Nowadays, highly-detailed animations of live-actor performances are increasingly easier to acquire and 3D Video has reached considerable attentions in visual media production. In this book, we address the problem of extracting or acquiring and then reusing non-rigid parametrization for video-based animations. At first sight, a crucial challenge is to reproduce plausible boneless deformations while preserving global and local captured properties of dynamic surfaces with a limited number of controllable, flexible and reusable parameters. To solve this challenge, we directly rely on a skin-detached dimension reduction thanks to the well-known cage-based paradigm. First, we achieve Scalable Inverse Cage-based Modeling by transposing the inverse kinematics paradigm on surfaces. Thus, we introduce a cage inversion process with user-specified screen-space constraints. Secondly, we convert non-rigid animated surfaces into a sequence of optimal cage parameters via Cage-based Animation Conversion. Building upon this reskinning procedure, we also develop a well-formed Animation Cartoonization algorithm for multi-view data in term of cage-based surface exaggeration and video-based appearance stylization. Thirdly, motivated by the relaxation of prior knowledge on the data, we propose a promising unsupervised approach to perform Iterative Cage-based Geometric Registration. This novel registration scheme deals with reconstructed target point clouds obtained from multi-view video recording, in conjunction with a static and wrinkled template mesh. Above all, we demonstrate the strength of cage-based subspaces in order to reparametrize highly non-rigid dynamic surfaces, without the need of secondary deformations. To the best of our knowledge this book opens the field of Cage-based Performance Capture.

"You might have trouble imagining life without your social media accounts, but virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier insists that we're better off without them. In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms"--

A man becomes entangled in a dangerous web of death and deceit in this “hallmark of classic French noir” set in 1960s Paris (The Guardian) Trouble is the last thing Albert needs. Traveling back to his childhood home on Christmas Eve to mourn his mother’s death, he finds the loneliness and nostalgia of his Parisian quartier unbearable. Until, that evening, he encounters a beautiful, seemingly innocent woman at a brasserie, and his spirits are lifted. Still, something about the woman disturbs him. Where is the father of her child? And what are those two red stains on her sleeve? When she invites him back to her apartment, Albert thinks he’s in luck. But a monstrous scene awaits them, and he finds himself lured into the darkness against his better judgment. Unravelling like a paranoid nightmare, Bird in a Cage melds existentialist drama with thrilling noir to tell the story of a man trapped in a prison of his own making.

In the mid-1950s, legendary avant-garde composer John Cage and artist Lois Long created a truly marvelous object. Part artist's book, part cookbook, and part children's book, Mud Book is a spirited, if not satirical, take on almost every child's first attempt at cooking and making. Through the humble mud pie—add dirt and water!—Cage and Long encourage children to explore their imagination and to get their hands dirty, and they offer this warning: "Mud pies are to make and look at, not to eat." A unique hybrid of art book, unconventional cookbook, and inspiration for young makers, this new edition of Mud Book will delight children and parents alike, and makes a charming gift for all ages.

The first instalment in the gripping supernatural thriller series from international bestselling author, Jodi Taylor. 'I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am.' Elizabeth Cage is a child when she discovers that there are things in this world that only she can see. But she doesn't want to see them and she definitely doesn't want them to see her. What is a curse to Elizabeth is a gift to others - a very valuable gift they want to control. When her husband dies, Elizabeth's world descends into a nightmare. But as she tries to piece her life back together, she discovers that not everything is as it seems. Alone in a strange and frightening world, she's a vulnerable target to forces beyond her control. And she knows that she can't trust anyone... White Silence is a twisty supernatural thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat. Readers love Jodi Taylor: 'Jodi Taylor does brilliant, strong female heroes, and Elizabeth follows on from Max in the St Mary's series' 'I look forward to another adventure with this quirky and perfectly matched pair' 'Hold on to your seat and close your eyes if you dare!' 'Gripping and full of curious plot turns' 'An on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller where no assumptions can be made'

Over the course of fifteen years, Nicholas Zurbrugg interviewed the avant-garde poets, filmmakers, dancers, writers, composers, and performance artists who were defying tradition, crossing genres, and forever changing how art would be created, performed, and interpreted. These conversations with thirty-one of the leading multimedia artists in the United States now form a comprehensive record, from the insiders' perspectives, of the most vital component of the postmodern American art world. Passionate about postmodernism and committed to innovative creativity, Zurbrugg asks these artists probing and insightful questions. How did their work evolve? Who most influenced them? How did they assess changes in contemporary art, and what did they think of each other's work? Which of their experiences had the most powerful effects on their creative development? What could lie ahead for American art? As these questions are answered by individual artists, the interviews also cumulatively address larger issues of artistic expression, including the idea of the avant-garde itself. The book features interviews with Kathy Acker, Charles Amirkhanian, Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley, Beth B, David Blair, William S. Burroughs, Warren Burt, John Cage, Richard Foreman, Kenneth Gaburo, Diamanda Galas, John Giorno, Philip Glass, Brion Gysin, Dick Higgins, Jenny Holzer, Mike Kuchar, Robert Lax, Jackson Mac Low, Meredith Monk, Nam June Paik, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Reich, Rachel Rosenthal, Bill Viola, Larry Wendt, Emmett Williams, Robert Wilson, Nick Zedd, and Ellen Zweig. Introductory notes to each interview provide context and connect the work and experiences of various artists, and photographs of theseartists contribute a significant visual element to the book. Nicholas Zurbrugg (1947-2001) was professor of English and cultural studies, as well as director of the Centre of Contemporary Arts, at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. He is the author of The Parameters of Postmodernism and Critical Vices: The Myths of Postmodern Theory.