Zombie-Alert for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY on Sunday, May 31st
May 18, 2009
This just in — the Centers for Deceased Control & Prevention has announced a Z-Alert for Brooklyn, NY on Sunday, May 31st.
Photo from drivenbyboredom.com. NOTE: Not all photos on Drivenbyboredom.com are SFW.
Recently analyzed data suggest that the outbreak will begin at The Charleston, located at 174 Bedford Avenue, between North 7th and 8th Streets in Williamsburg.
“We have information that leads us to believe there will be a Zombie infestation somewhere in Brooklyn that afternoon, specifically mid-afternoon around 2:00 p.m.,” said Amber MacArthur, spokesperson for the CDC.
The CDC is making a special request to the 3D community: all NYC-area stereo photographers and videographers are being asked to document the activities of the Zombie horde and make these images available for later study.
“Of course, we’d like to be on the scene ourselves,” said Ms. MacArthur, “but our resources are stretched rather thin right now, as you might imagine. We feel that examining the 3D images will be almost as good as being there.”
Citizens are urged to approach Zombies with caution, although due to their slow, shambling gait it is believed that most active New Yorkers will be able to outdistance the undead, should that become necessary.
As a precaution the CDC recommends that you wash your hands thoroughly (a minimum of 20 seconds or so) should you have any contact with a Zombie, to avoid spreading the contagion.
“Preparing people for emerging health threats is one of CDC’s overarching goals,” MacArthur explained. “We handle everything from bio-terrorism to pandemics, so it was obvious that we needed to bring our expertise to bear on the emerging Zombie problem.”
FOR UPDATED INFORMATION, GO TO www.nyczombiecrawl.com
Miggs Burroughs Lenticular Art: Fairfield Public Library, April 16—June 14, 2009
May 14, 2009
Please mouse over the image if it is not animating automatically.
Migg Burroughs is a well-known CT-based artist and graphic designer who has recently been working with lenticular images. While this show does not feature 3D lenticulars, Burroughs certainly proves that this imaging technique can produce fine art in the right hands.
The heart of this show (called Journeys) is a series of nine 18 X 18 inch lenticular portraits that use a period photo combined with a contemporary one taken in the same style to achieve their effect. The image reproduced above is of Burrough’s mother. He used a photograph from her high school days along with an image he shot making a two image lenticular that fades from the young woman to the senior citizen. While this idea may not sound revolutionary, seeing these portraits in person was surprisingly moving.
Burroughs offers a bit of history in his text explaining that it was a French painter Bois-Clair that invented the lenticular concept by taking narrow vertical strips of two paintings, reassembling them and folding them like an accordian. Burrough’s process begins with two digital images and the software necessary to divide them 30 stripes to an inch. He then laminates the digital output with optical lenticualr plastic that has a corresponding 30 grooves to the inch.
One of the highlights of the show is a piece called Political Ties (18 X 18 X 36 inches). Burroughs uses 7 square images joined together to form a simple chair. In the images we alternately see a young man sitting in a chair with a white shirt and red tie, looking much like the fellow working away in the cubicle next to yours. The alternate image has the same young man in a black T-shirt, roped to the chair with his red tie used as a blind fold. You can walk completely around this piece and watch the transformation from every angle.
This show is well worth the trip to Fairfield, CT. All the work is for sale and Burroughs does commissions, too. It was all I could do not to break the bank and buy one of his smaller works on the spot.
There’s one of a local movie house, The Community Theater, (20 X 16 inches) that presents the same view from day to night with an old-fashioned neon movie marque as its focus. Simply beautiful. And for $450 it could hang in your home.
For Miggs Burroughs’ website, go here.
For gallery information on Journeys, go here.
Satre Stuelke’s CT Scan Art
March 24, 2009
CT scans or CAT scans, more precisely computed axial tomography scans, are not generally considered art. But when Satre Stuelke’s CT scans of common objects like his children’s toys or a serving of Chicken McNuggets are the subject, they certainly look like art. It’s a case of the familiar seen in a compelling new way.
(Listen, if Damien Hirst is an artist—selling sharks, sheep and cows preserved in formaldehyde* at record setting prices—than Satre Stuelke more than qualifies in my view).
In addition to his still images, he’s also made videos that rotate his subjects through space and make them come weirdly alive.
Go here for the New York Times article on his work, or visit his site, Radiology Art for more images and video.
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*OT: In Rudolph Grey’s 1994 oral biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. it is claimed that Bela Lugosi, addicted to morphine and methadone due to chronic sciatica pain, took to drinking formaldehyde in his final days. This, along with habit of smoking cheap, Italian cigars (referred to as Dago ropes) led to the common complaint of his associates that Lugosi always ‘stunk.’ At least the dissipated actor didn’t call it ‘performance art’.
