prosthetic knowledge
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Anti Facial Recognition Visor
Interesting approach to avoid identification from cameras by lighting key areas of the face (video embedded below, via the great DigInfo):
This is the world’s first pair of glasses which prevent facial recognition by cameras. They are currently under development by Japan’s National Institute of Informatics.
Photos taken without people’s knowledge can violate privacy. For example, photos may be posted online, along with metadata including the time and location. But by wearing this device, you can stop your privacy from being infringed in such ways.
“You can try wearing sunglasses. But sunglasses alone can’t prevent face detection. Because face detection uses features like the eyes and nose, it’s hard to prevent just by concealing your eyes. This is the privacy visor I have developed, which uses 11 near-infrared LEDs. I’m switching it on now. It prevents face detection, like this.”
“Light from these near-infrared LEDs can’t be seen by the human eye, but when it passes through a camera’s imaging device, it appears bright. The LEDs are installed in these locations because, a feature of face detection is, the eyes and part of the nose appear dark, while another part of the nose appears bright. So, by placing light sources mostly near dark parts of the face, we’ve succeeded in canceling face detection characteristics, making face detection fail.”
Compared with previous ways of physically hiding the face, this technology can protect privacy without obstructing communication, as all users need to do is wear a pair of glasses.
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INTIMatic
Camera app with filters allows you to pixellate to protect identities. Based on the work of artist Inti Romero whose Facebook photos have this censored effect as a comment on privacy.
It’s a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends.
Snap a picture with your webcam or smartphone, choose a filter to give it a different touch and send it through to Facebook, Twitter or whatever social network you decide. Is, even, a real new way of sharing your pixels …“With INTIMatic™ you can share your pixels with unknown people instantly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Easier it is impossible! We have reinvented the way to share your pixels.
The project was carried out simultaneously on two different continents, by two “artists who do not know each other, united by the web “INTIMatic ™ is an application developed by
Federico Joselevich Puiggrós and ‘Intimidad Romero’.Even the code is available to download. Available for iOS and soon for Android, you can find out more at the project’s website here
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Dynamic Target Tracking Camera System
Fast object tracking camera demonstration, capturing and focusing at 1/1000th of a second - very impressive - video embedded below:
Via DigInfo:
This camera system can track very fast moving objects, keeping them in the center of the screen at all times. Currently under development by the Ishikawa Oku Lab. at the University of Tokyo, this latest version captures Full HD video and can be used outdoors.
“Ordinarily, to change the direction a camera faces, you move the camera mechanically. But in this system, it’s not the camera that moves, it’s the mirrors. This makes it possible to change where you’re looking really quickly. In this demonstration, we’re tracking a table tennis ball. The ball moves extremely fast, but this system can keep compensating for the ball’s motion, so the ball stays in the middle of the image.”
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of music video made with this to arrive soon …
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mapglitch
Flickr photoset from peder.norrby documenting glitches from iOS6 Maps in 3D mode.
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Self-Actualization Replaces The Journey
Game art installation by Jeffrey Scudder uses 4 Playstation consoles together to play Grand Theft Auto IV simultaneously:
A new video game wherein four copies of Grand Theft Auto 4 (PS3) are playable simultaneously via a single controller. The display transitions smoothly between instances. Its title comes from a change made to GTA4’s in-game radio stations in an expansion pack.
Videos, photos and further documentation can be found here
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user632
Public installation piece from undef in public window collects data of of it’s audience with a Kinect sensor - video embedded below:
User 632 is an installation that stores the behaviour of the people who look at it by monitoring them in return. It wants to know when and how a person passes by or if they stop on the way.
All data is being tracked and displayed publicly. Passers-by are stored as an anonymous number without any hints to their identities. Whoever comes to close to the camera though will be stored with a photograph next to their id.
The installation is made up of three Kinect depth cameras that constantly look for movements which are then reduced to a simple directional line in space. When a visitor enters a specific area, the algorithm is looking for a face. As soon as one is found a countdown appears that shows the time until a photo is taken automatically. At the same time the time a user is in the visible area is stored.
This data (time, path and eventually image) are stored in a database, interpreted and displayed as real-time statistics.
