Category Archives: Art

AI-generated art may be protected, says US Copyright Office – requires meaningful creative input from a human

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[…]

AI software capable of automatically generating images or text from an input prompt or instruction has made it easier for people to churn out content. Correspondingly, the USCO has received an increasing number of applications to register copyright protections for material, especially artwork, created using such tools.

US law states that intellectual property can be copyrighted only if it was the product of human creativity, and the USCO only acknowledges work authored by humans at present. Machines and generative AI algorithms, therefore, cannot be authors, and their outputs are not copyrightable.

Digital art, poems, and books generated using tools like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, ChatGPT, or even the newly released GPT-4 will not be protected by copyright if they were created by humans using only a text description or prompt, USCO director Shira Perlmutter warned.

“If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it,” she wrote in a document outlining copyright guidelines.

“For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the ‘traditional elements of authorship’ are determined and executed by the technology – not the human user.

“Instead, these prompts function more like instructions to a commissioned artist – they identify what the prompter wishes to have depicted, but the machine determines how those instructions are implemented in its output.”

The USCO will consider content created using AI if a human author has crafted something beyond the machine’s direct output. A digital artwork that was formed from a prompt, and then edited further using Photoshop, for example, is more likely to be accepted by the office. The initial image created using AI would not be copyrightable, but the final product produced by the artist might be.

Thus it would appear the USCO is simply saying: yes, if you use an AI-powered application to help create something, you have a reasonable chance at applying for copyright, just as if you used non-AI software. If it’s purely machine-made from a prompt, you need to put some more human effort into it.

In a recent case, officials registered a copyright certificate for a graphic novel containing images created using Midjourney. The overall composition and words were protected by copyright since they were selected and arranged by a human, but the individual images themselves were not.

“In the case of works containing AI-generated material, the Office will consider whether the AI contributions are the result of ‘mechanical reproduction’ or instead of an author’s ‘own original mental conception, to which [the author] gave visible form’. The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work. This is necessarily a case-by-case inquiry,” the USCO declared.

Perlmutter urged people applying for copyright protection for any material generated using AI to state clearly how the software was used to create the content, and show which parts of the work were created by humans. If they fail to disclose this information accurately, or try to hide the fact it was generated by AI, USCO will cancel their certificate of registration and their work may not be protected by copyright law.

Source: AI-generated art may be protected, says US Copyright Office • The Register

So very slowly but surely the copyrighters are starting to understand what this newfangled AI technology is all about.

So what happens when an AI edits and AI generated artwork?

Civitai / stable diffusion

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CivitAI is an AI image generator that isn’t hosted in the US, allowing for much more freedom of creation. It’s a really amazing system that gives Midjourney and DALL-E a run for their money.

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Civitai is a platform that makes it easy for people to share and discover resources for creating AI art. Our users can upload and share custom models that they’ve trained using their own data, or browse and download models created by other users. These models can then be used with AI art software to generate unique works of art.

Cool, what’s a “Model?”

Put simply, a “model” refers to a machine learning algorithm or set of algorithms that have been trained to generate art or media in a particular style. This can include images, music, video, or other types of media.

To create a model for generating art, a dataset of examples in the desired style is first collected and used to train the model. The model is then able to generate new art by learning patterns and characteristics from the examples it was trained on. The resulting art is not an exact copy of any of the examples in the training dataset, but rather a new piece of art that is influenced by the style of the training examples.

Models can be trained to generate a wide range of styles, from photorealistic images to abstract patterns, and can be used to create art that is difficult or time-consuming for humans to produce manually.

Source: What the heck is Civitai? | Civita

AI-imager Midjourney v5 stuns with photorealistic images—and 5-fingered hands

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On Wednesday, Midjourney announced version 5 of its commercial AI image-synthesis service, which can produce photorealistic images at a quality level that some AI art fans are calling creepy and “too perfect.” Midjourney v5 is available now as an alpha test for customers who subscribe to the Midjourney service, which is available through Discord.

“MJ v5 currently feels to me like finally getting glasses after ignoring bad eyesight for a little bit too long,” said Julie Wieland, a graphic designer who often shares her Midjourney creations on Twitter. “Suddenly you see everything in 4k, it feels weirdly overwhelming but also amazing.”

[…]

Midjourney works similarly to image synthesizers like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E in that it generates images based on text descriptions called “prompts” using an AI model trained on millions of works of human-made art. Recently, Midjourney was at the heart of a copyright controversy regarding a comic book that used earlier versions of the service.

After experimenting with v5 for a day, Wieland noted improvements that include “incredibly realistic” skin textures and facial features; more realistic or cinematic lighting; better reflections, glares, and shadows; more expressive angles or overviews of a scene, and “eyes that are almost perfect and not wonky anymore.”

And, of course, the hands.

[…]

Midjourney works similarly to image synthesizers like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E in that it generates images based on text descriptions called “prompts” using an AI model trained on millions of works of human-made art. Recently, Midjourney was at the heart of a copyright controversy regarding a comic book that used earlier versions of the service.

After experimenting with v5 for a day, Wieland noted improvements that include “incredibly realistic” skin textures and facial features; more realistic or cinematic lighting; better reflections, glares, and shadows; more expressive angles or overviews of a scene, and “eyes that are almost perfect and not wonky anymore.”

And, of course, the hands.

[…]

Source: AI-imager Midjourney v5 stuns with photorealistic images—and 5-fingered hands | Ars Technica

NL Museum Temporarily Swapped Girl with Pearl Earring With AI Art and Luddites didn’t like it – sounds like art pushing boundries

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A Netherlands museum is facing criticism for selecting an AI-generated piece of art to temporarily take the place of the renowned Girl with a Pearl Earring painting. The artwork was created by Johannes Vermeer in 1665 and is usually located at the Mauritshuis Museum but is on loan at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam until June 4.

In the interim, the Mauritshuis Museum held a competition for local artists to submit their own versions of the Girl with a Pearl Earring painting and said it would select one of the submissions to take Vermeer’s place until the painting is returned. While the competition may have seemed like a straightforward and exciting process, when the museum selected an AI-generated piece of art showing the girl with more structured and sharp outlines and glowing earrings, the art community erupted with complaints.

