70 Billion Pixels Budapest: 360 degree panorama image
"The observation tower of János-hegy [the Elizabeth Lookout on János Hill is], the highest vantage point of Budapest with a 360 degree panorama, was an obvious location. It also allowed us to take on previous world records in both the 'highest definition image' and the 'largest spherical panorama' category. When contacted, the Council of District XII informed us on the upcoming anniversary of the tower. We agreed to cooperate in commemorating the September 2010 event by setting up new world records-give them our best shot if you please. ."
(360systems Ltd., 360world.eu)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Plato's Allegory of the Cave
"Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?"
(Plato)
Plato's Republic, book vii, 514a-c to 521a-e
[Plato's allegory about consciousness underpins Western philosophy. It also introduces a fundamental concept used by Christian theology to describe spiritual enlightenment.]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Image Metrics: hyperrealistic CG facial animation
"When [Image Metrics] first started working on Emily, our goal was to create an exact replica of the real actress Emily O'Brien. Why? Because there was no other way to determine how close we had come to reality if we did not replicate a 'real' person. Judging from the reaction of people at SIGGRAPH 2008, and the hundreds of media hits, we've come pretty close to the mark.
...
Image Metrics began planning the Emily project in March 2008. After Image Metrics developed a script for the animation, the ICT Graphics Lab scanned O’Brien to develop the template for her CG double. A team of eight artists working part-time on the internal project then built a custom rig for the Emily character, captured O’Brien’s performance with video and applied it to the CG character with its proprietary facial animation solution. Once the capture and rigging processes were finalized, the 90-second animation took just one week to complete."
(Image Metrics)
CONTRIBUTOR
Deb TuckSHARE
Portrait Dolls: Ping Art Original Dolls
Another example of life-like dolls being made to measure. In this case the dolls are designed to be 'portrait' representations of existing people. The dolls are created by Singaporean doll maker Ping Lau.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Indie games: audience not just authenticity
"Once upon a time, not long ago, it looked like bedroom coding was dead - at least as a commercial pursuit. The nineties brought in a growing obsession with detailed 3D visuals, requiring ever-larger teams of ever more specialised coders, artists and designers. And while an indie gaming scene continued to flourish online, the fruits of those labours were largely unseen and unappreciated by mainstream gamers.
But a lot has happened over the last three years. Vitally, Microsoft started trawling the indie scene for content to fill its Xbox Live Arcade service. Sony and Nintendo soon followed suit, resulting in the likes of Braid, World of Goo, Mutant Storm and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People becoming key downloadable releases. At the same time, the growing PC casual gaming scene, together with the arrival of the iPod and iPhone as fully-fledged gaming platforms, has built an audience that clamours for graphically simple puzzle and word games. In a sense, casual gaming has legitimised non-naturalistic, often 2D, visuals and intuitive gameplay, reclaiming videogame culture for the masses.
Bedroom coding is back."
(Keith Stuart, 6 January 2009, The Guardian)
[This represents a broadening of the rather narrow trajectory of hyper-realism that has preoccupied the games development industry since its adoption by computer science advocates. This departure can be seen as a strengthening of voices questioning the authority of modes of representation derived (seemingly unquestioningly) from a default Modernist position e.g. favouring authenticity and fidelity over audience and interpretation.]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
