I recently visited and met up with two immersive tech colleagues, Meriko Borogove and Matthew Shaw, putting on this exhibition for the Tribeca festival at Mercer Labs, an exhibition space in Lower Manhattan by the World Trade Center stop that showcases immersive multimedia experiences like this LIDAR scanning timelapse project called Framerate Studios. An impressive, novel, and beautiful use of laser scanning tech that, according to their website, “bears witness to the flux of life on earth. Surrounded by shifting pointcloud landscapes, submerged in sound, we scale our perspective. Together we see the beautiful, creative, and destructive forces of nature and humanity.” My visit to Mercer Labs and the immersive tech exhibition was a pretty personal and memorable experience. It reminded me of an adventurous, ambitious, and otherworldly expedition into the Blue Mountains that I took with Luke Farrer and an impressive team of Australian mountaineers, including Lucas Trihey. That project involved abseiling down three waterfalls, drinking directly from waterfalls, encountering some exotic and intimidating fauna (tiger snakes), and laser scanning a 1000-meter stretch of a slot canyon with a Leica P20. Mercer Labs is the brainchild of Cooper Union alum Roy Nachum, the artist most commonly known for […]
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Summer in NYC is a uniquely sticky, stinky, and stupefying proposition. Sure, there is the ubiquitous odor of sun-kissed miscellaneous garbage and decomposing door dash leftovers wafting in the air, the pyramidal heaps of bloated black trash bags, subway temperatures soaring to levels more appropriate for a Sky Ting yoga class, and, of course, the dank urban humidity that seems to permeate the fibers of even the most moisture-wicking fabrics. But, if you can see through the heat and occasional foul NYC summer potpourri, it is one of the best times to hop around town. Many NYC residents travel on weekends (Long Island, Fire Island, Catskills, etc.) or work remotely during summer. Fewer tourists file along the narrow sidewalks and parks, and Midtown becomes oddly tolerable (Midtown during the high season has what some might call a prickly pedestrian problem). Restaurants like Una Pizzeria Napoletana and Tatiana are more accessible for walk-in scenarios, and Downtown has a distinctly more “local” and minimal vibe (heat keeps tourists and Westchester county daytrippers at bay). The numerous museums offer a chilly respite from the heat. Among the many world-class museums, the Met, where these two enjoy impromptu ice cream, is not only nicely […]
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Yes, you heard it right, people are making their travel plans based on Pokemon Go, an immersive Augmented Reality (AR) game that allows gamers to go on a virtual treasure hunt through some of the world’s most frequented public spaces, say, NYC’s Central Park or Paris’ Bois de Boulogne. You might dismiss this as a gaming fad or passing trend, but Pokemon Go has longevity. Founded in 2016, Pokemon Go grossed more than $6 billion in revenue between 2016 and 2020. And it still has a stable number of committed users. Sure, it’s just gaming, so it will probably be confined to a niche of the nerdy cosplaying types. Wrong; it is not just steering travel itineraries of gamers; it is an indication that AR is reaching a critical mass as a social and immersive technology, like a Pikachu “Pika Pika” cry in a coal mine or a Dragonite call on Fire Island. Yes, this technology has its quirks. For one, it uses smartphone cameras and screens as an interface, but this rapidly evolving technology will reach maturity sooner than you think. The Apple Vision Pro is called an XR or mixed reality device. However, it is an augmented reality […]
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Earth Day is a token holiday of sorts. Like National Empanada Day, we might celebrate the holiday through a bit of self-indulgence, like sussing out a delectably cheesy empanada or watching a David Attenborough-narrated Planet Earth documentary. But there is more we can do for the cause than affirm our love of nature and the creatures that inhabit it. It can also be a time to take inventory of our behavior individually and as a society and make some changes that might collectively make a difference so that our children and children’s children might live in a more habitable world. I recall the great Joaquin Phoenix, several years ago, commenting to a primarily stunned “liberal” Hollywood crowd that “We don’t have to take private jets to Palm Springs for the awards — and back,” and that it might be worth looking into how our choices may be contributing to the wildfires raging in the Blue Mountains of Australia, a UNESCO world heritage site from which these pictures were taken. Most of us do not have the option to “fly private”; however, we can “vote” with the choices we make. For example, we can try to eat more vegetables, fruits, nuts, […]
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Speceterras was featured in a CNN Article By Kate Springer, CNN “On a future trip to Europe, imagine exploring the Accademia Gallery in Florence guided by a talking “David” sculpture or embarking on a digital treasure hunt through the streets of Paris. Requiring only a phone and internet connection, augmented reality (AR) can add another layer of intrigue to our travel experiences. Specterras Productions, which strives to make the world’s natural and cultural wonders more accessible via technology, is already bringing such experiences to life. “With AR, you can create animated busts at a museum – in the future, you’ll be able to walk up to a sculpture of Alexander the Great or Herodotus and interact with the art via your mobile phone, kind of like ‘Night at the Museum,” Michael Breer, chief creative officer at Specterras, tells CNN Travel. AR and virtual reality (VR) became more mainstream during the Covid-19 pandemic when museums and destinations introduced interactive virtual experiences for would-be travelers.” Read the Full Article on CNN.com
