From the ANIMAC to the FairLight Computer Video Instrument, a nice roundup of mostly analog video-mangling technology from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. Lots of pictures and back stories, too.
(Via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals)
Tag: video
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Timeline of Analog Video Synthesizers
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At Home with English: Austin, Texas ESL Public Access Show
“At Home with English”, a fabulous early 1990’s low-budget ESL public access TV course filmed here in Austin, TX, dredged up by the Found Footage Festival. A truly exemplary bit of late-night public access weirdness. I’ve been mentioning this guy to friends for years, always hoping to catch it on so I could tape it. Glad someone’s found a copy, and they’ve even tracked down the star for an interview! This highlight reel’s pretty good, but it’s edited down considerably: each segment was made all the more absurd because they would go over each of the verb tenses repeatedly using the same odd inflection, interspersed with a super-macro-closeup shot of a woman’s lips reciting the vocabulary.
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The Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court as Read by a Piano
The Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court at World Venice Forum 2009 as read by a piano.
(Via Neatorama)
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Near Real Time Face Detection on the iPhone Using OpenCV
Near real-time face detection on the iPhone using OpenCV. An obvious point to make, I know, but I still think it’s amazing that this would have been very difficult to do on any home computer just a few years ago but now our mobile devices can handle the task with relative ease.
(Via O’Reilly Radar)
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CirculaFloor
From the SIGGRAPH 2004 emerging technologies demo, here’s the CirculaFloor, for when you want to play a bit of live-action Mario Bros. The tiles automatically rearrange themselves holonomically (albeit a bit slowly) depending on what direction the user is trying to walk.
(Reminded of this by Make)
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Phillip Torrone Rides the Square Wheeled Tricycle
(video no longer available)
Phillip Torrone rides the square-wheeled tricycle from the Math Midway, a traveling exhibition of mathematics. Figuring out what kind of catenary curves would be needed for differently shaped wheels is a branch of mathematics that I’m happy exists (as far as I know the problem dates back on some level to the 1960s, but for a good recent illustration of the math involved, check out this PDF from a St. Norbert College mathematical modeling class).
(Via Make)
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Cho Chabudai Gaeshi — Flip the Table
Taito’s new Cho Chabudai Gaeshi, a game based on a literal interpretation of the Japanese idiom “flip the table” (chabudai gaeshi). It gladdens my heart to see new weird games being made for the arcade. At least it’s easier to relate to than Boong-Ga Boong-Ga.
As one commenter on Kotaku notes, “If they localized this in the US it’d have to be called ‘F*ck This’”
(Via Offworld)
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Laser Cave Prototype
Interactive Audio Visual installation for
Mekanism’s “After School Special” art show
location: gray area foundation for the arts http://www.gaffta.org/concept/construction : suryummy
visuals : suryummy
audio : suryummy, herbie hancock, various manipulated retro logos
software : VDMXThis is like a model of the world I wanted to live in when I was a kid, somewhere between Tron’s MCP mainframe world, Cybertron, and Marble Madness.
(Via Make)
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Touchable Holography
“Touchable Holography”, a hardware demo by researchers from the University of Tokyo at this year’s SIGGRAPH conference. This mostly builds on the work they presented last year involving their “Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display” (PDF), a device that shoots out directional ultrasound to simulate haptic pressure, like the impact rain has when it hits your skin. I don’t think this current display counts as holography exactly (the image is made with a refracting mirror, just like Sega’s 1991 arcade game Time Traveler!), but being able to reinforce the illusion with the sensation of touch is a cool idea. Hopefully they can expand it to use more than one of their ultrasound boards so they can simulate a feeling that’s more than one-dimensional. Also good to see that researchers are using the inexpensive, off-the-shelf Wiimotes for projects like this.
(Via Make)
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Rhonda 3D Drawing / Sketching App
(video no longer available)
Rhonda. It’s a nifty 3D drawing/sketching app that’s been making the rounds for a few years, and now the video of its creator sketching with it has finally been posted on the web. Even better: it’s been ported to openFrameworks and is being actively maintained on a number of platforms.