philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Frieze London installs its first augmented reality work

Frieze London art fair has installed its first augmented reality artwork. “No shipping, no installation costs,” said its director, Victoria Siddall. “It is interesting for us to be able to test the boundaries of what sculpture can be.”

From Tuesday, visitors to Regent’s Park will be able to track down large hovering ice slabs that are artworks by the South Korean artist Koo Jeong A. They are only visible on mobile phones through an app.

Daniel Birnbaum, the director of Acute Art, which commissioned the artist, said three editions of the work had been placed around the park. “It looks just as realistic as the sculpture next to it. If you take a photo of it or you send it your friends, they will not be able to tell whether it is real or virtual,” he said.

Pixvana Creates Virtual Reality Training Experience to Prepare Businesses for Active Shooters in the Workplace

Pixvana, a virtual reality (VR) solutions provider specializing in corporate learning and training, and Alexo, experts in tactical training to counter workplace violence, today announced the release of a VR experience intended to prepare any workplace for an active shooter event. The Active Shooter Response training experience utilizes VR’s immersive powers to enable learners to practice situational awareness, increase readiness, and quicken reaction and response.

The VR training video features Alexo’s founder, Drew Hancock, a Seattle police officer and SWAT Supervisor with more than 25 years of law enforcement experience. Through the VR training, Hancock is able to effectively teach important decision-making strategies and simulate life-saving tactics for employees. Interactive quizzes during and after the program, ensure that employees are prepared and confident in their understanding of the curriculum.

The VR video reinforces critical protocols taught by Alexo, including two simple acronyms, “OODA” (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) and “ABC” (Avoid, Barricade, or Combat).

The active shooter training experience is available to businesses everywhere - and for a small incremental investment, companies can augment the core curriculum with tailored VR content that fits their specific location, layout, or industry.

See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pixvana-creates-virtual-reality-training-090000172.html

Virtual Reality Video Games That Double as Exercise

During the harshest months of Minnesota’s long, dark winters, when it takes only a few moments for your eyes to start watering and your cheeks to begin stinging, I give up my outdoor hobbies and get creative about exercising indoors. Sometimes that means hopping on a stationary bike. But more and more I find myself turning to an entirely different landscape: virtual reality.

Pulling a ski-mask-like VR headset over your eyes drops you into a virtual world where you can watch movies, play games, and, yes, exercise. Sensors track the location of your hands, body, and head while you smash opponents as Adonis Creed in “Creed: Rise to Glory.” Other apps let you dance, bike, do yoga, and meditate.

“Most people never stick to a workout, because it’s not fun, and you are well aware it’s a workout,” said Long. “But VR has the ability to trick the mind into thinking it’s a game and not exercise.”

I recommend one more accessory: disposable masks. The VR headset I use has a foam face pad, and it quickly becomes soaked with sweat. It’s gross, especially considering how many friends and co-workers borrow my headset each month. A hygienic mask cuts down on the ick factor dramatically.

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/smarter-living/wirecutter/virtual-reality-video-games-that-double-as-exercise.html

Brave new world

Michael Zink of Warner Bros. tells Paul Bray about some of the emerging technologies that are making waves in the media industry, and reveals why he’s excited by the prospect of autonomous vehicles.

See the full story here: https://www.ibc.org/create-and-produce/interview-michael-zink-warner-bros/4627.article

Apple, Microsoft Latest to Join Academy Software Foundation

Among ASWF’s open source projects is OpenTimelineIO, “an open source tool initially developed at Pixar that has been used for movies like ‘Coco,’ ‘Incredibles 2,’ and ‘Toy Story 4’.” ASWF’s other members include Amazon Web Services, Cisco, DreamWorks Animation, Google Cloud, Netflix, Red Hat, Sony Pictures, Unreal, the Visual Effects Society, Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros, among others.

“One of these tools is the Academy Software Foundation’s Continuous Integration (CI) build infrastructure, which streamlines development for build and runtime environments,” he said. “With Apple as a new member, we hope to work with them to improve support for Apple platforms, which will continue to democratize open source software development.”

