Computational artists through a virtual lens: CLOUDS documentary and depth enabled

We present CLOUDS, an upcoming documentary featuring new media artists in conversation about computational art and visual technology. The film contains interviews with over thirty international leaders in the field, captured using a Kinect paired to a DSLR video camera. Rendered in a realtime environment, CLOUDS depicts the artists as computational forms coexisting with their creations and engaging in an infinite conversation. The viewer navigates the virtual space following topics of interest and choosing who to watch. The film has been developed using our RGBDToolkit software, an application and code library for depth-enabled filmmaking. Using computer vision techniques to rectify the Kinect’s depth image to a high definition RGB video stream, the toolkit visualizes the combined data as a textured mesh. The scene may be re-photographed from new angles using a virtual camera, offering potential for new cinematic techniques that take advantage of this CGI and video hybrid.

Speaker Details

James George is an artist and software developer using code to critically interact with the social and perceptual implications of emerging technology. His installations, films, and mobile applications have been exhibited internationally at venues such as The Creators Project (NYC 2011), DHUB (Barcelona, 2011), and Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (Yamaguchi, Japan 2012). Through sharing his software open source and teaching workshops he enables others to express themselves using the tools he develops. George is artist in resident at Eyebeam Art+Technology center, an adjunct faculty at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program, and an active contributor to openFrameworks creative coding platform. As a fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, George is collaborating with Jonathan Minard to develop CLOUDS and the RGBDToolkit. An Idaho native, he holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Seattle and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Series:
Microsoft Research Talks
Date:
Speakers:
James George
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University

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Series: Microsoft Research Talks