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NFT Pixels

Parag K Mital — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 05:17:30 +0000

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens are data stored on the blockchain that certifies and records transactions associated with a digital asset. Effectively, they are certificates of authenticity of digital assets traded on blockchain-based exchanges that have spurred an economy of scarcity for digital assets such as images, GIFs, sound clips, and videos. In the past, artists producing digital content may have also considered selling their work in places such as instagram, behance, deviant art, or via their own websites. Though, it is unlikely that this content would have been actually bought in any form. This is likely because the content is already accessible to all. On these platforms, if we are to call it art, it could be akin to a digital version of public art in some ways, for all to see and consume. Or more likely, we would consider it either documentation or advertising and marketing of the artist’s work.

The entire point of NFTs, and the reason they are so marketed as being valuable, is because we believe there is digital scarcity of the content being traded and sold.

Prior to NFT marketplaces for digital art, let’s say that someone were to decide that they wanted ownership of … Continue reading...

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YouTube’s “Copyright School” Smash Up

Parag K Mital — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:19:51 +0000

Ever wonder what happens when you’ve been accused of violating copyright multiple times on YouTube? First, you get a redirect to YouTube’s “Copyright School” whenever you visit YouTube, forcing you to watch a cartoon of Happy Tree Friends where the main character is dressed as an actual pirate:

Second, I’m guessing, your account will be banned. Third, you cry and wonder why you ever violated copyright in the first place.

In my case, I’ve disputed every one of the 4 copyright violation notices that I’ve received under grounds of Fair Use and Fair Dealing. Here’s what happens when you file a dispute using YouTube’s online form (click for high-res):

3 of the 4 have been dropped after I’ve filed disputes, though I’m still waiting to hear about the response to the above dispute. Read the dispute letter to Sony ATV and UPMG Publishers in full here.

The picture above shows a few stills from what my Smash Ups look like. The process described in greater detail on createdigitalmotion.com is part of my ongoing research into how existing content can be transformed into artistic styles reminiscent of analytic cubist, figurative, and futurist paintings. The process to create the videos … Continue reading...

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3D Musical Browser

Parag K Mital — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 17:57:03 +0000

I’ve been interested in exploring ways of navigating media archives. Typically, you may use iTunes and go from artist to artist, or have managed to tediously classify your collection into genres. Some may still even browse their music through a file browser, perhaps making sure the folders and filenames of their collection are descriptive of the artist, album, year, etc… Though what about how the content actually sounds?

Wouldn’t it be nice to hear all music which shares similar sounds, or similar phrases of sounds? Research in the last 10-15 years have developed methods precisely to solve this problem and fall under the umbrella term content-based information retrieval (CBIR) algorithms, or uncovering the relationships of an archive through the information within the content. For images, Google’s Search by Image is a great example which only recently became public. For audio, audioDB and ShaZam are good examples of discovering music through the way it sounds, or the content-based relationships of the audio itself. Though, each of these interfaces present a list of matches to a image or audio query, making exploring the content-based relationships of a specific set of material difficult.

The video above demonstrates interaction with a novel 3D browser … Continue reading...

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Intention in Copyright

Parag K Mital — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:49:27 +0000

The following article is written for the LUCID Studio for Speculative Art based in India.

Introduction

My work in audiovisual resynthesis aims to create models of how humans represent and attend to audiovisual scenes. Using pattern recognition of both audio and visual material, these models use large corpora of learned audiovisual material which can be matched to ongoing streams of incoming audio or visual material. The way audio and visual material is stored and segmented within the model is based heavily on neurobiology and behavioral evidence (the details are saved for another post). I have called the underlying model Audiovisual Content-based Information Description/Distortion (or ACID for short).

As an example, a live stream of audio may be matched to a database of learned sounds from recordings of nature, creating a re-synthesis of the audio environment at present using only pre-recorded material from nature itself. These learned sounds may be fragments of a bird chirping, or the sound of footsteps. Incoming sounds of someone talking may then be synthesized using the closest sounding material to that person talking, perhaps a bird chirp or a footstep. Instead of a live stream, one can also re-synthesize a pre-recorded stream. Consider using a database … Continue reading...

