Turning Cars and Computers into Art

Rocketboom interviews Zach Lieberman on his latest projects. (3:57min video)

Transcript:

-I'm here with Zack Lieverman and I don't know exactly what to call you... What would you title yourself as?

-Like nerd, artist, researcher, hacker, yeah... I don't know.

-Renaissance man of technology?

-I guess so maybe.

-So how did you get your start in the field that you're doing right now?

-I discovered this community on-line, especially through Flash, people writing code to animate, and I've always loved animation... And for me it was just really beautiful this idea that you could write some lines of could and you could see something move, and then you could make really elegant types of motion.

One thing that I'm involved with now is an open source project called open frameworks, which is the C++ toolkit so... I said before I'm sort of a nerd artist, I you know, re-write software, we do sort of low level hacking, and this is making a tool for other people to make stuff with.

-For each individual use you're creating a brand new kind of software...

-Yeah, every time we have a new problem, a magician comes and says I want to do augmented reality card trick and then it's like, OK, let's make new software, about, you know, how do we track a playing card... we have a new problem and we come up with software to solve it.

-So I saw a really cool video on ... I think that it uses the open frameworks software with a car...

-Yeah, the project was in Belgium, and it was an advertising company that has the Toyota account and then, once they had the idea of driving and making a type face they contacted me through that... they needed to use software kind of real time software, in order to track the car to get a good sense of what the outcome would be. They did some experiments here, with, kind of , imagining on paper what the movements would be like. The driver would then take those drawings and try to interpret it driving, he would drive slowly at first and then drive faster, cause some of the things are really... involved wipe outs ... I software outputed in image and then the software designers took that image traced it and cleaned it up a bit, and then made the font.

We were making an eye tracker for a disabled graffiti writer, named Tempt, and Tempt has "Lug...ris" disease, and we were making a tool to help him retro feel again with his eye... Ok let's hook this up...

We're actually tracking the pupil, so as the pupil moves around we're following it, so we're like using open frameworks... write some code in order to find it and fitting and ellipse through it. There is data coming from the camera, and then we have some illumination from this infrared LEDs, your eyes are very good input devices, not a very good output device, and when you actually start to hook it up to draw, it's a little bit tricky.

And so we have to do a lot of work to make it easy for ourselves, and also easy for Tempt, it's all Tempt can use to communicate

-I guess this takes a bit of a learning curve ...

-It's a little quirky right now...

-I just closed my eyes that's the weirdest thing...

-So if anyone wants to look into using your software, how do they do that?

-Sure, so they can join the main list, it's at frameworks.cc and then we have workshops and events all the time.

-Somebody could learn from the master..

-No no, we're all learning so that's the exciting...everybody is in it together and learning and growing and evolving together.

-Very cool, thank you very much, that is cool stuff.

Have a look at Funky Forest

How Do We Know What We Know?

Image from the Site of The Exploratorium

California Academy of Sciences offers "sneak previews" of the new building, in Golden Gate Park. This would be close to completion according to the site. Scott Morgan, Senior Project Mgr. mentions the marvels that await inside to visitors. "You'll notice we've actually combined a little bit of the old, with the new".

The intent of the architect was to let the people in the building, reconnect with the park having a direct sight line to the nature outside.

On the 4th clip the Senior Curator of Botany talks about a "Living Roof" with native species grown during years and they wanted something compelling, educational : "when something is beautiful, it's much more compelling, educational all the way round".

Browsing the Golden Gate area wonders ... I had to visit the Exploratorium, the museum of science, art and human perception, to check what's up :-) since the last time I visited.

Highlights: Podcasts from the Exploratorium in San Francisco... start with: Alfred Wegener's crazy idea, an interview with Mel Zucker, Professor of Geology, Skyline college, San Bruno, California.

Follow with Today's Science Headlines and choose to Download a Booklet or a Widget to receive updates on your desktop.
Check feeds from: BBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, EurekaAlert!, MSNBC, National Geographic, National Science Foundation, Nature Magazine, Nature and Science, New Scientist, Science Daily, Science Magazine, Science NOW, Scientific American, and...Yahoo!

Learning about 2L Geo and Arts

This just a still, link to this blog to watch the clip: "Alien Beach". (runs better there than on the youtube site on my screen at least).

From the different versions of Alien Beach, I like this one by Juria Yoshikawa, (see top left link to "video in its original context") there. Interesting variation showing different versions adding to an original site or take, reminding me of "Watch the world(s)". in youtube. Love the visuals and "Rollercoaster" music on Watch the World(s) - Revisited.

Hyperlinked multimedia casts and share networks allow amazing explorative drifts...such as those I found in Judith Wechsler's book, connecting arts and science, read in the early '90s. (Fondo de Cult. Económica Spanish version).

The "palimpsests and interpenetrations" blog linked above informs on "Second Life Geography", explorations, learn more on this amazing clip:


By mageEgo .

This drift started earlier today looking for 2L tutorials in Argentonia, for that's the site where I first learned about 2L, when watching the inauguration of a UPNV site some time ago.

The debate regarding 2L and other virtual planets is spread between doers who walk their talk on virtual environments's pro's and cons, and fierce opponents, whom in most cases don't have a clue of what they're talking about -zero experiencing.
Myself having some issues with pacific time and the stuff I would like to explore (with others that is).