OVERVIEW

InBiTATIOn

Independent Birds Traveling Around The Image of the Onlooker

This project continues the exploration between global and local aspects of images. It extends previous projects like the “Escher lizards as pixels” [1] giving mobility and behavior to the conforming parts of the image.

The animation community have develop an extensive research in modeling the behavior of flocks of different species according to diverse rules (like following a leader, escaping, hunting, etc) [2] [3] these efforts had concentrate in realize a realistic behavior of the individuals of the colony. In this project, parts are entities that behave independently (between individuals) but each animal interacts with an external stimulus provided by the real time captured image of the spectator. This strategy of using the image of the viewer as a way to generate the artistic piece itself had been also explored before in abstract ways[4] and also as an extension of photomosaics to its video version[5].

The key concepts in this work was that the forming parts of the created scene were recognizable entities, and that they interact with the viewer, the results are esthetical satisfactory and a novel algorithm for the driven behavior of the building objects was designed.

The Author

jvillegas at umail.ucsb.edu

Javier Villegas is an electronic engineer from the Javeriana University in Bogota Colombia. He obtained a Masters degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering from Los Andes University. His previous research works include real-time pitch extraction for speech signals, explorations of foveal architecture in stereo vision and analysis/synthesis of visual speech. He worked as an Assistant Professor at Javeriana University and is currently a Ph.D student in the MAT program at UCSB. His current research interests are real-time video processing for HCI, multimedia signal processing, physical modeling and numerical methods for music synthesis and animation.

REFERENCES

[1]. Villegas J.Pixels in Escher Lizard Shape, MAT 256 Project 1. UCSB 2008.

[2]. Chenney, McDaniel, Anderson. Constrained Animation of Flocks, Eurographics SIGGRAPH Symposium on Computer Animation. 2003.

[3]. Hodgin R, Birds!,Flight404.com. 2007.

[4]. Moeller C, Camera Music/Kinetic Shadows. 1997.

[5]. Han Jefferson, Perspective Pixel, SIGGRAPH 2006 Art Gallery. 2006.