Tag: technology

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News VRC

Visit the VRC & Check out our iPad 2!

 

Welcome back students and faculty! To start the new school year off right, our iPad 2 is now set up in the VRC. We hope you’ll come check it out in CWAC 257.

We’ve installed a lot of great apps about art and images that have been featured on our blog and Facebook page and other programs that are useful for art historians, including Keynote. There’s also quick links to LUNA, Chalk, and ARTstor.

We also installed a great app called Flipboard, which we’ve set to display RSS feeds from other blogs pertaining to art, culture, and museums. Flipboard takes these feeds and displays them like a magazine [see screenshot above], making it easy to catch up on the latest news and research.

There’s also a wireless keyboard to go with the iPad, so you can easily check your email, look up campus events, or catch up on the news.

And, as always, the VRC’s iPad 2 can be reserved to teach and present in CWAC.

We look forward to seeing you!

Categories
Innovative Technology Photography

Gigapixel Camera Unveiled

The prototype machine – dubbed AWARE2 – has the potential to take pictures with resolutions of up to 50 gigapixels, equivalent to 50,000 megapixels, according to the team from Duke University in North Carolina.

It works by synchronising 98 tiny cameras in a single device.

The machine is likely to be used first for military surveillance.

In its current state the researchers say it can take one-gigapixel images at up to three frames per minute.

Via BBC News. For technical information about the project from Duke, click here.

Categories
Innovative Technology

Sound-Activated “Seeing” for the Blind

Israeli scientists have developed a “sensory substitution device” (SSD) that they say lets congenitally blind people “see” for the first time ever.

The device… features a tiny computerized video camera that transforms light into so-called “soundscapes”–specific tones that the wearer interprets using his/her sense of hearing.

Read more about the device here. Via Huffington Post.

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Tech Support

How Do I Unzip a Folder of Images?

You’ve downloaded a zipped folder of images from LUNA or Webshare – what now?

PC Computers

If you’ve ever had trouble unzipping a compressed folder of images on your computer, please see the following links for instructions on different PC platforms.

Windows XP

Windows 7

Windows Vista

Mac Computers

If you’re using a Mac running OS 10.5 or later, the pre-installed tool called Archive Utility will unzip folders and files by default. After downloading a zipped file or folder, you should see a dialog box that asks if you’d like to open with Archive Utility. Select OK.

The unzipped folder should then be available in your Downloads folder, or wherever you specify downloads to save.

If you are not prompted to open the folder with Archive Utility, try downloading and then double-clicking on the folder or file to unzip.

Please contact the VRC with any questions.

 

Categories
Innovative Technology Photography

Shoot Now, Focus Later: The New Lytro Camera

Start-up company Lytro is causing a buzz with their so-called light field camera, the first to allow users to shoot first and focus later.

While viewing a picture taken with a Lytro camera on a computer screen, you can, for example, click to bring people in the foreground into sharp relief, or switch the focus to the mountains behind them.

The camera will be released to the consumer market later this year. Via The New York Times.

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Innovative Technology Presentation Tech Support VRC

Teaching with the iPad: Presentation Tomorrow!

Where: CSL — 2nd Floor Cobb — Room C 210

When: Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Time: 1:30 to 2:30

Steven Clancy, Senior Lecturer in Slavic Languages and Literatures and Academic Director of the Center for the Study of Languages, will explore how the iPad can be used in the classroom. If you teach using a laptop computer and you are interested in using an iPad instead, you are encouraged to attend.

Unable to attend? Steven Clancy’s PowerPoint is available for download: Teaching with the iPad.

Via ġeðēode.

Categories
Innovative Technology VRC

Highlighting the Digital Humanities

The article “Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches” recently published in the New York Times discusses the growing importance of data and technology to research in the humanities.

The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data.

The focus on digital humanities is timely; this weekend the Visual Resources Center and the Division of the Humanities are co-sponsoring, along with the Newberry Library and Northwestern University, the very first THATCamp Chicago. THATCamp Chicago is a user-generated “unconference” where humanists and technologists work together for the common good. For more information, click here.

See also the University of Chicago Press’ recent blog entry exploring the top five recent books about new methodologies in the digital humanities.

Categories
Images on the Web Innovative Technology Presentation Software

VoiceThread Used by NYPL Picture Collection

The New York Public Library’s Picture Collection uses a collaborative web-based discussion and presentation tool, VoiceThread, to show images from their collections to the public and to students in classrooms. VoiceThread allows users to make comments on presentations by webcam, computer microphone, text, or telephone. If leaving a comment by computer, users may also draw on an image to illustrate their opinions.

For more information about VoiceThread, click here.

Categories
Innovative Technology Renaissance - Baroque

Searching for Leonardo’s Lost Battle of Anghiari

From Wired.com:

FLORENCE, Italy — Art diagnostician Maurizio Seracini has waited 30 years to get to the bottom of his biggest mystery yet: whether Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest lost fresco lies behind a wall in the Palazzo Vecchio here.

Seracini’s team of 30 will scan the palazzo’s 177-foot-long wall in mid-November, looking for the Battle of Anghiari, a work so magnificent it has been called the “school of the world.” The $1.5 million search expedition will jump-start a multidisciplinary conservation program at the University of California at San Diego’s Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology.

Categories
Innovative Technology

University of Chicago in 3D

From cnet.com:

Virtual-worlds platform developer Multiverse Network is set to announce a partnership Tuesday [October 9, 2007] that will allow anyone to create a new online interactive 3D environment with just about any model from Google’s online repository of 3D models, its 3D Warehouse, as well as terrain from Google Earth.

The Cochrane-Woods Art Center and the Smart Museum will soon be in Google Earth. The buildings were recreated by Dale Mertes from NSIT. Google Earth is installed on my (Megan’s) computer. Please stop by my desk if you’d like to see our building “in situ”. Learn more…