Of the roughly 3,480 artworks submitted, Berlin-based artist, Julian van Dieken, was one of five winners selected, and whose so-called painting is receiving backlash from artists and lovers of the painting.

[…]

When asked for comment, the Mauritshuis Museum directed Gizmodo to a statement on its website which said they did not choose the winners by looking at what was the “most beautiful” or “best” submission. “For us, the starting point has always been that the maker has been inspired by Johannes Vermeer’s world-famous painting. And that can be in the most diverse ways in image or technique.”

Source: A Museum Temporarily Swapped a Masterpiece With AI Art and Chaos Ensued

Sounds like art doing what art should be doing – pushing culture and perceptions. Making people think. Just a shame the village idiot squad angle is pushed by Gizmodo. Well done the Mauritshuis!

Luddites have a sad that Netflix Made an Anime Do boring background art Using AI Due to a ‘Labor Shortage’

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Netflix created an anime that uses AI-generated artwork to paint its backgrounds—and people on social media are pissed.

In a tweet, Netflix Japan claimed that the project, a short called he Dog & The Boy uses AI generated art in response to labor shortages in the anime industry.

“As an experimental effort to help the anime industry, which has a labor shortage, we used image generation technology for the background images of all three-minute video cuts!” the streaming platform wrote in a tweet.

The tweet drew instant criticism and outrage from commenters who felt that Netflix was using AI to avoid paying human artists. This has been a central tension since image-generation AI took off last year, as many artists see the tools as unethical—due to being trained on masses of human-made art scraped from the internet—and cudgels to further cut costs and devalue workers. Netflix Japan’s claim that the AI was used to fill a supposed labor gap hit the bullseye on these widespread concerns.

According to a press release, the short film was created by Netflix Anime Creators Base—a Tokyo-based hub the company created to bolster its anime output with new tools and methods—in collaboration with Rinna Inc., an AI-generated artwork company, and production company WIT Studio, which produced the first three seasons of Attack on Titan.

Painterly and dramatic backdrops of cityscapes and mountain ranges are emphasized in the trailer for The Dog & The Boy. In a sequence at the end of the promo video on Twitter, an example of a background—a snowy road—shows a hand-drawn layout, where the background designer is listed as “AI + Human,” implying that a supervised image generation algorithm generated the scene. In the next two scenes, an AI generated version appears, crediting Rinna and multiple AI developers, some affiliated with Osaka University.

Demand for new anime productions has skyrocketed in recent years, but the industry has long been fraught with labor abuses and poor wages. In 2017, an illustrator died while working, allegedly of a stress-induced heart attack and stroke; in 2021, the reported salary of low-rung anime illustrators was as little as $200 a month, forcing some to reconsider the career as a sustainable way to earn a living while having a life outside work, buying a home, or supporting children. Even top animators reportedly earn just $1,400 to $3,800 a month—as the anime industry itself boomed during the pandemic amid a renewed interest in at-home streaming. In 2021, the industry hit an all-time revenue high of $18.4 billion.

As the use of AI art becomes more commonplace, artists are revolting against their craft being co-opted by algorithms and their work being stolen to use in datasets that create AI-generated art. In January, a group of artists filed a class action lawsuit against Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney, claiming that text-to-image tools violate their ownership rights.

Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: Netflix Made an Anime Using AI Due to a ‘Labor Shortage,’ and Fans Are Pissed

So it wasn’t AI that created the reportedly shit working wages and conditions in Anime, that was there already. And drawing backgrounds in anime doesn’t sound to me like particularly inspiring work. And you need a human to tell the AI what to draw, so in that respect the job has only changed. Luddites afraid of change are nothing new, but they’d be better off embracing the opportunities offered.

This man used AI to write and illustrate a children’s book in one weekend. He wasn’t prepared for the backlash.

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  • Ammaar Reshi wrote and illustrated a children’s book in 72 hours using ChatGPT and Midjourney.
  • The book went viral on Twitter after it was met with intense backlash from artists.
  • Reshi said he respected the artists’ concerns but felt some of the anger was misdirected.

Ammaar Reshi was reading a bedtime story to his friend’s daughter when he decided he wanted to write his own.

Reshi, a product-design manager at a financial-tech company based in San Francisco, told Insider he had little experience in illustration or creative writing, so he turned to AI tools.

In December he used OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT, to write “Alice and Sparkle,” a story about a girl named Alice who wants to learn about the world of tech, and her robot friend, Sparkle. He then used Midjourney, an AI art generator, to illustrate it.

Just 72 hours later, Reshi self-published his book on Amazon’s digital bookstore. The following day, he had the paperback in his hands, made for free via another Amazon service called KDP.

Front page of Alice and Sparkle, by Ammaar Reshi. An AI generated children's book.
“Alice and Sparkle” was meant to be a gift for his friends’ kids.Ammaar Reshi

He said he paid nothing to create and publish the book, though he was already paying for a $30-a-month Midjourney subscription.

Impressed with the speed and results of his project, Reshi shared the experience in a Twitter thread that attracted more than 2,000 comments and 5,800 retweets.

Reshi said he initially received positive feedback from users praising his creativity. But the next day, the responses were filled with vitriol.

“There was this incredibly passionate response,” Reshi said. “At 4 a.m. I was getting woken up by my phone blowing up every two minutes with a new tweet saying things like, ‘You’re scum’ and ‘We hate you.'”

Reshi said he was shocked by the intensity of the responses for what was supposed to be a gift for the children of some friends. It was only when he started reading through them that he discovered he had landed himself in the middle of a much larger debate.

Artists accused him of theft

Reshi’s book touched a nerve with some artists who argue that AI art generators are stealing their work.

Some artists claim their art has been used to train AI image generators like Midjourney without their permission. Users can enter artists’ names as prompts to generate art in their style.

An update to Lensa AI, a photo-editing tool, went viral on social-media last year after it launched an update that used AI to transform users’ selfies into works of art, leading artists to highlight their concerns about AI programs taking inspiration from their work without permission or payment.

