[Art_beyond_sight_educators] Motion amplified - making the invisible visible

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,

Thought this would be of great interest. MIT has a project where small differences in an object, over time, in a video are amplified making it obvious to the viewer that there is a change going on. For example one could see that someone has a pulse by looking at a video. There are software programs that put sounds to color to make a soundscape, read meterological diagrams -    but what if with this new technology the differences in the video are put to sound then also a blind listener could hear a pulse - without a stethoscope?

Sort of like a magnifying glass for movement you can't see.

Best to read the article - did not do it justice

Links to Mit article, NYTimes article and video,  project website and paper.

Code is available at the project's website.

Excerpt:
MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will present new software that amplifies variations in successive frames of video that are imperceptible to the naked eye. So, for instance, the software makes it possible to actually "see" someone's pulse, as the skin reddens and pales with the flow of blood, and it can exaggerate tiny motions, making visible the vibrations of individual guitar strings or the breathing of a swaddled infant in a neonatal intensive care unit.

The system is somewhat akin to the equalizer in a stereo sound system, which boosts some frequencies and cuts others, except that the pertinent frequency is the frequency of color changes in a sequence of video frames, not the frequency of an audio signal. The prototype of the software allows the user to specify the frequency range of interest and the degree of amplification. The software works in real time and displays both the original video and the altered version of the video, with changes magnified.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/amplifying-invisible-video-0622.html
Finding the Visible in the Invisible


Finding the Visible in the Invisible
A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a computer program that reveals colors and motions in video that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye
http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/02/27/science/100000002087758/finding-the-visible-in-the-invisible.html#100000002087758

Project website
Eulerian Video Magnification for Revealing Subtle Changes in the World
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/amplifying-invisible-video-0622.html

Link to paper
Motion Magnification
http://people.csail.mit.edu/celiu/motionmag/motionmag.html

Best,

Lisa


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