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#there arent many who have that scale of presence

dontyouworrydaddy · 6 months

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hellooo ^_^ can i get a request for a gn or fem (dosent matter to me) non-military!rock climber reader & platonic!141?? like theyre friends with each other, but arent in the same work. the reader is some super talented and well known climber (i was thinking bouldering? top, rope, lead and auto belay are kinda… meh to me), but the members of the 141 never knew until they saw some viral video about the reader. if u want any info on climbing if you dont know much u can make a post or smth replying to this and i’ll send in another message with whatever u need to know!!!! thank you!!!!!

ᙅᥲᥒ ყoᥙ ⳽ᥱᥱ ຕᥱ ᥙρ ᖾᥱɾᥱ?

Task Force 141 x gn! Reader

Hey! I hope you like this! I didn’t really know how to make it as interesting as possible so I hope you still enjoy this. Tried my best out here💘💘😆

\(◡̈ )/♥︎

You had always been among your friends. The Task Force 141 met you in a bar and from that point on they basically adopted you. An unexpected friend group.

While you weren't officially a part of their team, you had forged a close friendship with many of the members. Your skills on the rock wall were legendary, but the nature of your work and the surrounding it had always kept you humble and quiet about your achievements.

It all began on a typical day at the task force's secure facility. Captain John Price had called in everyone for an important briefing. You sat with Captain Price, Ghost, Gaz, Soap. your eyes focused on the mission details. Your presence, however, had become so routine that no one really questioned it.

The briefing ended, and you exchanged nods and pleasantries with your friends as they geared up for their mission. This was your usual role - offering support, sharing stories, and providing a brief reprieve from the harsh realities of their dangerous work.

But little did you know, the tables were about to turn.

As the team settled into the dimly lit briefing room, Soap, always the one glued to his phone, showed a viral video to the others. "You guys have to check this out," he said, his eyes glued to the screen.

The video started, and it showed you, the mystery climber who had become a sensation in the climbing community. Your impressive bouldering skills were on full display, as you effortlessly conquered one challenging route after another. Your movements were a mesmerizing dance of strength, technique, and agility.

You could feel the tension thickening in the room.

Ghost's eyes widened as he watched, then looked over at you. "Hey, isn't that…?"

Before he could finish, Gaz chimed in, "It is! That's our friend, you y/n. That’s you!"

Everyone in the room was captivated by the video. You were like a.. Ghost , moving gracefully on the rock wall. You for sure made Ghost question himself and over his name. No one had suspected that you were a climbing prodigy. The atmosphere in the room shifted from shock to awe as your skills left the boys speechless.

Price couldn't help but smile. "You never fail to amaze us, do you, y/!n?" he said with a chuckle.

The video continued, showing you giving an interview. The interviewer asked about your inspiration, and you shared your story of growing up in a small town, scaling cliffs and mountains as a child. Your eyes lit up as you spoke about the thrill of facing challenges head-on, your voice filled with a passion that resonated deeply with everyone in the room.

As the video came to an end, Ghost spoke up. "You've been hiding this from us, mate! You're a rock star and never told us?!"

Gaz agreed, grinning. "You need to show us some of those moves sometime."

You blushed, a rare sight for your friends who had never seen you flustered. "I didn't think it was a big deal."

Soap shook his head. "It's a huge deal! You're incredible!"

In the days that followed, your friends couldn't stop talking about your incredible climbing skills. They shared stories of their own adventures with you, and it was as if a new layer had been peeled back to reveal a different side of your life.

One evening, after a mission, you took Gaz and Soap to your favorite local climbing spot. With the cool breeze in your hair, you demonstrated some basic techniques and shared your passion for climbing. As the sun dipped below the horizon, you could see their enthusiasm growing.

Gaz, now harnessed to the rock, looked down at you. "You know, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me after joining the task force."

Soap chimed in, hanging from a challenging route. "Yeah, mate, this is our kind of thrill!"

Over time, the climbing outings became a regular part of your lives outside of the high-stakes missions. Your soldier friends now knew a different side of you – the thrill-seeker who found solace in the heights of the natural world.

Gaz and Soap, improved their climbing skills under your expert guidance. They marveled at the rock face, the trust in the ropes, since they’re still not good enough to do it without ropes like you, and the rush of adrenaline when they reached a challenging summit. It was a stark contrast to the intensity of their day jobs.

One afternoon, as you were all scaling a rugged cliffside, Soap looked down at you and grinned. "You know, you've given us a new way to unwind, something we never knew we needed."

Gaz nodded in agreement. "This is like therapy, but with a better view."

The bond between all of you grew stronger with every climb. Each expedition became a break from the darkness and danger of your profession, a reminder that there was more to life than the battlefield.

But as much as you cherished the moments spent with your friends, you were well aware of the realities you all faced. In your world, danger was never far away, and the missions could turn deadly in an instant.

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mihai-florescu · 3 months

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Can u explain to me the significance of anzu. If u wanna

Signed, someone that only knows of her as the self insert protag and wasn t aware she s somehow very important (i dont go here but i like hearin u talk about it)

Yes! Anzu is a character in her own right with a full backstory that expands beyond enstars actually, in ensemble girls, to the point where it makes me wonder at what point they decided to make enstars to show what she's been up to after leaving kimisaki (the school in engirls. There she is called angie, both angie and anzu are references to the pronounciation of the game titles themselves). She's also the older sister of the protagonist of engirls, a male transfer student from yumenosaki into kimisaki (the plot of engirls takes place in enstars 2 era, so her brother is actually still at yumenosaki during the first year of enstars, he's in the general course though, not the idol one).

The reason Anzu transfered is after a failed revolution she was part of in kimisaki. In that game she is a sort of ghost haunting the narrative, where a lot of characters still mention her (and compare iirc?) to her younger brother. I cant speak much of how this impacts him, ive only read a limited number of engirls stories, mostly ones from before he transferred. Heard the game ends with a timeloop he has to break, so im very curious to one day find a translation for That. So while that's happening over at kimisaki, but let's get back to enstars, where anzu gets another chance at a successful revolution and falls in love with idols in the process. Her presence and trickstars revolution solidifies that things are changing from the war into a hopeful future, the student council arent undefeatable, and there are still new characters that can appear and impact the flow of the story.

When trickstar were broken up by fine she stays and helps in the DDD in a way where, without her, trickstars revolution wouldnt have succeeded. She puts on a mask and joins on stage when the only other member left in the unit was subaru, and the minimum number of people to be qualified to perform is 2. She calls people from her old school in the crowd, amd her brother calls general course students, whose support for her trickstar lead to winning the first live against knights and make way for them to progress to the finals. In the end during the DDD finale it's her vote that makes the difference, going into overtime and making trickstar win. She's a regular person, not a genius, not even an idol, who had impacted the course of events time and time again until the end. She supported Trickstar's revolution, joined them on stage as support, i'd say she is the glue of the unit that helped keep it floating, made it a place to return to. On a grander scale, Anzu is a character who gets a second chance at a successful revolution that ends in happiness, something she had failed at kimisaki. Trickstar are the miracle that changes yumenosaki, but that wouldnt have been possible without anzu's support. Their 5th member.