“I had not read up on the issues,” Reshi said. “I realized that Lensa had actually caused this whole thing with that being a very mainstream app. It had spread that debate, and I was just getting a ton of hate for it.”

“I was just shocked, and honestly I didn’t really know how to deal with it,” he said.

Among the nasty messages, Reshi said he found people with reasonable and valid concerns.

“Those are the people I wanted to engage with,” he said. “I wanted a different perspective. I think it’s very easy to be caught up in your bubble in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where you think this is making leaps, but I wanted to hear from people who thought otherwise.”

After learning more, he added to his Twitter thread saying that artists should be involved in the creation of AI image generators and that their “talent, skill, hard work to get there needs to be respected.”

He said he thinks some of the hate was misdirected at his one-off project, when Midjourney allows users to “generate as much art as they want.”

Reshi’s book was briefly removed from Amazon — he said Amazon paused its sales from January 6 to January 14, citing “suspicious review activity,” which he attributed to the volume of both five- and one-star reviews. He had sold 841 copies before it was removed.

Midjourney’s founder, David Holz, told Insider: “Very few images made on our service are used commercially. It’s almost entirely for personal use.”

He said that data for all AI systems are “sourced from broadly spidering the internet,” and most of the data in Midjourney’s model are “just photos.”

A creative process

Reshi said the project was never about claiming authorship over the book.

“I wouldn’t even call myself the author,” he said. “The AI is essentially the ghostwriter, and the other AI is the illustrator.”

But he did think the process was a creative one. He said he spent hours tweaking the prompts in Midjourney to try and achieve consistent illustrations.

Despite successfully creating an image of his heroine, Alice, to appear throughout the book, he wasn’t able to do the same for her robot friend. He had to use a picture of a different robot each time it appeared.

“It was impossible to get Sparkle the robot to look the same,” he said. “It got to a point where I had to include a line in the book that says Sparkle can turn into all kinds of robot shapes.”

A photo of a page of Alice and Sparkle, by Ammaar Reshi. An AI generated children's book.
Reshi’s children’s book stirred up anger on Twitter.Ammaar Reshi

Some people also attacked the quality of the book’s writing and illustrations.

“The writing is stiff and has no voice whatsoever,” one Amazon reviewer said. “And the art — wow — so bad it hurts. Tangents all over the place, strange fingers on every page, and inconsistencies to the point where it feels like these images are barely a step above random.”

Reshi said he would be hesitant to put out an illustrated book again, but he would like to try other projects with AI.

“I’d use ChatGPT for instance,” he said, saying there seem to be fewer concerns around content ownership than with AI image generators.

The goal of the project was always to gift the book to the two children of his friends, who both liked it, Reshi added.

“It worked with the people I intended, which was great,” he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Source: This man used AI to write and illustrate a children’s book in one weekend. He wasn’t prepared for the backlash.

YouTube may fix controversial policy to demonetize videos with swearing – wait why can’t you swear on YouTube? US prudish sensibilities suck ass

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YouTube is rethinking its approach to colorful language after an uproar. In a statement to The Verge, the Google brand says it’s “making some adjustments” to a profanity policy it unveiled in November after receiving blowback from creators. The rule limits or removes ads on videos where someone swears within the first 15 seconds or has “focal usage” of rude words throughout, and is guaranteed to completely demonetize a clip if swearing either occurs in the first seven seconds or dominates the content.

While that policy wouldn’t necessarily be an issue by itself, YouTube has been applying the criteria to videos uploaded before the new rule took effect. As Kotaku explains, YouTube has demonetized old videos for channels like RTGame. Producers haven’t had success appealing these decisions, and the company won’t let users edit these videos to pass muster.

Communication has also been a problem. YouTube doesn’t usually tell violators exactly what they did wrong, and creators tend to only learn about the updated policy after the service demonetizes their work. There are also concerns about inconsistency. Some videos are flagged while others aren’t, and a remonetized video might lose that income a day later. Even ProZD’s initial video criticizing the policy, which was designed to honor the rules, lost ad revenue after two days.

[…]

Source: YouTube may fix controversial policy to demonetize videos with swearing

Posted in Art

This Controversial Artist Matches Influencer Photoshoots With Surveillance Footage

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It’s an increasingly common sight on vacation, particularly in tourist destinations: An influencer sets up in front of a popular local landmark, sometimes even using props (coffee, beer, pets) or changing outfits, as a photographer or self-timed camera snaps away. Others are milling around, sometimes watching. But often, unbeknownst to everyone involved, another device is also recording the scene: a surveillance camera.

Belgian artist Dries Depoorter is exploring this dynamic in his controversial new online exhibit, The Followers, which he unveiled last week. The art project places static Instagram images side-by-side with video from surveillance cameras, which recorded footage of the photoshoot in question.

On its face, The Followers is an attempt, like many other studies, art projects and documentaries in recent years, to expose the staged, often unattainable ideals shown in many Instagram and influencer photos posted online. But The Followers also tells a darker story: one of increasingly worrisome privacy concerns amid an ever-growing network of surveillance technology in public spaces. And the project, as well as the techniques used to create it, has sparked both ethical and legal controversy.

To make The Followers, Depoorter started with EarthCam, a network of publicly accessible webcams around the world, to record a month’s worth of footage in tourist attractions like New York City’s Times Square and Dublin’s Temple Bar Pub. Then he enlisted an artificial intelligence (A.I.) bot, which scraped public Instagram photos taken in those locations, and facial-recognition software, which paired the Instagram images with the real-time surveillance footage.

Depoorter calls himself a “surveillance artist,” and this isn’t his first project using open-source webcam footage or A.I. Last year, for a project called The Flemish Scrollers, he paired livestream video of Belgian government proceedings with an A.I. bot he built to determine how often lawmakers were scrolling on their phones during official meetings.

“The idea [for The Followers] popped in my head when I watched an open camera and someone was taking pictures for like 30 minutes,” Depoorter tells Vice’s Samantha Cole. He wondered if he’d be able to find that person on Instagram.

