There are a lot of things I love about Miami, but real estate is really on top of the list. Real estate developers in the sunshine state go out of their way to build some of the most dramatic high rises in the country. They are very high tech.
I have seen condos with built-in exercise equipment, spas on balconies, air conditioned storage units, massage rooms, and over-sized wine storage. One building is better than the other.
Now I just heard that the Paramount Miami Worldcenter, being built in the downtown area, is going to feature a 5,000 square foot sky port on top of a 60-story tower for passenger drones or flying cars.
Now that is awesome. You have to watch the video to see the future in high-rise living. It’s a thrill to see a sky lobby and a dedicated glass-enclosed elevator.
Supasorn Suwajanakorn, a computer scientist at Google Brain, an artificial intelligence research team at Google, has created a new kind of lip-reading technology that could possibly produce a video of you saying something you did not.
I was told about this technology during a special events assignment I was working on. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Suwajanakorn said. “The technology is so good that you can barely tell the difference. It’s all done by a neural learning network that mimics movements in the mouth and teeth of a person from video footage.
“The computer algorithm teaches itself to imitate exactly how a person talks by watching him or her, over and over, again. It picks up on a speaker’s mannerisms by studying the subject’s teeth, lip movements, and jaw shape.”
Suwajanakorn has already created phony videos of Tom Hanks and former president Barack Obama. Check out the video.
I sent a birthday card to a friend who I haven’t seen or spoken to in 10 years. She said the minute she saw my card in her mailbox she knew it was from me. She said she would recognize my handwriting anywhere, I was amazed. Was my handwriting that distinctive?
I don’t think so, but apparently it made some impact on her. I guess that’s why songwriters are now loving a digital project called “Songwriters Fonts” because they can download typefaces created from dead rock legends and write songs using their handwriting style. Some of the rockers are: Kurt Cobain, David Bowie and John Lennon. There are so many others.
Songwriters fonts were designed to give musicians inspiration, motivation and imagination. Creating a composition in the handwriting of a musical super star could possibly give someone the impetus to write the next big hit.The company clearly states the fonts are for personal use only.
This is what the promotional material looks like. Create a song for me.
Read more about this in Pitchfork, an online music publication.
For some reason, the technologists at MIT, do not think it’s natural for human beings to be speaking out loud to voice assistants.
Instead they want everyone to get what they want by just thinking about it.
MIT is working on a nonverbal device that communicates your demands. I know this sounds like voodoo, but MIT has invented a jaw-mounted device that reads your neuromuscular signals through built-in electrodes.
Now this is scary. The hardware called AlterEgo, can read “words in your head.”
The idea is to meld human and machine.
The IA device, intelligence-augmentation, was trained by 10 techies to read their neurophysiology. A school news release stated,”Once calibrated, the research team was able to get about 92 percent accuracy for commands.”
It’s very possible that one day you will be able to order a pizza from the comfort of your couch without saying a word. You will be surprising the whole family when the doorbell rings.
I guess we are all in for a bunch of surprises in the not so distant future.
Since its inception in 2009, the Miami Beach Gay Pride has grown from a neighborhood event to a global celebration. Eliot and I volunteered to walk alongside the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce float in the annual parade. There were so many young people who showed up to give out promotional materials to the crowds, we were able to actually sit down and watch the show.
We are proud to be involved in any activity that demonstrates love for others.
Photos by Eliot Hess, except the one he is in. Marcia Grand took that one.
I’ve always been attracted to tall men.
Everyone wanted to participate in photo ops.
Our jobs were to give out bubble bottles.
Marcia Grand took this photo. She should have been in it. We just weren’t complete.
The Miami Beach Chamber Of Commerce float.
Interesting choices.
It was so good to see young people getting involved.
This is one time when you really want cold feet. After walking through the muck in the Everglades National Park for a few hours, the continuous flow of cold water was truly appreciated. It was hot outside. Eleven of us met early this morning to walk through the secret gardens of the Everglades to see what inspired artist Christina Pettersson to create her intricate and life-like nature drawings. Christina is on the top row, far left.
I’m pictured here with Kathryn Mikesell, founder of Fountainhead Studios and the events organizer for the day. Christina is a Fountainhead artist who has been working in the Everglades for several months and is having an exhibition in conjunction with AIRIE (Artists in Residence in Everglades) www.airie.org at Ernest Coe Visitor Center https://www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/coedirections.htm.
Kathryn invited some of her residency artists and members of her foundation (that’s us) to visit the gardens that inspired Christina. It was an amazing expedition because we walked through slog up to our knees. We used walking sticks and stayed pretty close together to lend a helping hand.
John DeFaro, a Miami multidisciplinary artist, is a close friend of ours from New York. His parents lived on our floor in our Manhattan Co-op for over 30 years. His work is collected by many.
I wasn’t really concerned about walking through the muck. Look at the bottom of my pants. I was anxious to do something different. The Everglades were peaceful, fascinating to look at, and timeless. We can all use a little of that.
A well-known audio enthusiast/tech writer friend of mine, Steve Guttenberg, (not the actor), told me not to miss the “David Bowie Is” exhibit currently at the Brooklyn Museum, March 2 to July 15th. I plan to see it in May when I’m in New York for an extensive period of time.