A critique i see sometimes is that everyone ends up liking her for no reason but...thats not true? Many characters welcome her as a breath of fresh air and a needed new perspective, but others are aprehensive and untrusting in the beginning, it's not like her presence alone magically fixes everything as a deus ex machina or anything, she's actively working hard, to the point where she jeopardizes her own health in the process. And it's also not like she acts the same with all idols either, or doesnt have her own personality and input, she directly impacts their character arcs through her treatment, like in kaoru's case comes to mind first.

This is for ! era at least. I feel more confident talking about that one than !!, where she is part of the P association and experiences hardships and is undermined there, but i am not the person to talk about that as i dont feel like my knowledge of her role there is nearly good enough.

#ask #anon #enstars

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asuka--langley--soryu · 3 years

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If you haven't already, could you expand more on the "Asuka's a lesbian" theory? I've seen people say it and I think it seems reasonable, but I haven't found anyone actually explain their thought process.

calling it a theory makes it seem a little more serious than it is, i think. more or less its just that a lot of asuka’s characterization resonates with the experiences of gay women (which i am using broadly, tho i do specifically think asuka is a lesbian), especially in regards to alienation from womanhood/women and compulsive heterosexuality.

basically, she exhibits literally no genuine affection for men but feels like she has to imitate heterosexuality (ie kissing shinji), she chooses kaji as a man to fixate on bc he is inherently unavailable, rejects all of the boys at her school and leaves her date early bc she can’t simulate interest in them, and mentions a few times how the idea of being in a relationship or having sex with a man disgusts and disturbs her. the only person she is even remotely close to is hikari and, emotionally, really the only person who seems to have an understanding of her and vice versa is rei (who she has a kind of classic baby gay obsession-rivalry thing with, which i will talk about in my eventual asuka/rei post lol). these are all things that mirror the actual experiences of young wlw p closely, which is why hc-ing asuka as a lesbian is popular.

probably this kind of thing is more difficult for non-wlw to understand bc there isnt the sort of obvious gesturing to same sex attraction like w maya or kaworu or w/e. even though, for me, asuka is a much more accurate depiction of my experiences as a lesbian than maya. but if youre not a gay woman youre probably not well versed in their experiences and commonalities beyond like.....being attracted to girls--for a lot of reasons, obvi, one of which being that gay women arent often depicted in realistic ways so like.... how would you know what actions/emotions are signals or flags.

then again, of course, how many ‘true lives of real and nonsexy lesbians’ stories is any given cishet person (and, to a point, non-wlw people in general) really intaking--esp w the goal of gaining this understanding so that you can approach media with an actual metric for judging whether or not a character may be gay without them having to be like ‘i literally love women/men’ (and even then like... look at fucking kaworu). im not kind enough to really give people the benefit of the doubt, i guess, but either way the difficulty in this kind of thing is that it’s all based in reading actions and expressions that feel inherent to the gay experience as therefore representative of gayness. and also being willing to accept the presence of gayness as something not necessitating textual confirmation--which is, for way too many fucking people, where the problem lies.

its a bit of a dead horse but really the idea of like having to prove a sexuality for a character who has no stated sexuality is rooted in the presumption of heterosexuality as not only a neutral category but an inherent one. like, if we are to remove something from the default set there needs to be a given reason and evidence, a detailed claim of divergence, and what counts as acceptable is ever shifting and impossible. there isnt a like....homosexual scientific method or kinsey scale conditional proof system and, even if there was, people probably still wouldn’t believe it.

basically what im trying to say is that if a lot of lesbians say ‘i think this character is a lesbian’ it might be best to just believe them.

#asks #nge #evangelion #asuka langley soryu #neon genesis evangelion #god this got out of hand #but it was between being brief and snippy or extremely longwinded #and yknow where i went #kind of this is a thing that i have thought about forever and ever and so #i did kind of tangent and ramble #chozomechanic #q #this has been a text post #mine

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dream-realm · 4 years

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not to be weird, but increasingly everyone on the left sounds like “capitalist patriarchal colonial etc etc etc ideology forms a limited, necessarily exclusionary conception of humans..biopolitical nature of govts manages all life, decides who lives, dies, etc.,” (idc if im oversimplifying. this is tumblr lol..) describing this genuinely nightmarish picture of the modern world (which i think is in many ways correct). and then the response is, like, massive coercive bureaucracy on a scale never imagined or implemented, benevolent representatives from underrepresented demographics that are bankrolled by special interest groups, legislation and regulation of every single aspect of our lives. its not even just flirting with ideas that will be seized on by bad actors. (of which there are so many, most going completely unnoticed since almost no one pays attention to “bad guys” who arent deemed alt right or in the republican party). the scary part is that they cant even articulate a vision of a better world that doesnt implicate themselves as faceless, lifeless points of data dealt with by some sophisticated system that will somehow run perfectly first try if only the right person ascends to office and/or regulations are put in place. idk how to say it. people want this. it runs so deep, like it follows from the tracts of their brain.

most people would be literally giddy if a coterie of harvard professors of a variety of races and ethnicity successfully carried out a coup on major world govts and announced that, luckily, you never have to do anything again, we will take care of it (: idk how to say this in a way thats sensible, mostly because i havent actually worked it out at any length..its like a stage of human or societal evolution distinct from something in the past. religion is an extremely complicated phenomena, etc. so i hope this isnt read as reducing it. and im not trying to be melodramatic. but when i speak to people and realize that they genuinely cannot comprehend (past belief or anything like it) in a deep way that someone could be religious or believe in god, be sincerely spiritual etc., and basically anything other than some version of Secular Humanism, my blood runs cold and i feel like im in the presence of some version of human that is unrecognizable to certain eyes. its a sense that something is not quite right, but only appears this way every once in a while, since that form is not yet totally predominate but reaching that level. im not trying to be obscurantist. in some way it terrifies me, like uncanny valley

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adventures-with-emma-blog · 7 years

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Brexit Tour: The Summary Part 1 - Overview of Everything

Budget and Costs:

First things first, I saved up plenty of money to do this, more than I actually needed in the end, which was excellent. So it meant i wasnt exactly watching what i was spending - so if you’re looking for advice on keeping costs low, I’m probably not going to offer you much enlightening advice with this section!

In total, over the course of 5 weeks i spent appoximately £1,300, this included: -interrail ticket + eurostar ticket + a few train/bus/tram tickets within the countries i visited -Food and Alcohol (lots and lots of alcohol) -Accommodation -excursions (eg. caves, castles, boat parties, spas etc)

Train Travel:

I really enjoyed inter-railing, i really loved travelling across the land, getting a real sense of the scale of Europe. Not only that but getting a glimpse into other, ore rural parts of the country that you wouldn't necessarily chose to visit. Through farmland, and small non-touristy towns.

The most beautiful journey by far was from Munich, Germany to Ljubljana, Slovenia. It went through the Austrian Alps, snow covered and shining in the glorious sunshine. But I’m assuming it would just as beautiful in the summer this route.

A downside to train travel is that some trains can be delayed, i found myself sat in a station in the freezing cold more that once, but most of the trains did run smoothly. Although, they were pretty quiet (dont know whether its down to it being winter or not but), I got 4 seats and a table to myself on most of the long distance trains (>3 hours). Which did make the whole experience pretty comfortable, much more room than you would get on a plane/bus/car.

