Smell significantly enhances sense of realism in virtual reality, researchers find
... The study participants played a short segment from the beginning of the game, twice, with and without smell. While they were immersed in playing, researchers administered a blend of four specific odors—forest, smoke, rotten and dank. We developed forest, rotten and dank to match the scenes, using industrial flavor compounds.
One compound we used in the concoction for dank was 1-octen-3-ol, which has an earthy, mushroom odor character. We used dimethyl trisulfide in the rotten mix, which is a product of human decomposition and attracts blowflies.
The smoke smell was a commercially available smoky BBQ marinade sauce.
Fleshing out the smells
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In the research, we used our prototype "olfactometer" to deliver the odors. An olfactometer sends specific smells along a soft plastic tube fixed underneath the wearers' nose. As the player worked their way through the VR environment, the olfactometer allowed us to accurately deliver the associated smells. ...
See the full story here: https://techxplore.com/news/2022-04-significantly-realism-virtual-reality.html
How a Polish Film’s Use of AI to Create an English Version Could Bolster the Foreign Movie Market (Exclusive Video)
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he told the film’s director that his plan would involve using visual effects and A.I. to seamlessly convert the movie into the English language.
“He said, ‘I think it would be great because I wanted to do the movie in English and had no money to do it,” Marks recalled director Maciej Barczewski telling him. “Just don’t make my guys look like monkeys.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.thewrap.com/polish-foreign-film-the-champion-ai-english-video/
The Latest Sign That Beeple Has Truly Arrived: An Exhibit at an Italian Art Museum
Beeple, the upstart digital artist who launched the global craze for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, among art’s most powerful brokers a year ago, will make his museum debut later this month—the ultimate sign of art-world acceptance.
On April 24, the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin, Italy, will include the artist’s first sculpture, “HUMAN ONE,” in Expressions with Fractures, a sweeping survey exhibition about the ways new technologies and social ills affect the human experience. ...
Ms. Christov-Bakargiev said she’s arranging Beeple’s piece at one end of a nearly 500-foot-long wing in the 18th-century Baroque castle that now comprises the museum. Facing it on the other end will be Francis Bacon’s 1956-1957 “Study for Portrait IX,” a hunter-green portrait of an anguished man with no hands, dressed in a suit but seemingly trapped within the chalky white outlines of a cage. ...
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-latest-sign-that-beeple-has-truly-arrived-an-exhibit-at-an-italian-art-museum-11649682005
Cities Take the Lead in Setting Rules Around How AI Is Used
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Explaining the algorithms: Amsterdam and Helsinki
One of the biggest complaints against AI is that it makes decisions that can’t be explained, which can lead to complaints about arbitrary or even biased results.
To let their citizens know more about the technology already in use in their cities, Amsterdam and Helsinki collaborated on websites that document how each city government uses algorithms to deliver services. The registry includes information on the data sets used to train an algorithm, a description of how an algorithm is used, how public servants use the results, the human oversight involved and how the city checks the technology for problems like bias.
Amsterdam has six algorithms fully explained—with a goal of 50 to 100—on the registry website, including how the city’s automated parking-control and trash-complaint reports work. Helsinki, which is only focusing on the city’s most advanced algorithms, also has six listed on its site, with another 10 to 20 left to put up.
“We needed to assess the risk ourselves,” says Linda van de Fliert, an adviser at Amsterdam’s Chief Technology Office. “And we wanted to show the world that it is possible to be transparent.”
The registries don’t give citizens personalized information explaining their individual bills or fees. But they provide citizens with a way to give feedback on algorithms, and the name, city department and contact information of the person responsible for the deployment of a particular algorithm. So far, at least one Amsterdam man who was displeased about getting an automated text about an overdue electricity bill used the registry to find out why the government contacted him.
Ms. van de Fliert has lost count of how many cities have reached out to learn more about the registry, and says she hopes that others pick up the project.
“It doesn’t make sense to do this just for Amsterdam and Helsinki,” Ms. van de Fliert says. “We all have the same needs.”
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See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-take-lead-setting-rules-around-how-ai-is-used-11649448031
CEEK VR gains 100%+ as push toward virtual reality and Metaverse development intensifies
Major partnerships and a booth at the Grammy’s
CEEK hosted a booth in the gift lounge at the 2022 Grammy and this may have provided a new level of exposure for the project since a number of influencers and music fans would have visited the pop up. ...
Hosting the booth was made possible through CEEK VR’s partnership with Universal Music, which grants the protocol the rights to live performances for many popular artists including Lady Gaga, Bon Jovi, U2, Sting and Ziggy Marley. ...
See the full story here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/ceek-vr-gains-100-as-push-toward-virtual-reality-and-metaverse-development-intensifies
