Microsoft Surface

Hi there! Today we will be talking about a product of Microsoft – Microsoft Surface (a coffee table!!). Some of us may also know it as Microsoft Milan (its codename). It was first launched on 17 April 2008 at AT&T stores for customer use.

As you can see from the above video, Microsoft Surface is multitouch (touchscreen). Did you know that it is capapable of responding up 52 touches, WOW!! It has a 360-degree user interface, a 30-inch reflective surface with a XGA DLP projector underneath the surface which projects an image onto its underside, while five cameras in the machine’s housing record reflections of infrared light from objects and human fingertips on the surface. The surface is capable of object recognition, object/finger orientation recognition and tracking, and is multi-touch and multi-user. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving placed objects.

How we interact with the coffee table is known as a natural user interface (NUI). Now let’s look at the specifications of this fabulous table!

• Up to Intel Core Quad Xeon “WoodCrest” @ 2.66GHz
• Up to 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM
• Up to 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive

It also has a custom motherboard form factor about the size of two ATX motherboards.

Well, after knowing so much about this table, aren’t you tempted to own one yourself? I dare tell you that you’d probably not buy this coffee table. Why? After looking at the price… My friend, it costs approximately US$10,000!! What a beautiful figure, isn’t it! Well, let’s all wait for the price to drop as you know, tech stuff always do! That’s all folk! Please give your honest comment about this post so that there’s always an improvement. See ya! 🙂

Virtual Art

Welcome back! Today we will be covering on another area of discipline of New Media Art – Virtual Art. If you had ever done sort of a research before regarding this aspect on the net, chances are you’d receive plentiful of “out-of-the-world” beautiful images and very few information (about what virtual art is and its history etc…). I tried to look for definitions of virtual  art and guess what I’ve got? After sieving through all the unwanted info, I can only say that there’s only one pathetic definition from Wikipedia that sounds logical. Here it goes: Virtual art is art practice using Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality as a medium.

Frankly speaking, I don’t really find that the definition’s a good one. The word “virtual” has been used throughout and this defeats the purpose of explaining what “virtual art” means (this applies more to less IT-savvy people). Therefore, I shall bring in the definitions of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality to make this explanation more explicit.

Virtual Reality (VR) is actually a technology that allows users to interact with a computer-simulated environment, whether that environment is a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world. This should sound more sane to gamers. Gamers play their 3D video games using the computer, XBox, PSP etc… By doing so, they are interacting with a world that does not exist in actual fact but only “exists” thanks to the development of Information Technology. We can also say that Virtual Reality is like a fake reality although it sounds crazy to say that something is real when it’s actually fake, haha!

Next, augmented reality. This combines the real world and virtual reality, where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time. We actually hardly get games using augmented reality. I guess it wouldn’t be as exciting games that add in a little fantasy here and there to spice up the whole content. Well, probably museum use augmented reality to re-enact the histories of their countries. With the help of technology, museums may get people to produce 3D historical characters (real character of the history) to tell a story of the countries’ history. Here’s an example:

Lastly, we look at mixed reality. Mixed reality merges both virtual reality and augmented reality. This implies that mixed reality contains both facts and imaginations. Games such as Dynasty Warriors and Age of Empires are using augmented reality. Dynasty Warriors uses the true background history of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and then adds in some fantasy to spice up the content. Same goes to Age of Empires. It uses the true history of various empires and adds in some creativity to make the game more fun for gamers.

We can now conclude that that Virtual Art is a form of art that uses technology to bring in imaginations and creativity of people to the art. This then adds another level of depth to the original definition of conventional art.

If you would like to share about your knowledge on Virtual Art, please do so by keying in your comments. Please also give your honest feedback on this post. Thank you!

Windows 7

Here’s Windows 7, your future operating system for Windows users. If this still sounds greek to you, have you heard of Windows Vienna then? Yes, that used to be Windows 7’s codename. A less known codename for this operating system (OS) is Blackcomb.

Windows 7 has been officially announced to succeed our current Windows OS, Windows Vista by Microsoft in 2007. The OS would be utilised for personal computers (home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, netbooks and media center PCs). It would be another 3 years (counting 2007 and onwards) on estimation before the final release, when product quality has been assured.

Unlike all its previous versions of Microsoft Windows OS, this one would be an incremental upgrade from Windows Vista. This implies that the OS would be fully compatible with all device drivers, applications and hardwares currently compatible with Windows Vista. Based on presentations held by Microsoft, the OS developers would focus more on multi-touch support (touchscreen) and redesign the Windows Shell and its taskbar. A surplus to the taskbar would be a home networking system known as HomeGroup. At the same time, computer performance would also greatly improved. Application currently available in Microsoft Windows OS will still continue to exist in the new version.

