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.

Valérian agent spatio temporel 3

19:33 le froid est de sortie ce soir et le plat épicé vietnamien est aprécié. Rapidement commandé et digéré nous nous dépêchons pour ne pas rater le premier spectacle de notre programme déjà chargé: une pièce radiophonique à écouter dans un planétarium, le Groß Planetarium de Prenzlauer Allee.

19:55 grâce à nos vélo subsonique nous remontons la Stargarderstrasse (la bien nommée vu la direction spatiale que nous prenons).

Foule des grands soirs au planétarium, population assez jeune, légèrement alcoolisée et les pupilles comme les oreilles dilatées bien ouvertes. Thème du soir: histoire du lsd racontée sous un ciel étoilé.

Jusqu'à là tout va bien.

20:12 réveillé ou éveillé depuis quatorze heures déjà je me sens doucement glissé vers un état semi hiberné-tique, semi-hallucinatoire. Mon enveloppe corporelle est là, la tête bien calée sur l'épaule de ma douce, mais ma tête s'évade, je lévite.

Les effets combinés du décalage horaire, des étoiles, des voix parlant de lsd en allemand et anglais, les sièges inclinés du planétarium, une douleur au mollet droit qui m'empêche de me relaxer complètement, la fatigue, les rêves qui toquent à mon oreille "hé ho il y a du monde ici?" et des images d'album de Valérian dans ses voyages temporels, c'en est trop, je pars, le temps n'a plus d'accroche sur moi.

Valérian sort de ce corps.

22:02 le voyage est fini, nous nous levons et sortons sous le vrai ciel étoilé. Direction la fusée berlinoise aussi connue sous le nom de fernsehturm. Le groupe se sépare et m'enfonce seul dans les bas fonds kreuzbergien. Berlin la nuit tout ça.

22:54 entrée au Bohnengold, chercher mon contact bière, prendre un bière, trinquer, parler, réunion Spotter à Berlin et repartir. Voyager dans le temps ou se télétransporter serai de bon aloi ce soir. Mais aucune startup n'a communiqué sur le sujet.

23:44 seconde traversée de Berlin et me retrouve au kino Babylone et y retrouve ma douce entourée d'une foule d'artistes, actrices, acteurs et autres gens du spectacle pour une avant-première.

Le projection prévue à minuit est retardée de presque une heure... nous attendrons, je ne suis plus à une nuit courte près.

Film un peu expérimental, se passant dans les années 30 à Berlin et filmé comme un film à l'époque. Noir et blanc et musique d'accompagnement. Un peu long mais dans la continuité de la piéce sonore du début de soirée. Vive le contraste.

3:00 peut-être, notre lit. La nuit, le sommeil, la couette, le bonheur.

Biennale des bewegten Bild oder B3 - Thursday

This morning I woke up and went almost directly to the Max Planck institute where my hosts are working. This institute is freshly new and to have an idea of how it looks, think of the design a Scandinavian hotel in Stockholm, but instead of rooms for sleeping you will find labs, working rooms, über cool microscope, nice sofa, good cafeteria, good coffee, a lot of light and space, all what you need to do a good research job and probably any job.

The head full of cells images I left this place. More moving images were waiting for me down town. I took the U8 follow by the S2 (not sure) to join the main train station. There I went to the Kai Middendorff Galerie where I saw a film (it was "Out (Tse)" from artist Roee Rosen). It was question about Israel, sm, politic, exorcism, fetishism, eroticism and more. Type of video installation where you wonder "Am I looking at two women, one with clothes whipping the ass of the other, naked, the arms attached to the ceiling and screaming with an evil voice quotations from the a former Israeli minister? Yes I'm.", checked.

To continue I went again to the Weißfrauen Diakoniekirche located nearby the Willy Brandt place. Watch some films, played video game with four other players on the fulldome and left again.

I crossed the Main and enter the Deutsches Filmmuseum. There I only had 45min to attend the exhibition on Fassbinder. Very nice installations, mainly projections of film parts, shorts ones with explanation. Now I know I'm missing some german movie references (or in French "Maintenant je sais que je dois combler mes lacunes fassbinderienne").

Re-crossing the bridge, official opening of the fulldome in the church and short visit for another opening in the same street of the Basis place. Here as well a lot of videos. I remind to the readers that it is the topic of this Biennale.

Then again leaving and going home by feet. Frankfurt is pretty quiet for and an Halloween evening. I just saw 4 people dressed for the pumpkins event.

Time to sleep well thank you.

A night at the planetarium

September is over and October took over ten days ago. As usual the trees, but not only, some buildings in Berlin as well are getting new colors. For the trees it's easy, we call it Autumn, for the buildings it's the light festival or festival of light. 

Passed 9:00pm you may find a lot of night photographers in the streets of Berlin, all equipped with tripod and waiting on the side as fishermen with their fishing rod waiting for the chosen monument to change appearance. This year I'm following a bit more seriously the program who offers interesting combos: free shows outdoor with light and music and payed performances indoor with music and light.


Last Sunday we attended two shows: one outside the Elisabeth Kirche in Invalidestrasse and a second inside the church building. First show used the front side of the building as projection surface as well as its shape to create nice visuals. Therefore you had the impression that the whole building was changing color and not only simply colored with a laser pointer. Indoor only the back wall served as projection surface, a huge surface, the small baroque ensemble was a delight for ears and the visuals created could have been better. I mean technically it was superb, but the content was not really synchronized with the music.

Tonight it was the opposite, the projection outdoor on the Gross Planetarium roof in Prenzlauer Allee was fine but not exceptional, only a simple slide show and sadly rain. This event took place during the week.  Nice to see this place full of people during the evening and people of bit younger than the an average planetarium visitor.

But really tonight it is in the planetarium that the a full dome show is taking place. Live electronic music and projection on the whole indoor dome surface. The projection surface was ok, not a perfect blending but it did the job as some people may say. The rest was completely hypnotic :-) The visuals - rather simple - were completely matching with the electronic live performance creating a strange atmosphere, truly immersive experience, giving you the feeling to be in the center of the dome, floating in space and no I did not take drugs before.