The influence of Hong Kong action cinema stars like Bruce Lee lives on in today’s cinema, but the ancient styles they based their techniques on are slowly dying out. But there’s now a crowdfuding project aimed at preserving the heritage of different Kung Fu fighting styles, called the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive . It’s a collaboration between a martial arts society called the International Guoshu Association (IGU) and the City University of Hong Kong. The goal is to use photos, high-speed video, panoptic video and motion capture to capture and quantize the different techniques. The project organizers believe that fighting styles like Hung Kuen and Wing Kong from the south of China, along with various northern styles, are best preserved in Hong Kong. That’s because many of the Kung Fu masters from the nation’s north and south converged on Hong Kong due to political instability on the mainland around the turn of the 20th century. Rather than preserve such techniques in traditional 2D forms as shown above, the group wants to preserve a complete 4D analysis of the forms. On top of storing images, video and mocap data, it plans to include physical data like speed, torque, torsion and force data. That’s because different Kung Fu techniques use different body mechanics, which can’t be conveyed by mere drawings or oral descriptions. It’s also capturing a large amount of 3D panoptic camera data shot from six different angles. While a large amount of motion capture has already been performed by the City University of Hong Kong, its funds are starting to run dry. As a result, they’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign on FringeFunder , with the hope of raising $47, 000 to hire motion capture experts. The minimum pledge is about $39, which will get you perks like a framed certificate and project poster, with higher level pledges snagging Kung Fu tours in Hong Kong and even dinner with local celebrities. Check the video below for more information — and as a reminder of what they’re trying to preserve, watch Bruce Lee single-handedly transform US television. Filed under: Misc , Home Entertainment Comments Via: Off the Reservation Source: FringeBacker

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Crowdfunded project uses 3D motion capture to catalog ancient Kung Fu styles

Google’s Knowledge Graph is pretty good at telling you who was the 37th president of the US , or what the square root of 342345 is. Ask it more complex questions, like “why does the sun set at night?” and it’ll still send you off to find the answer yourself. Next week in New York, Google researchers will present a paper on its “Knowledge Vault, ” which Kevin Murphy of Google Research, describes as “the largest repository of automatically extracted structured knowledge on the planet.” Knowledge Vault applies machine learning (unlike Knowledge Graph which is an extension of community supported tools) to automatically trawl webpages, assimilating their facts, information and connections therein. Not only does this mean it’s faster, it can continually grow and update itself. The net result will be a huge database of knowledge, the likes of which would have been unimaginable just years ago. The real-world implications are that services like Google Now (or Siri et al) could get a huge boost in smarts — tapping into a much deeper well of understanding, knowing what, how and why things are related. This could lead to much more intelligent web services, or truly explode any limits of augmented reality (“ah, you’re in Berlin, and sent an email last week about museums, perhaps you want to visit the Museum Berggruen “). Unsurprisingly this comes at a privacy cost; analysts are expecting Google to leverage services like Gmail that contain your data (plus the data that’s public/online) bundled in with the rest of the world wide web. While there are no timelines on when we might see this implemented in live services, don’t be surprised when it’s not just your proximity to Sir Bacon that freaks you out, but how and why you’re so close, plus favorite films you have in common, and where you can go and see them locally. Filed under: Science , Software , Google Comments Via: New Scientist Source: CIKM

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Google’s ‘Knowledge Vault’ seeks the answer to life, the universe and everything