Seems I May Have Mislead People… Sorry

warren — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:50:39 +0000

As part of my talk at At The Vanishing Point on Saturday, I used the virtual billboard defacing project Augmented Reality Advertising Takeover (see the video at the bottom of this post) as a simple example of how to create a piece of mobile augmented reality art for the Junaio app. I claimed that all you needed to do to replicate it was take photos of the billboards, design replacement images, and upload these assets using the Junaio GLUE Channel Creator on the Junaio website. Actually, it’s not quite that simple…

If you want to upload an image overlay using that online tool, you have to upload it as a 3D model, and to do that, you need to have a model in the MD2 format. (You can generate one of these by creating the model in Blender 2.49 and choosing MD2 as your export option. If you have a version of Blender that doesn’t support this type of export, Junaio provide a downloadable script on this page.)

So, in addition to the replacement image, you’ll need an MD2 “screen” to display it on. You can make one of these by going into Blender and creating a 2D plane with the same aspect ratio as your image. You then upload that as the requested MD2 Model and use the replacement image as the Model Texture. (You may then need to play around with the Scale option in the Junaio GLUE Channel Creator to get a neat overlap, or go back to Blender to resize.)

Apologies for misleading people. Hopefully, this doesn’t turn the do-it-yourself virtual billboard defacing into too arduous or complicated an endeavour… I personally still think it’s still worth trying!

The Information Virus @ At The Vanishing Point

warren — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:00:52 +0000

When I did the final batch of set ups for Melbourne and put the map up on the site, I figured that was the end for (Un)seen Sculptures. I planned to bid it a fond farewell then move on to other projects. Since then, however, parts of it have duplicated, mutated, and moved on to occupy new and unexpected venues… So, I figure I should start maintaining a blog to keep anyone who’s interested abreast of its movements.

I’ll also throw in posts about events/developments in augmented reality art (and augmented reality, in general) that I consider noteworthy…

In about a month, a half dozen or so (Un)seen Sculpture works will migrate north to take up residence on the Esplanade in Cairns, as part of the Cairns Festival. (More on that later..) And last week, my work – The Information Virus – was reworked and included as one of the works in reverse=Bread.from(crumbs), a show at the At The Vanishing Point Gallery in King St, Newtown, Sydney.

Unlike it’s original iteration, which “delivered” random public domain images and audio, this version played/displayed content contributed by people who responded to an open call for contributions on the following broad theme: This Is Something You Should Know…

I got 12 very different responses to this call out that included material as diverse as poetry, music/noise compositions, elliptical multi-layered ruminations, humorous radio pieces, a declaration about the legal rights of Muslims in New South Wales, and field recordings of a juice seller in Palestine, a restaurant in Cairo and a Tel Aviv beach memorial to a pirate radio peace activist.

The exhibition is on till August 7, so come down and check it out if you’re in the area. On Saturday around 2pm, I’ll be there presenting a talk on how to make your own mobile augmented reality art.