52 Card Draw

Fifty-two cards lay on a table, each with their own unique symbol. At plain sight, these cards are just black and white, but when held up to the camera at the exhibit, these cards show scenes from the movie, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".

Alan Rhodes, Professor in the School of Film and Animation, has been working at RIT and the Future Cinema Lab in Toronto for a year to expand this new technology. Rhodes has put augmented reality tags on these cards, which are recognized by the computer and show scenes. It is even possible to arrange these cards in order and watch a western fight scene unfold.

“It’s like recognizing faces, except a lot easier for the computer,” describes Rhodes, explaining how the computer associates the tags on the cards and turns them into scenes on a screen.

Rhodes says that there are even 3-D possibilities when it comes to augmented reality identifiers. You would be able to hold a card up to a camera and play with a 3D image on-screen, just like you would move something on-screen with a mouse. This technology, however unfortunate, will not be coming out anytime soon. For now, Rhodes believes that there is more of a novelty and advertising use for it.

“A company can put one of these tags in a newspaper, a person can go home and hold it up to their computer camera and see an image on-screen, like newspaper magic.”

Rhodes' next project is to set up the cards so that a film can be watched on a deck of cards. Ante up and enjoy.