Our final class was an exercise in distilling everything we covered into eight 5-minute presentations. Here are our notes.
-M
Prologue – A Thousand Zapruders (Michael)
- when everyone has cameras and connections
Several decades after the JFK assassination, the Discovery Channel made a 3D model of Dealey Plaza based on some of the known photos and films, then used the model to weave a spatially and temporally coherent sequence. The effort was largely done by hand and the data, compared to today, was paltry. Imagine how such an event would be collectively captured today, and what the challenges are to integrate images and videos into a single 3D model.
I. Billions and Billions of Photos (Martin and Matt)
- the qualitative impact of colossal image libraries
In Billions and Billions of Photos we explore the impact of having huge databases of photographic and other data has on our society and our collective images. With this unfathomable quantity of information we must rethink our methods for finding information, what is truly private, and what we can gather from the patterns of millions of people’s image-making, what new and critical insight this can provide.
Image bookmarking websites as reorganization for image metadata
With so much data available, finding what you are looking for is harder than ever. These services provide new ways of social bookmarking of images, to bring relevant material to the front and structure the metadata that is crucial to this undertaking.
Three new aspects of online personal privacy that will require regulation.
With the new information age personal privacy is all but extinct, and government laws and regulations are far behind the cutting edge when it comes to rights of individuals over their images and data.
Billions and Billions: Will we ever run out of photographs?
This examines the nearly infinite number of possible photographs we can produce, and how this finite number can not really be comprehended
Amalgamations
This post explores the power of compositing these billions of billions of photos in recognizable shapes and forms that speak volumes on our collective consciousness and collective memory of the society. Most striking are the composites of playboy centerfolds, as well as high school graduations photos.II.
External Links:
MIT Sense Lab Visualizing Flickr photos in Spain
Tracing city hot spots based on flickr uploads.
FlickrVision
Live flickr updates from around the world.
ColorPickr
Find flickr photos based on a color.
Retrievr
Find flickr photos based on a drawing
TinEye
A “reverse image search” that finds matches to an image across the internet.
II. Just Like Being There (Neil and Sebastian)
- photo-realism and the psychophysics of perception
In the class “Just like being there” we dealt with current developments in virtual presence, place representation. We mainly concentrated on two aspects: underlying ideas and concepts of presence and current technologies.
Telepresence
The term telepresence was coined in 1993. It describes live user interaction over distance in a simulated, shared space. Telepresence mainly refers to the spatial index, however there are attempts to integrate temporal aspects into this setting.
Cisco Telepresence Magic
Mission Eternity Sarcophagus
Virtual Reality
The original phrase Virtual Reality goes back to Atonin Artaud, though in a different meaning. It is an umbrella term for almost any immersive, virtual experience. The core technology consists of HMD or other display devices. Current trends focus on the integration of other haptic feedback channels, i.e. ultrasound and tactile feedback.
NASAVIEWlab
CyberWalk
VirtueSphere
Head-mounted / Helmet-mounted displays
HMDs are display devices, worn on the head, that facilitate the virtual reality experience.
Flight simulator with Vuzix HMD (video)
British Royal Navy Q-Sight HMD (video)
Cave Automatic Virtual Environments (CAVEs)
A CAVE is an immersive virtual reality environment (”theater”) where moving images are projected on the walls of a room-sized cube.
U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (video)
Quake III 360 panorama (video)
Holodecks
Holodecks are similar to CAVEs, but generally refer to simulated reality facilities in science fiction (i.e. in Star Trek)
1950: Ray Bradbury – The Veldt
Star Trek Holodeck (video)
Google Holodeck
Holography
Whereas Holodecks are the product of aesthetic, conceptual invention (,though there is a google holodeck) holography refers to an actual imaging technology invented by Hungarian physicist, Dennis Gabor, in 1947.
Touchable holography
Second Life Holodecks – “Virtual reality” in “virtual world” ;-D
Film inside a holodeck inside a virtual world (video)
III. Moving, Morphing, and Merging (James and Matt)
- methods and consequences of transitioning from 2D image to 2D image
Moving and Morphing Images
Mobile camera systems have allowed users to move through space while recording the environment around them. Technologies like the Steadicam, a camera mount that stabilizes the view while the user walks around; gyro stabilizers, which can be attached to vehicles like helicopters to get a large-scale, sweeping view of panoramas; and motion control photography that can composite multiple angles of a scene into one recorded view.
In addition to compositing film, morphing images together has introduced a way to merge images to create seamless transitions between views. The most notable example of this technology in use is “bullet time,” which with the aid of camera arrays can synthesize multiple views together to create the experience of very slowly moving through time. An example: Toshia Timesculpture commercial.
