Machinima Festival

The 2005 Machinima Film Festival will include screenings of current award-winning work, discussions with leading machinimators, new technology demonstrations, and panel discussions which examine machinima's wider cultural, legal, and aesthetic ramifications.

Visiting Artist Jean-Pierre Hebert

'Star Trek' spoof conquers Internet, catches attention in Hollywood

A group of five Finnish students who filmed the 103-minute parody say they are amazed by the amount of interest generated by "Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning", in particular the attention it's getting from the movie capital of the world.

The movie has been downloaded 1.7 million times from the website, http://www.starwreck.com and the number continues to soar -- an unexpected destiny for a project undertaken by a group of amateurs and filmed in Finnish with English subtitles. The film took 7 years to complete.

This film has a bunch of very decent visual effects. All the interiors of the spaceships are computer generated and the actors were filmed against bluescreen in the directors living room.

I recommend taking a look at the FAQ section on the website.

iPod Video and more

This was one of the products introduced at last weeks apple media event. It's the new iPod. What's so special about it other then being the 5th version of the most popular music player since 2001? It finally has video playback. Read up on it at apple.com/ipod . Unfortunately I will not have the video iPod anytime soon because Apple is having yet another media event tomorrow night, and my money is going towards whatever products may be announced then.

I/O Brush

I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special "ink" they just picked up from their immediate environment. In our current prototype, the brush houses a small CCD video camera in its tip with a ring of white LEDs around it. Force sensors are also embedded inside of the brush, measuring the pressure that is getting applied to the bristles. When the brush touches a surface, the lights around the camera briefly turn on to provide supplemental light for the camera. During that time, the system grabs the frames from the camera and stores them in the program.

Blow-Up

Please comment on Antonioni's Blow-Up and the issues of reality and illusion in photography.

One more thing....

So not shy of a month ago did my boss introduce the iPod nano, which has been a crazy success, does Steve Jobs have yet another surprise up his sleeve. If possible, I will have one of the new products, if thats what they maybe, on hand next class. Otherwise I know just as much as you do, nothing other then this media invitation. I'll have a post of whatever the annoucements may be when unveiled tommorrow at 10am, pacific time. For those of us who can't do math, thats 1p.m. eastern time. Stay tuned kids.

Question about Waking Life

Hey,

I was wondering if any of you could help me with this. Earlier today in class we saw the making of waking life and they showed how they did the effects for the movie. I was wondering if there are any available programs that allow you to draw on top of video just like in the movie?

~Will

Wired to to the Brain (post by Rachel Bowers)

I was unable to located the article in Wired magazine (approximately
4-5 years ago) where scientists 'tapped' into the eye nerve (of a
blind person) that communicated with the brain. The computer converted
a digital image into a medium that the human brain could somehow
interpt as a visual representation of the world around them. The test
was so successful that blind people with this operation could drive a
car up to 25-30 miles an hour. When the article was published,
scientist were hoping to improve the refresh rate and transfer rate
between the computer and the human so that the blind could have the
same quality, or better of sight as a person with normal sight. The
one disadvantage: users had to wear a large clunky headset/goggles
that look very similar to a VR headset that included the camera and
computer.

Visiting Artist Robert Lisek

Visiting Artist Saoirse Higgins