Friday, December 23, 2005
spacer.gif{ART}
http://spacergifart.com/
Este site apresenta imagens dos famosos arquivos spacer.gif (também chamados por transp1x1.gif e nomes semelhantes), que foram fundamentais para o layout de site há alguns anos atrás, e que agora estão em decadências (mais detalhes no texto de apresentação do site, que segue abaixo).
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Obsolescence meets timelessness in new Art form.
What is a "spacer.gif"?
The spacer.gif is a means, employed by web designers, of keeping table based layouts from collapsing in on themselves. The spacer.gif was once a valuable tool in a net world governed by the interdependence of content and layout. However, to the contemporary high-efficiency web designer, who employs css formatting and layout capabilities, spacer gifs are largely an obsolete and unnecessary tool. The independence of content from layout has come, and spacer gifs, as a concept and as digital objects, are disappearing.
What is spacer.gif{ART}?
As the digital culture industry forges on to virtual territories yet unseen, spacer.gif{ART} hopes to salvage small pieces of the wreckage left behind. spacer.gif{ART} produces and distributes limited edition archival prints of spacer.gif image files downloaded directly from the web by our highly skilled team of curators and techno-conservators. Our portfolio collections represent a dying breed of often unknown artists who utilize(d) the tools of a rapidly fading past to create extraordinary table-based web design experiences. Our curatorial staff hand picks the most extraordinary examples of the spacer.gif to offer to you, our patron, as handsome limited edition archival prints.
We plan on offering a range of newly discovered works and will be limiting the amount of prints produced and sold. There will only be 10 copies each print portfolio printed. 10 additional individual prints will be made of each piece for patrons interested in collecting individual works or assembling custom portfolios from individual works. Once the final prints have been made, all spacer.gif files will be permanently deleted from our hard drives.
Este site apresenta imagens dos famosos arquivos spacer.gif (também chamados por transp1x1.gif e nomes semelhantes), que foram fundamentais para o layout de site há alguns anos atrás, e que agora estão em decadências (mais detalhes no texto de apresentação do site, que segue abaixo).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Obsolescence meets timelessness in new Art form.
What is a "spacer.gif"?
The spacer.gif is a means, employed by web designers, of keeping table based layouts from collapsing in on themselves. The spacer.gif was once a valuable tool in a net world governed by the interdependence of content and layout. However, to the contemporary high-efficiency web designer, who employs css formatting and layout capabilities, spacer gifs are largely an obsolete and unnecessary tool. The independence of content from layout has come, and spacer gifs, as a concept and as digital objects, are disappearing.
What is spacer.gif{ART}?
As the digital culture industry forges on to virtual territories yet unseen, spacer.gif{ART} hopes to salvage small pieces of the wreckage left behind. spacer.gif{ART} produces and distributes limited edition archival prints of spacer.gif image files downloaded directly from the web by our highly skilled team of curators and techno-conservators. Our portfolio collections represent a dying breed of often unknown artists who utilize(d) the tools of a rapidly fading past to create extraordinary table-based web design experiences. Our curatorial staff hand picks the most extraordinary examples of the spacer.gif to offer to you, our patron, as handsome limited edition archival prints.
We plan on offering a range of newly discovered works and will be limiting the amount of prints produced and sold. There will only be 10 copies each print portfolio printed. 10 additional individual prints will be made of each piece for patrons interested in collecting individual works or assembling custom portfolios from individual works. Once the final prints have been made, all spacer.gif files will be permanently deleted from our hard drives.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Alter Ego
http://www.alteregoinstallation.co.uk/
por Alexa Wright e Alf Linney
Vale a pena olhar as imagens no site. Não é o primeiro trabalho que captura a imagem do espectador e a apresenta para o mesmo mas, parece, desta vez se conseguiu uma boa solução técnica para a idéia ;-)
A descrição disponível no Rhizome.org (http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?36874):
Alter Ego, which has largely been developed within the department of Medical Physics at University College London, is a screen-based installation made by Alexa Wright and Alf Linney. In the installation users interact with what appears to be their own mirror image. Originally conceived as an artwork, Alter Ego draws together practical and theoretical concerns from a wide number of discourses, among them psychoanalysis, cognitive science, HCI, and digital game studies.