Merging Images
The use of digital cameras and the ever cheapening of digital media has allowed us to create images much larger than would be possible with just the use of a camera. The combination of both physical practices, hardware, and software allow us to merge multiple images into large panoramas or seamless virtual space.
The main technological breakthroughs that allow for such images include software stitching, the use of nodal points in setting up multiple camera rigs, feature mapping through the use of Scale Invariant Feature Transformation(SIFT).
IV. Rich 3D Modeling (Jeff and Tianwei)
Making 3D models from 2d photos. Using geometry and point clouds. Where can automation replace handiwork? Where can it not? Who has ownership over this content? Here are some links that address these points:
LIDAR – (Light Detection and Ranging) an optical remote sensing technology that measures properties of scattered light to find range and/or other information of a distant target.
BRDF – (Bidirectional Reflectance Distance Function) a four-dimensional function that defines how light is reflected at an opaque surface.
Google Sketchup – An easy-to-use 3D modeling software.
Google Building Maker – A 3D modeling tool to assist users in adding buildings to Google Earth.
Microsoft PhotoSynth – A software application that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensionalmodel of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object.
Manhatta Map – The Mannahatta Project explores what Manhattan might have looked like in 1609, just before Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor.
UpNext – In lieu of crowd-sourcing, a (most likely) hand-built 3D approximation of Manhattan, that’s more navigable (but not necessarily more detailed) at street-level than Google Earth’s take on the same space.
Open Street Map – A 3D Earth model, with the significant difference being that all of the 3D data is open-source.
OGLE – A legally unsustainable but nevertheless interesting approach to extracting existing 3D data from closed systems.
Ink Scanner – A low budget means of creating 3D models. Silhouettes are captured when it is surrounded by a high contrast fluid, such as milk or ink.
V. Liveness I (video) (Carbon and John)
- the role of streaming real-time images and video in Earth models
What is Lifecasting?
Lifecasting is a continual broadcast of events in a person’s life through digital media. Typically, lifecasting is transmitted through the medium of the Internet and can involve wearable technology. (Wikipedia)
Platforms:
Justin.tv: http://www.justin.tv
Ustream.tv: http://www.ustream.tv/
Qik: http://qik.com/
News: Man Commits Suicide On Justin.tv
Webcams
We Live in Public
United States Webcams
Hunting: “The idea came from another website that has viewing of animals, and a co-worker had asked me, ‘boy wouldn’t it be great if you could put a gun to that?”
Mouse Click Brings Home Thrill of the Hunt
Science: Telehealing
Art: Access
VI. Liveness II (other sensors, other data) (Eric and Liangjie)
- The role of streaming data in Earth models.
Instant global Zeitgeist
Ambitious real-time / fresh representation of “human emotion”.
via http://itp.nyu.edu/RepresentingEarth/?p=923
“Constantly monitoring random number generators based on electrical noise. They analyze the data over time, and attempt to identify statistically significant variations from the norm, from which they find correlation to global events”
via http://itp.nyu.edu/RepresentingEarth/?p=923
Behavioral Monitoring & Modification
Broadcast your energy consumption.
via http://itp.nyu.edu/RepresentingEarth/?p=953
via http://itp.nyu.edu/RepresentingEarth/?p=953
Life logging and stat tracking.
via http://itp.nyu.edu/RepresentingEarth/?p=965
Privacy
Near real-time access changes the nature of information that’s technically public but traditionally difficult to access. In the past you’d have to shlep to the post office and thumb through the latest… requiring an investment of time and energy that’s completely erased by sites like Tampabay Mugshots.
Public is still public, but with bureaucratic friction removed privacy is lost.
Daytum-founder Nicholas Feltron’s obsessive annual reports.
via http://itp.nyu.edu/RepresentingEarth/?p=965
“Soon many people will be logging all their messages, either text, phone, email, or gestures and using them to recall and share with others. It won’t seem strange at all. Strange will be those who opt out of life-logging — at great expense and effort.” — Kevin Kelly
Infrastructure
An open network of live data — the “internet of things’”. Data is easily accessible to the public through XML, Json, etc, and easily uploaded with libraries supporting a range of programming languages.
via http://itp.nyu.edu/RepresentingEarth/?p=869
“Tiny, self-contained, battery-powered computers with radio links, which enable them to communicate and exchange data with one another, and to self-organize into ad hoc networks.” Smart phones, web-connected Arduinos, etc. all qualify as Motes.
via http://itp.nyu.edu/RepresentingEarth/?p=923
Epilogue – The One Earth Model (Michael)
- if there can be a single Earth model, will there be?