The reason for the codename Blackcomb for Windows 7 was due to a planning for it to be the successor of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Major features such as an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system (WinFS) to enable the emphasis was planned for Blackcomb. However, it was delayed and another minor release (Longhorn) surfaced. Longhorn was also reset after three main viruses exploited flaws in the Microsoft Windows system.

Microsoft then diverted its development priorities to Windows Vista. It threw in major concepts from Longhorn and everything turned well. Windows Vista was successfully released on 30 January 2007 (retail).

In early 2006, Blackcomb was renamed Windows Vienna and then Windows 7 in 2007. According to an interview by Newsweek, Bill Gates suggested that Windows 7 would be more “user-centric”. Another statement by Senior Vice President Bill Veghte was that Windows 7 will  not have the same kind of compatibility issues with Windows Vista like what Windows Vista has with the previous versions. On 16 October 2008, Microsoft CEO Ballmer confirmed the compatibility between Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Users can download the Windows 7 OS beta via the Microsoft Connect program although the official release will be on 10 April 2009 worldwide.

What is a computer algorithm?

(Adapted from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question717.htm)

To make a computer do anything, you have to write a computer program. To write a computer program, you have to tell the computer, step by step, exactly what you want it to do. The computer then “executes” the program, following each step mechanically, to accomplish the end goal.

When you are telling the computer what to do, you also get to choose how it’s going to do it. That’s where computer algorithms come in. The algorithm is the basic technique used to get the job done. Let’s follow an example to help get an understanding of the algorithm concept.

Let’s say that you have a friend arriving at the airport, and your friend needs to get from the airport to your house. Here are four different algorithms that you might give your friend for getting to your home:

• The taxi algorithm:

1. Go to the taxi stand.
2. Get in a taxi.
3. Give the driver my address.

• The call-me algorithm:

1. When your plane arrives, call my cell phone.
2. Meet me outside baggage claim.

• The rent-a-car algorithm:

1. Take the shuttle to the rental car place.
2. Rent a car.
3. Follow the directions to get to my house.

• The bus algorithm:

1. Outside baggage claim, catch bus number 70.
2. Transfer to bus 14 on Main Street.
3. Get off on Elm street.
4. Walk two blocks north to my house.

All four of these algorithms accomplish exactly the same goal, but each algorithm does it in completely different way. Each algorithm also has a different cost and a different travel time. Taking a taxi, for example, is probably the fastest way, but also the most expensive. Taking the bus is definitely less expensive, but a whole lot slower. You choose the algorithm based on the circumstances.

In computer programming, there are often many different ways — algorithms — to accomplish any given task. Each algorithm has advantages and disadvantages in different situations. Sorting is one place where a lot of research has been done, because computers spend a lot of time sorting lists. Here are five different algorithms that are used in sorting:

• Bin sort
• Merge sort
• Bubble sort
• Shell sort
• Quicksort

If you have a million integer values between 1 and 10 and you need to sort them, the bin sort is the right algorithm to use. If you have a million book titles, the quicksort might be the best algorithm. By knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the different algorithms, you pick the best one for the task at hand.

Net Art (net.art)

(Adapted from Wikipedia, http://www.easylife.org/netart/)

net.art (derived from internet art) was first introduced in 1994. It is a self-defining term created by a malfunctioning piece of software, originally used to describe an art and communications activity on the internet. net.artists sought to break down autonomous disciplines and outmoded classifications imposed upon various activists practices.

The net.art movement arose in the context of the wider development of Internet Art. As such, net.art is more of a movement and a critical and political landmark in Internet Art history, than a specific genre. Early precursors of the net.art movement include the international fluxus (Nam June Paik) and avant-pop (Mark Amerika) movements. The avant-pop movement particularly became widely recognized in Internet circles from 1993, largely via the popular Alt-X site.

The term “net.art” was probably coined by Pit Schultz in 1995, but is also attributed to Vuk Cosic, and stems from “conjoined phrases in an email bungled by a technical glitch (a morass of alphanumeric junk, its only legible term ‘net.art’)”. It was first used with regard to the “net.art per se” meeting of artists and theorists in Trieste in May 1996, and referred to a group of artists who worked together closely in the first half of the 1990s. These meetings gave birth to the website net.art per se/CNN Interactive, a fake CNN website “commemorating” the event.

net.art developed in a context of cultural crisis in Eastern Europe in the beginning of the 1990s after the end of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The artists involved in net.art experiments are associated with the idea of a “social responsibility” that would answer the idea of democracy as a modern capitalist myth. The Internet, often promoted as the democratic tool par excellence, but largely participating in the rules of vested interests, is targeted by the net.artists who claimed that “a space where you can buy is a space where you can steal, but also where you can distribute”. net.artists focus on finding new ways of sharing public space.

