Softlab are at it again, with a spectacular, generated architectural volume. I was part of a group show with them last year; then, they worked entirely with the lasercutter. In the spring, they did a small work that switched media, making each piece of the installation with an inkjet printer to apply color. (Hey, it’s wildly expensive thanks to ink costs, but simple – and with photo paper, looks gorgeous.) Now, they’ve put the two together: it’s a large volume, playing with interior and exterior form, it uses the inkjet-printed cards, and it’s held together with binder clips. It’s installed in such a way that it seems to intrude into the space, filling it organically. There’s something magical about going from its plain exterior to the brilliant color inside; peering in is a bit like looking from one dimension into another.
Marius Watz, known in the Processing community, has photos from the opening on the Lower East Side last week, above.
The other novel idea here was using Kickstarter to fund the development. It’s a model of how to do Kickstarter right: everyone gets their name on a piece and gets involved in the artwork. Using the reward is a lot more logical than simply begging for money, and it’s what could give Kickstarter in general some longevity. Here’s how they explain it:
In order to make this project happen, we need to complete the final design, print color on + or – 3,960’ of super high gloss photo paper, laser cut the paper into their specific geometry, clip the pieces together, and install the final piece. There’s a lot to do and a short amount of time to do it!
If you can help us offset some of the costs we will reward you with pieces from the original installation! Every cent you give will go towards materials such as paper, ink, fasteners, lights, etc.
Along with our Kickstarter campaign and the production of the installation, we would love to track where our support is coming from. After you donate, leave us a message containing your name, where you are located, and a picture to be uploaded on a Google Map found here www.chromatex.me
You can also see how many panels have been given names at www.chromatex.me! Pass the word along and help us tag the entire installation with supporters!
Just talking about the funding, even, takes away from the broader point: when you make your work participatory, even in a small way, you build your audience. That might be in the form of funds. It might simply be in the form of people showing up for an event. The capital that you generate doesn’t have to be in money. But if you’re making art for people to witness, it seems their participation on some level is essential. Why else do people go to openings but to be part of a crowd, of something happening? Food for thought.
Check out the video on Kickstarter, which describes the participatory model:
Oh, yeah, this is Create Digital Motion. But if this isn’t giving you ideas for a motion-based event or ways to involve your audience and community, I don’t know what will… (and hey, you can walk around it: check the lovely Flash model on the gallery site above.)
It takes two to tango, and lots of people for a line dance.
Yes, as the rest of the Web has noticed, Apple has just proudly touted the fact that it’s streaming its own press event in a format only people with the latest Apple devices can actually watch. Even Mac site TUAW, gearing up for today’s press event, thinks it’s pretty odd. But let’s skip straight to the good stuff: what’s this HTTP live streaming, anyway? The short answer is, it’s something cool – but it’ll be far cooler if Apple can acquire some friends doing the same thing.
Apple PR has this to say about their stream:
Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards.
(Update – it may also help if you have a $1 billion server farm, as that could be the reason Apple is doing this at all. I’m, uh, still holding out for some magical nginx module, myself, but okay. How many billions would Apple have needed to reach more than Mac and iOS devices?)
Note that they never actually claim HTTP Live Streaming is a standard, because it isn’t. Apple has proposed it to the Internet Engineering Task Force, but it hasn’t been accepted yet. Meanwhile, as we’ve learned painfully in the case of ISO-certified AVC and H.264, just having a standard accepted is far from the end of the story – standards on paper aren’t the same as standards in use. Ironically, presumably all Apple means by saying HTTP Live Streaming is “industry-leading” is that they’ve done it first, and no one else has.
Apple can claim, correctly, that HTTP Live Streaming is “based on Internet standards.” In lay terms, you take a video, chop it up into bits, and re-assemble it at the other end. While common in proprietary streaming server software (think Flash), that hasn’t been something you can do simply with an encoder, a server, and a standard client. As Ars Technica explains, one key advantage of Apple’s approach is that by using larger slices or buffers – at the expense of low latency – you can count on higher reliability than real-time streams. And unlike previous approaches, the use of HTTP means you don’t have to worry about which ports are open. So you get something that’s reliable, easy to implement, and doesn’t require pricey additional software.
Other than that, it’s all basic stuff, meaning implementations should be easy to accomplish, software stays lightweight, and lots of clients could easily add support on a broad variety of desktop and mobile platforms. Here are the basic ingredients: read more
Right on cue, after mentioning that game engines like Unity can become powerful tools for live and interactive visuals — not just digital “games” in the conventional sense — here’s an example, via the Unity Twitter feed. SNIFF, by Karolina Sobecka with software development by Jim George, combines the beautiful, commercial Unity game engine with two free and open source tools — Blender for generating models, and OpenFrameworks for providing a tool for analyzing video input for interaction.
Yes, the model could have been done in Blender’s own game engine, or with more OF code, but Unity is a nice tool, too — and I think it’s a healthy sign that commercial and free tools can compete with one another.
Unity, the commercial game engine, has long been a development tool of interest to those working not only in games but other live and interactive 3D visuals. In contrast to traditional tools, Unity is simply friendlier to designers and programmers alike. It’s what you’d imagine a game engine to be. After first attracting developers on the Mac, Unity has since become a powerhouse on various platforms.
