The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller » Animation

15th Street on YouTube || North Meets South || A Game of Locational Awareness [part 2]

Nikolas Schiller — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:50:13 +0000

click image above to view

On August 5th, 2008 I made the first version of this mashup, East Meets West and with the newly created contraflow bicycle lane on 15th Street NWDC, I decided to make the second version, North Meets South.

The two videos were taken from one continuous video recording that I conducted while riding on my bicycle from U Street & 15th Street to Massachusetts Ave & 15th Street and back. At home I split the videos into North & South and used the crosswalks as the starting & ending points. The object of this video mashup is to find the exact time when the two recordings pass each other on opposite sides of the street.

A few notes:
1) The sound might get annoying. Mute it if you must. But you will miss out on at least one foreign language.
2) The leaves on the contraflow bicycle lane made my bicycle shake, which rattled my bicycle lock; clang.
3) The portion of the road where the new contraflow bicycle lane is located comes from reclaimed car parking spaces that have created uneven riding surfaces.
4) Leave the time stamp in the comments!

Related Interactive Entries:

Photographs of a Major Laser in the Hallway [Timelapse Laser Painting]

Nikolas Schiller — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:15:24 +0000

Saturday night I was on my way over to a friend’s 1990′s-themed house party and when I got to the house I realized that I had left my bicycle lock at my home. Perturbed, I hopped back on my bicycle, pedaled home as fast as I could, and when I arrived at my house, I received a text message from a different friend asking me to bring over his laser that he’d left at my house the previous night. I weighed my options and decided to bring the laser to my friend’s apartment in Adams Morgan. After I arrived, we decided the best place to shoot the laser in the apartment was down the length of his long hallway. I noticed that there was a tripod in the kitchen, so I decided to get out my small camera and take some photographs of this major laser in the hallway.

The following photographs were taken using my Canon SD750 and the aforementioned tripod and laser using long exposure settings to capture the geometric designs the laser created:

This shot was taken with the camera moving. If you look closely, in the center of the photograph you can see the hallway door

View of the hallway with the green laser making circular designs

Animated GIF of two photographs showing the hallway at different exposures.
The second image was slightly modified to line up the floor, however this caused the crack below to door to move slightly.

This shot was taken with my friend stretching out their arm to support their weight against the wall
The result of the timelapse + laser is that their body became colored by the laser beams.

My friend leaning against the wall as the laser paints her body.
If you look closely, you can see her purse and right arm.

Animated GIF using three photographs featuring my friend wearing furry boxers.
If you look closely, you can see the way the laser light disperses within the fur fabric.

A washed out photograph of two of my friends

My friend had a metal laser-cut head of Jerry Garcia that we placed next above a candle.
The purple orb that appeared in the photograph is a mystery!

This photograph reminded me of space….

Related Photography Entries:

Revisiting the Dupont Lenz Quilt Animation

Nikolas Schiller — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:16:09 +0000

Embedded from Facebook

In August of 2007 I posted the Quicktime Movie of Dupont Lenz Quilt Animation on this blog. I had not joined YouTube yet, nor had I released the contents of this website to search engines, so only recently have I begun to port some of my animations to other websites. Today I decided to upload the animation to Facebook and to YouTube.

The animation uses same layout from my map “Dupont Circle Quilt 2005.” The 30 second animation features two 15 second segments of the same imagery shown from two different perspectives. The modified aerial photography of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC is magnified using transparent glass spheres to create unique cartographic perspective.

Related Animations:

The American Flag in a 51 Star Configuration with One Star Removed

Nikolas Schiller — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:08:41 +0000

Lately I’ve read a couple articles related to DC becoming America’s 51st state. While I’m wholeheartedly in favor of this prospect, two nights ago I decided to make an American flag showing my frustration with the fact that this route is not currently being pursued.

Above is a static public domain flag I found on WIkipedia by Gunter Küchler that I decided to modify showing what an American flag could look like, but with one star (New Columbia) removed.