#Lesson 3 – How to make Ice Text

Welcome to the third lesson on “How to make Ice Text”. Today’s lesson would also be quite fun and the end product is quite cool too. Without any further ado, let’s start the ball rolling… (Adapted from http://www.voidix.com/icetext.html)

Start out by choosing Filter > Render > Clouds. Make sure that your foreground color is white, and your background color black.

Take your text tool and write whatever you like in large white text. Duplicate your text layer, but hide the duplicate. We will come back to this one later.

Rasterise your visible text layer by right clicking your text with the text tool, and choosing rasterise. We are now going to apply the wind filter to make an icicle effect. After you have rasterised your layer, merge it to your background by pressing Ctrl+E. Now choose Filter > Stylise > Wind. The filter can only apply the wind in one direction, so we are going to do one side of the text at a time. Choose “from the right” in your wind options menu, and click ok. Your text should be blown to the right, now lets do the other sides. Choose Image > Rotate Canvas > 90 Degrees CW. Press Ctrl+F to reapply the wind effect. Do this to each side of your text, and you should have something like the image below. I applied the wind filter twice to each side, you can do it however many times you like depending on the size of your text.

Lets make the text stand out a bit more, choose Image > Adjustments > Brightness Contrast. Darken the image slightly and then up the contrast, yours should look like the image below.

Lets give our text some color. Create a new layer, and change the layer mode to “colour” Change your foreground colour to light blue, and your background to a darker blue. Click on your gradient tool and apply a Radial Gradient to your canvas.

Now we are going to use that duplicate text layer you have been saving. Control click the layer to give you a selection of your text, create a new layer above everything you have so far, and fill your text with blue gradient. While your still on this new layer, choose Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic. I used a cell size of 7. Your image should look similar to mine.

To make our text look more “ice cubish” lets sharpen it a bit. Choose Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. Reapply the filter a few times by pressing Ctrl+F until yours looks similar to mine.

You’re done! here is how mine turned out.

Hope you enjoyed it! Practise a few times and you’ll be an expert at this. Don’t forget to leave some comments behind.

#Lesson Two – Making your first 3D logo

Welcome back to our second lesson on “Making your first 3D logo”. Today we will be exploring the feature “Emboss”. Many of us often produce great images from Photoshop but hardly any 3D images. We always think that 3D means more rendering, more tedious jobs for us, illustrators. Actually, it is NOT!! We will now dive into the contents of this lesson, have fun! (Adapted from http://graphicssoft.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=graphicssoft&cdn=compute&tm=10&f=10&tt=14&bt=0&bts=1&st=32&zu=http%3A//www.voidix.com/3dlogo.html)

First, lets make a new image with a gray background, and whatever size you want. I would make it fairly large to start.

Now, make a new layer by selecting it through the layers drop-down menu.

On this layer you are going to make the shape of your logo. So, with the color black go ahead and make whatever shape you want to make 3D. Make sure that you keep it all on the same layer.

Now, when you have finished with your shape, go to edit>transform>skew and pull the bottom two corners outward as shown below.

Next up, go to edit>transform>scale and sized down your logo by pulling only the top portion downward, as shown below.

Now we are going to add a slight bevel to our shape. So, go to filter>stylize>emboss and use the settings below.

Now, your image should look something like the one below.

Now come the easy, but effect part. While you are on the layer with your logo on it, press and hold the Ctrl & Alt button, and while holding them, hold the up arrow key. As your hold those buttons down your image will be duplicated over and over, but slightly above the original one, giving it a totally 3D look.

Your image should look like the one below.

Now that we have our shape, we are going to colorise it. So, merge all of your layers together except your BG layer by selecting merge down from the arrow on the layer pallet. Select your logo by holding the Ctrl button and selecting your layer from the layer pallet.

Now, while your image is selected, make a new layer and fill your selection with whatever colour you want your logo to be. Now, change the layer style to colour by selecting layer>layer style

Your image should now look like mine.

Now just change your background colour to match your logo colour. Now that you have your logo completed all that you have left to do is customise it to your liking. Below are a few steps that I took to make my logo look even better.

After this, I lowered the opacity of my logo layer so that it blended in a little better.