Incredible Photos of the Sun
March 2, 2009
Boston.com has a gallery of 21 amazing, astounding, incredible images of your favorite star and mine, the ever-lovin’ Sun.
Click on the samples on the left for lrager images, then go to their site for more!
Their Image #17 showing a coronal mass ejection of a billion tons of matter at millions of kilometers an hour is incredible when you consider the amount of power on display. It reminds me a Jack Kirby drawing — bursting with the power cosmic. . .!
10 Steps to Advanced Photography
February 19, 2009
Hong Kong from a peak on a summer night as the city comes alive by Trey Ratcliff.
3D to “Revolutionize” Porn Industry. . .Again? Maybe. Possibly. (I doubt it).
January 26, 2009
Every few years this same story crops up: being such a natural fit, pornography and 3D viewing systems are announced to be forming an alliance that will have us all lolling about having fake sex with 3D images of the already artificial, botoxed, surgically-enhanced, bleached and shaven vixens of Hollywood’s shadow industry. Announced with great fan fare, these stories and their 3D systems never deliver on their throbbing, pulsating promises. But maybe this time it will be different. . .?
A $4 million 3D remake of the Hong Kong softcore classic Sex and Zen is in preparation; only 25 to 30% of this new version will be sex scenes so apparently this is being geared for the imaginary ‘couples market’ niche of the porn world.
But wait, there’s a fly in the lube already! Producer Stephen Shiu Jr. complains. “We’re having trouble finding a male lead who is willing to undress in front of the camera.” For the complete article, (SFW) go here.
Back in the day when I was introduced to the high octane, bullet ballets and swooping kung-fu wire work that have long since been incorporated into the Hollywood film lexicon, to see these films you needed to go to certain video stores in your local Chinatown (for me Lafayette or Bayard Streets below Canal). Bootleg copies on VHS cost $4 and the first time a gwai lo (“ghost person,” e.g. white boy) ventured inside you could expect to wait a longish time before the owner was prepared to sell you anything.
My ‘bible’ in those days was a paperback titled Sex and Zen and a Bullet In the Head by Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins. It remains an excellent introduction to the pre-takeover (before 1997) HK cinema.
The back of the book had thumbnails of the movie posters for their essential picks, along with titles in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. I would point to these and the video store owner would dutifully get them (or quickly dub a copy) for me. After a few visits, I evidently passed some sort of test and was welcomed into these stores as a true fan. Now I would get suggestions for new movies, based on my previous selections.
If you’ve never seen The Killer, A Better Tomorrow, Hard Boiled, Project A, Parts I & II, Armor of God Parts I & II or Police Story I, check them out and see what made the pre-Hollywood careers of director John Woo and Jackie Chan the stuff of fanboy legends.
And know this: if it wasn’t for what he learned worshipping at the altar of 1980s & 1990s HK cinema, Quentin Tarrantino wouldn’t even have a job as gaffer today.
hugin – Free Panorama photo stitcher
January 12, 2009
Here’s an easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging toolchain based on Panorama Tools.
With hugin you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and more.
To download the software, go to the site here.
ImageFuser: Combine Multiple (Bracketed) Exposures
January 5, 2009
ImageFuser is a graphical front end for the Open Source Enfuse software available from Panotools. Mac downloads here, Windows downloads, here. See the panoramic example below:
Enfuse is a command-line program used to merge multiple exposures (bracketed exposures) of the same scene and merges them together to form a uniformly lit scene.
It produces an image that looks very much like a tone-mapped image (without the halos). But it does not require the creation of an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image, so it’s much simpler to use and allows the creation of very large multiple exposure panoramas.
ImageFuser is a GUI for these Open Source tools:
- Enfuse http://enblend.sourceforge.net,
- Align_Image_Stack http://hugin.sourceforge.net and
- ExifTools http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool
Free Documentaries at SnagFilms.com
January 5, 2009
There are brief commercial interruptions but the Beta of SnagFilms.com offers, as promised, a large selection of excellent document on their site via streaming video. Watch HBO, National Geographic, PBS, Network and Independent documentaries on your desktop now!
With all the new distribution models coming into play these days, you can almost hear the yelps of the former moguls of the film-multiplex chains amidst the baying of the coyotes and the hot, dry wind on the plains. And the rest is silence.
A Visual Guide to Most Awesome Ways to Take a Photograph
January 5, 2009
Point, shoot and … what? From amazing architecture to abandoned places, sometimes the subject is at the center of compelling photography – but at other times the types and approaches take the proverbial cake. These fascinating photography techniques take the art of image-making into entire new dimensions.
Some photographers seem to freeze, slow, or speed up time. Others rotate our views in dizzying directions elevate our views to dazzling heights. Featuring eye-popping works from 3D, panoramic and high-speed to infrared, HDR and tilt-shift photographers, here is a visual guide to ten of the world’s most awesome ways to take a photograph.
For the complete article on the WebUrbanist site, go here.