[…]

The Followers has also hit some legal snags since going live. The project was originally up on YouTube, but EarthCam filed a copyright claim, and the piece has since been taken down. Depoorter tells Hyperallergic that he’s attempting to resolve the claim and get the videos re-uploaded. (The project is still available to view on the official website and the artist’s Twitter).

Depoorter hasn’t replied directly to much of the criticism, but he tells Input he wants the art to speak for itself. “I know which questions it raises, this kind of project,” he says. “But I don’t answer the question itself. I don’t want to put a lesson into the world. I just want to show the dangers of new technologies.”

Source: This Controversial Artist Matches Influencer Photos With Surveillance Footage | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine

Palette – Colorize Photos using AI, great colour

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A new AI colorizer. Colorize anything from old black and white photos 📸, style your artworks 🎨, or give modern images a fresh look 🌶. It’s as simple as instagram, free, and no sign-up required!

Source: Palette – Colorize Photos

Only gums and teeth in shadow look a bit brown and ghoulish but this is absolutely brilliant. Beautiful colours!

In https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/xe6avh/i_made_a_new_and_free_ai_colorizer_tool_colorize/ the writer says uploaded images are only present in RAM and removed after sending to the user

Google research AI image noise reduction is out of this world

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If you have great lighting, a good photographer can take decent photos even with the crappiest camera imaginable. In low light, though, all bets are off. Sure, some cameras can shoot haunting video lit only by the light of the moon, but for stills — and especially stills shot on a smartphone — digital noise continues to be a scourge. We may be getting close to what is possible to achieve with hardware; heat and physics are working against us making even better camera sensors. But then Google Research came along, releasing an open source project it calls MultiNerf, and I get the sense that we’re at the precipice of everything changing.

I can write a million words about how awesome this is, but I can do better; here’s a 1-minute-51-second video, which, at 30 frames per second and “a picture tells a thousand words,” is at least 1.5 million words worth of magic:

Video Credits: DIYPhotography

The algorithms run on raw image data and adds AI magic to figure out what footage “should have” looked like without the distinct video noise generated by imaging sensors.

Source: Google research AI image noise reduction is out of this world

Use This Free Tool to Restore Faces in Old Family Photos

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[…]

GFPGAN—first made it onto our radar when it was featured in the August 28 edition of the (excellent) Recomendo newsletter, specifically, a post by Kevin Kelly. In it, he says that he uses this free program to restore his own old family photos, noting that it focuses solely on the faces of those pictured, and “works pretty well, sometimes perfectly, in color and black and white.”

There are several ways to access the program—as outlined in this post on ByteXD—but we got there using this Baseten web page, per Kelly’s recommendation.

The tool is incredibly easy to use. If you are accessing GFPGAN on your phone, you have the option of selecting a photo from your library, or taking a new photo to use. When we accessed the page on a laptop, the only option was choosing a file from your computer.

Anyway, once you upload the photo, tap or click the green “Restore photo” button, and then wait for the final product. While the results aren’t instant, the restoring process takes roughly 15 to 20 seconds.

First, your original image will show up on the left, and then a few seconds later, the restored image will appear on the right. There’s a link you can click directly underneath the restored photo to download it. That’s it!

Of course, if a photo is damaged and part of someone’s face has torn off, GFPGAN can’t make it reappear, but the tool can improve the quality of what’s there. As an example, here’s a screenshot from the version of the program on the Baseten web page, featuring one of my own family photos:

Image for article titled Use This Free Tool to Restore Faces in Old Family Photos
Screenshot: Elizabeth Yuko

I never knew who the woman on the bottom left of the photo was, but in the restored image, I can easily identify her as my great-aunt.

[…]

Source: Use This Free Tool to Restore Faces in Old Family Photos

Midjourney – AI picture creator through words, wins digital art competition

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An independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.

Source: Midjourney

It works like Dall-e and is now very popular because a user used this to win a digital art competition (using attribution)

Jason Allen entered the artwork titled “Theatre d’Opera Spatial” in the “Digital Arts / Digitally-Manipulated Photography” category of the Colorado State Fair fine arts competition but created the piece using a popular text-to-image AI generator named Midjourney.

A Twitter post describing Allen’s win went viral earlier this week (and was first covered by Vice). The post elicited a strong response, with many users claiming that Allen had been deceptive in submitting the piece, particularly as most of the public is unaware of how text-to-image AI generators work. Allen, though, has defended his actions.

“I wanted to make a statement using artificial intelligence artwork,” he told The Pueblo Chieftain. “I feel like I accomplished that, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

[…]

Responses to Allen’s win, though, have been mixed, with many accusing him of deceiving the judges. From Allen’s description of his win, it seems that the fair’s judges were not fully aware of how the piece was created. Writing in the Midjourney Discord, Allen says the artwork’s “description clearly stated I created them via Midjourney,” but when another user asks if he explained what the software does, Allen replies, “Should I have explained what Midjourney was? If so, why?” eliciting face-palm emoji reactions from others in the chat.

Allen said he’s been telling people at the show that the piece is “digital art created using a.i. tools” and that he doesn’t need to explain what Midjourney is any more than a digital artist might explain how Adobe Illustrator works

[…]

The rules of the competition Allen entered describe his category only as “Artistic practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process.”

[…]

Source: An AI-generated artwork’s state fair victory fuels arguments over ‘what art is’ – The Verge

 

Image to Lithophane Generator

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Turn your pictures into 3D stl files of lamp lithophanes, flat lithophanes, night light lithophanes, and more by using the lithophane makers below. Learn more about how to use LithophaneMaker.com by watching my YouTube tutorials. Click on a lithophane picture or title to go to the tool that created that lithophane. Instructions on how to use the lithophane makers are on their page, and general instructions on how to 3D print a lithophane are on the 3D Printing page. Give me feedback by joining the Lithophane Maker User’s group on Facebook.

Heart Lithophane Maker

images/Heart Lithophane.jpgTurn your pictures into beautiful heartfelt gifts for your loved ones! The new user interface for this tool lets you crop your pictures on the first page, then click the button at the top that says CLICK HERE TO VIEW LITHOPHANE for you to see the lithophane and adjust its dimensions. You can lower the value by the rendering resolution to make the lithophane look more like the final product, or increase the value to make the lithophane render quicker.