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Course @ CEMA Srishti School of Design, Bangalore, IN

Parag K Mital — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:29:27 +0000

From November 21st to the 2nd of December, I’ll have the pleasure to lead a course and workshop with Prayas Abhinav at the Center for Experimental Media Arts in the Srishti School of Design in Banaglore, IN. Many thanks to Meena Vari for all her help in organizing the project.

Stories are flowing trees

Key words: 3D, interactive projects, data, histories, urban, creative coding, technology, sculpture, projection mapping

Project Brief:

Urban realities are more like fictions, constructed through folklore, media and policy. Compressing these constructions across time would offer some possibilities for the emergence of complexity and new discourse. Using video projections adapted for 3D surfaces, urban histories will become data and information – supple, malleable, and material.

The project will begin with a one week workshop by Parag Mital on “Creative Coding” using the openFrameworks platform for C/C++ coding”.

About the Artists:

Prayas Abhinav

Presently he teaches at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and is a researcher at the Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA). He has taught in the past at Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and Center for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT).
He has been supported by fellowships by Openspace India (2009), TED (2009), … Continue reading...

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Concatenative Video Synthesis (or Video Mosaicing)

Parag K Mital — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 10:08:47 +0000

Working closely with my adviser Mick Grierson, I have developed a way to resynthesize existing videos using material from another set of videos. This process starts by learning a database of objects that appear in the set of videos to synthesize from. The target video to resynthesize is then broken into objects in a similar manner, but also matched to objects in the database. What you get is a resynthesis of the video that appears as beautiful disorder. Here are two examples, the first using Family Guy to resynthesize The Simpsons. And the second using Jan Svankmajer’s Food to resynthesize Jan Svankmajer’s Dimensions of Dialogue.

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Google Earth + Atlantis Space Shuttle

Parag K Mital — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:21:08 +0000

I managed to catch the live feed from NASA.gov of the Atlantis Space Shuttle launch yesterday. Though what I found really interesting was a real-time virtual reality of the space shuttle launch from inside Google Earth. Screen-capture with obligatory 12x speedup to retain attention span below:

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Lunch Bites @ CULTURE Lab, Newcastle University

Parag K Mital — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:08:56 +0000

I was recently invited to the CULTURE lab at Newcastle University by director, Atau Tanaka. I would say it has the resources and creative power of 5 departments all housed in one spacious building. In the 12-some studios housed over 3 floors, over the course of 2 short days, I found people building multitouch tables, controlling synthesizers with the touch of fabric, and researching augmented spatial sonic realities. There is a full suite of workshop tools including a laser cutter, multiple multi-channel sound studios, full stage/theater with stage lighting and multiple projection, radio lab, and tons of light and interesting places to sit and do whatever you feel like doing. The other thing I found really interesting is there are no “offices”. Instead, the staff are dispersed amongst the students in the twelve-some studios, picking a new desk perhaps whenever they need a change of scenery? If you are ever in the area, it is certainly worth a visit, and I’m sure the people there will be very open to tell you what they are up to.

I also had the pleasure to give a talk on my PhD research in Resynthesizing Audiovisual Perception with Augmented Reality at the Lunch … Continue reading...

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Short Time Fourier Transform using the Accelerate framework

Parag K Mital — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:06:55 +0000

Using the libraries pkmFFT and pkm::Mat, you can very easily perform a highly optimized short time fourier transform (STFT) with direct access to a floating-point based object.

Get the code on my github:
http://github.com/pkmital/pkmFFT
Depends also on: http://github.com/pkmital/pkmMatrix… Continue reading...

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Real FFT/IFFT with the Accelerate Framework

Parag K Mital — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:05:05 +0000

Apple’s Accelerate Framework can really speed up your code without thinking too much. And it will also run on an iPhone. Even still, I did bang my head a few times trying to get a straightforward Real FFT and IFFT working, even after consulting the Accelerate documentation (reference and source code), stackoverflow (here and here), and an existing implementation (thanks to Chris Kiefer and Mick Grierson). Still, the previously mentioned examples weren’t very clear as they did not handle the case of overlapping FFTs which I was doing in the case of a STFT or they did not recover the power spectrum, or they just didn’t work for me (lots of blaring noise).

Get the code on my github:
http://github.com/pkmital/pkmFFT… Continue reading...

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