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If you recently saw a picture of a middle finger wielded with a monument of institutional power in the backdrop, it is probably the hand of Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist, political dissident, and affable human rights agitator. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) just concluded its 20th party congress and has backed Xi Jinping for an unprecedented third term in office. To put it lightly, the Chinese government does not look kindly at political dissent and criticism. Despite the dangers, Mr. Weiwei has been committed to revealing the screwups, hypocrisy, human rights abuses, and moral hazard of Chinese authoritarianism. His efforts culminated in over 50 interrogations and some 81 days in a Chinese prison. The middle finger is a universal symbol of contempt, and indeed the conduct of the Chinese government (and its American corporate collaborators) on human rights is contemptible. Consider the lives of the Uighur ethnic minority living in the western Chinese province of Xingjian. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, over 11 million Uighurs live in Xingjian, with some one million being unlawfully detained in “reeducation” facilities or mass-internment camps. To see what this ethnic minority endures, check out the extraordinary work of the Frontline journalistic […]
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The Bunker Hill Monument by Specterras on Sketchfab We humans, tend to embellish, exaggerate, and even conjure up stories out of whole cloth. Trusting an autobiography, a CV, or tales of former glory on the football field or classroom is a bit naive. Legends are often the result of embellishments. To use a contemporary example, Kim Jon Un is allegedly able to control the weather, cure diseases, and according to the Korean Central News Agency, “reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom.” His father, Kim Jong Il, a man of numerous talents, was reported to have concluded his first 18-hole championship golf course with a staggering 11 holes-in-one and a record-setting 38 under par. He was also reported not having the bodily need to pee and poop. I always get a good chuckle from propaganda. Still, it speaks to what can happen (in an extreme scenario) if a society does not have mechanisms to account for what is true, even if the truth is inconvenient, uncomfortable, even dangerous. Dave Chappelle’s Instincts about the Past Much of history as we understand it is a collection of stories, some accurate and anodyne, some laughably […]
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Shark diving has always appealed to me, partly because they’re such charismatic creatures and because of their size, grace, evolutionary success, ability to instill fear in humans, and role as custodians of the deep. They are a physical manifestation of the beauty and the perils of the waters that cover two-thirds of our planet. What else would have millions of Americans of both sides of the political aisle glued to TV screens every July. I am referring to Discovery’s shark week. Puerto Rico is not renowned for its shark diving, but there is a site on the southern part of the island (off a small town called Guanica) with a healthy population of Caribbean Reef Sharks. But this isn’t a story about reef sharks; it is a story of Murphy’s Law, that is, what can go wrong, will go wrong. And what the dive community and PADI can learn from Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto. But before I get into that, I have to tell you a story of my recent Puerto Rican dive trip and how quickly things can go from bad to worse. Diving Off The Port of Guanica We set off for Guanica after a late night at […]
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“In Patagonia, the isolation makes it easy to exaggerate the person you are: the drinker drinks; the devout prays; the lonely grows lonelier, sometimes fatally.” Bruce Chatwin, mystagogue of punchy travel writing, had a life-long interest in this remote end-of-the-world peninsular landmass. His fascination started as a young public school pom. Chatwin’s grandmother had a curiosities cabinet containing a leathery chunk of “brontosaurus hide”, allegedly from Argentina. Though an apocryphal story, this artifact aroused a firey fascination with the remote South American peninsula, climaxing in Charwin’s seminal work, In Patagonia. The experience of hiking Patagonia El Chalten, a frontier town tethered to the edge of Los Glaciares National Park, is the best access point for trekking in Argentine Patagonia. While the A-frame houses cling to the earth like their similarly-shaped geological parents, the Andes range; modern conveniences, like wifi, international cellular service, and a diverse array of eateries, dilute some of the heaviness that makes the drinker want to drink and the restless wish to wander. It is the type of environment where one feels inclined to keep on moving. Incidentally, I haven’t tacked on more mileage in one month than my time in Patagonia. Part of that was the […]
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Horseshoe Bend is a charismatic (and very symmetrical) oxbow bend in the Colorado River that begs the viewer’s instant attention. For that reason, the area isn’t normally explored by the day-tripping voyager. It is not uncommon to see throngs of photographers confined to a space smaller than the McCarran International Airport smoking lounge. If you do go there, remember as beautiful and distinct as that serpentine form is, you won’t be the first to notice it and not the last to photograph it. For that reason, I highly recommend wandering from the main lookout and finding one of the numerous perches towering over the Colorado River that have not been photographed into oblivion.
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