Layout for complete Video Reshoot (sans NTSC)

Well, even though stabilisation was great and the videos looked good before the browser, once they were exported, they looked very bad with terrible artifacting.

Thus, I bit the bullet and decided to re-shoot instead of sleeping.

This is the new layout used for the re-shoot, you'll notice that I added a border around the rear of the lazy susan so as to avoid reflection and increase lighting of items inside liquid.

side view

top/front view

Set Layout #2

After working a very long time on fixing the wobble on the existing video footage, I managed to get my hands on a really good lazy suzan, thanks heaps to Simon.

This was the layout of my new set.  You'll notice that I dispensed with the lighting tent concept, mostly because you couldn't really see what was in the jars very clearly and really, a few shiny lights on the jar edges aren't that big of a deal.

Jar Set Shoot #1

Here is the layout of the first set built to create my jar animations.

I tried to incorporate the concept of the lighting tent but due to a lack of a lazy susan (and not wanting to pay $40 for one) I went budget.  It involves, a curled up piece of paper for background (without edges), a metal frame drilled and fixed to a plastic breadboard, a platform made of a sticky-tape dispenser inside, a shoelace, 3CD's, tape a Blu-tak (shown below) which attaches via a drilled hole in the breadboard surrounded by another CD, baking paper wrapped round the top and sides and three spotlights tied to my tripod with shoelaces above the baking paper.

Jar within my lighting tent.

Side-view showing curled paper backdrop.

Close-up of the rotating platform (with 10 degree outline for still movie test.

My home made "lazy suzan".

The resultant video produced with this method left a lot to be desired, particularly from a wobble perspective.  I'll post the video, and what it looked like after post soon...

On a side note, this video is of one of the jars but using still images rather than video... You can see my template with every 10 degrees showing but worth a look anyway:

Test Cycle of iPod Jar

Here is a test animation showing a jar rotation.

What to jar next?

I'd like a larger jar to enclose a miniDV cassette and something that will take the 2.5 inch external hard drive.

Still not sure what to place in the pickle jar and the two original baby food jars...  I'd like to capture gaming... maybe a DVD would work, or BlueRay though I don't have any of those.

I'd love to purchase a broken/damaged iPhone (since they are very topical atm) but is it worth the money on such a project?

Filling jars & making new ones...

So, the jars from last night have been topped up with Gelatine.  They look relatively good, except I am worried that the phone jar has too much of a colour difference despite my attempts to ensure a smooth blend.

Some new additions to the collection include:

• USB key
• Oil (actually vegemite)
• Micro SD card

Complete set as at today, above.

Complete set as at today, front.

Untethered Jars (In progress)

The jars that were created last night have successfully set and look good. Now to top up the gaps... Here is what they look like now:

iPod Shuffle w/ headphones

XBox communicator

Nokia phone

Film roll

Rotation Source Code Argh!

Finding source code for nice image rotation is proving more difficult than I thought... I have something that will work if I tweak it a fair amount which should be fine but still, you'd think I wasn't the first to want to do this.

What would have been nice would be to successfully implement the Quicktime VR stuff but I can't get the demo because they e-mail out the links and I've yet to receive an e-mail either through Uni mail or my personal mail.  I'm not impressed with their site as a result.

In Progress... New Items in Jars

Here is a shot of some not yet set items in jars...

Cleaned Jars

After Washing, removing stickers, and removing paint from lids, here are my new, clean specimen jars...  My finger tips hurt from all the sanding and scouring.

Cleaned, empty jars.

Major Theme: "Capturing the Now"

Chris asked us to come up with a phrase/one-liner to describe the work.

Process/thoughts regarding the theme:

• Collecting and throwing away
• What is important and what we collect
• Important collections
• Collections of today are the rubbish of tomorrow
• Collections of now are the rubbish of tomorrow
• Collect today, throw tomorrow
• Interests of today
• Interests of the now
• Collected interests of today
• Captured interests of the now
• Collections of today
• Collections of now
• Capturing the Now

Finally, I decided on "Capturing the Now"

Swipe Code?

• JQuery Swipe
• jQuery Reel Plugin 

iPod Classic 360 degree view

iPod Classic 360 degree view

This is kinda the style I'd like for the website pictures.
Obviously not as detailed, but you get the idea.

Potential items to be placed in jars...

Roll of film

Mobile Phone - thanks to 3 Mobile @ANU

Mini Photographic Keepsakes

iPod Remote plus Headphones

Original iPod Shuffle

SD and USB storage

iPod 3G accessories

Additonal Jar Collection

Jars of various shapes and sizes yet all maintaining a basic clean shape.

Now, to empty, clean and strip the paint from the lids...

Oh, and a special thanks to David for helping with the selections.

[AJ] Australian Journey's Work Proposal - Jarred Objects

Aims/subject of the proposal

• What is the nature of the work you are proposing?

The work will be a set of nine 360 degree photographed objects, each held in glass jars suspended in liquid.  These jars will have fake specimen tags adding to their "authenticity".  These photographs will be presented as spinning objects within a browser.