Lithophane Lamp Maker

images/Lithophane Lamp Schematic.JPGTurn up to four pictures into a lithophane lamp model using this tool. The tool provides an interface that will work will most lamps. A cutout cylinder with a ledge makes it possible to put the lamp lithophane directly over the lamp’s light socket and underneath the light. The default settings work for a lamp that I have at my own house, but I suggest you measure the light bulb socket that you’re going to put the lithophane lamp over.

Lithophane Light Box Maker

images/Lithophane Light Box Schematic.jpgTurn your photos into a lithophane light box. The lithophane light box was designed to easily take light sockets like the ones you can find here. You can design a customized lithophane light box and crop your photos in just a few minutes using this tool.

Night Light Lithophane Maker

images/Night Light Lithophane.JPGClick the picture above to access the night light lithophane maker. The default settings for the night light lithophane make the lithophane with night lights can be bought here. This webtool gives you the ability to design the night light lithophane to be able to interface with almost any night light!

Flat Lithophane Maker

images/Lithophane Frame.JPGTurn a photo into a hangable flat lithophane stl with this tool. This tool automatically surrounds the lithophane with a frame and some holes for hanging the lithophane. Some twine and suction cups can be used to attach the lithophane to a window, and pretty much any will work. We used this twine and these suction cups.

Lithophane Globe Maker

images/Spherical Lithophane Example.JPGDesign a spherical lithophane with an optional lunar background. The lithophane interfaces with a light bulb through a cylindrical base, and can have a hole at the other end if desired. You can select the aspect ratio of your picture and crop it in this tool as well.

Curved Lithophane Maker

images/Curved Lithophane.jpgThis lithophane design tool creates curved lithophanes or completely round votive lithophanes. You can adjust the dimensions of the lithophane that are shown in the picture to get exactly what you want.

Ceiling Fan Lithophane Maker

images/SchematicCFL.jpgThis image to stl generator turns pictures into a ceiling fan lithophane. You can turn up to four pictures into a cylindrical lithophane that has hooks that fit into a circular lithophane that is also designed here. The circular lithophane has 1 or 2 holes that allow you to attach to the ceiling fan’s pull string fixture.

Circular Lithophane Maker

images/Lithophane Tag.jpgThis tool with crop an image into a circle and create a flat 3d stl from your photo. The 3d model can have a positive or negative image, so that you can make a lithophane or inverse with this tool. The 3d model is designed to be printed horizontally, and the model comes with a hole for attaching it to a string, hook, collar, or whatever you have in mind!

Color Lithophane Maker

images/Color Lithophane Picture.pngThis lithophane tool turns a picture into a the stl files you need to print a color lithophane.

Christmas Tree Lithophane Maker

images/Christmas Tree Lithophane.jpgTurn your picture into a Christmas Tree Lithophane with this tool! These lithophanes can be placed on a table, or hung from a tree. I have found compared two lighting options. This tea light is bright enough to illuminate the lithophane in regular room lighting, but has a battery life of 30 hours and I recommend a clamp diameter of 28.5mm for it. This tea light lasts for 100 hours, but doesn’t illuminate the lithophane well in a dark room (but not a bright one), and needs a clamp diameter of 36mm.

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Source: Image to Lithophane Generator

The Humanity Globe: World Population Density per 30km^2

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This visualization was created in **R** using the **rayrender** and **rayshader** packages to render the 3D image, and **ffmpeg** to combine the images into a video and add text. You can see close-ups of 6 continents in the following tweet thread:

https://twitter.com/tylermorganwall/status/1427642504082599942

The data source is the GPW-v4 population density dataset, at 15 minute (30km) increments:

Data:

https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/gpw-v4

Rayshader:

http://www.github.com/tylermorganwall/rayshader

Rayrender:

http://www.github.com/tylermorganwall/rayrender

Here’s a link to the R code used to generate the visualization:

https://gist.github.com/tylermorganwall/3ee1c6e2a5dff19aca7836c05cbbf9ac

Source: The Humanity Globe: World Population Density per 30km^2 [OC] – Reddit Swaglett

Posted in Art

Mapped: A Detailed Map of the Online World in Incredible Detail

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View the giant full-size (20 MB) version of this map.

Map of the internet's most popular websites

A Map of the Online World in Incredible Detail

The internet is intangible, and because you can’t see it, it can be hard to comprehend its sheer vastness. As well, it’s difficult to gauge the relative size of different web properties. However, this map of the internet by Halcyon Maps offers a unique solution to these problems.

Inspired by the look and design of historical maps, this graphic provides a snapshot of the current state of the World Wide Web, as of April 2021. Let’s take a closer look!

But First, Methodology

Before diving into an analysis, it’s worth touching on the methodology behind this graphic’s design.

This map highlights thousands of the world’s most popular websites by visualizing them as “countries.” These “countries” are organized into clusters that are grouped by their content type (whether it’s a news website, search engine, e-commerce platform, etc).

Visual Capitalist on the mapEditor’s fun fact: Can you spot Visual Capitalist? We’re right in between TechCrunch and The Guardian above.

 

The colored borders represent a website’s logo or user interface. In terms of scale, each website’s territory size is based on its average Alexa web traffic ranking. The data is a yearly average, measured from January 2020 to January 2021.

Along the borders of the map, you can find additional information, from ranked lists of social media consumption to a mini-map of average download speeds across the globe.

According to the designer Martin Vargic, this map took about a year to complete.

[…]

Source: Mapped: A Detailed Map of the Online World in Incredible Detail

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Songwriters Are Getting Short-Changed by Music Streaming, Study Shows

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Ever since the music industry began its streaming-fueled recovery around five years ago, the songwriting and publishing communities have been protesting not only the uneven payment structure of streaming — which sees recorded-music rights holders being paid three times what publishing is paid — but also the imbalanced power and payment structures of the music industry. This situation has been thrown into dramatic relief in recent weeks by the formation of the songwriters’ group the Pact and its calls for artists to stop demanding credit and publishing income for songs they did not write — but the organization’s founders also say that it is just the first step in a music economy that has tilted against the people who create the very foundation of that economy: songs.