Another problem is that some journeys are pretty long (but i guess you could avoid this). I ended up doing 20 hours of train travel within 3 days Prague - Glasgow when heading home. Which was pretty dull and tiring.

A problem i did notice with trains in europe, particularly if you are doing long distance travel between countries like i was, is that on the boards in the station, it doesnt always state every station that the train stops at. Not only this but i ended up on a few trains that part way through the journey the train number would change ( ie. if you were to look it up from one station it would be called something else. for example the IC 211 from munich would be the IC71 from Salzberg << note: not a real example) which was a little confusing. Not only this but some trains actually split into 2 seperate trains midway through the journey - and this wasnt always very clear - particularly if you dont speak the local language, so watch out for that!

Thankfully, I didnt have any problems, and somehow made it smoothly through ever train journey i took - although i did get very confused and stressed at times ( Emma Queen of Trains!)

Accommodation:

I stayed in hostels throughout this trip, ranging from £7pn to £12pn for 8-10 bed dormitory rooms ( well other than the few nights i spent with a family friend). Every hostel i stayed in was clean and fufilled easily my needs of somewhere warm and comfortable to sleep, with hot showers and somewhere comfortable to relax. However it became quickly apparent that some hostels are much better than other for solo travellers. However even when i worked out what i was looking for in a hostel, this wasn’t always possible to get within my price range. I booked my hostels as i went along, so while in one location, i would book my accommodation for the place i was moving to next. This allowed me some flexibility with my travel. Allowed me to change route slightly, or even spend a few days more in a location i was enjoying!

Meeting People:

As a fairly quiet and shy individual this was a part of the trip that i was pretty worried about. Not so much would i meet people to talk to, but would I actually be able to strike up enough conversation for people to want to spend time with me/ do things with me/ have a drink and a laugh with me?

Turns out yes, i am capable of this, and its a nice feeling :)

I met so many amazing people on my trip, a few that stood out in particular and made my trip special, even more amazing, and with their brief presence have made a big impact on my life! I cannot wait to see them all again someday.

But a huuuuuuge part of making these friendships is to stay at a very social hostel. Stay in a dorm room at a hostel with communal areas and preferably one that organises evening activities and you will be thrust into crowds of likeminded travellers looking for people to talk to ( rather than some who arent particularly social that you may be sharing a room with ).

Plans and Timescale:

I am a very organised person, I like to know what im doing in advance, im not very spontaneous, i like having a layed out set of plans to stick to and get me by. This is not possible with travelling. I didnt expect it to be, it wasnt, and y’know what? I dont even care! :) If youre like me and feel the need to organise every moment of your trip, dont get too hung up on details, its much easier just to go with the flow. Plan yourself a rough route like i did, with aims of what you want to see/ where you want to go, and approximately how long for. but do not expect to stick to it exactly. For example, i spent 2 extra days in Budapest that i planned cause i loved the city and the hostel so much. I rerouted Romania entirely due to a fault with my own planning and went to a city i hadn’t even heard of instead! I slept in and caught different trains than planned ( cause i was hungover).

It’s these small details that make the trip more enjoyable and less stressful. Don’t think you have to do everything, see everything, and be busy learning and being cultured every second of the day. It’s not going to happen, and trust me it doesnt even matter. Just being in the hostel lounging about and chatting with fellow travellers and doing nothing productive is an important part of the experience. - You’re never going to have enough energy to go non-stop anyway unless your some sort of machine!

Summary:

Basically, i had the time of my life. I already have several new friends that i can go stay with all over the world. I’ve seen so many beautiful countries that ive never visited before. I have seen awe-inspiring sights. Ate delicious local food. Partied in some of the best bars i’ve ever visited. (Coming soon - hostels i stayed in and my reviews of them - brief run down of the cities i stayed in and what i recommend seeing/ whats not worth seeing/ what i wish i had seen) PS: If youre european and want to visit australia, travel europe in winter - i now have a contact in all the major cities! Aussies everywhere! PPS: Any questions about my trip or my first experiences as a solo traveller, please please please just ask :) Visit my instagram for more trip photos: instagram.com/emmalucyangus

#europe #travel #blog #interrail #eu #train #rail #accommodation #hostel #travellers #solo travel #female #girl #planning #route #budget #cost #overview #review

