| exhibit research | SIGGRAPH 2001 Report |
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SIGGRAPH 2001
Sketches and Applications: Displays
A very interesting presentation by Shree K. Nayar of Columbia, on making more realistic on-screen images by detecting lighting changes in the real world. By using a photodetector attached to a monitor, it is possible to adjust the monitor's power, brightness, or color level, mechanically. In software, you can also adjust brightness and color levels, and in a 3D scene, realism or level of detail. But what Nayar and his colleagues are doing is shooting a scene (real or virtual) while waving around a lightbulb, then programming the computer to detect the real lighting changes at runtime, and mapping those to the correct lighting changes on-screen using a lighting grid model and image-based rendering. They used a real still life, captured on video, and I imagine that using moving images would increase the data exponentially. But nonetheless, a fascinating technique begging to be applied to an exhibit or installtion. Technically, they use two photodetectors and a hemispherical camera with neutral density filter, all mounted on the monitor. In a completely different display technique, Lars Erik Holmquist and colleagues at the PLAY Interactive Institute in Sweden demonstrated textiles with photochromically-active threads sewn in, which change color in ultraviolet light. As a start to what looks to be very interesting research, they sewed data into various parts of a hanging textile, then controlled a UV light to illuminate particular parts of the textile. (They used a single light on a motor, but this could be done with multiple point lights, adjusting for spill.) Sewing was done with a computer-controlled knitting machine. Variations mentioned could include heat-sensitive material; a narrow-beam laser to switch on images or draw an image; or weaving optical fiber into a fabric.
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