C.C. Chicago

A photo mosaic is a picture made up of many smaller pictures. The smaller file images can be seen up close, but at a distance, an entirely different image can be seen. Photo mosaics are also referred to as photo montages, photo-tiled pictures and photo tapestries.

Robert silvers is the creator of Photomosaic software technology. His company, Runaway Technology, produces many of the famous Photomosaics you may have seen in magazines, ads and posters today. The Photomosaic technology invented by silvers is patented in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe and Japan and the right to use this process is vigilantly monitored and protected.

In the U2 concert in 2005 Vertigo tour, during the song ONE, they showed a collage of faces from the audience up on one of the big screens above the stage. The faces kept filling the screen, getting smaller and smaller as if a camera was zooming out, and then all of a sudden you could see that all tiny faces from the audience were making up a moving image of Bono’s face as he was singing…at it was all live!

Today, personal computers are powerful enough to create photo-tiled pictures in a relatively short amount of time. And despite the patents of Runaway Technology, there is a lot of free and inexpensive software, as well as Web-based tools, that you can use to make a photo mosaic image from your own collection of personal photos. The larger your collection of source images, the better your photo-tapestry will turn out. The following page has has more information about photo mosaics as well as links to software and online tools you can use to create your own photo tapestries.

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The history of special effects begins even before the invention of the camera itself. During the 1700s, magicians utilized many techniques to perform optical illusions and astound their audiences. These techniques formed the foundations of special effects. One of the most used special effects in magic shows during this period was the summoning of the dead-spiritism. A small box with a light source to project images of historical figures onto columns of smoke or billowing cloth. This gave a ghostly motion to the image, frightening audiences to the point that several magicians were jailed for their work.

In 1895, the first paid motion picture show was staged. Thirty-two years later, sound entered the picture, and as we headed through the mid-point of the 20th century, color and added special effects found their way onto movie screens.

Tne invention of limelight around 1820 provided a way to project much brighter images from greater distances. This led to the use of magic lanterns for presentations and educational purposes. This changed the magic lantern from a secret tool of specialists to a well-known instrument.

Another technique of early illusionists was the use of glass sheets as two-way mirrors. In an illusion that came to be known as Pepper’s Ghost, after John Henry Pepper, a member of the audience was turned into a skeleton and back. This was done by placing a large glass sheet at a 45-degree angle between the audience and the stage, and adjusting the lighting so that audience would either see through the glass to the person, or the reflection in the glass of a skeleton off stage. The ligthing was faded in and out to make transformation. This technique was adopted later in  early films, and a horde of “ghost” movies were created using two-way mirror techniques.

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Java is an island in Indonesia and its capital city is Jakarta. Java now plays a dominant role in the economic and political life of Indonesia. Java is one of the most densely populated regions on Earth.

Javanese music is one of the richest and most distinctive of asian musical cultures. Music was and is of enormous importance in religious, political, and entertainment functions. The music of Java embraces a wide variety of styles, bi=oth traditional and contemporary, reflecting the diversity of the island and its lengthy history. Apart from “traditional” forms which maintain connections to musical styles many centuries old, there are also many unique styles and conventions which combine elements from many other regional influences, including those of neighboring Asian cultures and European colonial forms.

Javanese Gamelan music has been performed for and enjoyed by people of all walks of life, from beggars to kings, although the sizes and types of ensembles, as well as the styles of music differs depending from which social class the audience is and on the ocassion.

Javanese music uses two tuning systems (or “taras”); slendo and pelog. Slendo has five pitches to the octave, while pelog has 7 pitches. With slendo, the octave is divided in more or less 5 equal intervals, while with pelog the octave is divided in 7 unequal intervals wherein the smaller ones approximate the semotone of the Western music. It was believed by the Javanese to be the older system, but contemporary musiciologist find evidence that slendo was derived from pelog. Slendo is associated with what which is masculine, and pelog with what which is feminine.

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Anna Pavlova was the most celebrated ballerina of her time. the legendary prima ballerina was born near St. Petersburg, Russia on February 12, 1881 during the cold whiteness of a Russian-Jewish background. Her real father was a wealthy businessman, named Lazar Polyakov. Her mother, named Mathwey (Mathew) Pavlov, was a retired soldier, who died when she was only two years old. Although she was registered under the name of Pavlova, her father Lazar Polyakov took good care of young Anna Pavlova and also paid for her tuition at the Imperial Ballet Schhol in St. Petersburgh.

When she was 8, her mother took her to a performance of “The Sleeping Beauty,” and Anna experience epiphany- a baptism by ballet. This and only this was what she wanted to do with her life. At the age of 10 she was admitted to the Imperial School of Ballet by Marius Petipa. Her exceptional gifts were immediately visible, and after graduating, at 18, she made her company debut on September 19, 1899 in a pas de trois in “La Fille Mal gardee,” and worked with the Mariinsky Ballet from 1899-1907. Anna never danced in the corps de ballet. She shared the role of Gizelle with “Matilda Kshesinskaya’. Her partner and choreogrpher was Mikhail Fokin. He choreographed Pavlova’s best known showpiece “The Dying Swan” on the music of Camille Saint-Saens. In 1908 Sergei Diaghilev hired Pavlova and Mikhail Fokin for his “Ballets Russes” (Russian Seasons) in Paris and London

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Ballet is a formalized form of dance originated in the Renaissance court as an outgrowth of court pageantry in Italy, where aristocratic weddings were lavish celebrations. It further developed in France and Russia as a court dance form. Ballet was shaped by the French ballet de cour, which consisted of social dances performed by the nobility in tandem with music, speech verse, cong, pageant, decor and costume. When Catherine de medici, an Italian aristocrat with an interest in the arts, married the French crown heir Henry II, she brought her enthusiasm for dance to France and provided financial support.

Ballet is a highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary. It has been influential as a form of dance globally and is taught in ballet schools around the world which use their own culture and society to modernize the art. Ballets are choreographed, and also include mime, acting, and are set to music, usually orchestral. it is best known in the form of classical ballet, notable for its techniques, such as point work, turn-out of the legs; its graceful, flowing, precise movements; and its ethereal. Later developments include neoclassical and contemporary ballet.

A ballet of the Renaissance was a far cry from the form of theatrical entertainment known to audiences today. Tutus, ballet slippers, and point work were not yet used. The choreography was adapted from court dance steps. performers dressed in fashions of the times. For women, they wear formal gowns that covered their legs to the ankle. Early ballet was participatory, with the audience joining the dance towards the end.

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