• What is the subject matter of the work?

Drawing on the 360 degree views of items presented in the Australian Journey's Shoebox and my fascination with the jarred mud and sea creatures done on the Antarctic mission, and just generally with scientists historically taking specimens, this work will make comment on modern life now as the jarred items will include electronic and common household objects.

• How many works do you intend to produce for this project?

There will be one web page presented with these nine objects shown in a standard 3x3 grid, possibly spinning based on the mouse-over event.  Optionally, it would be fun if such spinning could be accelerated depending on user interaction, ie. fast or slow mouse-over.

Research/working process

• What's the historical or conceptual basis for your ideas?

History shows that we take specimens of existing objects for later study.  Within the Australian Journey's exhibit, you not only see evidence of this with the jarred objects, but with the entire "jarred" set of cases, holding, coins, dresses, wool, instruments, etc.

• How will you go about developing these ideas, and what visual material and other research will be involved?

 As a commentary on modern life, as if these items were found and jarred in the future, the objects will have a technological focus, highlighting the irony of placing electronic things in liquid.  Themes include communication, entertainment, technology,   Such items include:

1. a mobile phone (Nokia 8210)
2. an original iTalk iPod attachment
3. an XBox wireless headset
4. a post-it note with a shopping list written on it.
5. iPod headphones
6. a Micro-SD or SD card.
7. Concept of LCD TV printed onto Acetate or Tracing Paper to have an opaque object.
8. -
9. -

* Q. I'm looking for feedback and other ideas in regard to what items could be included. 

Methods and materials

• What methods and materials do you intend to use?

Cleaned Jars
Objects suspended using Gelatin.
Software options:

1. Using Nuke, model the jar and use 3D projection to build a 3D view of the object and use a camera to circle the object.
2. Using the photos themselves, present as a sequential image animation.

Background, etc.  Should be well-lit, all encompasing white background.

* Q. Is the 3D projection idea overkill?

* Q. How would such a bright environment be achieved?

• What new skills do you need to develop?

1. 3D Projection, ties in with my Digital Compositing complimentary.
2. Advance roll-over effect withing the browser... possibly using JQuery, as learned in first year.

Timeframe

• Give an outline and plan of your work in relation to the time available.

Week 3 - Have objects within jars, photographed with labels, etc.
Week 4 - Test 3D projection concept with photos and/or
Week 5 - Webpage setup and layout complete.
Week 6 - Mouse-over functionality introduced.
Week 7 - Review.

* Q. Does this seem reasonable?

Visual Materials

• Provide drawings, diagrams, related visual and research material which may be useful in developing your proposal.

Within the article, Making of Australian Journey's (8 October 2008), senior curator Martha Sear, stated:

"... amazing scientific material gathered on the voyage including – I think this is our favourite named object in the gallery - assorted sea gunk. It is stuff that was trawled up from the bottom of the ocean by the expedition and put in a jar. We have the jar, and you can see the little shrimps and strange creatures that were found under the sea."

Jar containing mud and sea residue.

Test Jar Image #1

Test Jar Image #2

Deadlines

• You should prepare a full-length detailed draft for discussion by the end of week one of semester, and the final version for approval by the end of week 2.

Using Gelatin for Moulds and Prosthetics

Using Gelatin for Moulds and Prosthetics

This is an interesting method for creating moulds and prosthetics using Gelatin.

The only downside here is that it comes out quite brown and I'd prefer something more see-through.

Questioning Map Concept and Proposal

As much as looking into Ptolomy's Map was interesting...

I placed the map onto a plane and changed parts of it to correspond to the terrain. 

1. Whilst the map looked kinda good at such a close camera angle... it clearly would need to be worked over, either to remove the words or clear them up... I think there is too much work here.
2. My ideas for the camera wandering around, seeing the drop to the sea, seeing the fire pop up as they reach the equator, and get blown back by the winds... are very basic and to be pulled off nicely, I'd need to be able to draw better and better represent my pop-up book concept without it looking cheap and nasty... I want something clean and polished.
3. I want to know more about the legends back then, ala, too hot at equator... this is proving very difficult to research.
4. My other thought of a Southern version of the map, as if Australians had explored a small amount and thought New Guinea was larger, as was New Zealand, with a similar heat concept at the equator again needed better fleshing out and better drawing skills.  I think if this concept was undertaken by a group it might have a better chance of success.

It's a pity, 'cos I was enjoying the idea of using the Ptolomy map.  I was going to write up the proposal anyway but I've decided against it now.

Ptolemaeic land area coverage overlay

In an effort to identify anomalies and get a clearer picture of the area covered by Ptolemy's map I've tried to outline the bounds of the known map at the time...

Area covered as shown on Google Maps:

Identical area as shown on Google Earth:

Topographic Map of the world.

Topographic Map of the World released by NASA and Japan

This map shows the topography of the world... this may be useful when mapping the 2D Ptolomy map on a 3D plane.