Interestingly, it’s all powered by the open-source Mono, a free version of Microsoft’s .net platform (and a painful reminder to Java advocates of what Java could have been). You can read a case study of that success story; PDF only.
The coming Unity 3 upgrade is looking significant.
Greater cross-platform support. Not only Mac, Windows, and Wii, but Xbox 360, iPhone, iPod touch, and Android. (I saw an impressive Android presentation at a panel in Berlin in May; it’s looking like you’ll get the same stuff the iOS developers get, but perhaps with even better multi-platform support. It could mean the iOS version improves, simultaneously, as that work under the hood gets done.
Unified editor. Open one editor, target any and every platform.
New visual goodness. Superb lightmapping for more realistic lighting effects, lens effects, and deferred rendering for improved performance mean better-looking visuals. The lightmapping uses the lovely Beast.
Source-level debugging. Thanks to improvements in Mono’s MonoDevelop code environment, you can finally debug your scripts with ease.
Occlusion culling for improved performance across platforms, mobile and otherwise.
Other key features the dev team spotlights: powerful, easier new scene editing, surface shaders and easy shaders for OpenGL ES, XOR operator in JavaScript, easier math functions, and lots more — see the post.
All in all, it clearly makes Unity the environment to beat for independent creators.
I still long for a strong game engine choice for open source developers, one built on higher-level languages than C++ (or using something other than primitive bindings to C++ engines). I don’t imagine such an environment would ever compete directly with something like Unity; on the contrary, it could go in other, more experimental directions than a more comprehensive commercial game would, and conceivably be more lightweight. PyGame, jMonkeyEngine, and the Blender Game Engine are a few examples that might fill the category; I’m curious if readers are using any of these (Unity included).
Unity’s place is clear, though; they’re doing extraordinary work and reshaping the notion of what a game engine is. Stay tuned for that version 3 release.
Madrid-based artist Rubén Fernández sends along his most recent project, which layers stop motion video with novel live control. The material itself is composed of stop motion footage produced with everyday materials, most notably beer and soda cans. The stop motion footage was reprocessed into more stylized animation, and then is controlled via MIDI using both conventional faders and flex-sensor gloves, using the Mac VJ app Modul8.
I love the sense of a layered process here; I hope we get to see more of this work – it looks to me like a great step toward a larger performance.
Description:
Vídeo-Arte. Audiovisual Stopmotion controlado en directo por MIDI y guante con SENSORES DE FLEXIÓN bajo software de VJ MODUL8.
Creado a partir de materiales cotidianos como latas de cerveza, refrescos y otros.
Addendum to the previous story: an “end user” and an “application” are not the same thing. Watching comments from some users dumping on Firefox and Opera because they don’t understand this is painful. Watching it come from journalists is even more so. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what today’s announcement met. The “free” applies to end user, free, “broadcast” Internet video. It doesn’t apply to the tools you use even to view that video – including Firefox.
Here’s the deal: today’s “free forever” MPEG LA announcement was mostly a PR coup. It changes very little: critics of the use of the patent-encumbered, royalty-bearing format in HTML5 video were aware that the free end user license might be extended.
But, boy was it a PR coup, because the words “forever free” starting spreading around the Web, and some people got the wrong idea. You’re not free to use MPEG LA’s technology as a content publisher if you want to use H.264 as your distribution format for on-demand or for-sale video. More importantly, you’re not free to ship H.264 encoders or decoders.
That means if you’re making, say, a truly free and open source Web browser like Firefox, you can’t distribute H.264 support without paying millions for a license or breaking the law. Giants like Apple and Google and Microsoft pay anyway, so it’s not an issue for them. But it is an issue for free software developers. Writing for the Mac blog TUAW, author Chris Rawson fails to understand this point: read more
The good news: a lot of “broadcast” Internet video is free forever on AVC and H.264. The bad news: everything else still costs money, not much else changes, and you can expect the next battle will be a protracted patent debate. Whee! Photo (CC-BY) Bill Jacobus.
MPEG LA, the group that holds the patent pool for AVC (best known for the H.264 codec) and licenses said pool to third parties, has extended its royalty-free license for free, end-user playback of its video. That extends a deadline from what had been December 15, 2015 to an indefinite date, and it removes the “doomsday” scenario painted by some opponents of the H.264 license, in which all Internet video suddenly ceases to be royalty-free. Read the full announcement from MPEG LA:
So, game over? Out with WebM? Stick with H.264 forever? Actually, not quite.
First of all, even if you’re talking only playback and only free videos, this license extension doesn’t cover all use of video on the Internet. That’s “Internet Broadcast AVC Video.” On-demand videos are excluded.
Beyond the “free” and “Internet” qualifications, you get into even more royalty fees. Let’s let MPEG LA explain that in their own words:
MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides coverage for devices that decode and encode AVC video, AVC video sold to end users for a fee on a title or subscription basis and free television video services. AVC video is used in set-top boxes, media player and other personal computer software, mobile devices including telephones and mobile television receivers, Blu-ray Disc™ players and recorders, Blu-ray video optical discs, game machines, personal media player devices and still and video cameras.