After this I adjusted the brightness and contrast by going to edit>adjust>brightness/contrast until I was satisfied with the result.

After this I selected my logo and took out my airbrush tool. After making my foreground colour white, and brightened areas on my logo were the light would be hitting it more strongly.

After this you should have your logo just about 100% completed. Here is an example of the cool things that you can do with your new 3D logo.

Well there you have it, cool 3D logos without the help of a 3D program! 🙂 Please comment!

#Lesson One – How to transform your doodles into GREAT Photoshop Art

Welcome to our first lesson on “How to transform your doodles into GREAT Photoshop Art”! I believe that many of us are mischievous at times and like to doodle on adverts we get in from our letterboxes. I do recall myself drawing moles with long and ugly hair, moustaches, wrinkles and thick eyebrows etc on useless advertisement papers when I was young. I would then laugh at the amusing faces. Well, today we will be doing something rather similar, but in a digital way. We’re gonna use the famous tool – Adobe Photoshop! We will be transforming a doodled image into a somewhat “beautiful” art!! Pranksters, are you ready? (Adapted from http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/index.cfm?featureID=1795&pn=1)

Before

After

———————————————————————————————————————————–

01. Find yourself a decent high-res stock image, or use an image of your own. For this illustration I’ve chosen a quirky futuristic image of a model, which you can download for a small cost from iStockphoto at this link: http://tinyurl.com/5j2jog. You can use any portrait that has a fairly clear background.

02. We’re going to insert some layers behind the figure later on, so we need to create a layer mask. First, select the Pen tool, and create a path around the edge of her face, hair and arms. Then right-click (Ctrl + click) your path, and pick Make Selection. Then go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection to create your layer mask. Name this layer ‘Woman’.

03. To replace the background that we’ve just got rid of, create a new layer and call it ‘background’. Move this layer to the bottom of the layer stack. Choose a light purple and a dark purple, and fill the layer with a radial gradient, making sure the lighter shade is in the centre.

04. Right-click on the layer mask you created in Step 02 and select Apply Layer Mask. Next, cut out her left arm and paste it onto a new layer. The arm doesn’t look right where it is, so we’re going to rotate it towards her body slightly. After you’ve done that, merge the arm and woman layers together. Then select Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

05. Grab a piece of paper, and something to draw with – this could be pencil, pen or inks. Sketch out some drips, similar to flowing blood. Be as messy and as rough as you want: the messier, the better. Use the photo of the woman as a reference point so that your drips will work with her body when you scan the drips into Photoshop.

06. Scan your drip drawings and open them Photoshop, dragging them onto a new layer named ‘drips’. Set the blending mode to Multiply. This gets rid of all the white and leaves you with only black. All you have to do now is move them around to see where they would fit best. I drew mine so that they would come from her fingertips and eye, but it’s up to you. Have as many drips as you like – have fun and experiment with markers, felt-tips and paint.

07. Open splat.psd from the cover disc and drag it onto a new layer called ’splat’. Make sure to put it behind the ‘woman’ layer. Next you need to desaturate it (as in Step 04) and set the blending mode to Multiply.

08. Next, have a hunt through your sketchbooks and anywhere else for doodles you’ve done, or grab a pen and get doodling, to create the materials for the next step. These can be as random as you like there are no rules here.

09. Next, scan in all of your doodles, drag them into your document, and stick them in a folder called ‘doodles’. Select a doodle’s layer, go to Image > Adjustments > Invert, set the blending mode to Screen, and play with its positioning. Repeat this for all your doodles.

10. Go to http://tinyurl.com/6sbbsp, download the image and drag it onto a new layer called ‘nebula1’. Drag the layer to the top of the layer stack, and set the blending mode to Screen. Select Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and enter a brightness of 5 and a contrast of 50 respectively. Then select Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and drop the hue to -90. Leave the other controls alone.

11. Go to http://tinyurl.com/6jj2r4, download the image and drag it onto a new layer called ‘nebula2’. Change the blending mode to Screen and play with the colours. You can use any star field or space scene as a means of creating a bright and colourful textured overlay for your images. It’s just a matter of experimenting.

12. The background is looking a bit bland at the moment so let’s embellish it. Open bg_texture.psd from the cover CD and drag it onto a new layer above the ‘background’ layer. Set the blending mode to Overlay and select Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and enter –10; 100. Rename the layer ‘texture’.

13. We’re nearly there – just one more flourish of colour. Download the image from http://tinyurl.com/5kystq, drag it onto a new layer and set the blending mode to Screen. Mess around with the brightness and contrast, and the hue and saturation. Make sure you keep it bright and colourful.