[…]

But as streaming rose and the industry adapted, artists came to accept that their recorded music — which garnered a fraction of the income in the streaming world that it had in the CD era — had essentially become the way to bring people to the place where they really made money: concerts, where fans not only buy tickets but merchandise as well as CDs and albums.

 

 

Needless to say, songwriters saw little income from that business model — which has been completely up-ended by the pandemic. Now, with most areas of the business looking at streaming as a if not the primary generator of income, the songwriter’s plight is more dire than ever, according to “Rebalancing the Song Economy,” an authoritative new report by industry analysts Mark Mulligan and Keith Jopling of Midia Research(with an introduction by Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus).

The 35-page report, which is available here for free, lays out both the history of this dilemma and some (admittedly difficult) proposed solutions, but what may be unprecedented is the way that it lays out how skewed against songwriters the new music economy is. A handful of the many statistics from the study follow:

  • The global music industry revenues (recordings, publishing, live, merchandise, sponsorship) fell by 30% in 2020 due to the combined impact of COVID-19 and a recession
  • Streaming has created a song economy, making the song more important than ever, yet music publisher royalties are more than three times smaller than record label royalties
  • Streaming will bring further strong industry growth, reaching 697 million subscribers and $456 billion in retail revenues, but the royalty imbalance means that label streaming revenue will grow by 3.3 times more than publisher streaming revenue
  • The current royalty system assumes all songs are worth the same – they are not – and rewards poor behavior that dilutes artist and songwriter royalties
  • Music subscribers believe in the value of the song: twice as many (60%) state that the song matters more than the artist, than think the artist matters more (29%)
  • They also believe that songwriters should be remunerated properly: 71% of music subscribers consider it important that streaming services pay songwriters fairly

In a section titled “The Songwriter’s Paradox,” it lays out the ways that the song has become more important than ever, but, paradoxically, the songwriter has less income and influence

 

 

  • Big record labels have weaponized songwriting: In order to try to minimize risks, bigger record labels are turning to an ever more elite group of songwriters to create hits.
  • The emergence of the song economy: The audience has shift its focus from albums to songs.
  • Writing and production are fusing: As music production technologies have become more central to both the songwriting process and to the formation of the final recorded work, there has been a growing fusion of the role of production with writing. This has led to a growing body of superstar writer-producers.
  • The industrialization of songwriting: Record labels are reshaping songwriting by pulling together teams of songwriters to create “machine tooled” hits – finely crafted songs that are “optimized for streaming.” While the upside for songwriters is more work, the downside is sharing an already-small streaming royalties pot with a larger team of creators and co-writers.
  • Decline of traditional formats: Songwriters have long relied upon performance royalties from broadcast TV and radio. However, as the audiences on these platforms migrate towards on-demand alternatives, performance royalties face a long-term decline. Similarly, the continued fall in sales means fewer mechanical royalties for songwriters.
  • Streaming royalties: The song is the first in line culturally but it is last in line for streaming royalties. Of total royalties paid by streaming services to rights holders, between a fifth and a quarter is paid for publishing rights to the song. Labels are paid more than three times higher than publishers on streaming. An independent label artist could earn more than three thousand dollars for a million subscriber streams, whereas a songwriter could expect to earn between $1,200 and $1,400, and even then, only if they are the sole songwriter on the track. On average, songwriters will therefore earn between a third and a half of what artists do.

The report then proposes a series of solutions that are far too complex to summarize fully here, but in short:

  • The song economy requires an interconnected set of solutions across three areas: songwriter remuneration and share, streaming pricing and culture and consumption, with rights holders and streaming services working together
  • Streaming royalties will better serve creators if they recognize that different types of behavior (e.g. lean forward, lean back listening) represent different royalty values and that not all songs are worth the same
  • Fan-centric licensing is a simple concept that may be complex to implement but will bring a crucial foundation of fairness into the song economy
  • Streaming pricing needs a rethink, including ensuring price increases benefit creators, a reduction in the discounting of subscriptions and even metered access to music catalogs, to protect against the current situation of royalty deflation
  • Songwriter careers need to be reshaped, with an opportunity for labels and publishers to work more closely together, including secondments for young songwriters into artist projects, providing predictable income and accelerating their development.

The report concludes with a very British statement: “What is clear is that today’s’ song economy is not working as it should and that everyone across the value chain will benefit from a coordinated programme of change.”

In last week’s Variety article on the Pact, hit songwriter Justin Tranter expressed a similar sentiment in far more direct terms: “The business is definitely still broken and songwriters are definitely the least respected people in our industry, no matter how big of a songwriter you become.”

Source: Songwriters Are Getting Short-Changed by Music Streaming, Study Shows – Variety

Posted in Art

This Artist Uses Drones To Create Gigantic Long-Exposure Light Paintings in the Sky

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[…]

artist Frodo Álvarez has come up with a different approach, using just a handful of pre-programmed drones to create towering long-exposure light paintings.

Typically these types of images are created by someone standing in front of a camera with its shutter open for a prolonged period and either waving an LED light wand around, or using brightly colored flashlights to sketch out images in the air that are only visible to the camera’s sensor.

[…]

the flight path of a drone can be precisely controlled and pre-programmed, so Álvarez teamed up with the Madrid-based UMILES entertainment who specializes in using drones to create light shows. This particular project required just five drones to create an image of a soccer player ready to kick a ball. The drones were each flown into a very specific position before turning on their LED lights and then performing a pre-determined flight pattern

[…]

According to PetaPixel, thanks to the drone’s limited battery life and an 11pm curfew in place as a result of the pandemic, the team only had time for four attempts once the sky had sufficiently darkened so the long exposure image wouldn’t be blown out. The scale of the image necessitated the use of multiple drones who were each responsible for just a part of the soccer player’s body so that the light painting would be finished in a specific time frame.

