ecopolis

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

Urban Screens Manchester 07 explores the conditions for urban screens from a multitude of perspectives, making it relevant to media specialists, designers, artists, architects, urban planners, broadcasters and theorists.

The omnipresence of public displays such as LED, LCD, plasma screens, large scale projections and media facades demands a critical reflection of their impact on cities and on our perceptions of them. At the same time, they offer new and exciting possibilities for artistic and non-commercial use as well as for community development and play.

Urban Screens Manchester looks specifically at the creation of content, commissioning / funding issues, curatorship and the architectural possibilities of urban screens in the 21st century.

The conference will take place at Cornerhouse, Manchester‘s international centre for contemporary visual arts and film.

The Manchester conference is a follow-up to the first groundbreaking conference in this area, Urban Screens 2005 in Amsterdam by the Institute of Network Culture.

“Superfund365, A Site-A-Day” is an online data visualization application with an accompanying RSS-feed and email alert system. Each day for a year “Superfund365” will visit one toxic site currently active in the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
This piece was a Turbulence Commission, the long lasting project dedicated to the promotion of net.art.

The journey begin in the New York City area and work our way across the country, ending the year in Hawaii. In the end, the archive will consist of 365 visualizations of some of the worst toxic sites in the U.S., roughly a quarter of the total number on the Superfund’s National Priorities List (NPL). Along the way, they will conduct video interviews with people involved with or impacted by Superfund. Content changes every day so be sure to visit often or use the subscribe tools to have content delivered to you.

“Superfund365” is conceived, designed and produced by Brooke Singer. The programming and Flash guru behind the project is John Kuiphoff. Kurt Olmstead provides business analysis and additional programming. Emily Gallagher is assisting with project research and EPA relations. Camera and sound work by Andrew Rueland.

“Superfund365″ is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation. Additional funding was provided by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

1 Sri Yukteswar Giri (guru)

2 Aleister Crowley (dabbler in sex, drugs and magic)

3 Mae West (actress)

4 Lenny Bruce (comic)

5 Karlheinz Stockhausen (composer)

6 W. C. (William Claude) Fields (comic)

7 Carl Gustav Jung (psychologist)

8 Edgar Allen Poe (writer)

9 Fred Astaire (actor)

10 Richard Merkin (artist)

11 The Varga Girl (by artist Alberto Vargas)

12 Leo Gorcey (actor) *

13 Huntz Hall (actor, with Leo Gorcey, one of the Bowery Boys)

14 Simon Rodia (creator of Watts Towers)

15 Bob Dylan (musician)

16 Aubrey Beardsley (illustrator)

17 Sir Robert Peel

18 Aldus Huxley (writer)

19 Dylan Thomas (poet)

20 Terry Southern (writer)

21 Randy Nauert (surfer/musician)

22 Tony Curtis (actor)

23 Wallace Berman (actor)

24 Tommy Handley (comic)

25 Marilyn Monroe (actress)

26 William Burroughs (writer)

27 Sri Mahavatara Babaji (guru)

28 Stan Laurel (comic)

29 Richard Lindner (artist)

30 Oliver Hardy (comic)

31 Karl Marx (philosopher/socialist)

32 H. G. (Herbert George) Wells (writer)

33 Sri Paramahansa Yagananda (guru)

34 Anonymous (was hairdressers’ dummy)

35 Stuart Sutcliffe (artist/former Beatle)

36 Anonymous (was hairdressers’ dummy

37 Max Miller (comic)

38 The Petty Girl (by artist George Petty)

39 Marlon Brando (actor)

40 Tom Mix (actor)

41 Oscar Wilde (writer)

42 Tyrone Power (actor)

43 Larry Bell (artist)

44 Dr. David Livingston (missionary/explorer)

45 Johnny Weismuller (swimmer/actor)

46 Stephen Crane (writer)

47 Issy Bonn (comic)

48 George Bernard Shaw (writer)

49 H. C. (Horace Clifford) Westermann (sculptor)

50 Albert Stubbins (soccer player

51 Sri Lahiri Mahasaya (guru)

52 Lewis Carroll (writer)

53 T. E. (Thomas Edward) Lawrence (soldier, a/k/a/ Lawrence of Arabia)

54 Sonny Liston (boxer)

55 The Petty Girl (by artist George Petty)

56 Wax model of George Harrison

57 Wax model of John Lennon

58 Shirley Temple (child actress)

59 Wax model of Ringo Starr

60 Wax model of Paul McCartney

61 Albert Einstein (physicist)

62 John Lennon, holding a French horn

63 Ringo Starr, holding a trumpet

64 Paul McCartney, holding a cor anglais

65 George Harrison, holding a flute

66 Bobby Breen (singer)

67 Marlene Dietrich (actress)

68 Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi (Indian leader) #

69 Legionnaire from the Order of the Buffalos

70 Diana Dors (actress)

71 Shirley Temple (child actress)

72 Cloth grandmother-figure by Jann Haworth

73 Cloth figure of Shirley Temple (child actress) by Jann Haworth

74 Mexican candlestick

75 Television set

76 Stone figure of girl

77 Stone figure

78 Statue from John Lennon’s house §

79 Trophy

80 Four-armed Indian doll

81 Drum-skin, designed by Joe Ephgrave

82 Hookah (water tobacco-pipe)

83 Velvet snake

84 Japanese stone figure

85 Stone figure of Snow White

86 Garden gnome

87 Tuba

88 Elvis (rock star reincarnated)

* Painted out because he requested a fee

# Painted out at the request of EMI

§ Also used by Peter Blake as the basis for the cut-out of Sgt. Pepper.

Thank you to Mr. Randy Nauert (surfer/musician)

Online Videos by ECOPOLIS

Jonathan Harris, interactive designer, explains, at TED Conferences’s, how he see the data visualization process. He presents three projects: We Feel Fine, a project that search into blogs to collect the planet’s emoticons, the Yahoo! Time Capsule, which records images, quotes and thoughts appeared in 2006, and he premieres Universe, which presents daily events as constellations of words.