98 research outputs found
Automatic generation of Chinese calligraphic writings with style imitation
A parametric representation of stroke shapes is derived by adopting style imitation, a shape-generation-based process, to compactly represent the shapes of single strokes for the automatic generation of Chinese calligraphic writings. An image-processing-based approach is employed to derive the distance between the two strokes. The concept of stroke context is introduced to determine the shape of a stroke to be produced and the distance between two strokes is defined as the shortest distance between two points. An important difference between personal handwriting and a script generated from a font system is that a human writer writes a certain stroke or character differently each time, while a font system generates the same output. The shape-based criterion used in this study makes direct use of areas, which is more reliable than using shape contours because stroke contour details vary greatly.published_or_final_versio
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The Crisis of Language in Contemporary Japan: Reading, Writing, and New Technology
My dissertation is an ethnographically inspired theoretical exploration of the crises of reading and writing in contemporary Japan. Each of the five chapters examines concrete instances of reading and writing practices that have been problematized in recent decades. By calling attention to underlying moral assumptions, established sociocultural protocols, and socio-technological conditions of the everyday, I theorize the concept of embodied reading and writing thresholds. The scope of analysis is partly informed by popular discourse decrying a perceived decline in reading and writing proficiency among Japanese youth. This alleged failing literacy figures as a national crisis under the assumption that the futurity of children's national language proficiency metonymically correlates with the future well being of its national cultural body. In light of heightened interests in the past, present, and future of books, and a series of recent state interventions on the prospect of "national" text culture, it is my argument that ongoing tensions surrounding the changing media landscape and symbolic relations to the world do not merely reflect changes in styles of language, structures of spatiotemporal awareness, or forms of knowledge production. Rather, they indicate profound transformations and apprehensions among the lives mediated and embodied by the very system of signification that has come under scrutiny in the post-Lost Decade Japan (03/1991-01/2002). My dissertation offers an unique point of critical intervention into 1) various forms of tension arising from the overlapping media technologies and polarized population, 2) formations of reading and writing body (embodiment) at an intersection of heterogeneous elements and everyday disciplining, 3) culturally specific conditions and articulations of the effects of "universal" technologies, 4) prospects of "proper" national reading and writing culture, and 5) questions of cultural transformation and transmission. I hope that the diverse set of events explored in respective chapters provide, as a whole, a broader perspective of the institutional and technological background as well as an intimate understanding of culturally specific circumstances in Japan. Insofar as this is an attempt to conduct a nuanced inquiry into the culturally specific configurations and articulations of a global phenomenon, each ethnographic moment is carefully contextualized to reflect Japan specific conditions while avoiding the pitfall of culturalist assumptions. Understanding how an existing system of representation, technological imperatives and sociohistorical predicaments have coalesced to form a unique constellation is the first step in identifying how the practice of reading and writing becomes a site of heated national debate in Japan. Against theories that problematize the de-corporealizing effects of digital technology within reading and writing, I emphasize the material specificity of contemporary reading and writing practices
Intermediality and interculturality in Jose Juan Tablada's poetry: East Asian culture and the 'visual turn'
This thesis investigates two key themes in the Mexican writer José Juan Tablada’s (1871 -
1945) poetry: intermediality between poetic text and visual art, and interculturality between
cultures of East Asia and Mexico. As previous studies have noticed that many of Tablada’s
poems on visual art are also related to East Asian culture, the study finds this point worthy of
further discussion and investigates the potential correlation between interculturality and
intermediality in Tablada’s poetry.
This thesis explores the chronological evolution in Tablada’s poetry collections El florilegio
(1899, 1904), Al sol y bajo la luna (1918), Un dÃa (1919), Li-Po y otros poemas (1920), and El
jarro de flores (1922) as regards their poetic texts, typographical arrangements, and
illustrations. In the early stage, Tablada’s poetry related to East Asian topics shows strong
orientalist influence from French translations. Starting from Al sol y bajo la luna, Tablada’s
poems of East Asian themes intertwine with East Asian visual art including prints and seals. In
Un dÃa, Li-Po y otros poemas, and El jarro de flores, Tablada’s poems use visual presentation
such as illustrations and non-linear typographical arrangements to convey extra-textual
meaning. Chapter One and Two apply Liliane Louvel’s theory of ‘pictoriality’ and scheme of
polarities in ekphrasis to study the intermedial transposition between painting and poetry in
Tablada’s pictorial writing. Chapter Three and Four adopt approaches and conclusions of
cognitive research into the reader’s perception of non-linear poetic texts to discuss the verbal
visuality in Tablada’s visual poetry.
The thesis concludes that, through French and English translations, East Asian culture
influenced Tablada’s intermedial writing and inspired his ‘visual turn’ in poetic composition.
The poetry-painting hybrid form such as ehon, the visual-verbal signifying writing system
known as ideograms, as well as the painter-poet tradition in East Asian culture inspired
Tablada to pursue ‘graphical-lyrical simultaneity’ in poetry and prompted his experiment of
visual writing.
Through the investigation into Tablada’s poetry, this thesis finds that interculturality might lead
to the intermedial writing. This thesis contributes to the study of visual poetry with underlying
influence from East Asian culture
Glass as ink: seeking spontaneity from the casting process
This practice-based research addresses internal form in cast glass. That is, ink- like imagery, which is wholly contained within clear, colourless glass. For the purposes of this project, ‘ink’ refers to liquid ink as is used in Chinese brush painting and calligraphy rather than to ink applications such as those used in print media. The aim is not to use ink itself. Rather, it is to emulate ink, rendered inside glass, while exploring the material similarities between the two media, including their liquid properties and their ability to be worked opaque or translucent.