[…]

 

Source: This Artist Uses Drones To Create Gigantic Long-Exposure Light Paintings in the Sky

Posted in Art

Why People’s Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing

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When you buy an NFT for potentially as much as an actual house, in most cases you’re not purchasing an artwork or even an image file. Instead, you are buying a little bit of code that references a piece of media located somewhere else on the internet. This is where the problems begin. Ed Clements is a community manager for OpenSea who fields these kinds of problems daily. In an interview, he explained that digital artworks themselves are not immutably registered “on the blockchain” when a purchase is made. When you buy an artwork, rather, you’re “minting” a new cryptographic signature that, when decoded, points to an image hosted elsewhere. This could be a regular website, or it might be the InterPlanetary File System, a large peer-to-peer file storage system.

Clements distinguished between the NFT artwork (the image) and the NFT, which is the little cryptographic signature that actually gets logged. “I use the analogy of OpenSea and similar platforms acting like windows into a gallery where your NFT is hanging,” he said. “The platform can close the window whenever they want, but the NFT still exists and it is up to each platform to decide whether or not they want to close their window.” […] “Closing the window” on an NFT isn’t difficult. NFTs are rendered visually only on the front-end of a given marketplace, where you see all the images on offer. All the front-end code does is sift through the alphanumeric soup on the blockchain to produce a URL that links to where the image is hosted, or less commonly metadata which describes the image. According to Clement: “the code that finds the information on the blockchain and displays the images and information is simply told, ‘don’t display this one.'”

An important point to reiterate is that while NFT artworks can be taken down, the NFTs themselves live inside Ethereum. This means that the NFT marketplaces can only interact with and interpret that data, but cannot edit or remove it. As long as the linked image hasn’t been removed from its source, an NFT bought on OpenSea could still be viewed on Rarible, SuperRare, or whatever — they are all just interfaces to the ledger. The kind of suppression detailed by Clements is likely the explanation for many cases of “missing” NFTs, such as one case documented on Reddit when user “elm099” complained that an NFT called “Big Boy Pants” had disappeared from his wallet. In this case, the user could see the NFT transaction logged on the blockchain, but couldn’t find the image itself. In the case that an NFT artwork was actually removed at the source, rather than suppressed by a marketplace, then it would not display no matter which website you used. If you saved the image to your phone before it was removed, you could gaze at it while absorbing the aura of a cryptographic signature displayed on a second screen, but that could lessen the already-tenuous connection between NFT and artwork. If you’re unable to find a record of the token itself on the Ethereum blockchain, it “has to do with even more arcane Ethereum minutiae,” writes Ben Munster via Motherboard. He explains: “NFTs are generally represented by a form of token called the ERC-721. It’s just as simple to locate this token’s whereabouts as ether (Ethereum’s in-house currency) and other tokens such as ERC-20s. The NFT marketplace SuperRare, for instance, sends tokens directly to buyers’ wallets, where their movements can be tracked rather easily. The token can then generally be found under the ERC-721 tab. OpenSea, however, has been experimenting with a new new token variant: the ERC-1155, a ‘multitoken’ that designates collections of NFTs.

This token standard, novel as it is, isn’t yet compatible with Etherscan. That means ERC-1155s saved on Ethereum don’t show up, even if we know they are on the blockchain because the payments record is there, and the ‘smart contracts’ which process the sale are designed to fail instantly if the exchange can’t be made. […]”

In closing, Munster writes: “This is all illustrative of a common problem with Ethereum and cryptocurrencies generally, which despite being immutable and unhackable and abstractly perfect can only be taken advantage of via unreliable third-party applications.”

Source: Why People’s Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing – Slashdot

Posted in Art

RAWGraphs releases version 2

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RAW Graphs is an open source data visualization framework built with the goal of making the visual representation of complex data easy for everyone.

Primarily conceived as a tool for designers and vis geeks, RAW Graphs aims at providing a missing link between spreadsheet applications (e.g. Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, OpenRefine) and vector graphics editors (e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, Sketch).

The project, led and maintained by the DensityDesign Research Lab (Politecnico di Milano) was released publicly in 2013 and is regarded by many as one of the most important tools in the field of data visualization.

Source: About | RAWGraphs

Posted in Art

Booknooks Bookshelf Inserts Add Mystery to Your Bookshelf

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Suddenly in December 2019, booknooks were discovered:

Take a look behind the ‘small doors to imaginary spaces’ within bookshelves – BBC News

A "book nook" - a small diorama of an alleyway visible between books on a bookshelf
Post image

Twitter post by @monde55212068: 路地裏bookshelf 文庫本サイズを作りました。両面を開くことはできませんが小さくて可愛らしいです。電源スイッチを表面につけました。制作2018年 材質 木#design #art #bookend #路地裏#文庫

Image Copyright @monde55212068 @monde55212068

A book nook. It is a bookcase model with a light

And Bored Panda had a look at 33 Bookshelf Inserts That Book Lovers Will Appreciate

I Made A Booknook For A Christmas Gift, My Inspiration Was Blade Runner. It's 11" X 6"
Witch Is Watching You
Post image

Unfortunately the term Booknook is not yet a keyword, so when searching you will find loads of other stuff you’re not looking for. So here Is some stuff I have found for you:

To Buy

Etsy:

Old town Japan miniature diorama bookend booknook shelf insert

Old town Japan miniature diorama bookend booknook shelf insert image 0

Book Nook – Book Shelf Insert – Book Shelf Decoration – Bookend (Wood)

Book Nook Book Shelf Insert Book Shelf Decoration image 4

Book nook bookshelf insert art Hidden world of old Italy patio – Booknook alley is original book lover gift

Book nook bookshelf insert art Hidden world of old Italy patio image 0

Whimsical themed booknook shelf insert.