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katebushwick · 5 years

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The second mode of apprehension, nonauthentic and shocking, is exemplified by a YouTube user with the handle omgtkseth, posting in the comments field of a Getty Museum (2012) film clip that explained the research behind the Gods in Color project. In response to a question from handle MILITARcz about why the statues struck some people as unrealistic or kitschy, omgtkseth wrote: Because of the materials, perhaps. Im [sic] a little familiar with canvas painting, and one notices how certain colors are unachievable depending on your paint type. Perhaps the colors are based on natural paintings made with fruits and flowers of the area. But I agree they arent [sic] very pretty. They are very bright and many colors are mixed. Like a nerdy girl dressing with rainbow leggings and so on. . . . I would have used a soft copper for the scales. Having demonstrated his or her credibility in painting and pigments, omgtkseth focuses on the implausibility of the materials used to produce the Gods in Color statues. Omgtkseth knows that “certain colors are unachievable,” particularly if the colors are derived from plant and other nature-given matter. The statues are also shocking (“arent [sic] very pretty . . . very bright and many colors are mixed”). The painted statues, according to this viewer, are nonauthentic (because the way in which the pigments were produced is suspect) and shocking (garish and too bright). Within the basic modes of apprehension there was a range of opinion about the color, from generally positive through neutral/curious, skeptical/negative, and hostile. The strongest theme to emerge, however, was ambivalence. Many respondents were caught between appreciating the science behind the polychrome and disliking the finished product. This position is especially evident in the comments by readers who selectively endorsed the polychrome—in other words, they liked some of the painted pieces but not all of them. Reader “flapperlife,” writing in an online chatroom about the Gods in Color show, confessed: I think the sculptures showing the human anatomy look better without color. I feel like the color would take away the full effect of the presentation of the body. [T]hat being said, I think some of the other sculptures are equally as lovely with color. The lion sculpture really stood out to me as something that color enhances.12 Flapperlife accepts the color per se but does not think it works on all of the pieces. There are limits, it would seem, to the acceptable reach of colored paints. “Scholars give us antiquity—the colorized version,” went one headline, but the issue was not just that antiquity had been given a splash of paint (Gewertz 2007). The intensity of the color, and its alien presence in cherished aesthetic terrain, proved too much for some. “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong”: Painted Marble The Gods in Color caused a sensation when it toured the United States and Europe.13 The exhibit featured painted casts based on Greek and Roman figures: gods, mythical characters, heroes, statesmen, and ordinary people. The statues provided a stark contrast with popular images of pristinely white, marble classical sculptures (Figure 1).14 The director of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, which hosted Gods in Color in early 2007, summarized his guests’ reactions thus: “Some [visitors] like it, because they did not know [about the color] and it was a discovery. Some are disappointed. [They] have said to me personally, ‘You have completely ruined the image we had of antiquity.’”15 On YouTube, a film clip of Vinzenz Brinkmann demonstrating his UV raking light technique generated this comment from a viewer: “Interesting, but I’m really glad that paint went away over the ages!” (Getty Museum 2012). And a reviewer of the exhibition’s installation at the Sackler Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from late 2007 through early 2008, confessed that although he was fascinated by the objects, “All this color feels wrong, wrong, wrong” (Cook 2007). What were they upset about? We can consider, as a starting point, the portrait of Augustus from Prima Porta (Figure 2). The original statue was discovered in Rome in 1863 near the ruins of a villa associated with Livia, the Emperor Augustus’s wife (Liverani 2004). Scholars identified the statue as a portrait of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, on the basis of stylistic features and iconographic clues, including the Eros and dolphin at his feet (both serving as visual reminders of Augustus’s immortal ancestress Venus) (Fittschen 1991; Hausmann 1981; Schmaltz 1981). The Gods in Color version presents a festively adorned man with bright red lips. The eyes are carefully painted and framed with eyebrows and long eyelashes. Pigment free, the emperor is the model of omnipotence, severity, and divine detachment. Under colored paints, he is simultaneously human and alien, awesome and vulnerable. Each of the pieces in the Gods in Color exhibition was a provocation to received wisdom about the classical aesthetic. Even so, there was something especially jarring about the Prima Porta Augustus. Here was one of the most recognizable images of Western antiquity—the face of the young Empire, harbinger of eternal Rome—utterly transformed (Zanker 1998). As generations of young classical archaeologists have been taught, the Prima Porta Augustus exemplifies the imperator’s masculine virtue through its “neatly arranged hair and with facial features . . . classically calm” (Pollini 2012:175). But the classical calm dissipates beneath the painter’s brush. The red and blue paints on the breastplate turn an arcane set of mythical images into a graphic novel whose characters leap off the surface (on the ambiguity of the meaning of the images, see Squire 2013). According to the team of art historians, classical archaeologists, and chemists who worked on the exhibit, this is how the Prima Porta Augustus originally looked: “Everything irrespective of function was colored in the same lively colors. The sculptor conceived the three dimensional form which he chiseled out of the stone always with a view to the coloring” (Brinkmann 2007:29; see also Brinkmann and Koch-Brinkmann 2010; Kader 2009). Critics, nonetheless, saw red. Scholarly fights over painted marble have a long history (Bradley 2009). In the late eighteenth century, German art historian J. J. Winckelmann popularized the idea that Greek and Roman marble sculptures were intended to be white. Winckelmann linked white marble with purity and natural form, the very definition of beauty in the Enlightenment period. His moralistic teachings on marble statuary found material justification in later scholarship. In ancient Greece and Rome, marble was a luxury material that was expensive and difficult to obtain. Covering white marble sculpture with colorful paints would therefore have been a symbolically destructive act. But even as Winckelmann’s ideas were taking root among European scholars and connoisseurs, contrary evidence mounted. Fresh archaeological discoveries showed that Greek and Roman sculptures, along with temples, had in fact been finished with bright paints.16 By 1835, when the British Museum established a special committee on the question of color in classical sculpture, the debate over painted marble raged across the continent (Jenkins and Middleton 1988).17 At stake was the moral basis not just of classical culture but also of nineteenth-century Europeans’ pretenses to classicizing progress (Hamilakis 2007; Hoock 2010; Rose-Greenland 2013). It is now generally accepted that Greek and Roman marble statues and public buildings were finished in such a way that their surfaces were polychromatic. Scholars interpret this finishing treatment, moreover, as having been integral to the meaning of the objects (Palagia 2006; Walter-Karydi 2007). But while many scholars agree that metal attachments, fabric, floral crowns, and targeted (but limited) paints were used to dramatize the visual impact of the statues and buildings, what remains controversial is the specific idea that marble was painted (Bradley 2009, 2014:189–90). The Gods in Color exhibit revealed the rawness of this controversy. Despite the painstaking efforts of the statues’ makers to support the color reconstruction with scientific and archaeological evidence, they failed to convince their audience to believe what they were seeing. Color as Material At the heart of the Gods in Color project were two tasks: identifying paint traces, or “ghosts,” (Harvard University Art Museums curator Susanne Ebbinghaus, quoted in Reed 2007) on the surface of Greek and Roman marble statues and recreating the original paints using the same ingredients, ratios, tools, and techniques of the ancient ateliers. To achieve these tasks, the men and women involved in the project used sophisticated equipment—a point repeatedly stressed in the Gods in Color catalogue, museum didactic boards, and affiliated scholarly publications. In their essay “On the Reconstruction of Antique Polychromy Techniques,” published in the edited volume that served as a scholarly complement to the exhibition catalogue, Brinkmann and Koch-Brinkmann (2010) wrote, About four years ago, our efforts in this area [color reconstruction] reached a new scientific and technical height: thanks to the non-contact analyses made possible by UV-VIS absorption spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence measurement, our understanding of the pigments has become substantially greater and more specific. . . . We can meanwhile adjust the colourants employed for the reconstruction to correspond quite precisely to those of the antique original. (P. 115) Reproducing the colors quite precisely required a degree of ocular precision of which machines are capable but the human eye is not: Due to the fact that UV-VIS absorption spectroscopy is a physical and optical method of measurement, not only can the respective colourant be identified, but the shade exactly defined in a chromatic diagram. As a result, it is possible to determine the hue independently of the individual sensory impression. (Brinkmann, Koch-Brinkmann, and Piening 2010:200) Accompanying this passage are a series of color photographs showing UV-VIS spectrum readings, chromatic diagrams on the x-y axis, and small piles of granular yellow ochre earths at various stages of shading after being burnt. The scientific work behind the statues appears bulletproof: Machines take the readings, locate the color traces, and guide the process of recreating colorants. “Individual sensory impression” is not up to this task but is in fact something to be overcome by technology. In saying so, the researchers offer a preemptive response to critics: Whatever personal taste might dictate, we know we got the science right. For the Gods in Color statues to be faithful re-creations, one more step was required. After the colors were correctly seen, they had to be correctly made: The preparation of the natural pigments through a process of grinding and washing is the prerequisite for attaining paints of a quality and vividness so great that [the sculptures’ subtle] characteristics are still visible today. Especially in the case of the yellow and red ochres, the preparation requires tremendous effort, since the procedure has to be repeated fifteen to twenty times . . . (Brinkmann and Koch-Brinkmann 2010:126) The researchers avoided modern, synthetic paints to the extent possible and drew attention to their effort to recreate the pigments using original, organic materials. At the Institute for Archaeology at Georg-August University in Göttingen, two glass cases displayed the tools and materials of the pigment re-creation. The accompanying labels named the substances (“azurite,” “ochre”) and their places of origin. The unlabeled tools were meant to speak for themselves: raw-wood pestles and mixers and the finished, ground product in small glass dishes. This arrangement of tools stressed the traditional nature of the practices within the precise techniques of science. From the perspective of the Gods in Color researchers, creating the paints properly was the core achievement because it was the only guarantee for knowing the statues properly. The paints were the material of consequence, the true object of scrutiny through the UV-VIS readings and chemical analysis. Why did viewers fail to notice? Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann blamed what she called “Marmorweiss,” a socially constructed sensibility about marble and how it should look, behave, and be thought about.18 Marmorweiss translates into English as “white marble,” but it can also be a word play on “marble wisdom” or “marble sense.” For centuries, marble statues were adorned with paint, jewelry, metal attachments, floral garlands, and clothing. The unpainted version that we know today is an accident of entropy legitimated by Western civic values. With their brightly painted surfaces, the Gods in Color statues challenged this accomplishment. The punch line was that the statues were made of plaster, not marble. Plaster casts of marble statues have been made and displayed for centuries. They allow lifelike replicas to travel widely for study and artistic experimentation (Frederiksen and Marchand 2010). The Gods in Color scientists bracketed the plaster and prioritized the pigments, imagining the end products as historically accurate study pieces. Skeptics, on the other hand, struggled to decouple color from material. Marble Sense and the Impact of Time Why is a particular image of antiquity so important to us—in this case, the one that centers on white marble? There are two aspects to this question. One concerns the lionization of select historical moments. A robust scholarly literature argues that specific events or epochs are narrativized and sometimes romanticized to explain contemporary social structures and project for ourselves an edifying imagined past (Anderson [1983] 1991; Goody 2006; Halbwachs [1950] 1980; Sewell 1996). The second aspect of the question concerns the evolution of the white marble statue as the most visible and iconic symbol of Western civilization. That aspect has received less scholarly attention. Answering it, I argue, begins with material historiography. Statues of people and gods were an everyday sight in ancient Greece and Rome. Their abundance prompted ancient writers to describe statues as the “other population” of Greece and Rome.19 More than mere backdrop elements, statues had important social functions. Sculpted gods directed worship in temples and formed the centerpiece of religious processions. Commemorative statues recalled the deeds of war heroes, philosophers, statesmen, and civic benefactors. Imperial portraits served as a constant reminder of the emperor’s authority. They were, in short, an active, vibrant component of social life. Marble is an ideal material for statue carving. Although statues had long been made from a range of materials (wood, bronze, limestone, and terracotta), by the first century ad, marble had become “the great prestige building material of its time” (Ward-Perkins 1992:23). Materially, marble is softer and less friable than limestone and tufa, making marble amenable to carving cascades of drapery folds and curly hair. Marble is also luminous, a product of its crystalline calcium carbonate content. The crystalline calcium is what gives the surface a glow and makes the sculpture seem alive. With this particular combination of physical and visual qualities, marble was used to create the most important, expensive, and elite statues, reliefs, and monuments. Its preeminence is summed up in the emperor Augustus’s claim that he found Rome a city made of common bricks (latericius) and left it, at his death, a city of marble.20 Augustus granted access to the vast network of imperial marble quarries cautiously and with nepotistic priorities. This example set the pattern for subsequent emperors who treated marble as a prized resource available only through the beneficence of the imperator (Fant 1988:150). The power of marble lay not just in what it stood for (wealth) but also in what it could do materially. The literary record provides rich examples of intense encounters between fleshand-blood people and their marble counterparts. Pliny, the Roman historian, describes the destruction of the late emperor Domitian’s portrait statues: [Domitian’s] countless golden statues, in a heap of rubble and ruin, were offered as fitting sacrifice to the public joy. It was a delight to smash those arrogant faces to pieces in the dust, to threaten them with the sword, and savagely attack them with axes, as if blood and pain would follow every single blow. (Pliny, Panegyricus 52.4–5. Reprinted and translated in Varner 2004:112–3) The mutilation of the statues, writes Varner, “represents the collective destruction of the emperor himself in effigy” (Varner 2004:113). What brought the statues to life, and what led to their death, was color. Pliny describes Domitian’s statues as golden (aureae), meaning they were carved in marble and covered with a thin layer of gold leaf. Pliny’s passage allows us to imagine the contrasting visual impact of the statues as they gleamed in the hot, bright Mediterranean sun, with the charred gold leaf scorching the face in the fire. By Pliny’s time, white marble stood for purity, homogeneity, excellence, and authenticity. These qualities connected directly with the mos maiorum, the mores of the ancestors, which served as the moral absolute among the Romans (Jockey 2013:77). Subsequent imperial iconography alternated colors and whiteness to signal different aspects of the subject (Bradley 2009). But a new moral weight was assigned to white marble. As painted marble statues lost their color due to natural processes of fading, unpainted marble became the default material state. Natural fading does not produce stark-white surfaces. It produces, rather, dulled shades of the original hues. For this reason, the project of whitening developed its own expertise—scrubbing away the surface impurities, discrediting textual evidence of painted marble, and producing replica study casts using white plaster. The work of lightening and whitening was naturalized, and the whiteness of classical marble statues became a convenient fact for a range of nineteenth-century scholarly arguments. Whiteness signaled humanism, civilizational progress, and moral purity (McClintock 1995). Twentieth-century Color Science and the Correct Polychrome The link between color and cultural values was systematized in early twentieth-century color theory. The most prominent of the American color systems, the one founded by Albert Henry Munsell (1858–1918), pushed beyond the latent chromophobia of classicizing whiteness. On the contrary, Munsellians believed that the right color palette—that is, the careful arrangement of colors within a balanced system—could be beneficial to individual health and social welfare. For example, Munsell urged that “beginners,” including children, should avoid viewing “strong color” because “extreme red, yellow, and blue are discordant. (They ‘shriek’ and ‘swear.’)” (Rossi 2011:4, quoting Munsell 1906). The potential of color to modify group behavior appealed to a broad set of actors in the penal system, government, and private industry, and the Munsell system became a near-ubiquitous technology for standardizing color. In a Munsellian system, colors occurring in nature are inherently correct because perfectly balanced but manufactured colors are wrong for being used in unbalanced combinations and proportions. The same principle applies to Greek and Roman art, which provided a useful teaching example for Munsellian theory since Greek and Roman art predated synthetic, chemical-based dyes and paints. A 1924 article in Color News, an official publication of the Munsell Research Laboratory, accepted that classical sculpture was polychrome: . . . sculptured figures were very generally painted. There are only a few traces of colored pigment found today on any Greek sculpture, but it seems likely that color generally appeared in the hair, the eyes, borders and costumes, and other decorations. (Nickerson 1924:12)21 The Romans used colorful paints, too, and exceeded the ornamental limits of that medium by adding another layer of visual emphasis: Painting was evidently not ornamental enough, for they decorated their sculpture with heavier, more impressive and ornate metal work. (Nickerson 1924:14) The core issue in Munsellian color systems was not whiteness against color but rather natural subtlety against gaudy excess; the high points of ancient art are those moments when artists achieved balance within an established “hue circuit.” The proper balance of “warm” and “cool” within a circuit generated colors pleasing to viewers. In early Greek art, for example, warm reds and yellows were balanced with cool blues and greens, “resulting in a more neutral effect” (Nickerson 1924:5). Neutrality, nuance, and harmony—the very features that Munsellian scientists advocated over modern synthetic palettes—were said to be the hallmarks of Greek painting. Where evidence pointed to bright and bold colors, as in the Parthenon in Athens, the Color News writer denies that the paints were meant to be seen in any detail: “Used as it was, in the upper part of the structure, where one had to look at it from a distance, the effect might be very pleasing. Seen nearer, it might seem rather crude to users of more subtle color” (Nickerson 1924:11). In Roman architecture, by contrast, colorful paints were restricted to the private interior of temples and homes. The public palette was “nearly neutral in color” and “austere”—a decision supposedly explained by the social character of the Roman nation (Nickerson 1924:14). Color, according to Munsellian thought, is a powerful social element, and its best expression is found in balanced systems of hues and tones. No color is “wrong, wrong, wrong” on the face of it; rather, its associated colors give it meaning and logic. The Gods in Color scholars continued this tradition by attempting to correct how we perceive color. Introducing “colorized” antiquity via sculpture, they wanted viewers to accept the colors as part of a historically accurate system of pigments and material practices. Despite their airtight scientific case, the Gods in Color researchers could not dislodge cherished ideas about the culture of antiquity. In that imagined antiquity, the emperor’s new (Technicolor) clothes are a fantasy. “Kitsch”: Scholarly Criticisms I asked Koch-Brinkmann whether, among the negative responses to the exhibit, there was one particular line of criticism that was surprising. Yes, she said, the allegation that our work is ungrounded. Because, of course there were people who just didn’t understand what we were doing and who were never going to accept paint on the statues, but [specific scholars] criticized our method of paint reconstruction. . . . They could not outright deny that [paint] was there. But they hate that we made them. (Interview in Frankfurt, Germany, June 27, 2011) This line of criticism finds its full expression in a review of the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, published by German classical archaeologist Bernhard Schmaltz. He criticized Brinkmann and Koch-Brinkmann for allowing their imaginations to intrude on rigorous application of their scientific approach (Schmaltz 2005). The crux of the problem, Schmaltz argued, was the researchers’ selective use of evidence. In his discussion of the skin color of the painted statues, for example, he insists that the selected specimens do not present the solid case that Brinkmann and his colleagues want them to. Schmaltz acknowledges that the skin portions of the original sculpture were probably altered in some way to appear lifelike. The question, however, is whether paint was used to achieve this effect and, if so, with what intensity. Doubting the representativeness of the evidence as presented in the catalogue, Schmaltz wrote: Only three examples in the catalogue are considered on their own [the rest are collapsed into groups], and in two of those cases B[rinkmann] wrongly believes that a silver skin finish is present. . . . The examples are not even representative of the range of remaining marble sculpture, as it is for example at the Acropolis. (Schmaltz 2005:26) Citing the Acropolis as a counterexample draws pointed attention to the failings of Brinkmann’s team to look carefully even at the obvious evidence; ancient sculptural evidence does not come more visible or significant than that. Further, The examples (“S.44”) for painted skin from large sculptural pieces are remarkably uneven (bemerkenswert disparat) yet for B. they are completely valid. It is completely questionable why B. didn’t undertake a systematic look at his own