Winter vernissage

Polychroming by artist Joe Clark - Centrum Berlin

Some ideas in my head after attending a vernissage in Neükölln or another Berlin Bermuda triangle should I say. You are inside the berliner U-Bahn ring but far from everything. But it's a real urban density that reminds you that you are in a real city. A part of Berlin I only know for its galleries, independent art places, book shop with concert place hidden in the basement you enter by what could be interpreted as a trap, bar that become clothes shop by day, nest of hipsters, old airport turned into a kitesurfing spot... A part of the city I almost only remember by night except during the 48Stunden Neükölln.

Centrum, the place of the day. First time was last summer at the occasion of the Project Space Festival where with two friends we wrote about the different art places. Centrum of last August was special to us. They were not the only ones but one of the first thanking us of the article we wrote about them and it was a transition, former owner giving the keys to the new key master Mareike. She took well care of the place, sadly I missed the previous exhibition but this time I made it!

I have to say the name of the installation has attracted my attention: Polychroming. Probably a déformation professionnelle. Not much to say when you find the installation interesting. The chance I had was to be there early and was able to converse with the artist Joe Clark which is always good.

I don't know if it is the location of the Reuterstrasse. But as during my first visit of Centrum - or other places in this area - there is something rough about the environment, make me thing of each place I enter as an inhabited cavern, expecting painting on the walls, except yesterday was a projection on a tilted wooden deck of silver-ish kind of stone.

One last thing I should start study the relation between vernissage and choice of beer proposed. I wonder if it says something. Yesterday was Flensburger, a good choice.

Pano for the people 2

I "closed" this project by adding some final examples. More precisely examples where something can go wrong and showing what it means in images.

One important thing to be able to create a beautiful little planet is to have made first a full spherical panorama picture. This panorama has to be presented as a rectangular image, an equirectangular image of ration 2:1, this means the virtual camera that would have taken this image has an equirectangular lens of field of view 360°. That is the requirement for my scripts and function that generate template file to control hugin. But you are free to distort any rectangle images with different ratios.

All the codes and guidelines here panoToLittlePlanet.

What does it mean to generate a little planet from the south hemisphere of full spherical panorama? The answer below:

full spherical image with only the south hemisphere visible.

the resulting little planet.

Pano for the people

The past fews day, actually during Chistmas vacation, I started to think how can I make easier the process of creating little planet panorama pictures. Before my android phone decided to update its software I could directly from the phone generate the little planet from a full spherical panorama, not anymore. That's not a bit problem because using hugin you can in three to four click generate a little planet. This means to perform some remapping from an equirectangular panorama.

To avoid having to open hugin again and knowing that you can script hugin I created python script with some functions to automatize this process.

The code and explanation are beautifully stored and located on my public github account panoToLittlePlanet.

The famous little planet pictures are in this flicker little planet photo album.

Nos amis les mayas

À trois près ils avaient raison, début 2015 et non 2012. Tristesse.

Le stress de se dire il y a pire qui arrive. L'énorme stress en suivant le file d'actualité vendredi dernier et d'être dans l'impossibilité de faire quoi que ce soit d'autres que d'attendre, souffler, attendre.

L'espoir, faible, mais espoir quand même, tellement il va falloir travailler après ces tragiques évènements. La chance est qu'ils ont touchés tout le monde, toutes les générations, tous. Il y a du boulot, pour tout le monde. Surtout éviter la récupération politique et religieuse d'une réaction populaire - qui a l'air massive - qui forcément sera simpliste - la récupération - dans l'explication de cette réaction. Sinon on n'avancera pas et ce sera la énième prise de conscience temporaire avant de replonger.

L'idée, une idée est que l'on réussisse à vivre ensemble, c'est assez farfelue comme idée je l'admets. Nous sommes tous différents et ces différences font avancer les choses, sinon c'est la mort.

Le choc des armes à feu aussi. On n'est pas aux US mais en France. La simple pensée qu'une personne se balade dans la rue avec une arme à feu me fait flipper. Dans un monde civilisé ce n'est pas normal. L'auteur de cet article s'est déjà fait braquer il y a quelques années lors d'un voyage professionnel aux US et il sait que ce n'est pas cool d'avoir une arme pointée dans sa direction. L'auteur aussi se doute que c'est encore moins cool d'être contrôlé régulièrement car sa couleur n'est pas assez blanche ou simplement de se faire descendre par prévention.

Pas spécialement optimiste ce dimanche soir.