Steve just wrote about the exhibit for CNET where it caught my eye because he usually writes audio reviews. He wanted to do the Bowie piece because the entertainer was one of the most talented performers of his time. He was a musician, writer, dancer, actor, painter and a mime.
Steve said when you see the exhibit you realize that Bowie was always full of surprises. He led a free-spirited life that allowed him to explore many different paths. For folks who have had lots of aspirations, but never acted on them, Bowie’s exhibit is a reminder of what could have been.
Everyone who visits the exhibit gets a state-of-the-art headphone by Sennheiser, which provides what the Brooklyn Museum calls a “total immersive audio experience through the theatrical scene-settings and animation videos. There is quite a lot to see from stage costumes and portrait photographs to Bowie’s handwritten lyrics and even his coke spoon.”
Steve said what makes this exhibit so different is that the visitor receives the audio presentation automatically through the Sennheiser headphones when he or she stands in front of each showcase. They do not have to keep changing exhibit numbers. It’s one -of-a-kind.
Steve Guttenberg is another free spirit who refers to himself as the Audiophiliac. You can see Steve explain his love for music and the world of audio in the above video. For many years Steve was a movie theater projectionist, a high-end audio salesman and a record producer. He now reviews audio products for CNET, and freelancers for Home Theater, Inner Fidelity, Tone Audio and Stereophile.
Steve is a character. Be sure to watch all of his videos on YouTube. He certainly takes you behind the scenes in the world of music.
Photography and filming are not allowed in the exhibition.
Organized with unprecedented access to David Bowie’s personal archive, this exhibition explores the creative process of an artist whose sustained reinventions, innovative collaborations, and bold characterizations revolutionized the way we see music, inspiring people to shape their own identities while challenging social traditions. David Bowie is has been touring globally for the past five years and is taking its final bow at the Brooklyn Museum, providing an opportunity to view this one-of-a-kind material.
David Bowie is presents approximately 400 objects drawn primarily from the David Bowie Archive, including the artist’s original costumes, handwritten lyric sheets from famous songs, original album art, photographs, and videos, all tracing Bowie’s creative process from his teenage years in England through his last twenty years, when he resided in New York City. The archive is presented within an immersive, multimedia installation that includes continuous audio along with projected animation and video.
Highlights of the exhibition include more than 60 custom-made performance costumes, including six designed by Freddie Burretti for Ziggy Stardust / 1980 Floor Show and seven designed by Kansai Yamamoto for Aladdin Sane. There are 85 handwritten lyric sheets, including those from “Fame” and “Fashion”; drawings, including a sketch for the Young Americans album cover; and oil paintings, including two of musician Iggy Pop, all by Bowie.
There are also more than 40 pioneering music videos, television clips, and filmed roles as well as a multimedia presentation of international tour footage with rare scenes from the legendary Diamond Dogs tour, filmed in Philadelphia. A custom audio mix made up of snippets of Bowie’s songs—produced by longtime collaborator Tony Visconti—is also featured.
David Bowie is is organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
I don’t know about you, but every time a stranger hands me a drink at a bar, or at an event, I wonder if the beverage is safe. I just know too many people who have been drugged. One of my friends was sexually assaulted, and another one was in a deadly accident after someone slipped a roofie (a date rape drug) in his drink.
After Danya Sherman, a George Washington junior, experienced a life-threatening situation, she decided to help others avoid the same horrendous situation.
This story should be shared with all the young people you know. Sherman’s idea is brilliant. She is creating the KnoNap, a drug-detecting cocktail napkin, that will tell you if it’s safe to drink. All you have to do is drip a drop of your drink on the KnoNap napkin. If the napkin changes colors, you have been drugged. Put down the drink, and head for the door.
Sherman plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the first round of manufacturing in April. The goal, she says, is to roll out the product by the end of the year.
I just can’t believe that Dubai is actually home to the world’s first rotating skyscraper. One day I have to see it in person.
When I first heard about it from some friends, I think I got a little dizzy. When I read about it in some tech pubs, my heart started to race. If I ever get to see it for real, I hope I have the courage to visit a high floor. While I might be very nervous, I wouldn’t want to miss the experience.
The rotating skyscraper is supposed to be complete in 2020. David Fisher of Dynamic Architecture, created the concept.
Fisher is building an 80-story, 1,273-foot tower in Dubai with floors that can rotate 360 degrees in both directions. Please watch the video. It’s absolutely amazing. Fisher wants to create a building that gives condo owners the opportunity to see sunsets and sunrises. Entire floors rotate.
The building will feature voice-activated technology that allows residents to spin their apartments just by a verbal request. Seventy nine wind turbines placed horizontally between the floors and solar panels on the roof produce the tower’s energy. The central elevator lets residents transport cars to their floor and park them next to their apartment.
Each unit is prefabricated with steel, aluminum and carbon fiber materials. They are assembled at the factory and then attached to the tower.
That scares me. What if it falls off? That is going to be an expensive fall. Units are priced from $4 million to $40 million.
DigiDame 