catalogue since the whole point to the project is to give a full look at the early classical sculptural evidence. It is a serious omission! (ein schwerwiegendes Versäumnis!) (Schmaltz 2005:26) The problem is not just that the polychrome researchers cherry-picked their evidence or overlooked other cases; according to Schmaltz, they were overly bold with the paints. Even if the scientific instruments were correct in identifying traces of pigment, Schmaltz averred, the scholars failed to provide cultural justification for their particular painted reconstructions. The works were out of step with their imagined Zeitstellung, or time period (Schmaltz 2005:31). The Gods in Color researchers had prepared themselves for skepticism. In the official catalogue, Brinkmann predicted, “This project will be reproached with having ventured into the realm of fantasy”; and, further, “Responses such as ‘primitive’ or ‘kitsch’ will be heard, but this first shock has to be overcome” (Brinkmann 2007:27). Brinkmann and his colleagues remained confident that the weight of scientific evidence behind their project would overcome prejudicial viewing by helping audience members to “learn afresh to accept the coloring of statues as an art form. . . . Twenty years of research, the last ten of them with the aid of color reconstructions, were just long enough for me to master this process” (Brinkmann 2007:27). The ontological basis of Schmaltz’s criticism, however, was essentially cultural rather than epistemic. What Schmaltz did was shift the terrain from materials science—terrain on which the Gods in Color scientists were strong—to cultural history, which was more open to interpretation. He was prepared to accept polychrome statuary to an extent. But he was unconvinced of these specific reconstructions in the cultural matrix of imagined Greco-Roman antiquity. There was something about the painted casts themselves that was perceived as excessive. That same doubt was echoed by Ebbinghaus, albeit in a more positive light: “There is a big difference between this abstract notion [polychrome sculpture] and actually attempting to imagine what the sculptures might have looked like” (Reed 2007). Imagining painted statues was fine; making them into material objects was not, because materialization imposed particular colors on the imaginary landscape. To suggest that the painted statues were illogical in their Zeitstellung is to insist that they do not have a legitimate place in that imaginary landscape and, by extension, in antiquity itself. The Gods in Color scholars sketched a picture of antiquity with ancient texts and archaeological evidence. Circumlitio (Brinkmann, Primavesi, and Hollein 2010), for example, includes an image of a Pompeian wall painting showing a statue of Artemis on a base, brightly colored with yellow, purple, turquoise, and gold paints from head to toe (Figure 3). In the museum guide and on exhibition didactic boards, readers were told of an “abundance of reference to Antique statuary polychromy” (Brinkmann, 2010:15). But the same information was freighted with cautionary notes: Pompeian wall paintings and other such images cannot be treated as records of true depictions of now-missing artworks, for example, and there is the open question of why so many ancient paintings present monochrome, rather than polychrome, statues. The Gods in Color scientists were appropriately circumspect, engaging in the correct form of scholarly dialogue. For Schmaltz and for nonspecialist viewers, however, what was missing was a clear picture of what all of these colored statues meant or did in antiquity. Did those bright reds and blues seem as bold to the ancient viewers as they do to us? Can the scientists’ “paint ghosts” sustain these shocking reproductions?22 And if Augustus really wore such gaudy clothes, does this require revising his historical image? Zeitstellung is not a simple matter of having the right evidence. It is also a matter of how that evidence is presented, particularly if it conflicts with a collectively held image of history. This implies, further, that the careful efforts of the Gods in Color team were irrelevant beyond the simple effect of thrilling the modern museum audience. While the technical goals of the Gods in Color project were to master the observation and re-creation of pigments, the broader epistemic aim was to rethink the sociocultural landscape of antiquity by imagining a riot of colors among the statues. For Schmaltz, the question of kitsch was actually less important than that of fit. A failed Zeitstellung suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the world that the painted statues were meant to recreate. The achievement of authentic paints and pigments could not overcome that misunderstanding. Extending Schmaltz’s critique beyond the specific question of evidentiary choices, the problem with the Gods in Color statues is that they are only accurate in a particular moment in ancient history—and not necessarily the one we care most about. They are accurate, moreover, in a particular contemporary moment, as the product of current scientific techniques, pigment production, and ways of seeing. Color, intended by the scientists as an empirically grounded historical corrective, became instead an unwanted aesthetic intervention. The colors made plain the fault line between technical accuracy and cultural validity. This brings us to an apparent confirmation of Fleck’s maxim that “only that which is true to culture is true to nature” (Fleck [1935] 1979:35). Discussion and Conclusion Color is grounded in deep cultural meaning. Anthropologist Victor Turner reminds us that color use is socially patterned and reflects basic life-and-death processes and emotions (Turner 1967:88–9). My discussion has highlighted one aspect of color, namely its vulnerability to competing, socially grounded systems of perception. The important point for a sociological theory of color is that even when people are past the “purity” threshold—in this case, their acceptance of a (shocking) new understanding of classical marble statues—there is another set of constraints operating on the tone and hue of the colors. As my data demonstrate, perception is constrained by collective ideas as well as intellectual training. In the Gods in Color case, the salient perceptual systems can be distinguished from each other as empirical and cultural. Both of them sought to make definitive meaning of color by interpreting its application to reworked classical pieces. The Gods in Color show was no ordinary curatorial project. It was an assertion of the central role of science in revealing historical and aesthetic truth. In an age in which science and technology hold sway over many people’s hopes for longevity and powerfully shape a vision of the future, the Gods in Color show suggested that technologically grounded empiricism is needed, too, to correct our vision of the past. The problem for the exhibition’s creators was that the statues had been overhauled to the point where they were no longer recognizable as historically authentic. They were, instead, hybrid creatures straddling Rose-Greenland 99 science and art, struggling to gain credibility (Gieryn 1999). Viewers accepted the basic idea of polychrome sculpture but were turned off by the specific colors used. The colors were too bold. Bright colors and bold color patterns may have a charming ethnic romanticism in Western fashion practice, but they signify persons and practices as nonwhite, socially transgressive, and Other.23 What the Gods in Color viewers seemed to want from their statues was classical authenticity, which is the product of acquired sense and collective wisdom rather than historically or chemically precise renditions. Authenticity, I have argued, operates on two levels. First, from the material point of view, there is the issue of historically accurate ingredients made to produce the pigments. Second, from the point of view of reception, there is the issue of cultural plausibility. Authenticity, in sum, is an outcome of our own experiences and socially cultivated understandings. It is not interchangeable with accuracy. What the case presents is a conflict between scientific and cultural authority mediated at the level of sensory perception and made visible through the addition of color. These two forms of knowledge, the scientific and the cultural, have no inherent relationship. They may be cooperative, as when the rules of science and the frisson of cultural creativity combine to produce high-end modernist cuisine (Borkenhagen 2015; Lane 2014), or, as the present case demonstrates, they may be in conflict. The nature of their relationship varies because science itself can be used in the name of tradition and authenticity (e.g., conserving ancient objects by slowing their rate of decay) or innovation (e.g., remaking the same objects to the way they “really” once were). I have argued that a sociological theory of color must engage with materiality as a multifaceted phenomenon. In the present case, the materiality is two-fold: the substance of the color itself (plants, pigments, chemicals, dyes) and the object to which the color was applied. Each of these elements has meaning and is open to contestations over credibility and meaning. “Marble sense” (Marmorweiss), Koch-Brinkmann’s term for a shared disposition toward marble and its appropriate uses, highlights the importance of material sense more generally. Marmorweiss is rooted in centuries-long processes of natural material decomposition and change as well as social forces of historical mythologizing, institutionalized aesthetics, and conflation of material, color, and norms. With any given cultural object there are several materials at play, and each material is differentially visible and significant according to audience, context, subject matter, and the qualities of the material. Just as materiality is a moving target, so is the setting in which the object is received and perceived (on socially shaped perception of time and symbols, see Zerubavel 1997). Where do we go from here? I suggest two research directions that have potential to strengthen and extend sociological theorizing with color. The first concerns the intersection of color perception and time. Every restored historical object has, simultaneously, two temporal dispositions: past and future. The (newly) painted (ancient) statue, as I have tried to demonstrate, is one object through which the tension between these dispositions came out particularly strongly. The painted statues were an affront to temporality because the rules of Western classicism were changed halfway through the game, without warning or explanation. Taste is a factor here, to be sure, since the high modernism currently in vogue is clean and tends not to be polychromatic (or, when polychrome is called for, it is used judiciously against a monochromatic background). But taste is only part of the explanation. The rules of tasteful erudition clashed with the rules of good science. Where ordinary museumgoers and classics fans saw shocking reproductions of white originals, the Gods in Color researchers looked at white statues and saw a massive historical error. The emotional aspect of this tension—the sense of losing or gaining control over a cherished mental image of a fetishized historical period—merits further development, empirically and theoretically. 100 Sociological Theory 34(2) As a second contribution, the paper calls for renewed thinking about what aesthetic knowledge is and how it operates (Chong 2013; Shapin 2012). New technological tools have opened the door to previously unimaginable feats in reconstruction and conservation work. These achievements pose difficult questions for aesthetic knowledge, primarily because people generally do not like to be told that their admiration for an artwork or building is misplaced because the artwork or building is technically false. When the Sistine Chapel paintings were restored in the 1990s, for example, some art historians severely criticized the restored versions for being garish and distracting (Beck and Daley 1995). The newly “revealed” hues were not, in short, what they preferred to associate with one of the crowning works of the Renaissance. Sociologists are beginning to think more systematically about how aesthetic knowledge is codified, imbued with authority, and negotiated. Continuing this line of enquiry is essential for claiming aesthetic knowledge as a patterned and observable facet of social life.

