Video Feedback Machine Creates Analog Fractals

January 2, 2024 by Richard Baguley 10 Comments

One of the first things everyone does when they get a video camera is to point it at the screen displaying the image, creating video feedback. It’s a fascinating process where the delay from image capture to display establishes a feedback loop that amplifies the image noise into fractal patterns. This sculpture, modestly called The God Machine II takes it to the next level, though.

We covered the first version of this machine in a previous post, but the creator [Dave Blair] has done a huge amount of work on the device since that allows him to tweak and customize the output that the device produces. His new version is quite remarkable, allowing him to create intricate fractals that writhe and change like living things.

The God Machine II is a sophisticated build with three cameras, five HD monitors, three Roland video switchers, two viewing monitors, two sheets of beam splitter glass, and a video input. This setup means it can take an external video input, capture it, and use it as the source for video feedback, then tweak the evolution of the resulting fractal image, repeatedly feeding it back into itself. The system can also control the settings for the monitor, which further changes the feedback as it evolves. [Blair] refers to this as “trapping the images.”

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Quivering Facehugger Is All Geared Up

December 30, 2023 by Donald Papp 4 Comments

[Jason Winfield] shared with us a video describing a project with a lot of personality: a mounted, lit, and quivering Alien facehugger triggered by motion. The end result is a delightful jump scare, and the Raspberry Pi that controls everything also captures people’s reactions.

It starts with a little twitch when motion is sensed, then launches into a perfectly unsettling quiver combined with light and sound. We particularly like the wave-like effect from the LED lighting, which calls to mind illumination from rotating hazard beacons.

The unit looks like a mounted and tastefully-lit static model, but is actually primed to sense motion.

One challenge was how to efficiently move the legs. Rather than use a motor for each limb, [Jason] settled on a single motor driving a rotating cam arrangement. You can see the results for yourself in the video below, but getting there was not simple.

The surplus motor [Jason] chose is thin and high-torque, but runs extremely fast. Since he wanted the legs to quiver creepily rather than vibrate, something needed to be done to mitigate this.

The solution is a planetary gear assembly that drives a rotating ring and cam arrangement coupled to the facehugger’s legs. There’s only one motor, but the effect is that each leg’s motion is independent of the others. The whole assembly is quite slim, and everything is contained within the frame.

Facehuggers and gear assemblies are not exactly an everyday combination, but believe it or not this isn’t the first time the two have joined forces. Check out the Aliens-themed cuckoo clock, complete with crew member torso and emerging chestburster!

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Generating 3D Scenes From Just One Image

December 29, 2023 by Donald Papp 6 Comments

The LucidDreamer project ties a variety of functions into a pipeline that can take a source image (or generate one from a text prompt) and “lift” its content into 3D, creating highly-detailed Gaussian splats that look great and can even be navigated.

Gaussian splatting is a method used to render NeRFs (Neural Radiance Fields), which are themselves a method of generating complex scenes from sparse 2D sources, and doing it quickly. If that is all news to you, that’s probably because this stuff has sprung up with dizzying speed from when the original NeRF concept was thought up barely a handful of years ago.

What makes LucidDreamer neat is the fact that it does so much with so little. The project page has interactive scenes to explore, but there is also a demo for those who would like to try generating scenes from scratch (some familiarity with the basic tools is expected, however.)

In addition to the source code itself the research paper is available for those with a hunger for the details. Read it quick, because at the pace this stuff is expanding, it honestly might be obsolete if you wait too long.

Multi-View Wire Art Meets Generative AI

December 20, 2023 by Donald Papp 10 Comments

DreamWire is a system for generating multi-view wire art using machine learning techniques to help generate the patterns required.

The 3-dimensional wire pattern in the center creates images of Einstein, Turing, and Newton depending on viewing angle.

What’s wire art? It’s a three-dimensional twisted mass of lines which, when viewed from a certain perspective, yields an image. Multi-view wire art produces different images from the same mass depending on the viewing angle, and as one can imagine, such things get very complex, very quickly.

A recently-released paper explains how the system works, explaining the role generative AI plays in being uniquely suited to create meaningful intersections between multiple inputs. There’s also a video (embedded just under the page break) that showcases many of the results researchers obtained.

