How to get a 360 degree panoramic shot

Now this is a very clever invention developed from phd work by Jonas Pfeil, a student in Berlin. He has built a 'Throwable panoramic camera' which has 36 mobile phone cameras embedded in a ball that you throw in the air and it takes a 360 degree picture at its highest point. There's a video on his website that explains it and there's a link to this panoramic shot to show what it can do.

This reminded me of a wedding in Winchester about 16 years ago, when the Brother of the Bride attached a camera to a rocket - a firework style rocket - and sent it up over the wedding party as we stood on the mizmaze at st catherine's hill, an old pagan site. We all dutifully looked up and smiled for the birdie, then watched in amusement as the rocket did not come straight back down but got blown off course into the brambles, with Brother of the Bride in hot pursuit regardless of his bare legs. After a good half hour of searching he did not come back triumphant, just scratched. He probably shouldn't have worn shorts to a wedding. I do wonder if the camera was ever found. This ball camera would have been more reliable, though possibly not as spectacular and harder to hide in a pocket during the ceremony.

The other drawback is that you have to catch the ball before it lands, not my strong point. Though jostling to catch the camera ball at a wedding would have more point to it than trying to catch the bride's bouquet.

little fishes

Oh, and if you're reading this on an iPad then that big blank space at the top of the page is meant to have cute little goldfish swimming around who come to your mouse cursor. But not for iPad users.

now, where was I?

I haven't been away, just sidetracked by life. Things have been happening - work, conferences, family. I have made dates in my diary to try and catch up on writing here. First I need to backtrack and check what I have and haven't shared about what was happening back in May - I hate not working in chronological order. So that's at least five months of posts if I can remember what was interesting. It may be bullet points. Just need to mark the spot and remind myself to come back regularly. Currently getting back into swing after three weeks of feeling decrepit. That may just have been post-funding-application exhaustion or possibly a virus. One of those can't-be-bothered-to-get-up-off-the-floor-and-lie-on-the- bed viruses. The application was about trying to get funding to work with Grandparent Carers and their families on a storytelling project. More of that in November as that is when I will hear if I have the funding. If not, then I will no doubt rant about it here before I have to develop plan B for paying for my flat white soy decafs in 2012

CHI2011

I promised Il Professore that I would blog on my trip to CHI, and as yet have not found time to sit down and think about what I have been doing. It is always easiest just to do trip logging in chronological order, little and often, but I have been loathe to lug my macbook around with me as it is just that bit too heavy when you have a poorly shoulder. So, I have almost a week to catch up with. I did make notes in my little red book so I wouldn't forget the highlights, but there is more and more happening that I want to share and I am way way behind. I did think that maybe I would try and separate out the sociable parts of the trip from the work related parts of the trip.

And now I am getting distracted by talk of hoarded computer equipment by Bill Buxton at CHI, Must stop and listen.

3D film in the palm of your hand

Today I stumbled across yet another reason for getting an iphone in 2011: palmtop theater

This is a device that fits onto your iphone/ipod touch and enables you to watch films and animations that have been built in 3D. Well, the image is split into three sections so some parts are foregrounded and some backgrounded, the device has mirrors that reflect it up and hey presto a cinematic experience in the palm of your hand.

V2_Institute for Unstable Media is showcasing some works made specially for this, curated by Maki Ueda. The video explains how the technology works - how to prepare your images so they appear on screen as 3D.

V2_ seems like an interesting organisation to keep an eye on. If I were in Rotterdam I would try and get along to the showcase. It looks like several artists are developing work for the palmtop theatre following the artists workshops at V2_last year.

Palm Top Theater_i3DG, by Jitsuro Mase, Tom Nagae (JP) / DIRECTIONS, Inc.

As I can't get there I shall have to content myself with the videos and write-ups of the event.

I did notice when watching the youtube video that a couple of people have posted instructions on how they made their own versions of the viewer. Could be an interesting thing to try - a bit more complicated and time-consuming than making your own kaleidoscope perhaps.

immaterials: making rfid beautiful

I stumbled across a very interesting video about a clever idea from Timo Arnall and Jack Schulze - people worth watching if you are interested in novel and thoughtful design. I was following a link recommended to me by Sam Kinsley about the Making Future Magic project from Berg London, using ipads to create light animations. That work is well worth a look too.
But this video that I want to point people at, Immaterials: the ghost in the field, is all about "exploring the spatial qualities of RFID, visualised through an RFID probe, long exposure photography and animation" Basically that means they used a little LED light attached to an rfid tag and held it near an rfid reader to see when the tag and reader talked to each other, thus mapping out the edges of the range of the rfid. The video has a very clear explanation of why this is important for designers using rfid, and is intriguing enough to watch even if you aren't using rfid in your own work.
They are visualising the shape of the readable volume of different rfid tag readers - you can't see this footprint of rfid any other way, which can be a problem if you are a designer who needs to know where and at what angle to embed tags in relation to readers. Making a visual representation makes it easier for the designers to know where to place the components. And even if you aren't that bothered by any of that it's still worth watching.

trip to concordia

As is often the way I have a backlog of things that I want to write about that seem to have happened quite a long time ago tho really it's been only a few weeks.
I had a very interesting trip to Montreal, only my second visit to Canada and very different from my experience of Vancouver.
I was invited to visit the Oral History Research Centre at Concordia University, who were interested in work i have done in the past on locating oral histories using mscape. It was very flattering to be asked, and even more exciting to be paid to go. I cheekily asked if Dr Clodagh Miskelly could come with me too, as we worked together on the community based projects that seemed most relevant to talk about this time. So I had the benefit of catching up with Clodagh as well as getting the chance to meet some great people running some really interesting projects. Should have guessed that from their slogan "the stories people tell matter."
Special mention to Steve HIgh, Stacey Zembrzycki, Jessica Mills and Laurel Hart - who did a brilliant job of pointing us at interesting places to go and wander, and the best places to eat.

Apart from some interesting discussions on oral history, digital storytelling, locative media and so on, we gave a public talk and ran two workshops for people currently working on community based oral history projects with them. I hope we gave them an interesting introduction to some of the possibilities, perils and pitfalls of working with gps and pervasive media projects.

It was also good to revisit past work and realise that it was still interesting, and to try and map the spin offs in terms of people who got into mscape type projects through their involvement with the Southville CLASS group project on Wartime Childhoods.

Unrelated highlights of the trip were....

.....the best soya cappucino I have ever tasted, at café Myriade just over the road from Concordia university on rue Mackay

.....stumbling across Aux Vivres with Clodagh, an amazing vegan restaurant, a lucky break on my first night in a wet and windy Montreal, that we had to visit on our last day as we hadn't had space to eat their gateau fauxmage - the most fab cheesecake I have had in a while, even tho (or possibly because) it contained no cheese, milk, cream or butter. More of that in another post.

.....finding the co-operative book store on bishop street and enjoying the tshirt slogans, buying presents for family.

.....strawberry daiquiris at Mesa14. I've never had one before, well, not that I remember, so can't compare them but these were great - a very good way of taking the taste away of the worst meal I have had in years at some overpriced downtown jazz club in the touristy area.