Microsoft’s Craig Mundie has dismissed the potential of “synthetic virtual worlds” like Second Life, saying that the potential for immersive environments will be likely realized through 3D tools that capture and model the real world.
Another location-based visual technology demonstrated by Mundie had a lot in common with the “augmented reality” vision that Ray Kurzweil and other futurists have described. He showed how a Sony hand-held computer could display live video overlaid with information about shops and other addresses in the field of view. Mundie predicted that the required processing power for such an application would be available in mobile phones within two years.
Review by Brian Sholis [...]By contrast, unremitting pain characterizes the pictures in Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan, edited by Leora Kahn for the nonprofit organization Proof: Media for Social Justice. The volume presents the work of eight acclaimed photojournalists and the beseeching testimony of aid agency workers, noted writers, and a handful of celebrities; proceeds from its sales will be donated to Amnesty International and the Genocide Intervention Network. If the chilly formalism of the North Korea pictures testifies to the Dear Leader’s control over his population and his country’s visitors, the presence of so many emaciated, fly-ridden bodies mere inches from the camera lenses indicates that whatever order once held in this arid African plateau has now irredeemably collapsed. Yet the photographic depiction of even the most lawless, unprecedented situation adheres to decades-old visual convention: a regular alternation of somber black-and-white and vividly colored pictures; a preponderance of children and the elderly; stark outlines of malnourished, brittle bodies graphically contrasted with sand and dirt; and long lines of displaced people stretching into the distance.[...] via pring mag.
Brian Sholis is an editor at Artforum and is the coeditor of The Uncertain States of America Reader (Sternberg Press, 2006).
I love Nikon. They seem so on it and sharp, no pun intended, even though it seems hard to believe they are doing way with most of their film cameras. I think they really understand the intersection of image and information as seen with their Universcale is a very educational tool reminscent of C&R Eames film on scale.
Photography — peter on December 31, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Our good friend Bryan Collins just told me about this crazy little gadget. It’s a WiFi SD memory card that can auto transfer images from any camera which takes SD cards. Eye-Fi™ can also upload to any one of twenty online sharing sites. More info can be found at DP review.
