Walking photographs
PhotoWalker is a temporary name of the web site
for virtual walk-through contents
created by using a brand-new image technology
'STAMP' (Spatio-Temporal Association with Multiple Photographs).
This is developed at the Center for Spatial Information Science (CSIS)
of University of Tokyo.
We named this site after impression of the technology:
you may feel you are walking in photographs
or the photographs are walking.
If you want to experience this,
select one of the contents in World Map
and get in the world of PhotoWalker.
Progress of virtual reality
In these years,
thanks to technologies,
a lot of people are enjoying virtual reality
in their computers.
Image-based approach is one of the virtual reality technologies,
which creates the virtual world by using only photographs.
Among them,
a well-known method is QuickTime-VR (panorama VR/object VR)
of Apple Computer, Inc.
In this method,
however,
there are some problems of the operations
to restrict free movement;
for example, you may not move into deeper side of photographs
(different from zooming in/out).
STAMP has solved this problem
by allowing vague joint of spaces,
so as to move anywhere in photographs.
For this technology,
we obtained national patent (2001-174582)
and international patent (FPA-2093-US).
Expansion of collage
Our technique is also called 'multi-dimensional
photo collage'. Photo collage, in art world, is the method
of making a picture by sticking pieces of photographs
onto a 2-dimensional canvas. If this method is implemented
in a computer, pieces of photographs are skewed and stuck
to build an interactive pseudo 3-dimensional space. In
the same manner as photo collage of fine art, you may
build a space by mixing any kind of media. For example,
you may mix old and recent photographs, photographs of
your face and other's face, or photographs and paintings.
If you arrange the technique, this method has great potential
to create various contents to represent transformation
over time like videos or movies, shift of multiple viewpoints,
or selection of the ways to go like a maze.
What is multi-dimension?
Perfection of the technique of photo collage came
from Moving Focus series of old master David Hockney,
as diversified representation with multiple viewpoints.
Even at present,
a lot of engineers in the world have been trying
various approaches for this technique.
Simran Singh Gleason uses full advantages of the photo collage technique
in his works, Enfolding Perspectives: Photographic Collage.
We may say that,
STAMP takes over their techniques of photo collage
and materializes multi-dimensional spaces in a computer screen,
which are built on individual cognition and
are independent of orthogonal three axes.
We recommend that you produce new spatial representation of yours
by using STAMP.
Using a digital camera...
Digital cameras become widely used recently.
Its spreading speed is explosive.
We should say that the environment has been completed
in which lots of people may collect
vast amount of photographs in a short period of time.
The quantity (number) and the facileness is
beyond the comparison to the past.
Along with this expansion,
the usage of those photographs has been changing.
For example,
a photograph is attached to an e-mail
or it is released on the Internet;
furthermore, appreciating photographs through VJ effects
becomes much more popular than ever.
Beside such usage,
STAMP is useful to arrange photographs in aggregate,
not to treat them as separate ones.
STAMP enables you to arrange photographs spatially
so that you view around the space of those photographs
as if you move around in that space.
STAMP, in a sense, is the tool for a real-space photo album
(creating a photo album from space or creating a space from a photo album).
Browsing pages on the Internet
The radical principle of the Internet is 'hyperlink'.
On a normal browser, pages are browsed by tracing their
links one by one. If, however, you can browse a subsequent
page in semitransparent image on the current page, in
other words, if you can view the current page and subsequent
pages at the same time, does web browsing become much
more convenient? This can be the problem of interface
-- how to present database. STAMP is the technology that
combines photograph images on the Net with hyperlinks
and displays those images, the current photograph (opaque
image) and subsequent (semitransparent image), at the
same time. This is almost the same as the FOG effect of
virtual reality in usual cases.
Introduction of animation
Another feature of STAMP is 'animation'.
When you move from a page to another on the Internet,
the screen images are changed in a moment.
If, to this change,
transition representation is applied,
how would it be?
STAMP introduces morphing technique between pages
to represent smooth transition
based on human eyes,
which is recognized as a suggestion of a new type of browser.
Up to the present,
the current Internet browser was suggested
as an imitation of 'book'
and VRML was suggested as an imitation of 'city'.
Some user of STAMP pointed out
that STAMP is close to characteristics of human memory space.
So it turns out that
the next subject of STAMP development is transition speed?
Comparison with videos
What is the difference between STAMP and video?
This is one of the frequently asked questions. To this
question, we always answer as follows: "Video is a recording
method provided with time width; photograph, in contrast,
collects significant scenes by picking up only impressive
moments. Therefore, STAMP has more potential for communicating
those scenes with others." Although we answer in this
way, STAMP provides the method to use videos, which is
in preparation for release. In addition, we are planning
to develop various functions: BBS-type STAMP, STAMP operated
in association with maps, QuickTime VR, or IBNR. In a
series of STAMP projects, we are aiming at associating
any kind of data 'spatially' on the Web.
As a record of architecture
Photographs on magazines were the tools in most
cases to provide architectural information. This caused
photographic architecture to reach cataloging of architecture.
There were some opinions that photographs and architecture
had complicity in a crime.
Distribution of architectural information via the Internet
has just begun.
At present,
in most cases,
photographs are just presented on the Web,
while new approaches have been tried;
such as editing of architectural information
by using virtual 3-dimensional space or technical drawings.
We think that
STAMP also contributes to communication of architectural information,
and it is the best technique
to describe 'sequence'
that represents transition of view along with traffic lines.
It will be interesting
if STAMP-like architecture is discovered in the near future,
which is one of our motives to push our project ahead.
From the viewpoint of cognitive science
In closing,
I have one question here to you:
Why STAMP provides views with 3-dimensional depth?
This is because the depth is nothing but an illusion
since there is no information of 3-dimension in photographs.
Then,
what fosters illusions in your mind?
That is just 'transformation' of images.
Conventional theory of perception had consistently explained
perception through the theory of form.
Since, however, 'movement' makes information,
what turns out to be significant to perception
is 'transformation', not 'form'.
'Form', the basis of research of perception,
is the unit of geometry.
Why has research of perception been sticking to particular geometry?
What is viewed through changes of targets is not 'form',
but the targets themselves, their real 'shape'.
'Shape' is perceived,
not by 'form',
but by 'transformation' that has no particular form.
(Masato Sasaki, "Affordance")
Space in a computer,
interface,
memory of users who view the space,
characteristics of photographs...
If we seek the essence of those things,
we reach the problem of recognition or perception of human beings.
STAMP is still incomplete
to represent virtual 3-dimensional spaces.
Despite this,
isn't it possible to say
that STAMP is the representation method
that extremely takes advantages of human cognitive features
by using its nature of automatic compensation
to (try to) perceive given information.
Copyrights (c) 2003 hiroya tanaka allrights reserved.