philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

FROM ONLYFANS TO AUGMENTED REALITY! REBECCA MINKOFF PULLED OUT ALL THE STOPS FOR SS ’21

Rebecca Minkoff has always been an early adapter of the latest buzzy platforms—case in point: she’s built up a community of almost one million dedicated followers on Instagram thanks to her mix of behind the scenes content, a podcast, and brand campaigns. But this season, the designer cast her net far and wide to integrate the most innovative technology imaginable. As a result, just days after she showcased her wares during a socially-distanced presentation at Spring Studios, anyone around the world can try on the collection from the comfort of their own home, thanks to augmented reality powered by Yahoo Ryot Lab.

As the innovation partner for New York Fashion Week: The Shows 2021, Yahoo Ryot Lab worked with Minkoff to create an extended reality content experience through a multi-dimensional lens (try saying that sentence ten times fast!). Now, anyone, anywhere can bring a taste of NYFW to them by using their computer mouse to mobile phone to see the outfits from different angles.

It’s one of the many multifaceted tech-forward ways that Minkoff turned to to bring her collection to a new level. Think: a first-of-its-kind content partnership with OnlyFans, Clubhouse talks, and integrating QR codes at the space to shop and pay over time. For those who were there to enjoy a little bit of real-time show energy during a mainly-virtual NYFW, the setup was transformed into an indoor tropical jungle…with the city skyline just visible through the large windows.

See the full story here: https://fashionweekdaily.com/from-onlyfans-to-augmented-reality-rebecca-minkoff-pulled-out-all-the-stops-for-ss-21/

AI will take construction robotics from hype to reality

Buildots attaches 360 cameras onto project managers’ hardhats to collect footage inside the construction site, flagging problems to be solved and tracking construction progress.

Israel-based AI startup Buildots has been taking its first steps to make this happen.

On a typical site, there are tens of thousands of different construction activities. Tasks can be as small as installing a door handle, or as big as laying a brick wall.

See the full story here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-will-take-construction-robotics-from-hype-to-reality/

SAG-AFTRA & AFL-CIO To Host Third Annual Labor Innovation & Technology Summit

This year’s Summit will include discussions with key industry leaders & influencers on:
• The rise of streaming services
• The changing business model for content distribution
• Emerging uses for volumetric video
• Combatting deepfakes
• Gaming and voiceover trends
• How innovation and COVID-19 are impacting essential workers

See the full story here: https://deadline.com/2021/02/sag-aftra-afl-cio-to-host-third-annual-labor-innovation-technology-summit-1234695992/

Here Comes the Virtual Real Estate Boom

Virtual real estate: new players, new rules

In 2004, Ailin Graef, better known by her avatar’s name Anshe Chung, began amassing virtual real estate in Second Life. She started with less than $10, and became famous for becoming the first avatar to achieve a net worth of more than USD $1 million from business dealings conducted entirely inside a virtual world. Much of today’s excitement about virtual real estate and NFT speculation can be traced back to the mythology surrounding Anshe Chung. 

The key to speculating on land in the virtual world is to learn the new rules. The old rules, the ones that favor the already-rich, no longer hold true. The old real estate adage “location, location, location” implies that values are set by their proximity and visibility, but in virtual worlds, players can teleport to new locations using cartesian coordinates, so visibility and foot traffic matter much less. 

What matters in the virtual world is bringing humanity and life to something flat and pixelated, drawing players somewhere, and then encouraging them to return and interact. (These settlements are often called “clusters of content.”) In the virtual world, ingenuity and design matter far more than location and budget.

See the full story here: https://www.coindesk.com/here-comes-the-virtual-real-estate-boom

EVER HEARD OF AR CLOUD? THAT’S THE FUTURE OF AUGMENTED REALITY

AR cloud technology empowers the unification of the physical and digital world to make immersive experiences. This technology utilizes a typical interface to offer constant, contextual and shared digital content overlaid onto individuals, items and locations. This gives users data and services straightforwardly attached to each part of their actual environmental surroundings.

You’ll soon see organizations make and build up their own custom versions (the “Magicverse” from Magic Leap, for instance) that will permit them to market different novel features and approaches. Fundamentally, they’ll all do something very similar: connect information in the cloud to mobile handsets that will permit AR gadgets to turn into the doors for our avatars in this new scene of reality layered with virtual interactive data.

See the full story here: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/ever-heard-of-ar-cloud-thats-the-future-of-augmented-reality/

Christie’s auctions jumps into burgeoning digital art market

"Everydays - The First 5000 Days," by the American digital artist known as Beeple, comprises all the works of art that he has made over the course of 13 years. Christie's in New York said that because the venture was so new for the auction house, bidding in the Feb 27-March 11 online sale would start at just $100.

The art work carries what is known as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT), a unique digital token encrypted with the artist's signature and which verifies its ownership and authenticity and is permanently attached to the piece.

The auction comes at a time of rapid expansion of the digital art market, where creators use computer generated imagery, scanned photos, manipulated videos and other medium to create original work. The recent introduction of NFTs opens the way for digital art to be sold in the same way as traditional paintings and sculptures.

"Not unlike the advent of Street Art as a blue chip collecting category, NFT-based art is on the threshold of becoming the next ingeniously disruptive force in the art market," Noah Davis, Christie's specialist in post-war and contemporary art said in a statement. 

See the full story here: https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/entertainment/1451169-christies-auctions-jumps-into-burgeoning-digital-art-market

Data meets science: Open access, code, datasets, and knowledge graphs for machine learning research and beyond

A new interconnected ecosystem for research is shaping up, and machine learning is just the tip of the iceberg.