Below are the animated versions of the flag that I produced to highlight the lack of the 51st star on America’s flag:

Blinking:

Blinking faster:

10 different blinking stars:

Related Flag Entries:

Related Colonist Entries:

Exhibit Fly-Through in Reverse Slow-Motion @ Artomatic 2008

Nikolas Schiller — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:25:32 +0000

Last night I took a 42 second fly-through of my Artomatic 2008 exhibit that I recorded on Friday afternoon and stretched & reversed the footage into a 3 minute and 30 second abstract animation. The video starts at the RECORD book, then pans & zooms into Freedom Plaza on Federal Triangle Quilt #4, pans across Nova et Accvratissima Totivs Terravm Oribis Tabvla [2008], zooms up close to Charlotte Spheres, and pans back over to Nova et Accvratissima Totivs Terravm Oribis Tabvla [2008] and ends.

Audio is from two tracks on disc one of Cold Krush Cuts by DJ Food & Coldcut (Ninja Tune 1997). It features a sermon I believe to be from Rev. Billy Graham about the Bug’s eye view versus the God’s eye view.

::::::::::Text of the sermon::::::::::

People who fly have a different view of the world than those who spend their lives on the ground. A very wise man once wrote a poem while he was flying, and he called this poem “The God’s Eye View,” and he said that this view was entirely different than the view he always had on the ground, which he called “The Bug’s Eye View.”

Out there, somewhere, in the air we fly through, exists an old Persian legend much like this poem about a bug who spent his entire life in the world’s most beautifully designed Persian rug. All the bug ever saw in his lifetime were his problems. They stood up all around him. He couldn’t see over the top of them, and he had to fight his way through these tufts of wool in the rug to find the crumbs that people had spilled on the rug. And the tragedy of the story of the bug in the rug was this: that he lived and he died in the world’s most beautifully designed rug, but he never once knew that he spent his life inside something which had a pattern. Even if he, this bug, had even once gotten above the rug so that he could have seen all of it, he would have discovered something – that the very things he called his problems were a part of the pattern.

Have you ever felt like that bug in the rug? That you are so surrounded by your problems that you can’t see any pattern to the world in which you live? Have you heard anybody say lately that the world is a total mess? That, my friends, is the Bug’s Eye View, and seeing only a little of the world, me might be inclined to think that this is true.

A better quality version of the video is viewable on Facebook.

Related Artomatic Entries:

Saint Louis Lenz Animation

Nikolas Schiller — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:46:50 +0000

Screen grab links to a 32-second 11.5mb Quicktime Movie

Using the same tessellation that was used in Saint Louis Quilt #5, I created this animation featuring a fish-eye-like glass sphere hovering over the imagery (see Lenz Projection). The sphere’s optics create a +200% magnification of the imagery, so as the sphere moves around in the animation the abstract geography is revealed below in close-up detail. There is a new on-line mapping service in Japan that features this visual element, but I am proud to say that I’ve been making similar maps for nearly 5 years now. My animation’s style features more angular refraction within the sphere to give a sense of roundness to a flat surface. My animation also slightly suffers from over-projection within the sphere but I personally like the pixilated effect that is created.

Click here to watch / download the animation.

Birth of a City [Rochester,NY]

Nikolas Schiller — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:43:55 +0000

link to 3mb 10 second animation of the Inner Circle of Rochester, New York

So late last night I read Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGblog entry about “the City of Retroactive Mathematics,” and made the above animation. It’s composed of three elements: a light source, two spheres of different sizes, and the imagery. Prior to reading his article I was about to make the next Rochester map, so I continued using the Rochester imagery to create what looks like a urban molecule giving birth to a smaller version of itself. Would that be an asexual city?

Dupont Lenz Quilt Animation

Nikolas Schiller — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:46:33 +0000

Click on the screenshot above to watch the 30 second animation of Dupont Circle. [12 mb download]

upcoming: Lenz Quilt Animation

Nikolas Schiller — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:33:51 +0000

Currently working on an animation. It should be finished in a day or two. Above is a screenshot from the first 15 seconds.

