Posts Tagged → photography

Time portraits

Time-lapse portraits layered and cut to reveal the passage of time, by Nerhol:

“The numerous portraits are actually different, photographed over a period of three minutes as the subject tried to sit motionless, the idea being that it’s impossible to ever truly be still as our center of gravity shifts and our muscles are tense. The portraits are actually a layered lime-lapse representing several minutes in the subjects life and then cut like an onion to show slices of time, similar to the trunk of a tree.”

[via colossal]

Fake Holidays

Fake Holidays is a photography project by Reiner Riedler:

“When wishes are out of reach, simulation is taking over our leisure time and our holidays. Imaginary worlds are created, often under massive technological exertion, in order to offer us experience as reproducible merchandise. Although the quality of these adventures on demand sometimes proves to be rather dubious, the boom does shed light on one thing: the yearnings and dreams underlying people’s daily lives.”


 

 

Bliss and rage sulle colline di Sonoma

Impossibile non riconoscerlo. Bliss (in italiano: beatitudine, felicità) è il wallpaper più famoso del mondo. Arrivato sui computer di milioni di persone con Windows XP nel 2001, è stato il panorama più visto da chi in questi dieci anni si è “affacciato” sui desktop e sul web attraverso le finestre del sistema operativo della Microsoft.
Quello che forse pochi sanno invece è che non si tratta di un’immagine sintetica, né, almeno a detta del suo autore, di una fotografia sottoposta a pesanti sessioni di Photoshop. Secondo Charles O’Rear, infatti, lo scatto è totalmente genuino e ritrae le colline di Sonoma County, in California (più info in questa pagina di Wikipedia). Un luogo che a guardarlo oggi si presenta parecchio meno paradisiaco, anche perché da molti anni è stato convertito a vigna (la foto è stata scattata nel 1996).
Photoshoppata o no, l’immagine è ormai entrata a far parte dell’immaginario legato ai computer, tanto che le reinterpretazioni, le parodie e gli usi artistici non si contano.
A cominciare dal progetto After Microsoft (2006), del duo artistico Goldin+Senneby: i due sono andati fisicamente sul “luogo del delitto” e sono tornati con una versione aggiornata dello stesso panorama:

Poi c’è chi è andato a scovare la location su Google Street View, offrendoci una visione non molto dissimile:


Ecco invece cosa ci ha fatto l’artista Paul Destieu (My Favourite Landscape, 2007), riproducendo fisicamente uno dei bug più classici del mondo Windows:

Un altro artista, Carlo Zanni, nel 2003, l’ha dipinto, come si fa con un vero paesaggio, olio su tela:

Poi c’è “Windows Real”, realizzato da Johannes P Osterhoff con l’aiuto dei suoi studenti della Merz Academy di Stoccarda:

Chiudo con la mia consueta notazione personale: quello che vedete qui di seguito, e che potete scaricare qui, è il mio desktop attuale, montato però, con buona pace di Bill Gates, su un Macintosh. Ma che fanno i tre uomini a destra? Distruggono un fax a suon di calci e mazzate da baseball (citazione del film “Office Space”). Il nostro rapporto con la tecnologia? Bliss & Rage. Da sempre.

Adding Objects Into Photos

objects

Kevin Karsch and his team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are developing a software system that lets users easily insert objects into photographs, complete with convincing lighting and perspective:

We propose a method to realistically insert synthetic objects into existing photographs without requiring access to the scene or any additional scene measurements. With a single image and a small amount of annotation, our method creates a physical model of the scene that is suitable for realistically rendering synthetic objects with diffuse, specular, and even glowing materials while accounting for lighting interactions between the objects and the scene. We demonstrate in a user study that synthetic images produced by our method are confusable with real scenes, even for people who believe they are good at telling the difference.

(via Laughing Squid)

Film Grenade

Ball camera

The Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera, designed by Jonas Pfeil as part of his thesis project at the Technical University of Berlin, creates spherical panoramas after being thrown into the air:

“Our camera uses 36 fixed-focus 2 megapixel mobile phone camera modules. The camera modules are mounted in a robust, 3D-printed, ball-shaped enclosure that is padded with foam and handles just like a ball. Our camera contains an accelerometer which we use to measure launch acceleration. Integration lets us predict rise time to the highest point, where we trigger the exposure. After catching the ball camera, pictures are downloaded in seconds using USB and automatically shown in our spherical panoramic viewer. This lets users interactively explore a full representation of the captured environment.”

(via BLDGBLOG)

 

Electronic Instant Camera

Electronic instant camera

Niklas

Electronic Instant Camera is a project by Niklas Roy. It’s a combination of an analog b/w videocamera and a thermal receipt printer.

“The device is something in between a Polaroid camera and a digital camera. The camera doesn’t store the pictures on film or digital medium, but prints a photo directly on a roll of cheap receipt paper while it is taking it. As this all happens very slow, people have to stay still for about three minutes until a full portrait photo is taken.”

(via today and tomorrow)

American Pixels

Colberg1

Colberg2
“American Pixels’ series is a pixel experiment created by Jörg M. Colberg in (2009 – 2010).
‘Image formats like jpeg (or gif) use compression algorithms to save space, while trying to retain a large fraction of the original information. A computer that creates a jpeg does not know anything about the contents of the image: It does what it is told, in a uniform manner across the image.”

(via TRIANGULATION BLOG)

Study of Perspective

AiWhiteHouse

Aiweiwei study of perspective tiananmen 1997 600x450

Weiwei Study of Perspective San Marco 1995 2003 600x390

AiMonaLisa

AiEiffel

Ai Weiwei work from Study of Perspective:

“…Each picture show the artist’s hand making a one-finger gesture, again rude, at a variety of places familiar and unfamiliar. The equal-opportunity dissing encompasses power sites like Tiananmen Square and the White House, but also, intriguingly, Long Island City, Queens. Together with the history-infused sculpture, the antic pictures give a sense of the versatility of an artist whose role has been the stimulating, mold-breaking one of scholar-clown.”

– Holland Cotter for the New York Times

[via i like this art]

Alterations

Afdruk01 600x445

Works by Jasper Elings:

“…With sources originating from digital readymades or appropriated video, each artist modifies, redirects and redistributes the footage using a wide array of alterations, from simple editing to more detailed and complex reconstructions. The digital realm casts a dark shadow over the initial intent of images and our preconceptions of their meaning and usage into a new alternative mode of existence where the source becomes either a catalyst or an added layer of a whole new work.”

(via i like this art)