Tag: history

History of CGI

While it’s billed as “How Pixar Helped Win 27 of the Last 30 Oscars for Visual Effects”, this video from Wired works pretty well as a short history of computer-generated visual effects, from the Genesis visualization in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs to Pixar’s own Coco.

Jeff & Sanjay

“We’ve been doing it since before Google. But I don’t know why we decided it was better to do it in front of 1 computer instead of 2. I would walk from my D.E.C. research lab 2 blocks away to his D.E.C. research lab. There was a gelato store in the middle.” “So it’s the gelato store!” Sanjay said, delighted.

Inside Bruegel

“New imaging technology, created by a project known as “Inside Bruegel” offers some insight into these questions, by allowing us to pull the painting’s layers apart. “It’s a huge advancement if you want to look at Bruegel. You can actually see the creative process. You can follow the artist in how he makes decisions.”

536 was the worst year

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest 10 years in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse

Castle Reconstruction

6 Ruined British Castles Come Back to Life

Onward and NoeMam Studios have joined forces to digitally reconstruct 6 ruined castles across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The series of gifs sees the castles fluidly re-emerge from the landscape, retelling the sense of place by showing “the true splendor enjoyed and defended by yesteryear’s barons, queens, and kings.

Dunhuang Library

It’s an extraordinarily demanding branch of study: the Library included documents in at least 17 languages and 24 scripts, many of which have been extinct for centuries or known only from a few examples. The collection mirrors the remarkable diversity of Dunhuang itself, where Buddhists rubbed shoulders with Manicheans, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews, and Chinese scribes copied Tibetan prayers that had been translated from Sanskrit by Indian monks working for Turkish khans. Given how international the materials from Dunhuang are, scholars have agreed that the methods for their study should be, too. For decades, however, they have faced real problems, both in conducting research and in sharing their findings; Stein and the explorers who followed him scattered the library’s holdings among more than 12 libraries and museums around the world.

Precision Engineering

Precision Engineering enabled Modernity.

This corresponding concept of “tolerance” turns out to be equally important. The ancient world was certainly capable of creating complex machinery (see the Antikythera Mechanism above), and the early modern period was able to put together the scientific method and new ways of conceptualizing the universe. But it’s the Industrial Revolution that created — or was created by — this notion that machines could be made in parts that fit together so closely that they could be interchangeable. That’s what got our machine age going, which in turn enabled guns and cars and transistors and computers and every other thing.

Mesa Verde exodus

An estimated 25-30k people lived at Mesa Verde between 1225 and 1260, and then the population declined rapidly. For a long time, archaeologists had no idea what had become of them. But Pueblo tribes—in what is now New Mexico and Arizona—had, for generations, told stories about an exodus from Mesa Verde, and they claimed the previous inhabitants as their ancestors.