Snapshots - Camera Culture News
December 2015

Making 3-D Imaging 1,000 Times Better

A new Camera Culture paper by Achuta Kadambi, Vage Taamazyan, Boxin Shi, and Ramesh Raskar, in the International Conference of Computer Vision shows that "by exploiting the polarization of light - the physical phenomenon behind polarized sunglasses and most 3-D movie systems - [we] can increase the resolution of conventional 3-D imaging devices as much as 1,000 times.  The technique could lead to high-quality 3-D cameras built into cellphones, and perhaps to the ability to snap a photo of an object and then use a 3-D printer to produce a replica."


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Invitation to Join Us in India - January 22 to 29
Emerging Worlds Workshop

The world is our lab. Billions are hungry for new digital interfaces to physical solutions. The Emerging World initiative at MIT Media Lab is following up on the October Boston meeting with our next meeting in India. With are co-innovating with some of the most creative minds, leading companies and organizations to address the billion dollar problems that will touch a billion lives. The week in India will engage many stakeholders to spot challenges and find solutions in health, education, financial inclusion, food and agriculture, housing, and civic issues and more.




Hisham Bedri's "Ode to the Selfie" 

Former Camera Culture researcher, Hisham Bedri, presented "Ode to the selfie" - a mystical experience and behind-the-scenes look at what it really means to take a selfie at TEDx Beacon Street this fall.  





Innovating for Billions -
Ramesh Raskar's UIST Keynote Transcript

Read a transcript of Ramesh Raskar's Innovating for Billions talk from the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) which was held in November.  The Camera Culture professor discusses what's next for interfaces encouraging the production of DOPS, Digital Opportunities for Physical Systems.  He reviews several Camera Culture technologies that provide new interfaces for current user problems and he discusses the lab's Emerging
World efforts.  



Unlimited Vision - 
Albert Redo Sanchez presents at TEDx

"What if you could read a book without even touching it? Or what if we could reconstruct how a painting was created layer by layer? This video explains how terahertz waves can be used to unravel secrets that may be hidden in cultural heritage objects."




Ramesh Raskar's AMA on Reddit

Last month Ramesh Raskar hosted an AMA on Reddit.  Read his top comments including questions like: "If there was one law of physics that you could 'tweak,' what would you change and how?" "Will there be a technology to make the blind see?" and "How has your research focus and approach changed over the years?"



Computer Vision - Predicting our Cities,
a TEDx talk with Nikhil Naik
 
Nikhil Naik collaborates with Camera Culture and Macro Connections groups to better  understand our cities.  Recent project s like Streetscore  use computer vision techniques to determine the safety of a place using Google StreetView images.  



Solving Mysteries in Art with Multi-Spectral Imaging 
Albert Redo Sanchez at Sightlines  

Albert Redo Sanchez's full talk from the Harvard conference is now up online.  Albert looks closely at Scene d'ete, a 1869 painting by Frederic Bazille to see if terahertaz imaging can uncover several questions for curators.  He also reviews xray and ultraviolet scans for comparison.



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