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Art exhibit lets you draw on a 3D self-portrait
Most self-portraits are, by definition, solo affairs. However, artists Alon Chitayat and Rosalie Yu are blurring those lines a bit. Their Skin Deep art installation lets you draw on 3D-scanned models of the creators, giving their self-portraits your own creative spin. You don't even need any special tools -- all you do is doodle on specially marked paper, and webcams translate the relevant sections to textures. While you sadly won't have an easy time trying Skin Deep yourself (it was made as part of New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program), it's easy to see the underlying concept applying elsewhere. You could see games where players personalize their characters, or 3D painting programs where real-world art adds some flair to digital masterpieces.
The best way to draw a self-portrait is with your blood and a CNC machine
Snapping a selfie with your phone is easy enough these days, but in order to create a self-portrait, a Brooklyn-based artist chose a slightly different route. 44-year-old Ted Lawson hooked himself up to a CNC machine (which he refers to as a "robot") intravenously so that the device could draw a life-sized nude self-portrait with his blood. For the "Ghost in the Machine" work, Lawson had to remain connected to the output device while it plotted its marks to compose the sketch. "I'm generally not into doing selfies, particularly nude ones, but when I came up with the idea to connect my blood directly to the robot (CNC machine), it just made too much sense to not try one as a full nude self-portrait," he said. Lawson goes on to say that folks that may criticize his use of the machine for the piece, but leveraging the tool for drawing takes "just as much skill and practice to use as a pen." For a look at the process (obviously, not for the squeamish), head on past the break.
Casio joins the self-portrait LCD ranks with the €350 Exilim EX-ZR1000, we go hands-on (video)
Watch out, Samsung MV900F, there's a new self-portrait cam in town. Many camera manufacturers may not consider high-end models from Casio to be a threat to their own market share, but the company's new Exilim EX-ZR1000 has more that a few tricks up its €350 barrel. First and foremost is the 180-degree swiveling LCD, which, like Samsung's MultiView flavor, flips all the way forward to simplify composition for self-portraits, but it also offers some nifty gesture controls, letting you wave briefly to trigger a two-second countdown, for example. The camera also includes features that should appease more-advanced users, such as a dedicated mode dial, a versatile lens ring control, a top ISO sensitivity of 25,600 and a 6 frames-per-second burst mode. There's also a 16.1-megapixel CMOS sensor and Casio's Exilim Engine HS 3 on board to handle processing. We caught up with the snappy shooter at Photokina, and were pleasantly surprised with its looks and performance. Its body construction may not make it feel like a premium shooter, despite the decidedly high-end price tag, but performance was speedy and the 3-inch LCD looked quite nice, even when viewed at an angle. As we mentioned, that display flips up and faces forward, but it can also tilt at various other angles, enabling below-the-waist or overhead shooting, too. The mode and lens dials had a reasonable amount of resistance, and the camera focused quickly and accurately. We can't speak to image quality, unfortunately, but shots we captured appeared to be sharp and properly exposed based on what we were able to gather from the display. Overall, the Exilim EX-ZR1000 seems to be a pretty capable shooter, and we're eager to see how it performs after it makes a formal debut this November. Catch our hands-on gallery below, followed by a video walkthrough after the break.
Video: Self-Portrait Machine binds your hands then bends your will
Drawing faces is hard; and as children suckled at the teat of MTV we posses neither the patience nor the discipline required to learn the skill. So imagine our surprise to discover the Self-Portrait Machine, a device that snaps your photo and then forces you to draw your own face by dragging your bound hands around until the portrait is complete. Jen Hui Liao's project is the result of an observation that "our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship." So it's like art and the intersection of philosophy... only it's not -- it's just a robot too lazy to make the portrait itself. See the video after the break.