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The New World of Net Art
Article from ARTnews on the history of and contemporary practice of Net Art - a good primer on the subject:
But as the Web has evolved, so too has the notion of what might be considered Internet art. “I think it’s much harder to define than it was in the mid-1990s,” says Christiane Paul, adjunct curator of new-media arts at the Whitney Museum and a follower of the form since its earliest days. “We are looking at something that is becoming more hybrid. Pieces often have different manifestations: an application, a net-based piece, an installation.” For Fornieles, who divides his time between London and Los Angeles, going from the virtual to the physical is simply representative of the way he thinks. “I studied sculpture, but I like moving from one medium to another. Why shouldn’t the work I make reflect a bit of that ADD mentality?”
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Multi-viewpoint robotic camera system creates real ‘bullet time’ slow motion replays
Tech to change live sports coverage, aiming for the 3D TV market - via DigInfo - video embedded below:
This multi-viewpoint robotic camera system, under development by NHK, links the motion of eight sub-cameras to that of an individual camera, so that all the cameras film the same moving object.
“Using this system, you can create the effect of stopping time, and moving the viewpoint all around the subject.”
“Previous methods used a fixed camera, so they could only capture subjects moving in a narrow or limited space. But this multi-viewpoint robot camera system can film dynamically moving sports, or subjects at lots of locations in an extensive space.”
Each robot camera has two motors, for pan and tilt. The cameras also share lens data, so they can zoom in unison.
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Copyrights
Art project by Phil Thompson takes blurred copyright-protected images of artworks from the Google Art Project to be recreated by Chinese oil painting services:
The Google Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com/) contains several paintings which have had a blur filter applied to them so as to make them unrecognisable. Google explain this decison stating that they were, ‘required to be blurred by the museums for reasons pertaining to copyrights.’
After collecting all of these images by taking screenshots and cropping out the blurred images, they were emailed to oil painting reproduction companies in China (chosen for its own issues with internet censorship and for its ongoing difficulties with Google), where they were painted to the scale of the original painting. These reproductions were shipped back to the UK and now become the art work.
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Off Pocket
A mobile phone case that can prevent data access to and from your phone:
The OFF Pocket™ is a phone case that blocks all wireless signals from entering and exiting the case.
To use the OFF Pocket™ simply place your phone inside the case and close it. Your phone is now OFF. Untrackable. Unreachable. Unbreachable.
The OFF Pocket has been extensively tested on all major networks, including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. It is compatible with all mobile phone hardware including but not limited to iPhones, Android, Blackberrys, Nokia as well as all modern phone operating systems.
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Rhizome: Prosthetic Knowledge Picks: Other Worlds - Return
A collection of items from the Prosthetic Knowledge Tumblr archive and around the Web, returning to the theme of “Other Worlds” (previously explored in a post from August 2012), which takes a brief look at independent creative games that challenge conventions of the form and bridge the divide between art and gaming.
Included are ‘Void One’, ‘Bad Trip’, ‘Memory of a Broken Dimension’, ‘FRACT OSC’, ‘Paradis Perdus’, and ‘EXO’.
You can read the entire submission at Rhizome here.
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Underground Bicycle Parking Systems in Japan
Danny Choo demonstrates Japanese robotic underground parking systems for bikes - video embedded below:
Too many bicycles and not enough space in Japan - so what do they do?
They dig wells in the ground and build robotic systems to store your two wheelers underground - safe from harsh weather and naughty thieves.
http://culturejapan.tv -
Kintinuous 2.0
Demo of 3D mapping tech using a computer and Kinect, here impressively capturing a looped 300 meter journey - video embedded below:
You can find out more about the project here
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NeuroKnitting
Project uses brainwave activity to create generative knitting patterns - video embedded below:
We have plotted brainwave activity into a knitted pattern. Using a wearable, non-invasive EEG headset, we recorded users’ affective states while listening to Bach’s “Goldberg Variations”, concretely the aria and its first seven variations. The audio was about 10 minutes long and we downsampled each second of the signal coming from the 14 channels of the EEG device. Three main features were measured: relaxation, excitement, and cognitive load. After recording, those features were converted into a knitting pattern. Hence, every stitch of a pattern corresponds to a unique brain state stimulated by the act of listening. It means the user’s affective response to music is captured every second and memorised in the knitted garment pattern.