The Alter Ego project is an art/science collaboration where the complex scientific or technological problem of creating the appearance of an automatic, real-time emotional response from the machine has so far been divided into several distinct processes. These include the detection and tracking of facial landmarks at video rates; the analysis of these measurements in relation to particular facial expressions; the classification of more than a dozen facial expressions; and the creation of a series of morph targets representing the end point of each of these expressions.
In the installation a stool with a curved black screen behind it is placed 1.5 metres in front of something that appears to be a mirror hanging on a wall. The individual user is invited to sit still on the stool with a blank expression on his or her face for some seconds. The computer captures images of the face via a webcam located behind the ‘mirror'. Using data gathered from these captured images, our system reorganises a stored 3D model to appear as the face of the user. As the computer is working the user will see an image which forms his or her own ‘reflection’. After about thirty seconds this reflection begins to react to, rather than mirror, the facial expressions of the user. For example: if the person viewed by the camera smiles, the virtual face, or ‘alter ego’, may look surprised or angry, or may smile back. This dialogue continues until the system detects that the face of the individual has moved outside its field of vision, at which time it is reset.
The work is fully automatic so that the interface does not require conscious intervention from the user (such as button pushing/touch screen etc). The interface is designed to be automatic and, as far as possible, invisible to create a sense of wonder around the work. Alter Ego has a secondary audience comprised of those people who have already used the work, or who are waiting to use it, and who are discussing their ‘performance’.
por Alexa Wright e Alf Linney
Vale a pena olhar as imagens no site. Não é o primeiro trabalho que captura a imagem do espectador e a apresenta para o mesmo mas, parece, desta vez se conseguiu uma boa solução técnica para a idéia ;-)
A descrição disponível no Rhizome.org (http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?36874):
Alter Ego, which has largely been developed within the department of Medical Physics at University College London, is a screen-based installation made by Alexa Wright and Alf Linney. In the installation users interact with what appears to be their own mirror image. Originally conceived as an artwork, Alter Ego draws together practical and theoretical concerns from a wide number of discourses, among them psychoanalysis, cognitive science, HCI, and digital game studies.
The Alter Ego project is an art/science collaboration where the complex scientific or technological problem of creating the appearance of an automatic, real-time emotional response from the machine has so far been divided into several distinct processes. These include the detection and tracking of facial landmarks at video rates; the analysis of these measurements in relation to particular facial expressions; the classification of more than a dozen facial expressions; and the creation of a series of morph targets representing the end point of each of these expressions.
In the installation a stool with a curved black screen behind it is placed 1.5 metres in front of something that appears to be a mirror hanging on a wall. The individual user is invited to sit still on the stool with a blank expression on his or her face for some seconds. The computer captures images of the face via a webcam located behind the ‘mirror'. Using data gathered from these captured images, our system reorganises a stored 3D model to appear as the face of the user. As the computer is working the user will see an image which forms his or her own ‘reflection’. After about thirty seconds this reflection begins to react to, rather than mirror, the facial expressions of the user. For example: if the person viewed by the camera smiles, the virtual face, or ‘alter ego’, may look surprised or angry, or may smile back. This dialogue continues until the system detects that the face of the individual has moved outside its field of vision, at which time it is reset.
The work is fully automatic so that the interface does not require conscious intervention from the user (such as button pushing/touch screen etc). The interface is designed to be automatic and, as far as possible, invisible to create a sense of wonder around the work. Alter Ego has a secondary audience comprised of those people who have already used the work, or who are waiting to use it, and who are discussing their ‘performance’.
