video - http://archive.pkmital.com

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...

The post 3D Musical Browser first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

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.

The post Concatenative Video Synthesis (or Video Mosaicing) first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

Facial Appearance Modeling/Tracking

Parag K Mital — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:19:10 +0000

I’ve been working on developing a method for automatic head-pose tracking, and along the way have come to model facial appearances. I start by initializing a facial bounding box using the Viola-Jones detector, a well known and robust detector used for training objects. This allows me to centralize the face. Once I know where the 2D plane of the face is in an image, I can register an Active Shape Model like so:

After multiple views of the possible appearance variations of my face, including slight rotations, I construct an appearance model.

The idea I am working with is using the first components of variations of this appearance model for determining pose. Here I show the first two basis vectors and the images they reconstruct:

As you may notice, these two basis vectors very neatly encode rotation. By looking at the eigenvalues of the model, you can also interpret pose.… Continue reading...

The post Facial Appearance Modeling/Tracking first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

Responsive Ecologies Documentation

Parag K Mital — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:34:40 +0000

As part of a system of numerous dynamic connections and networks, we are reactive and deterministic to a complex system of cause and effect. The consequence of our actions upon our selves, the society we live in and the broader natural world is conditioned by how we perceive our involvement. The awareness of how we have impacted on a situation is often realised and processed subconsciously, the extent and scope of these actions can be far beyond our knowledge, our consideration, and importantly beyond our sensory reception. With this in mind, how can we associate our actions, many of which may be overlooked as customary, with for instance, the honey bee depopulation syndrome or the declining numbers of Siberian Tigers.

Responsive Ecologies is part of an ongoing collaboration with ZSL London Zoo and Musion Academy. Collectively we have been exploring innovative means of public engagement, to generate an awareness and understanding of nature and the effects of climate change. All of the contained footage has come from filming sessions within the Zoological Society; this coincidentally has raised some interesting questions on the spectacle of captivity, a issue which we have tried to reflect upon in the construction and presentation of … Continue reading...

The post Responsive Ecologies Documentation first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

“Memory” Video @ AVAF 2010

Parag K Mital — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:04:20 +0000

Please rate, share, and comment!

Memory @ AVAF 2010 from pkmital on Vimeo.

‘Memory’ is an augmented installation of a neural network by Parag K Mital & Agelos Papadakis.
hand blown glass, galvanized metal chain, projection, cameras; 1.5m x 2.5m x 3m

Ghostly images of faces appear as recorded movie clips within neural-shaped hand-blown glass pieces. As one begins to look at the neurons, they notice the faces as their own, trapped as disparate memories of a neural network.

Filmed and installed for the Athens Video Art Festival in May 2010 in Technopolis, Athens, Greece. The venue is a disused gas factory converted art space.

Also seen at Kinetica Art Fair, Ambika P3, London, UK, 2010; Passing Through Exhibition, James Taylor Gallery, London, UK, 2009; Interact, Lauriston Castle, Edinburgh, UK, 2009.

The post “Memory” Video @ AVAF 2010 first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

Dynamic Scene Perception Eye-Movement Data Videos and Analysis

Parag K Mital — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:56:22 +0000

Over the past 2 years, I have been working under the direction of Prof John M Henderson together with Dr Tim J Smith and Dr Robin Hill on the DIEM project (Dynamic Images and Eye-Movements). Our project has focused on investigating active visual cognition by eye-tracking numerous participants watching a wide-variety of short videos.

We are in the process of making all of our data freely available for research use. As well, we have also worked on tools for analyzing eye-movements during such dynamic scenes.

CARPE, or more bombastically known as Computational Algorithmic Representation and Processing of Eye-movements, allows one to begin visualizing eye-movement data together with the video data it was tracked with in a number of ways. It currently supports low-level feature visualizations, clustering of eye-movements, model selection, heat-map visualizations, blending, contour visualizations, peek-through visualizations, movie output, binocular data input, and more. The videos shown above on our Vimeo page were all created using this tool. Head over to Google code to check out the source code or download the binary. We are still in the process of stream-lining this process by creating manuals for new users and uploading more of the eye-tracking and video data so … Continue reading...

The post Dynamic Scene Perception Eye-Movement Data Videos and Analysis first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

Memory and ChaoDependant at the Athens Video Art Festival 2010

Parag K Mital — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:06:39 +0000

May 7-9 saw the 2010 Athens Video Art Festival where with collaborator Agelos Papadakis, Memory saw its latest installation. The venue, a 2,500 square meters disused gas factory called Technopolis, or more commonly referred to as Gazi (Gas), was a brilliant display of warehouse spaces littered by gas pipes and oil still dripping from the cracks.

Over 2,700 submissions were received for a total of 450 presenting artists to see over 13,000 visitors during the weekend. Among the hundreds of video art, animations, and installations, were a number of performances including dance and music.

Both myself and collaborator Agelos Papadakis were interviewed by ERT, or loosely translated as Hellenic Radio and Television (something like the BBC). It is all in Greek, except for my interview.

Video Link to the interview on EPT.

Feel free to check out pictures from the festival and my travels on my flickr page.… Continue reading...

The post Memory and ChaoDependant at the Athens Video Art Festival 2010 first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

Video of Memory and ChaoDependant @ Kinetica Art Fair 2010, London UK

Parag K Mital — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:58:45 +0000

The post Video of Memory and ChaoDependant @ Kinetica Art Fair 2010, London UK first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

Public Opinion in Edinburgh of the 2009 Presidential Iranian Election

Parag K Mital — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:26:00 +0000

Filmed during the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a small team went around Edinburgh with a cardboard sign that read, “Ask Me About Iran” in order to gather people’s thoughts on the events surrounding the recent Iranian election.

Filmed with a Nikon D90.… Continue reading...

The post Public Opinion in Edinburgh of the 2009 Presidential Iranian Election first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.

Perception Related Videos

Parag K Mital — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Seeing as how many interesting talks are being collected in online video databases such as videolectures, mit world, academic earth, opencourseware, ted, uctv, or the nih videocasts, just to name a few, I’ve started to collect a few of the interesting talks that are related to perception.

You can find them here.… Continue reading...

The post Perception Related Videos first appeared on http://archive.pkmital.com.