14. For the finishing touches, create an adjustment layer. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Colour Balance and enter these values: 17; 1; 22. You can keep adding to this image as much as you like, throwing in any hand-drawn elements you have to hand, or whatever you dream up. Digital is good, but mixing it up with oldfashioned recycled doodles is better. Just to finish, select Layer > Flatten Image, then Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. You may want to increase levels and saturation as well.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson! Have fun doodling!

Digital Technology as an impact on Art

I would say: Digital Technology + Art = Digital ART!!

Do you agree?

I would say digital technology has transformed traditional activities such as painting, drawing and sculpture to new forms of ART – what we call “Digital ART”!

Before we discuss about digital art, let’s look at some forms of art before the arrival of digital art.

Prehistoric Art

Sculptures

Paintings

Now let’s look into a form of modern day art: digital art. We actually can get most forms from an art genre known as New Media Art. New Media Art comprises of digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art technologies, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology. The following are the areas of discipline for New Media Art:

• Artistic computer game modification
• Ascii Art
• Bio Art
• Computer art
• Digital art
• Digital poetry
• Tradigital art
• Electronic art
• Evolutionary art
• Generative art
• Hacktivism
• Information art
• Interactive art
• Internet art
• Net art
• Performance art
• Radio art
• Robotic art
• Software art
• Sound art
• Systems art
• Video art
• Virtual art

In the next post, we will look more into New Media Art… Stay tuned…

What is Digital Art?

Digital Art

What is Digital Art? It is art created on a computer in digital form. Wikipedia’s definition is: Contemporary art that uses the methods of mass production or digital media.

Digital

Again we ask ourselves, “How do we define “digital?” (since the definition was “in a digital form”).  A digital system uses discrete values but isn’t always symbolised numerically. The word “digital” comes from the same same source as “digit” and “digitus” (Latin word for finger) as fingers are used for discrete counting.

Probably the above ain’t really a good explanation. I’ve got a better explanation (hopefully it helps you understand better) from http://www.techterms.com/definition/digital. This is how it goes:

Digital information is stored using a series of ones and zeros. Computers are digital machines because they can only read information as on or off — 1 or 0. This method of computation, also known as the binary system, may seem rather simplistic, but can be used to represent incredible amounts of data. CDs and DVDs can be used to store and play back high-quality sound and video even though they consist entirely of ones and zeros.

Unlike computers, humans perceive information in analog. We capture auditory and visual signals as a continuous stream. Digital devices, on the other hand, estimate this information using ones and zeros. The rate of this estimation, called the “sampling rate,” combined with how much information is included in each sample (the bit depth), determines how accurate the digital estimation is.

Compact Disc

For example, a typical CD audio track is sampled at 44.1 KHz (44,100 samples per second) with a bit depth of 16 bits. This provides a high-quality estimation of an analog audio signal that sounds realistic the human ear. However, a higher-quality audio format, such as a DVD-Audio disc, may be sampled at 96 KHz and have a bit depth of 24 bits. The same song played on both discs will sound more smooth and dynamic on the DVD-Audio disc.

Since digital information only estimates analog data, an analog signal is actually more accurate than a digital signal. However, computers only work with digital information, so storing data digitally makes more sense. Unlike analog data, digital information can also be copied, edited, and moved without losing any quality. Because of the benefits digital information offers, it has become the most common way of storing and reading data.

Analog TV

*Analog (http://www.techterms.com/definition/analog)

As humans, we perceive the world in analog. Everything we see and hear is a continuous transmission of information to our senses. This continuous stream is what defines analog data. Digital information, on the other hand, estimates analog data using only ones and zeros.

For example, a turntable (or record player) is an analog device, while a CD player is digital. This is because a turntable reads bumps and grooves from a record as a continuous signal, while a CD player only reads a series of ones and zeros. Likewise, a VCR is an analog device, while a DVD player is digital. A VCR reads audio and video from a tape as a continuous stream of information, while a DVD player just reads ones and zeros from a disc.

Digital Devices

Since digital devices read only ones and zeros, they can only approximate an audio or video signal. This means analog data is actually more accurate than digital data. However, digital data can can be manipulated easier and preserved better than analog data. More importantly, computers can only handle digital data, which is why most information today is stored digitally. But if you want to transfer video from old analog video tapes into your computer so you can edit them, you’re not out of luck. You can use a digital to analog converter (DAC) to convert the analog information into a digital signal that can be recognized by your computer.

I hope it really helps you get your concepts right. Please do not hesitate to comment. Thank you! 🙂