The project examines the interface between control and chance; where the artistic process ends and the unique properties of glass take over and are governed by heat, time and gravity. It also addresses the transformation of two- dimensional line drawing and ink wash into the third dimension.
My research question is how the kiln and furnace casting processes can best be exploited to render the fluid, gestural and expressionistic immediacy of brush and ink painting, three-dimensionally, in solid glass.
Following 14 years of studying and making art in Korea (1997‒2003) and China (2003‒2010), I have developed an affinity for brush and ink painting and, more specifically, for Chinese Grass script calligraphy and traditional landscape. This project aims to explore various methods of capturing apparent gesture and spontaneity in cast glass, in the form of ‘ink’ abstractions that evoke these styles of Chinese painting.
My methodology includes identifying and isolating the elements that characterise Chinese brushwork in calligraphy and landscape painting, which are intimately linked fine art forms in China. Studio tests include manipulating different types of glass to create a dynamic, rhythmic, assured and graceful ink aesthetic, interpreted in the third dimension. I use flameworked inclusions to explore ink-like line and experiment with glass powders to evoke different intensities of ink wash. All tests are recorded in detail and are used to anticipate and loosely control glass movement. My research into Chinese brushwork characteristics is used to identify a framework within which the studio work sits.
The variety, order and combination of techniques used to create the work constitute original knowledge in the field of cast glass. My method for reinterpreting the characteristics of Chinese painting, including line quality, ink wash, composition and balance, embedded three-dimensionally within the framework of cast glass, also contributes new knowledge. Based on systematic research and analysis, the terms ‘casting’, ‘moulds’, ‘spontaneity’ and the ‘third dimension’ are examined and defined anew
Written Stūpa, Painted Sūtra: Relationships of Text and Image in the Construction of Meaning in the Japanese Jeweled-Stūpa Mandalas
This dissertation contextualizes the twelfth- and thirteenth-centuries Japanese jeweled-stupa mandalas as some of the most striking examples from the early medieval period of innovative elaborations on sutra transcription. The project proceeds from a methodology grounded in visual analysis and religious studies. I begin with basic questions of semiotic inquiry about the prominence and privileging of sacred text in the form of the central dharma reliquary, a characteristic distinguishing the mandalas from nearly all other paintings made before them. I seek to understand the reasons behind the privileging of scripture on the picture plane and the inventive manipulation of the sutra text into the form of a stupa, both novel choices in the context of their early medieval Japanese production. At their root, the jeweled-stupa mandalas are an elaborate sutra transcription project revealing anxieties about death and power expressed through the belief that devotion to sutra can save souls, cure illnesses, grant tremendous authority, and much more. After investigating the continental origins of the mandalas and the culture of sutra transcription during the eleventh through thirteenth centuries and conducting an analysis into the particular histories and formal qualities, the project approaches the mandalas using a three-part collaborative analysis. The first part examines visual, textual, and archaeological evidence from the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, which testifies to the understandings and capabilities of text as well as the power of sacred word expressed repeatedly and profoundly in early medieval Japan. This exploration of sutra text lays the critical basis for the second part's investigation into the notion of body underpinning the innovative construction of the mandalas. The indivisibility of sutra, stupa, dharma, relic, and body in the paintings visually manifests the conflated nature of these seemingly independent concepts in religious practice and doctrine. Combining the first two parts facilitates a reading of the mandalas through what I call a salvific matrix of text and body. The third part concludes the dissertation by returning to an explicit discussion of semiotics, further exploring the construction of meaning in the mandalas through their imbrication of text and image
Dialogues with the written world(s): Plurilingual TEAL pedagogy and content learning of Japanese young learners in multilingual landscapes
This ethnographic study aims to describe the literacy development of young Japanese children learning English at an international school in Tokyo (Japan). The research participants, who were recruited from Kindergarten to 4th grade (5 to 10 years old), also participated in summer programs in British Columbia (Canada) for periods ranging from 2 weeks to 2 months. The school adopts a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach (Coyle, Hood & Marsh, 2010), within a Hundred Languages of Children of Reggio Emilia educational approach (Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 1998) and Miyazakian dialogic pedagogy (Miyazaki, 2013). The school also adopts a plurilingual approach to teaching (Lau & Van Viegen, 2020) and used linguistic landscapes as a pedagogical tool (Dagenais, Moore, Sabatier, Lamarre & Armand, 2009) to promote children’s English and content learning through a series of critical inquiries. Methodological tools include classroom ethnography (Heath & Heath, 1983; Frank, Dixon & Green, 1999; Egan-Robertson & Bloome, 1998), Action Research (Wallace, 1998), as well as visual (Pink, 2009) and walking ethnography (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008) to explore the linguistic landscapes with the participants. The analyses are anchored within the theoretical concepts interconnecting plurilingualism (Marshall & Moore, 2018), multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, New London Group, 1996) and language learning in an asset-oriented perspective on education that views language competence as holistic and plurilingual and intercultural awareness conducive to critical thinking (Coste, Moore & Zarate, 2009). The purpose of the thesis is to build upon the current discussion on plurilingual pedagogies, curriculum design and language instruction for K-12 children, in the context of English teaching and learning in elementary schools in Japan. It has wider implications for teacher education in English as an Additional Language (TEAL) situations
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