Whimsical themed booknook shelf insert. image 0

Ebay

LEMAX Caddington Village Joseph Marley Antiques Victors Book Nook Lighted House

LEMAX-Caddington-Village-Joseph-Marley-Antiques-Victors-Book-Nook-Lighted-House

LEMAX 2004 Sutton’s Folk Art and Crafts + Marley Antiques/Victor’s Book Nook

LEMAX-2004-Sutton-039-s-Folk-Art-and-Crafts-Marley-Antiques-Victor-039-s-Book-Nook

Smaller sellers

TECHARGE

Japan Old Town Booknook Shelf Insert

Wizard Alley Booknook – A cozy wizard shopping alley on your bookshelf (Kickstarter)

Making your Own

People seem to make these mainly from wood or plastic. 3D printing is a thing, so on Thingiverse, some people are sharing their designs so you can print your own (and then paint it yourself)

3D Models

AlphaLyr’s Booknook contains a right wall, left wall, lantern and 2 signs

kborisov’s Fantasy Bookshelf Insert includes two bridge halves, cobbles, objects and left and right walls.

FiveNights has a Bookshelf Insert – Magic Book

FiveNights also has a different version, Magic Book II

Cardboard and plastics

A Cardboard Alley Bookshelf Howto

Warhammer 40k plastic model

Inspiration

Reddit has a few subreddits worth visiting:

/r/guidebooknook/ A guidebook for booknooks. DIY, design tips, STL files and ideas

/r/booknook/ Booknooks

Microsoft’s visual data explorer SandDance open sourced

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Microsoft just open sourced their data exploration tool known as SandDance:

For those unfamiliar with SandDance, it was introduced nearly four years ago as a system for exploring and presenting data using “unit visualizations.” Instead of aggregating data and showing the resulting sums as bar charts, SandDance shows every single row of a dataset (for datasets up to ~500K rows). It represents each of these rows as a mark that can be colored and organized into different areas on the screen. Thus, bar charts are made of their constituent units, stacked, or sorted.

Nice. I hadn’t heard about SandDance until now, but I’m saving for later. You can grab the source on GitHub.

Source: Microsoft’s visual data explorer SandDance open sourced | FlowingData

Someone Created A Funny Guide On How To Recognize Famous Painters And It’s Surprisingly Accurate (19 Pics

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If you’re not a big fan of classical art, you’d probably have a hard time pointing out what artist painted a certain painting. Well, your days of guessing are finally over – someone created a handy, albeit pretty hilarious, guide on how to recognize famous painters by their paintings and it’s surprisingly accurate.

The helpful guide, created by Reddit user DontTacoBoutIt, will help you recognize famous painters by pointing out the distinctive style elements in their paintings – in a hilarious way. From the Putin-like characters of Van Eyck to the chubby cupids of Boucher, check out this funny art guide in the gallery below!

#1 If Everyone – Including The Women – Looks Like Putin, Then It’s Van Eyck

Image source: flickerdart

Jan van Eyck

#2 If Everyone Looks Like Hobos Illuminated Only By A Dim Streetlamp, It’s Rembrandt

Image source: flickerdart

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

#3 If It’s Something You Saw On Your Acid Trip Last Night, It’s Dali

Image source: flickerdart

Salvador Dalí

#4 If The Paintings Have Lots Of Little People In Them But Also Have A Ton Of Crazy Bulls#%t, It’s Bosch

Image source: flickerdart

Hieronymus Bosch

#5 If Everybody Has Some Sort Of Body Malfunction, Then It’s Picasso

Image source: flickerdart

Pablo Ruiz Picasso

#6 Lord Of The Rings Landscapes With Weird Blue Mist And The Same Wavy-Haired Aristocratic-Nose Madonna, It’s Da Vinci

Image source: flickerdart

Leonardo da Vinci

#7 Dappled Light And Unhappy Party-Time People, Then It’s Manet

Image source: flickerdart

Édouard Manet

#8 If You See A Ballerina, It’s Degas

Image source: flickerdart

Edgar Degas

#9 Dappled Light But No Figures, It’s Monet

Image source: flickerdart

Claude Monet

#10 If Everyone Is Beautiful, Naked, And Stacked, It’s Michelangelo

Image source: flickerdart

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

#11 Dappled Light And Happy Party-Time People, It’s Renoir

Image source: flickerdart

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

#12 If The Images Have A Dark Background And Everyone Has Tortured Expressions On Their Faces, It’s Titian

Image source: flickerdart

Tiziano Vecelli

#13 Excel Sheet With Coloured Squares, It’s Mondrian

Image source: flickerdart

Piet Mondrian

#14 If All The Men Look Like Cow-Eyed Curly-Haired Women, It’s Caravaggio

Image source: flickerdart

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

#15 If The Paintings Have Tons Of Little People In Them But Otherwise Seem Normal, It’s Bruegel

Image source: flickerdart

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

#16 If Everyone In The Paintings Has Enormous Asses, Then It’s Rubens

Image source: flickerdart

Sir Peter Paul Rubens

#17 If Every Painting Is The Face Of A Uni-Browed Woman, It’s Frida

Image source: flickerdart

Frida Kahlo

#18 If Everything Is Highly-Contrasted And Sharp, Sort Of Bluish, And Everyone Has Gaunt Bearded Faces, It’s El Greco

Image source: flickerdart

Doménikos Theotokópoulos – El Greco (“The Greek”)

#19 If The Painting Could Easily Have A Few Chubby Cupids Or Sheep Added (Or Already Has Them), It’s Boucher

Image source: flickerdart

François Boucher

Source: Someone Created A Funny Guide On How To Recognize Famous Painters And It’s Surprisingly Accurate (19 Pics) | DeMilked

Posted in Art

Dynamic Wood Sculptures Carved to Look Like Pixelated Glitches

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Taiwanese artist Hsu Tung Han, however, uses them for inspiration in his latest series of stunning wooden sculptures.

By carving delicate block-shaped details that separate from various parts of the sculpture, Han successfully creates the bizarre yet magnificently original illusion of pixelation in 3D form.

He applies this technique masterfully on his most recent finished product, which depicts a snorkeler underwater.

Here, the wooden ‘pixels’ seem to represent the water that surrounds and submerges the snorkeling man.

Han has been posting photos of his carved sculptures on Flickr since 2006, and has developed a unique niche for blending traditional styles of woodwork with modern artistic elements.

Source: Dynamic Wood Sculptures Carved to Look Like Pixelated Glitches – Stay Wild Moon Child

Posted in Art