The GitHub repository for the project doesn’t have much in it yet, but it’s a good place to keep an eye on if you’re interested in what comes next.

We’ve seen generative AI applied in a similarly novel way to help create visual anagrams, or 2D patterns that can be interpreted differently based on a variety of orientations and permutations. These sorts of systems still need to be guided by a human, but having machine learning do the heavy lifting allows just about anybody to explore their creativity.

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Mickey Shall Be Free!

December 18, 2023 by Jenny List 24 Comments

The end of the year brings with it festive cheer, and a look forward into the new year to come. For those with an interest in intellectual property and the public domain it brings another treat, because every January 1st a fresh crop of works enter the public domain.

We’ll take a look at the wider crop around the day, but this year the big story is that Mickey Mouse, whose first outing was in 1928’s Steamboat Willie, is to get his turn to be released from copyright. [Jennifer Jenkins] from Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, is using Mickey’s impending release to take a look at the law surrounding such a well-protected work.

Mickey has perhaps the greatest symbolism of all intellectual property when it comes to copyright terms, having been the reason for the Disney Corporation’s successive successful attempts to have copyright terms extended. Now even their reach is about to come to an end, but beware if you’re about to use him in your work, for the Mickey entering the public domain is an early outing, without gloves or the colours and eyes of his later incarnations. Added to that, Disney have a range of trademarks surrounding him. The piece makes for an interesting read as it navigates this maze, and makes some worthwhile points about copyright and the public domain.

Last year, we welcomed Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to the public domain. Meanwhile if you’re reading this in 2023, we believe our use of a header image featuring the 1928 Mickey to be covered by the doctrine of fair use.

The Trans-Harmonium Is A Strange Kind Of Radio-Musical Instrument

December 13, 2023 by Lewin Day 17 Comments

Pianos use little hammers striking taut strings to make tones. The Mellotron used lots of individual tape mechanisms. Meanwhile, the Trans-Harmonium from [Emily Francisco] uses an altogether more curious method of generating sound — each key on this keyboard instrument turns on a functional clock radio.

Electrically, there’s not a whole lot going on. The clock radios have their speaker lines cut, which are then rejoined by pressing their relevant key on the keyboard. As per [Emily]’s instructions for displaying the piece, it’s intended that the radio corresponding to C be tuned in to a local classical station. Keys A, B, D, E, F, and G are then to be tuned to other local stations, while the sharps and flats are to be tuned to the spaces in between, providing a dodgy mix of static and almost-there music and conversation.

It’s an interesting art piece that, no matter how well you play it, will probably not net you a Grammy Award. That would be missing the point, though, as it’s more a piece about “Collecting Fragments of Time,” a broader art project of which this piece is a part.

We do love a good art piece, especially those that repurpose old hardware to great aesthetic achievement.

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LED Art Project Is Geometrically Beautiful

December 13, 2023 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

There is no shortage of companies on the Internet willing to sell you expensive glowing things to stick on your walls. Many hackers prefer to make their own however, and [Chris] is no exception. His LED wall art is neat, tidy, and stylish, all at once.

Wanting a geometric design, [Chris] decided to have his layout designed by a random number generator. He created his own tool that would generate a design using preset segment lengths arranged in a random fashion. Once he found a layout that worked for him, he designed a set of plastic adapters that would let him connect pre-cut lengths of aluminium channel together so he could assemble his design.

With the frame complete, he then laid the LED strips into the channels, after mapping out how he would connect the full circuit of addressable LED strips. He enlisted a Raspberry Pi Zero W as the brains of the operation, responsible for commanding the strips to light in the colors of his desire.

In a nice aesthetic touch, he sanded the whole frame and painted it a uniform grey color. This hid the joins between the 3D-printed parts and the aluminium channels, and gave it a more finished look. He also went to the trouble of graphing out the locations of the various LEDs in the frame, and used this data as the basis for animations that race between points on the frame. It’s somehow more compelling than the usual simple color fades and flashes of typical commercial products.

It’s a tidy build, and a level more artful than some of the off-the-shelf products out there. For his investment of time and money, [Chris] has netted an excellent piece of wall art in the process.