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adambstingus · 5 years

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The NFL’s New VR Highlights Take Football to a Whole New Level

Deep in the second quarter of the New York Giants’ win over the Chicago Bears on November 20, Giants quarterback Eli Manning slunga short pass to running back Rashard Jennings, who was forced out of bounds at the 28 after a five-yard gain. Nothing about the play, which lasted all of six seconds, stood out as particularly noteworthy. Except for one thing: Safety Deon Bush and linebacker Danny Trevathan shoved Jennings out of bounds right in front of NextVRs bug-eyed sideline camera. Watching the play on a VR headset made you instinctively want to get out of the way. The “you-are-there” sensation was strong.

NextVR is all but ready to flip the switch on live football.

OK, time out. You’re rolling your eyes, with good reason. Video on aVR headset is usually pretty disappointing. The novelty ofwatching something from a cool virtual vantage pointerodes quickly. There’s a screen door effect when seeing pixels on a magnified screen, shatteringthe illusion of being there. The content typically lacks narrative, offering nothing to direct your attention or provide urgency or drama.

But NextVR’s remarkable work with the NFL and the NBA provides a virtual experience that is far more engaging and dramatic. The slick highlights packages they produce for the NFL are released after the games, but NextVR is uniquely equipped to do live VR video. The company uses the same crew, gear, and processes to broadcast one live NBA game each week. They useeight camera rigs, hopbetween camera angles, and include onscreen graphics and play-by-play announcers.

We aren’t talking 360 video, either. There’s no confusion about where to look, as NextVRs rigs use a 180-degree field of view to record only the action in front of them. The hardware is more 3-D camera than VR camera, with processing tricks that add depth and boost the sense ofrealism. Each double-barrel RED rig captures 6K video for each eye. That’s tens of millions more pixels than any headset can display now, but NextVR wants to future-proof its content.

