Characters

Peter Greenaway has always been ahead of the times. Today I just stumbled across his Tulse Luper project (Archive Promo Game)

His decision to drive the experiment with a character confirms suspicions I have had since I was at the Pictoplasma conference. While I worked videotaping lectures, performances and karaoke, I couldn't help feel a strong affinity for many of the designers and artists. It wasn't just because of my background in comics and illustration; there was a deeper structure that was revealed to me that could tie all artistic mediums together, both digital and analog. The character was serving artists like Tim Biskup (Helper) and Nathan Jurevicius (Scary Girl) as a means to tie together paintings, comics, animations, and collectible vinyl toys. You could say that for these artists merchandising was part of their approach towards being pervasive. I see quantum cinema as using characters as the particles which bind multiple universes and stories together across different mediums.

Now here is a picture of me dressed in a wooden Helper costume at Pictoplasma 2006:

Ze Frank Wearing Full-Body RFID Spray?

More On Frame Rates

Apparently IMAX HD is shot and projected at 48 fps.

The 100fps website seems to have some answers about physical thresholds of how many frames per second we can see.

Now, just for fun, a slow-motion video of a coke can being destroyed by an arrow at 4000 fps (courtesy of Photron).

Cinenet

NASA Unveils Spray-On Circuits
The space agency showed how it can spray a thin film of metal on any object to create RF antennas and electronic circuits.

Sept. 26, 2002 -- Like many breakthrough discoveries, this one happened by accident. NASA had built a vacuum chamber in which astronauts could practice welding in space. The problem was, whenever the astronauts tried to weld something, it created a vapor that left a thin film of metal on the inside of the chamber.

The Russians had similar problems. But while the Russians learned how to get rid of the vapor, NASA figured out a way to control it and use it. The space agency created a "portable vacuum thin film deposition" device, which is a fancy way of saying NASA developed a handheld unit that lets engineers spray a thin film of metal on just about anything.

At the Frontline conference in Chicago on Tuesday, Fred Schramm of NASA's technology transfer department displayed a feather, a tissue, a piece of plastic wrap and a dollar bill coated with a thin film of chrome, as well as photos of rocks and other objects covered in chrome and copper.

NASA's main interest in the technology, which is still in development, is to create smart structures. Agency engineers spray the metal coating on a part and then analyze the film to determine what happened to it during space flight. But Schramm says that NASA has used a mask, or stencil, to create data matrix, two-dimensional matrix symbols that contain dark and light squares.

Schramm told a rapt audience that the same technology could transform the RFID industry. "We now have a handheld device that's roughly the size of a hair dryer," he said. "You could walk up to a wall and put a metal layer on it. We've created masks to make data matrix on a surface, and if you change the mask you can make an antenna or a circuit."

NASA hasn't made either yet because low-cost RFID is not an area of interest. But it does want to transfer the technology to the private sector. Schramm held out the possibility that one day, RFID tags could be sprayed on packaging, the way bar codes are printed right on many packages today.

Schramm say how long it would take before a product would be on the market, but it would likely be a couple of years. He also declined to say how much a reader would cost to build. The prototype probably cost in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to create. A company called Vacuum Arc Technology Inc. is working to commercialize it.

Schramm said RFID companies have contacted him about using the technology to create low-cost tags. "We see [the technology being used to create] the antenna first, then the circuit," he said. "One day, you are going to have somebody putting circuits and sensors right on walls, bags, anything."

He said these spray-on RFID tags and sensors would respond to a reader the same way existing technology does. "New technology impacts every corner of our society," Schramm said. "This is a quantum leap, not a baby step."

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The real quantum leap would be to use a transparent, non toxic RFID spray on actors in full costume and makeup, then develop a camera technology that could generate a 2D mask within the video image, eliminating the need for blue screens. You could shoot action in any kind of lighting in many different scenarios and always be able to separate the foreground from the background. The internet of things becomes the internet of actors, props and set elements. This article is over four years old; when will the be coming to a theater near you?

We need a word to describe digitally networked and trackable actors, props and set elements in cinema. Perhaps this could be called the cinenet?

More Martin Arnold

My favorites are the second piece ("passage à l'acte") and the third piece ("Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy"). The flipping of the frame in the first piece ("pièce touchée") reminds me of Artavazd Peleshian. I like Peleshian's use of flipping better, but ultimately I don't find the effect so great except when certain actions cross through the frame and make nice visual palindromes.