RGB+D

We’ve put together an exhibition featuring RGBD work along side the work of Kyle McDonald and Arturo Castro.  Opening May 10th from 6-8 at Eyebeam in NYC (540 West 21st St, Chelsea NY)

Our environment is full of machines interpreting our every gesture. We have video games programmed to judge our dance moves, electronic storefront advertisements that infer our gender, and security cameras that algorithmically deduce our intentions. These automated eyes peer through lenses of code continually attempting to make sense of our world.

What would happen if we cracked open these vision machines to reveal the images flowing through? How does their way of seeing influence our own self-perception? Their gaze is strange and unsettling, yet we recognize ourselves within it. We appear distorted, somehow alien and uncanny—as if we’ve stumbled into a funhouse hall of mirrors, confronted with reflections at once foreign and familiar, virtual and real. Lines and dots overlay our faces and figures, a new type of tribal mask depicting our body’s interface to computational logic. These digital depictions speak to our contemporary existence as half virtual/half analog beings, and have inspired a group of artist-technologists to explore their potential. 

WIRED FRAMES brings together artists who engage with machine perception to explore the humanistic, expressive, and creative potential of this mode of representation. The artists have taken up the subject of portraiture, exploring a new vanguard of the age-old genre. Both the viewers and the machines are responding to these portraits, following instinctual tendencies to look for facial patterns, to find the human within the field of view.

We’re doing a hands-on workshop in Barcelona next weekend. We’ll be teaching a two day workshop called Intro to hybrid 3D filmmaking with Kinect and DSLR using the RGBDToolkit and openFrameworks. 

Join us in developing the future of these techniques by doing it yourself. Coders and non-coders welcome! Details & Spanish text at http://rgbdtoolkit.com/hangar.html

Send a note to james@jamesgeorge to RSVP 

–Alexander

A quaint home for rgbdtoolkit tutorials downloads and videos, but keep your eyes here for the fresh stuff.

Jonathan and James, RGB+D contributors, supplied responses to Bruce Sterlings Essay on the New Aesthetic for The Creators Project.