Need some New Year inspiration on several levels? dickypan points to this brilliant New Year’s video. It’ll make you feel good about all dimensions of 2009. Motion graphics fly out of augmented reality, triggered by small objects on the screen.
The work is based on an open source framework. Here it’s running in Flash, as:
That means you can try it out for yourself on the website of the creators, AID-DCC and Katamari Inc.:
The code is all open, and comes in turn from NyARToolKit (Java), which, you’ll note “seems to executes much faster than the original C version.” Oh, yeah, and more good news: NyARToolKit works with Java, C#, and runs on Android. Augmented reality doesn’t make much sense on a desktop computer (even if it is cool), but put it on a mobile, and suddenly it’s mind-blowing.
So, you can see why I keep getting all up in Sun’s grill about the fact that they still don’t have stable support in Java or JavaFX for webcam input and that JavaFX’s video classes lacked any kind of pixel-level access. I’m going to keep shouting about it until it happens, because it is possible, it can work (and more effectively than Flash), and it is the future.
Via mobile designer dickypan [Taiwan]
Technology aside, I love some of the words that spring out of the piece. There’s something metaphysically wonderful about being able to make these virtual holes in the world and having wisdom pop out. Digital trickery, it may be, but the universe you imagine through this lens is a more interesting one.
My favorite quote:
TO ME /
BORN IN THIS WORLD MEANS /
YOU’VE COME TO ACCOMPLISH /
A MISSION
KUGO