Re: What to do in San Francisco

[Peter Davis <pdavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I'll be in the Bay Area during February, and I was wondering how to
> spend my time (I can work out how to spend my money by myself, thank you :)
> 
> So, are there any 3D-related events, exhibitons, museums, shops etc that
> it would be worth my seeing?


I just got back from a few days in San Francisco, and there was a
great installation at the Arts Center in Yerba Buena Gardens.  It was
called "Be Now Here" and it was by Mark Naiman (or something close to
that.)  Basically, you stand on a turntable next to a video projection
screen, wearing polarized glasses.  A pair of vide projectors, with
polarizing filters, project left and right images on the screen.  The
3D effect is very good.

The piece is attempting to explore a kind of virtual reality of places
by putting you in different places at different times of day.  The
places are Timbuktu, Dubrovnik, Jerusalem, ... (I can't remember the
fourth), and, of course, Yerba Buena Gardens.  There's a control panel
in the middle of the turntable for selecting place and time of day.
The video clips were done by putting a camera on a tripod and rotating
it 360 degrees, so you see everything that's going on around you.  For
each place, you can see early morning, midday, late afternoon and
evening.  For some inexplicable reason, the turntable somehow enhances
the sense that you're in that place looking around, even though the
screen and the projectors are stationary.

Anyway, that was well worth the $4 to get in.  I also shot off lots of
realist pictures, especially around the Palace of Fine Arts.  That's
just an incredibly interesting place, photographically speaking.
There's a lot to see and do (and photograph) in the area, but I only
had one day of free time.

-pd

--------
Peter Davis                    "Education is not the             617/873-4145
BBN Educational Technologies    filling of a pail, but      FAX: 617/873-2455
70 Fawcett Street               the lighting of a fire."       pdavis@xxxxxxx
Cambridge, MA 02138                     -- W. B. Yeats

        URL:  http://copernicus.bbn.com/people/PDavis/


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