Posts Tagged ‘photo’
“Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing”*…
… a tendency with which Bjørn Karmann has some timely– and thought-provoking– fun…
Paragraphica is a context-to-image camera that uses location data and artificial intelligence to visualize a “photo” of a specific place and moment. The camera exists both as a physical prototype and a virtual camera that you can try…
The viewfinder displays a real-time description of your current location, and by pressing the trigger, the camera will create a scintigraphic representation of the description.
On the camera, there are three physical dials that let you control the data and AI parameters to influence the appearance of the photo, similar to how a traditional camera is operated…
The camera operates by collecting data from its location using open APIs. Utilizing the address, weather, time of day, and nearby places. Comining all these data points Paragraphica composes a paragraph that details a representation of the current place and moment.
Using a text-to-image AI, the camera converts the paragraph into a “photo”.
The resulting “photo” is not just a snapshot, but a complex and nuanced reflection of the location you are at, and perhaps how the AI model “sees” that place.
Interestingly the photos do capture some reminiscent moods and emotions from the place but in an uncanny way, as the photos never really look exactly like where I am…
Want to memorialize a moment? Why take a photo when you can have AI just imagine the scene for you? “Paragraphica,” from @BjoernKarmann.
Try it here.
* Aesop
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As we point and click, we might recall that it was on this date in 1949 that George Orwell published his masterpiece of dystopian speculative fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and introduced terms like “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” “thoughtcrime,” “Newspeak,” and “Memory hole” into the vernacular.
“The best way to preserve a child’s vision is to let them see things their way rather than yours”*…
Kira Cook contemplates a series of photos taken by kids of their (unaware or surprised) parents…
… somehow, these malevolent images are borne from the tiny fingers and eyes and perspectives of the ones who love us… most?!
Children, of course, know little to nothing about “crafting” a good portrait. They know naught of symmetry, or contrast, or depth of field. They do, however, know the specific power of finally having control over the rectangular device normally glued to their parents’ hands. They pound that round red button at will, capturing images from their abbreviated heights, their lilliputian thumbs obscuring the lens, often blurring the image with their relentless movement.
These pictures remind us that while we study our children, they study us back. Before we speak, we see. For months before spoken language ever enters the relationship, a child gazes upon its mother for hours, every day. The gaze of the child is the least judgmental, the most accepting. When a child takes a portrait of their parent, there is an absence of so many of the elements that inherently exist in the portraits an adult makes. There is no moralizing, for one. No manipulation. They don’t bother to hide or deny the aspects we normally do in photos. In fact, unlike in every other photographic example, there is a total absence of forethought or editorializing…
More (and more on the) unflattering portraits that do what kids do best, wholeheartedly engage with the present moment: “The Humbling Tyranny of the Photos Our Kids Take of Us,” from @kirahesser in @romper.
* Jacob Liberman
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As we say cheese, we might recall that it was on this date in 1839 that Samuel Morse, a professor of art and painting at the University of the City of New York (now New York University) in Paris to promote his invention of the telegraph, met with Louis Daguerre.
Morse was fascinated by Daguerre’s daguerreotype—the first practical means of photography. Morse wrote a letter to the New York Observer describing the invention, which was published widely in the American press and stoked broad interest in the new technology. On his return to New York, he taught classes in the technique to his colleagues at NYU and others– including Mathew Brady, one of the earliest photographers in American history, famous for his depictions of the Civil War.
“Remembrance and reflection how allied!”*…
Via @christhebarker, an update of an iconic photo collage… what a year. (Larger here)
* Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems
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As we count the days, we might send thoughtful birthday greetings to Naguib Mahfouz; he was born on this date in 1911. A prolific writer– he published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career– he was one of the first writers in Arabic to explore Existentialist themes (e.g., the Cairo Trilogy, Adrift on the Nile). He was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.
“In a flat country a hillock thinks itself a mountain”*…
In 2003, the Annals of Improbable Research released the results of a study that was not so much groundbreaking as it was ground-battering: Kansas, the tongue-in-cheek analysis found, was flatter than a pancake. The researchers Mark Fonstad, William Pugatch, and Brandon Vogt used polynomial equations to calculate the flatness of the famously flat state, and discovered that—as compared to the topography of an IHOP pancake—it was indeed flatter than a flapjack.
Their finding was not incorrect. Parts of Kansas are, in fact, flatter than a pancake! But the study’s focus on Kanas, it turns out, was also misleading. Because there are states—six of them, to be specific—that are even flatter than Kansas. The states flatter than a pancake, you could say, could be served in a short stack.
This latest flatness finding comes courtesy of geographers at the University of Kansas, who just published a paper, “The Flatness of U.S. States,” inGeographical Review, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Geographical Society…
The top 10 flattest states, per their results? [Results charted on the map above differ as they reflect a slightly different analysis; c.f., the link below.]
Florida
Illinois
North Dakota
Louisiana
Minnesota
Delaware
Kansas
Texas
Nevada
Indiana
Get level at “Science: Several U.S. States, Led by Florida, Are Flatter Than a Pancake.”
* Turkish proverb
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As we reach for the maple syrup, we might send lofty birthday greetings to Albert William Stevens; he was born on this date in 1886. An career officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Stevens was a pioneering balloonist and aerial photographer who took the first photograph clearly showing the Earth’s curvature (1930) and the first photographs of the Moon’s shadow on the Earth during a solar eclipse (1932). In 1935 Stevens and a colleague made a record balloon ascent near Rapid City, South Dakota. 20,000 watched– and millions listened to a live NBC broadcast– as their sealed gondola, Explorer II, climbed to 72,395 feet, nearly 14 miles, a record that stood until 1956.
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