SCIENCE, DATA, AND DATA SCIENCE

"To succeed at becoming a data-driven organization, your employees should always use data to start, continue, or conclude every single business decision, no matter how major or minor".

That quote belongs to Ashish Thusoo, author of the DataOps book, founder of Qubole, and one of the people who built the data-driven culture in Facebook as early as 2007.

To make research readily available to as many people as possible as soon as possible, many researchers choose to publish their work on pre-print repositories like Arxiv or Zenodo. Pre-prints solve the open access issues, as they are immediately accessible for free.

Most pre-prints will be revised, in minor or major ways, while others may not be published at all. But even for the ones that do go through the review and publication process successfully, an equally important issue remains: Reproducibility.

According to a 2016 Nature survey, more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.

REPRODUCIBLE RESEARCH, CODE, DATA, AND GRAPHS

Enter Papers with Code. Papers with Code is another repository for research, with its mission statement citing the creation of a free and open resource with machine learning papers, code, and evaluation tables as its goal. It highlights trending machine learning research and the code to implement it.

Papers with Code was founded by Robert Stojnic and Ross Taylor in 2018. Stojnic and Taylor have joined Facebook AI in 2019. Since then, the team has grown, they have partnered with Arxiv, and expanded to more disciplines.

The latest addition to Papers with Code's arsenal is data. The repository now indexes 3,000+ research datasets from machine learning. Users can now find datasets by task and modality, compare usage over time, and browse benchmarks.

Connected Papers is a free visual tool that helps researchers and applied scientists find and explore papers relevant to their field of work, in any domain. It creates a graph for each paper in its repository, by analyzing about 50,000 papers and selecting the few dozen with the strongest connections to the origin paper.

On Feb. 3, Connected Papers also announced a partnership with Arxiv. 

See the full story here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/data-meets-science-open-access-code-datasets-and-knowledge-graphs-for-machine-learning-research-and-beyond/

How Can Blockchain Accelerate the Virtual Reality Revolution?

First, it allows the decentralization of virtual reality content without sacrificing its protection.

Second, despite decentralization, copyright protection will still be in place due to blockchain; if one will be able to steal the credit from someone else’s creative work, it is recorded in a blockchain. Copyright protection may be freed from the bureaucracy that plagues it now, and an efficient protection system allows virtual reality platforms to become pieces of a united ecosystem.

Third, merging with the profitable cryptocurrency market makes virtual reality popularization much easier. 

An innovative platform that combines virtual reality and blockchain

A nice example of a project that leans heavily into all the advantages provided by blockchain and virtual reality symbiosis is Victoria VR. It is a blockchain-based ecosystem that unites multiple virtual reality platforms and creates a whole world filled with user created photorealistic content, recorded in the blockchain. Therefore, Victoria VR users can work, visit tourist destinations, participate in meetings, enjoy concerts and play games without any risks or need to travel.

Victoria VR also allows its users to make money in the real world by trading and running businesses in the virtual one.

See the full story here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/365482

Inside Meow Wolf’s New Omega Mart Interactive Experience in Las Vegas

Spectators are led through a transformative narrative guided by interactive visual, sound, film and digital content all layered into multi-dimensional art. Video content — the length of three feature films — is embedded throughout.

What Exactly is Going on at Omega Mart?

The storyline of the new art experience centers on a mythical energy, called The Source. The Omega Mart grocery store has found a way to harness The Source and put it into their products, and they sell them to America, Brinkerhoff explains.

Guests can follow the storylines of DramCorp, the corporate giant behind Omega Mart, which has moved into this parallel dimension, taking over parts of the desert, as well as those of three sisters that lead a resistance to this infiltration. Look for clues as to what is going on within the exhibits, installation-filled rooms and terrains, or choose your own adventure — anything goes.

The authenticity and approachability of a Meow Wolf experience is a response to the cynicism and gatekeeping of the contemporary art world, something that Brinkerhoff says the collective strives to tear down. 

George R.R. Martin’s Role

The Game of Thrones creator consults on story building and vision for the world of Meow Wolf.

“Think of it like the Marvel Universe,” Brinkerhoff says. “There are different characters and sagas but they all kind of exist in this common universe that is the connective tissue between all of our different shows that we're developing.”

See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/index.php/news/inside-meow-wolfs-new-omega-mart-interactive-experience-in-las-vegas?fbclid=IwAR2tqBL93yC9Gy3qTBRFNktznmCwfXwKfcvr9CB2sI5cA9CCUoQkoAuGlWA

IN 2021, THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL FOUND ART IN ZOOM, INSTAGRAM, AND VR THEATER

Pared down to 14 projects, this year’s New Frontier focused on web art and social media alongside virtual and augmented reality experiences. The result was a show that felt intimate and intriguing — and set a model for showcasing interactive art online.

BEYOND THE BREAKDOWN

CREATED BY TONY PATRICK, LAUREN LEE MCCARTHY, AND GRACE LEE

It’s tough to make a Zoom call feel profound, but Beyond the Breakdown comes close. Like Tinker, the experience involves only a few people, all of whom dial into a web-based video chat. The chat is moderated by a Siri-like voice bot (controlled largely by a human operator), and it’s devoted to answering a simple question: what should Earth look like in 2050?

RICH KIDS: A HISTORY OF SHOPPING MALLS IN TEHRAN

TINKER

TO MISS THE ENDING

See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/15/22260581/sundance-film-festival-new-frontier-best-of-2021