Author: evangelia baka

Consider the (now deleted) tweet by The New York Times: “Obama offered balm. Trump drops verbal bombs. But both were accused, in a polarized country, of making racial tensions worse.” Consider this a textbook case of false equivalency in mainstream media: two arguments presented together, as equals, when, in fact, they are not. Then, there’s President Trump and his use of mobile keyboards — the Twitter megaphone that empowers, without distinction between public consensus and fringe babble. There are polls telling us public confidence in the actions of U.S. Congress flounders in the single digits, and under these unfiltered information-delivery...

Long before face filters and dancing hot dogs could alter the way we see the world and ourselves, there was already a group of people experimenting with the notion of the “real”: surrealist artists. In recent years, a number of museums, artists, and institutions have created experiences that combine art with digital supplements, augmented reality, or virtual reality. One such project comes from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), as part of its late career retrospective of surrealist René Magritte: The Fifth Season. SFMOMA commissioned the creative agency frog design for the project, asking them for an interactive technology integration that would build upon, not...

    Gamescom’s taking place in Germany this week, and both Brad Chacos and I are over here to cover it—and, of course, to cover Nvidia’s new 20-series graphics cards. But while Brad was busy with that on Monday, I had the day free to look around Cologne. I did the usual tourist rounds, saw the cathedral, looked at the old Roman walls. As I was panning across Google Maps, though, I spotted something unique: “TimeRide VR.” Of course I went. Never too late I’ve written quite a bit about virtual reality and tourism, but usually from the confines of my own...

Tencent endeavors to safeguard heritage and relics by utilizing modern methods, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality  Li Xi, a 21-year-old college student from Beijing, had always dreamed of spending more time in the Mogao Grottoes, also known as the Thousand Buddha Caves, in Dunhuang, Northwest China’s Gansu province, to study the rich collection of ancient paintings housed there. Although Li had been there several times, there were several obstacles that prevented her from going more often. In addition to constraints on money and time, there was also the question of getting access to the huge collection of paintings,...