So that means everything from Hulu on-demand video to the Firefox Web browser to video editing software still has to pay fees. That, in turn, means the free and open source community – and the Mozilla Foundation – are in the same boat they were before the announcement. And that means Google’s truly free WebM video format remains important. read more
A 1922 test of Kodachrome color motion pictures predates feature-length color movies by several years. The results are eerily beautiful, a transcendent view through the eyes of someone exploring a medium that is still new technology, and the talented performers able to exploit its potential.
At once contemporary and alien, the pictures are also a reminder of how much of our own self-image is shaped by media – and, perhaps, how seeing that media through fresh eyes can make it express whatever we wish. Thomas Hoehn reveals the film for the Kodak company’s blog A Thousand Words, as seen via Boing Boing), with further commentary by a film geek identified as Mike C.:
In these newly preserved tests, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae Murray appears almost translucent, her flesh a pale white that is reminiscent of perfectly sculpted marble, enhanced with touches of color to her lips, eyes, and hair. She is joined by actress Hope Hampton modeling costumes from The Light in the Dark (1922), which contained the first commercial use of Two-Color Kodachrome in a feature film. Ziegfeld Follies actress Mary Eaton and an unidentified woman and child also appear.
George Eastman House is the repository for many of the early tests made by the Eastman Kodak Company of their various motion picture film stocks and color processes. The Two-Color Kodachrome Process was an attempt to bring natural lifelike colors to the screen through the photochemical method in a subtractive color system. First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues.
The Eastman House is an extraordinary place, not only a museum but an active laboratory in the battle to save the history of film.
But when it comes to saving color film photography, there’s more than archival history at stake. Our friends at the blog Retro Thing have chronicled the demise of the Kodachrome-branded line, as well as the remaining opportunities to shoot in film. As hipsters snap up (so to speak) iPhone apps that fake vintage photography, it seems visual arts is in desperate need of digital-savvy creators who can also make use of genuine vintage photography. Here are a few resources from that blog of the eight-millimeter variety, perhaps the best format for the casual photography wishing to resurrect bygone motion images. And while these stories tend to the amateur rather than the birth of color Hollywood seen above, I think they’re perfectly appropriate to mention here – after all, today media is personal more than ever before. read more
Samsung today teased their upcoming Samsung GALAXY Tab tablet. The mention of “Tab” is forever in my own mind linked to my grade school gym teacher (it was her favorite snack, alongside jelly doughnuts). But hey, it’s better than yet another reference to “pads” or “slates” — bring back the tablet.
http://galaxytab.samsungmobile.com/ Side note: what is with North American Android device marketing? Apple sells phones that take pictures of your new baby. Android device makers and carriers prefer to sell phones that eat babies, and turn you into killer cyborgs. What gives? I prefer the Korean Android ads, which feature an adorable dancing rendition of the mascot.
More to the point, after a summer of cheap knockoff hacks running the Android OS, the Tab is likely the first “real” tablet for the Android platform. The presence of a 3G modem and OS 2.2 FroYo I think makes availability of Google’s official application conduit, the Android Market, more likely. And while you don’t need the Market or Google accounts to run an Android device, they make shelling out cash for one far more palatable. 3G modems would make these devices function, for the purposes of certification, essentially like a phone. My guess is you’d see them partly subsidized by carriers, though that could mean paying a monthly fee for mobile data and hold-ups related to carriers actually launching the thing. (According to the teaser, the Tab will hit on September 2 in Berlin, meaning you Germans could beat the US this time, unlike the reverse delay with the iPad.)
All of this means that in terms of hardware and software, the Tab could finally lead the charge of tablets built around a free software platform, in contrast to the iPad. Android isn’t a perfect free platform, but it still qualifies as “pretty darned good” in many respects. Instead of proprietary, closed-source APIs, a device like the Tab would mean open development, the ability of users to run what software they choose without having to hack their phone, a Linux kernel and Linux APIs, fully open-source platform code and sample apps, development on any OS (Windows and Linux, not just Max) with free, community-supported tools (like Eclipse), and development not bound by restrictive legal agreements. And, oh yeah, it’ll even run Processing.
My friend Brad Linder at netbook and tablet specialty site Liliputing breaks down the likely hardware specs. From leaked info: read more
The future is omni-platform. It’s visual content on mobiles, on desktops, and on TVs. It’s not tied to any one distribution platform, either, whether that’s iTunes (which bizarrely managed to co-opt the open RSS format for its own, with iTunes-specific tweaks), or things like the Xbox.
And the future is going to be a huge pain in the ***. Well, okay, it’ll be a pain for someone. Because of the complexities of supporting different platforms, and the fact that, while moving beyond Flash is liberating, it also requires dealing with some of those platform inconsistencies, getting video everywhere is likely to be a development headache. Like any remodeling, life will get worse while the changes are underway, but it’ll be worth it when it’s done.
Working out those complexities is also a huge opportunity for anyone in the video hosting business. After all, sorting out the challenges of embeddable players have long been a big ingredient in the success of services like YouTube, Blip.tv, and others. read more
