reality of the situation is literally tangible on the daily log of the support crew of DirectNIC, in charge of a backbone node in New Orleans. The Interdictor has become another perfect example of live, raw reporting, including live cameras and hundreds of images of the situation on the streets.

Once you have seen these images, you should be convinced to help, donate or do something about this catastrophe. 

 [09/28/2005- I should have checked earlier.... I just found out there is an extensive coverage of Katrina from National Geographics.]

This week I am off to Los Angeles for the 2005 edition of SIGGRAPH, the annual mecca of computer graphics professionals, special effects specialists, researchers and geeks of all kinds.

I opened an album of SIGGRAPH Photos at Flickr for the occasion. I will try to post new images there daily, along with the other SIGGRAPH pictures already available over there...

Open Photo Project is another great source of images, and the best thing is that these images are free to use as they are protected by the Creative Commons Licence.

In a world where dealing weapons to a dictatorship is hailed as a great commercial success but sharing music files is a crime, it is refreshing to see at least some people get their priorities straight.

Molecular Expressions: The Galleria is a collection of galleries and interactive experiments around microscopic and molecular visualization. It features the Power of 10 dive from a galaxy view to the molecules of a cell.

I had that site in my bookmarks for a while but the recent sighting of a supernova by Space Telescope Hubble is a good occasion to highlight this link.

The Gallery from HubbleSite is not only a clear and well designed website, but it is packed with a selection of amazing pictures from the Space Telescope.

My brother just pointed me in the direction of the online exhibition of the work of naturalist Edward S. Curtis.

The Library of Congress made available more than 1500 photographs from The North American Indian, where Curtis portrayed the way of life of eighty native american tribes.

The twenty volumes of about 100 images each are presented in high resolution. They cover various aspects of the lives of native americans at the beginning of the century, from intimate portraits to beautiful landscapes.

The Earth Observatory project is an educational website created by NASA to provide high quality satellite images for educators or just individuals.

Images are featured according to current events such as wildfires in California or massive solar flares.

Check it out for some beautiful examples of pictures of our home and neighborhood.