Nam June Paik

Toshi Hoo writes:

Nam June Paik has died at the age of 74:
If you are video artist and don't know Paik's work, you should. He introduced the world to video art in the 1960's and collaborated with the Fluxus art movement with folks like John Cage and Charlotte Moorman.

From the Mercury News:

MIAMI - Nam June Paik, the avant-garde artist credited with inventing video art in the 1960s by combining multiple TV screens with sculpture, music and live performers, has died. He was 74.
The Korean-born Mr. Paik, who also coined the term ``Electronic Super Highway'' years before the information superhighway was invented, died Sunday night of natural causes at his Miami apartment, according to his Web site.

MercuryNews.com | 01/31/2006 | Nam June Paik, electronic artist

Panoramic Video Field Test

Panoramic Video Field Test

360 degree panoramic VIDEO. Fun stuff.

-mike

The Scanner Photography Project

Mike Golembewski creates a strange and beautiful hybrid using flatbed scanners and large format cameras. He rigs old cameras to low-end scanners, the lens functions as it normally would, and the scanner slowly pulls the image in line by line.

It's kinda like when you put your face in the copy machine, and move it slowly left to right, and the scan bar does its thing. Imagine images of the outside world taken this way.

The Scanner Photography Project
Links appear to be dead now 3/07

Thanks, dylan!

HandBrake on Macintels

This is insane: Handbrake is doing H.264 full size encodes in REAL TIME on the new intel iMac. If this is true, I am going to have to buy one of those machines. (I really needed to buy a new refrigerator too. Oh well, I needed to lose a couple pounds from the holidays anyway)

...so I get a lot a emails asking if HandBrake will support the new Intel Macs. The answer is yes, a x86 build is already available from the download page. Not everything is optimized for Intel yet, but H.264 is and a 2.0 Ghz Core Duo iMac reportedly encodes about real-time to H.264 at full size (screenshot). The next release should be available as a Universal Binary and full optimized for both platforms.

HandBrake homepage

After Effects 7.0

Wahoo! Adobe announced and shipped After Effects 7.0. Check out the new feature overview (SWF: 23.1MB / 8:53 min).

• Redesigned, unified user interface


• Graph Editor Create precise animations with the new Graph Editor, which offers complete visual control over keyframe editing and easy synchronization of animated properties across layers.


• High Dynamic Range (HDR) color support 32-bit-per-channel floating-point color. (Professional edition only.


• Animation and Behavior Presets plus project templates


• Faster mask rendering


• 32-bit audio support


• OpenGL rendering Use OpenGL for final rendering at high speed: OpenGL 2.0 capabilities include common blending modes, motion blur on 2D layers, anti-aliasing and track mattes, better shadows and transparencies, and more.


• Expanded file format supportnew support for HDV, Macromedia Flash Video (FLV), Camera Raw, OpenEXR, AAF (Professional edition only), 10-bit YUV (v210), and 32-bit TIFF and PSD formats.
  


• Timewarp Slow down and speed up footage with smooth, crisp results and minimal artifacts. Timewarp analyzes pixel motion to create more accurate in-between frames. (Professional edition only.)

I'm looking forward to using the graph editor. Selecting keyframes vs. motion keyframes vs. selected properties, etc. is a nice touch. And the color coding looks handy, especially if you're trying to adjust the X/Y/Z ease a 3D object... If only they'd implement labeling individual points on a mask...but at least now there's an auto-save feature!

HDTV Axi-Vision Camera

The HDTV Axi-vision camera can simultaneously acquire both an HDTV color image and a high-resolution depth image of a scene. What? Essentially, the Axi-vision records infrared information about the distance between the camera and what's in front of the camera at the same time as the usual broadcast info. The resulting grayscale image can be used to key footage in real-time without using a green/blue sceen, or painful frame-by-frame rotoscoping.

Full details here. Make sure to watch the videos for true delight (1, 2, 3).

"Video Voyeur"

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Video feature: Viewsonic's mini projector - Engadget

This thing with the battery pack and an ipod with video.
Yes.
Video feature: Viewsonic's mini projector - Engadget

Garage 3D question..

Andrew writes:

...I know it's not ask dr. wiley, but i was wondering-
my friend and i both have canon zr series dvs,
theyd be pretty easy to rig stereoscopically,
does anyone have the software to generate 3D?
with or without glasses?
canons XL1 had a stereo lens, but i think that
just utilized the interlace.
do you know anything about this?
or where i could try looking?

My guess is that this is one for Dr. Bohus...

Microtel - the teletext station for the voluptuous blinking eye

Teletext is a system which encodes extra information in analogue TV signals, where televisions with the right chip can decode and display special text and graphic pages. Teletext originated in the UK in the 1970's. Today teletext services still offer a range of text-based information, usually including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules. There is an excellent Wikipedia page describing teletext and itshistory here.
[...]
This new channel is called Microtel. The station managers are artists Emma Davidson [Lektrogirl] and Paul B. Davis from Lektrolab. Microtel teletext programs will be broadcast by NOS, Netherlands public television.

Microtel is one of the projects curated by ambientTV.net as part of VBI [voluptuous blinking eye] - a submission for the exhibition "Satellite of Love" . This exhibition is presented by the 35th International Film Festival Rotterdam in association with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and the TENT Centre for Visual Arts. The exhibition runs from 26 January to 05 February 2006.

Up until 04 February 2006, you will be able to create teletext and email it to Microtel for inclusion on this website, a DVD to be distributed by SCEEN magazine andmost importantly broadcast on Netherlands TV station NOS. Check technical information for software downloads and FAQ's to contribute today!

Looks like there are only windows teletext editors available, so make one for me while you're at it, this sounds awesome.
Link