The result represents the dawn of a new kind of VR video, an experience that truly combines the best parts of watching a game on TV and being in the stadium.

Monster Truck

Tim Moynihan

The on-field cameras each use a pair of super wide-angle 8mm lenses to send two fisheye views of the action to the production truck, where the producers watch it on the monitors. You’ll find several Gear VR headsets in the truck, but no one is wearing them during a game. They’re there just so the crew and on-air talent can give the NFL VR experience a spin before blasting it out to the masses later on.With the NBA, it just goes out live,” Earl says.

The barrier to live NFL coverage goes beyond inking deals. The execution is already as polished as anything you’ll see on TV, but NextVR is still feeling its way through some details of shooting sports. Something as simple as panning is a no-no, because it may make peoplesick. Zooming is also off-limits, as it chops off the field of view. Both limitations make it tough to capture fast breaks in the NBA and long bombs in the NFL. When switching between cameras, NextVR producers favor a slow fade between angles, often when the action slows down.

The company has optimized its NFL field coverage by mountingcameras under each crossbar, placing manned cameras on the sideline of each end zone, and having four camera operatorsroam the sidelines. The setup favors action in the red zone overplays between the 30s, where each team has its bench. “The hard part about doing football is that with the 8mm cameras, you need the action to come to you,” Earl says. It’s a bit easier with basketball, where most of the action happens in front of the NextVR camera under each hoop. Anything that happens, we have a great angle of it,” he says.

That said, NextVR is all but ready to flip the switch on live football. The crew essentially produces complete games already, they just don’t broadcast them.The reason we do the NFL highlights the way we do it is because we want it to be exactly the same, says VP of content Danny Keens. We dont want there to be any loss of quality, any loss of resolution, any of that stuff. Itd be easier to just piece that show together and record it bit by bit. But we go start to finish and do live graphics and replays in real-time.

3D + VR = OMFG

VR is only now moving into the mainstream, but NextVR has been at it for two years. What started as a simple one-camera setup at midcourt during an exhibition game evolved into the current multi-camera setup with all the fixins. Earlier thisyear, NextVR announced it would carrylive NBA gameseach Tuesday as part of NBA League Pass. It marked a huge step forward for virtual reality.

For the first time ever, we announced a production schedule, says company CEO Dave Cole. We had more than 500 hours of live VR production under our belt before the NBA deal, but they were all one-off productions. Thats not the type of thing you can get viewers to schedule. I liken it to going to Best Buy and buying a television and the salesperson saying, ‘Well, theres probably going to be a broadcaster for this device someday.

NextVR’s secret sauce is its3-D effects, which date toits origin in 2009 developing 3-D television transmission tech. The company’s video-compression technology shrinks files by removing redundancies between each rig’sleft camera and right camera. Because that process involves detecting the edges of objects in a scene, the same technology can create wireframe replicas of everything the camerasshoot. When the video is rendered in a VR headset, it overlays stereoscopic video on top of those wireframes, creating the illusion of volume. It’s a mix of video and video-game tech.

It sends a hugely impactful message to your brain that youre actually in this environment, Cole says. Right now, the mesh, the number of vertices in the wireframe is quite low. In the next generation camera, which is rolling out in the middle of the season for the NBA, we are quadrupling the resolution of that mesh. That sense of presence is what were amping up.

Hacking Your Memory

NextVR outpaces the VR competition with the quality of its tech and scale of its deals, but it’s already eager to refine the experience. We will have done our job right when people cant remember whether they actually went to the game or watched it on NextVR, Cole says. I think thats an achievable goal.

Crazy as it sounds, that actually could be an achievable goal. At least in part. My answer to whether or not that could be possible is … sort of, says Julia Shaw, a memory expert, criminal psychologist, and author ofThe Memory Illusion. Shaw hasn’t studiedVR’s effect on memory, but she has successfully implanted false memories into the brains of test subjects.Because our memories are unreliable, convincing VR experiences could fool our brains. But only to an extent.

“Reality is multi-sensory,” she says. “When youre looking at something, no matter how high-def it is, if you dont have things like proprioception, your sense of space, you dont have smells, you dont have taste, you dont have temperature. These are things that we generally rely upon as markers to let us know weve experienced something instead of just imagined it.

So if Cole is serious about taking NextVR to that level, he’ll have to figure out how to infuse the experience with a lot more sensory input. Things like smart thermostats synced to the action and stadium-smell simulators.

VRs Biggest Challenges

NextVR has some more important technical hurdles to clear first, but they likely won’t be barriers for long. You can only watch its programming on the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream, but Cole hints you’ll see NextVR on PlayStation VR soon.1 And NextVR is talking with other sports leagues and entertainment companies about getting more content in the pipeline. Cole says 4k-capable phones will make the viewing experience that much better within the next year, and 5G connectivity will make accessing content easier on mobile devices.

NextVR

All of this begs the obvious question: Willviewers embraceVR as a first screen option for sports? Already, watching a game on NextVR is a better eyeball experience than watching it on TV. But here’s the thing: VR is a solitary pursuit, one that requires clamping a headset on. Watching sports is a social endeavor, one that revolves as much around the camaraderie of the experience as it does the game itself.

So there are compelling reasons to strap on a VR headset to watch a game, but it’ll likely only happen if you’re home alone. Duncan Stewart, director of technology research for Deloitte Canada, says the solitary viewing experience is just one mainstream adoption barrier. According to his research, a few trends are shaking out in these pioneer days of VR: The medium still appeals primarily to males, hard-core gamers, and those with deep pockets. Deloitte’s global surveys show that more than 95 percent of people dont own a VR device and arent interested in buying one.

“There are indeed some people who are interested enough in the VR perspective to watch sports and wear a device on their head that blocks out their wife or husband, kids, parents, friends, pets and smartphone for hours at a time,” Stewart says. “But not many.”

There are other impediments, not the least of which is VR’sillusion of immersion is shattered every time you need to use the bathroom or grab a snack. And then there’s the simple fact that watching a game isn’t as simple as flipping on the TV, popping open a beer, and flopping down on the couch. You’ve gotta hook up the gear, launch the app, and find the content. NextVR’s incredible videos may represent the future of VR, but sports fans may determine the future of NextVR.

1UPDATE 12/12/2016 at 5 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include information about NextVR’s recent launch on Google Daydream VR.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-nfls-new-vr-highlights-take-football-to-a-whole-new-level/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182945578062

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allofbeercom · 5 years

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The NFL’s New VR Highlights Take Football to a Whole New Level

NextVR is all but ready to flip the switch on live football.

The result represents the dawn of a new kind of VR video, an experience that truly combines the best parts of watching a game on TV and being in the stadium.

Monster Truck

Tim Moynihan

3D + VR = OMFG

Hacking Your Memory

VRs Biggest Challenges

NextVR

1UPDATE 12/12/2016 at 5 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include information about NextVR’s recent launch on Google Daydream VR.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-nfls-new-vr-highlights-take-football-to-a-whole-new-level/

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robertwardkinggoddard · 7 years

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from Robert Ward kinggoddard http://kinggoddard.com/in-the-event-that-you-and-your-expert-arent-in-an-identical-page-with-respect-to-such-attributes/

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