Google StreetView I.E.D. – Blowing Up The Spot

Nikolas Schiller — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:40:53 +0000

So the other day I mentioned I was working on a mash-up for Google’s new Street View feature.

The result is the first google bomb for Street View— an improvised explosive device, with a message called Street View I.E.D..

Check it out: www.StreetViewIED.com
Tune up the volume!

Starscape Animations

Nikolas Schiller — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:54:44 +0000

Inner Harbor Fly-Around

Made in the summer of 2005 for a client, this geospatial animation is a fly around of a Lenz projection centered on a high resolution aerial photograph of the Inner Harbor in downtown Baltimore, Maryland

Fort Armistead Park Fly-Around

Created for VJs at the 8th Annual Starscape Music & Arts Festival on June 24th, 2006. This animation uses high-resolution aerial photography of the area around the location of the event and creates a synthetic fly-over similar to Google Earth.

Animations for Starscape

Nikolas Schiller — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:44:03 +0000

I got a call today from my friend Robin about helping make content for the VJs at the Starscape Music Festival in Baltimore next weekend. I told him I’d love to make some animations for the event. He used my Washington Monument Zoom during Thievery Corporation‘s set at Operation Ceasefire, so I’m excited to have opportunity to have more of my work played at another concert.Â I made one of the inner harbor of Baltimore last summer for a client, but it’s short and I’d like to give the VJs a good minute clip to use.

Salt Lake City Quilt with Clouds – Animated

Nikolas Schiller — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 23:40:20 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

For the last 12 hours I have been rendering my first animation using moving clouds. I didn’t modify the quilt structure from the previous rendering, but I zoomed in closer to the center.

There are 3 pieces that are animated:
1) The Clouds – which were created from an elongated sphere and textured with a pre-made cloud alogorithm. These fly north to south across the left side of the scene.
2) Infinite plane that moves 180 to the right textured with a geographic tessellation of Salt Lake City.
3) Infinite plane that moves 180 to the left textured with a geographic tessellation of Salt Lake City.

Washington Monument Zoom

Nikolas Schiller — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 13:45:11 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

I made this animation for one of the main projects I’m working on right now, Operation Ceasefire. I’m going to make sure it ends up in the right person’s hands and hopefully it will be seen on a projection screen during the concert. I think the only real error in this rendering is that most people will be expecting to see the White House as it zooms out, but the tessellation only contains the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and some of the mall. Regardless, I think it looks pretty cool. If I had more time, I’d make a few more animations using this same imagery, but I’m not in the mood right now to do so. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, and I’m not sure if I’ll have much time to render anything for the next few days. But I guess, as I tend end my postings, we’ll see :-)

White House Warp – geospatial animation

Nikolas Schiller — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 22:33:11 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

Wow. This is probably my favorite animation yet. Its not technically special, it’s just fun as a hell to watch. Using Quicktime Pro, I can set it loop back & forth and I’ve spent the last few minutes marveling at my latest creation. If you look closely you can see the White House replicating into a perfect circle.

Up next, I’ve got some imagery of Prague, Sioux City, Iowa, a few topographic maps (a new dimension to Geospatial Art!), and even a subway map of Moscow I want to geographically exploit. Fun.

Yeah for the 9 day weekend- I took next week off!

Baltimore Mandala Animated

Nikolas Schiller — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 05:09:39 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

Its nice to take a good healthy spin & zoom….

This is my first animated mandala, and I am quite pleased with the results.
…I wonder what tomorrow will bring!

DC Molecule

Nikolas Schiller — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 02:00:59 +0000

I used the same source image as I used for my last rendering and mapped it as a texture on to the “star of..” series template and then I animated a fly-through…looks pretty good. So good that I included not one, but threee screen shots of the animation.

Image Links to Flash Player:

Mother Earth Animation

Nikolas Schiller — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 20:26:33 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

I think this is a pretty cool animation. There are two flaws I noticed, but I don’t think they detract too much from the animation.

