ecopolis

Fake For Real was realized by All Media Foundation to make people think about the role of simulation in our society. Play this smart memory game,where the original couple with the simulation. Can you tell the fake from the real?

Along with Beuys Everybody is an Artist maxim was born the performance pieces. Embodied art, which contributed to create a sort of semi-mythological persona bound between showman and shaman, audacity and megalomania. Embodied reality: in 1979 he was one of the five hundred signatories who founded the German Green Party.

Beuys’s project 7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung, was begun in 1982 at Documenta 7, the greatest art exhibition in Kassel, Germany.

His plan called for the planting of seven thousand trees, each paired with a columnar basalt stone approximately four feet high above ground, throughout the greater city of Kassel.

Beuys actions’ were central to his use of sculpture as an evolutionary process. Also the use of evocative materials to recall forth multiple associations. As much for Eva and Franco Mattes and their Synthetic Performance in Second Life.

All their actions are performed through their avatars, which were constructed from their bodies and faces. People can attend and interact with the live performances connecting to the video-game from all over the world. The series started in January 2007.

The couple are reenacting historical performances such as Beuys’ work “7000 Oaks” in the synthetic world of Second Life. An action which encourage the synthetic viewers to contemplate possibilities for new meaning of Art embodiment.

The first virtual tree and stone were planted on March the 16th 2007, exactly 25 years after the original oak was planted.

The 7000 basalt stones have been stacked on an island in Second Life: Odyssey. The diminishing pile of virtual stones will indicate the progress of the project, which will go on until all 7000 oaks and stones will be placed.

Second Life inhabitants will have the chance to take part to the performance, placing stones and trees in their lands.

But what kind of performance is that? Self-awareness, probably.

Imagine ergo sum. With the minimal effort, thou.

For months, as banking meltdowns in the virtual world Second Life cost participants steep losses of real money, corporate owner Linden Lab of San Francisco stuck to a laissez-faire line, essentially saying, We just host the software; residents should avoid deals that sound too good to be true. But this week, Linden Lab abruptly banned virtual banks that can’t furnish “proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter.” The requirement appears likely to shut down all of Second Life’s banks.

“There is no workable alternative,” Linden Lab wrote in an announcement posted Tuesday. “The so-called banks are not operated, overseen or insured by Linden Lab, nor can we predict which will fail or when. And Linden Lab isn’t, and can’t start acting as, a banking regulator.” The company wrote that “these ‘banks’ have brought unique and substantial risks to Second Life, and we feel it’s our duty to step in. Offering unsustainably high interest rates, they are in most cases doomed to collapse–leaving upset ‘depositors’ with nothing to show for their investments. As these activities grow, they become more likely to lead to destabilization of the virtual economy.”

A Linden Lab spokesman said that the company was not offering further interviews or comment on the decision or its timing.

The about-face came six days after Technology Review posted a story that described avatar losses and cited the possibility that one virtual-bank meltdown may have produced aggregate losses of some $700,000 in real money to many hundreds of Second Life “residents” in a manner that would be illegal in the real world. (See “The Fleecing of the Avatars.”) “I think the timing may well have been due to [that] story,” says Ben Duranske, an Idaho lawyer who has been closely following the complaints of Second Life participants.

from TechReview

Photoclima, a new book lauched by Greenpeace, presents images of some of Spain’s most emblematic places have been altered to show what they could look like if action is not taken to tackle climate change. It’s realized by Pedro Armestre and Mario Gómez and presented by the Guardian.

interface || surface
The peak D is when Microsoft Surface came out…

ecology || pollution

personal || collective || private

Currently, only English-language headlines are displayed, but we hope to support non-English headlines in the future.

I attended the View Conferences today talk with Rodrigo J. Lopez, principal at Neoscape, an award winning visualization studio based out of Boston and New York, where he serves as creative and art director.

He explained the audience that both in gaming and filmmaking, as well as in the realm of digital architecture and visualization, with every improvement and development in technology, new doors open to the point where the lines separating the worlds of cinema, gaming environment development and architectural visualization begin to blur.

So the storytelling, after the pure advertisement, now has conquered the realm of real estate marketing. Lopez is clear since the beginning declaring that there’re many other firm that do traditional 3D rendering and lighting better than them, but they don’t want to realize just beautiful 3D, their mission is to fall the viewer in love with the space.

Here’s the list of the …things to do to realize a great architectural visualization enhanced by storytelling:

*discovery
fall in love in love with the space, it helps a lot in the creative process and everyone involved in the film shppopuld attend this part to be inspired

*storyboarding
it helps to sell the idea and to work faster and cheper

*previsualization
importnat phase that helps doing really difficult shot faster and cheaper and laso it’s the phase when you can experiment more

*set design
usually the architect and the designer do it, but the creative job is to populate the space with furniture and people. Set dressing is really important because it can kill or leverage the story

*cameras
keep the camera simple and have always a purpose for evey movement

*lighting
important to give a mood to the image

*compositing
really delicate part also because it was an innovation of the last 4 years

*color grading
make it emotive

*editing
the most important part, it’s really the moment to put together all the pieces and tell the story

And finally 6 rules that he found useful:
- don’t fall in love with shots
- manifacture reality
- editing is preception | preception is reality
- point of view
- suggestion is more effective than exposition

The newest version of Google Earth includes a flight simulator. Though simple in comparison to full-blown simulators, Google Earth’s is fun and addictive. To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+A for the initial dialog (on OS X, Command+Option+A). Then choose your plane (F16 or SR22) and initial airport. Joysticks are supported; it has even been reported that force feedback works.