Elsewhere, ASWF’s Morin noted that Microsoft’s membership “helps us hit a significant milestone as we surpass $1M in annual funding, a solid financial base that we will use to support our open source projects, the software engineers that develop them, and the open source community in general.”

See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/apple-microsoft-latest-to-join-academy-software-foundation/

Disney, Microsoft Team Up to Shift Moviemaking to the Cloud

Walt Disney Studios and Microsoft inked a five-year deal to start transitioning filmmaking to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, with the goal of complete “scene to screen.” The effort is led by Disney’s StudioLAB. Walt Disney Studios chief technology officer Jamie Voris said the first step will be to move Avid editing tools into the cloud, to facilitate collaboration across locations. Microsoft U.S. president Kate Johnson noted that “we are at the tipping point for cloud in media and entertainment.”

Variety reports that, according to Voris, “working collaboratively on the same project in the cloud will also cut down on the need to store and administer many different copies of a file.” That’s significant because a single big film can produce petabytes of data, which risk “getting lost, or falling into the wrong hands.”

See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/disney-microsoft-team-up-to-shift-moviemaking-to-the-cloud/

Who Would I Be Without Instagram? An investigation.

Instagram didn’t share anything that isn’t already public knowledge, except for an impressively detailed, NDA-protected packet with analytics on my account. The Instagram employees also told me that celebrities, models, and influencers had recently been coming to them wanting to know why their casual selfies outperform their posed red-carpet photos and editorial shots. Chen explained that aspirational photos did better a few years ago, but now users crave posts that seem to be behind-the-scenes, candid: “People want to see you letting your hair down.”

Forbes and a handful of social-media-marketing websites echo that appetites are changing. People are sick of unrealistic lifestyles and picture-perfect aesthetics, they say. The next era of Instagram is all about the “relatable influencer,” with trends like #nomakeup, #nofilter, #mentalhealth, #bodyimage, and “Instagram vs. Reality” memes. I now realize that in this essay, I’ve hit five out of five.

See the full story here: https://www.thecut.com/2019/09/who-would-tavi-gevinson-be-without-instagram.html?

Deepfakes could anonymize people in videos while keeping their personality

AI could generate faces that match the expressions of anonymous subjects to grant them privacy—without losing their ability to express themselves.

The news: A new technique uses generative adversarial networks (GAN), the algorithm behind deepfakes, to anonymize someone in a photo or video.

How it works: The algorithm extracts information about the person’s facial expression by finding the position of their eyes, ears, shoulders, and nose. It then uses a GAN, trained on a database of 1.5 million face images, to create an entirely new face with the same expression and blends it into the original photo, retaining the same background.

Why am I always the bad guy?: Face anonymization is typically used to protect the identity of people such as whistleblowers, in photos and footage. This technique would make it far safer for them and also allow them to convey their personality when speaking. It also demonstrates a new value proposition for GANs, which have developed a bit of a bad reputation.

How AI can reshape TV

The ‘Netflix Effect’ is in full swing, with billions of people binge-watching programmes on-demand. But TV isn’t dead - it’s just evolving: what if broadcasters and TV service providers are missing a trick to offer new kinds of value to viewers, simply by reimagining and repackaging the content they already have

What traditional TV service providers miss and that digital-first does best are the agile, user-driven capabilities to buffer, test and release new services as fast as tastes change. This is a critical blind spot.

It’s time for TV service providers to deconstruct and re-sequence their content, to serve up right-size, on-topic experiences. From smarter search to snackable content and richer profiles, the players who differentiate through their content metadata will manage stay relevant for expectant audiences against the odds, without the need to reinvent the wheel.

See the full story here: https://www.ibc.org/consume/how-ai-can-reshape-tv/4428.article

Wake up, US Federal Reserve! China just showed how digital currency is done

醉翁之意不在酒 (The ulterior motive)

I believe China’s DC/EP product is designed to replace the mobile payment systems in China.

China’s approach with the DC/EP reflects an effort to create a cash-like payment infrastructure without going through a financial institution and, more importantly for many entities (instead of just Alipay or WeChat Pay), to conduct transactions.

But China’s DC/EP centralized design does grant powers to the Chinese government, and depending on technical details that are not available yet, those powers can be abused to censor transactions, track individuals and their spending habits, and favor government loyalists.