Namib Desert

Nikolas Schiller — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 19:52:16 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

This animation shows exactly why I think the whole spherical aspect of the “Lenz Project” is interesting. Albeit very simple, I am still amazed at how beautiful our earth is. Oh yeah, if you ever go to the Namib desert watch out for diamonds in the sand! BTW, deBeers sucks— artificially inflated blood diamonds really show the one you love that you paid too much for that bling! Watch this video for more info.

Next image will be the same graphic as in the animation, but just a hell of a lot larger (10,000 by 7,500 pixels) and should be on-line in about 6 hours.

..still fasting..

Nikolas Schiller — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 13:00:12 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

Above is a screenshot of today’s rendering- a 5 second animation of the most recent “Brussels Lenz” (see previous post). If you look closely, you can see why I’ve been so fascinated by the use of the glass sphere with embedded images. Well if you don’t want to look closely, I’ll explain it anyways- I like the way the sphere refracts the satellite images to look similar to the curveture of the earth. If you’ve ever been on top of a high mountain (one that goes above tree line) you might get what I’m talking about. Anyways, I’m not sure what graphic I’ll render next…. oddly at 30 frames per second at 720X480 size, a five second animation takes less time to make than a conventional still image….. hmmm, I think I’m sold on the idea of really large posters.

Adam kicked ass on Hardball last night. I recorded the show and put it on his campaign website. I was amazed at how Chris Matthews kept on insinuating that protestors are violent and bent on destruction. Yet Adam managed to keep his cool the entire time. Much respect!

I encoded the recording using Real Video. This was my first time using this A/V format. I was able to download the Export Plugin for Quicktime, and I am very pleased with the compression that I was able to get. However to encode the 13 minute segment of the show from DV format to Real Video format took over 3 hours! Way too long but the export plugin was able to take a 5,500 megabyte video file and compress it to 35 megabytes….that pretty impressive, albeit time consuming.

On the fasting front, this morning I ate a cayenne pepper. My friend David mentioned how the pepper is supposed to help cleanse the body by way of heat. After not eating any food for 36 hours (while drinking about 3 gallons of water) the cayenne pepper actually made my body temperature rise slightly. It was kinda cool. I am expecting a ketosis buzz sometime this afternoon. It should be interesting. And tomorrow a special friend will be coming to DC to visit me. I’m excited!

Olympic Space Rings 2004

Nikolas Schiller — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:55:45 +0000

Satellite Images of the Olypmic Venues in Athens, Greece in motion…

a thank you goes to Digital Globe for allowing the areas around the Olympic venues to be used for “art”. You can find the rest of them here. You gotta wonder if potential “terrorists” could be using these same images for their own malfeasance.

I really want to update the E Street Risk Analysis with a recent and remarkably better satellite image of downtown Washington, DC. I think I was in my room when this image was taken, so technically I am in this photograph….sorta.

“Beat It” Kiosk Video

Nikolas Schiller — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 16:17:09 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

WRGW event I organized called “BEAT IT.” I made every aspect of this video- took all photos, made all computer animations, and even the music. I did not make the fonts. Sequenced using iMovie. I brought my iMac down to the venue and had this video playing in loop the entire night :)

The Universe

Nikolas Schiller — Wed, 09 Apr 2003 15:43:54 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

I made a short “matrixesque” video using A Guy Called Gerald’s track “Universe”

The Recycling Room

Nikolas Schiller — Sun, 09 Mar 2003 16:50:34 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

Using Bryce, I constructed a 3D model of a prototype recycling room that could replace the single chute trash for all high-rise apartment buildings.

Spin Spin Spin

Nikolas Schiller — Tue, 19 Nov 2002 14:54:35 +0000

Image Links to Flash Player:

My first iMovie creation! I used a bunch of video clips I obtained from my Remote Sensing class and eventually gave this video to my professor. Part sucking up, part excited about making my first video.