Recent Developments in Cultural Heritage Image Databases: Directions for User-Centered Design

published or submitted for publicatio

Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts. EVA 2019 Florence

The Publication is following the yearly Editions of EVA FLORENCE. The State of Art is presented regarding the Application of Technologies (in particular of digital type) to Cultural Heritage. The more recent results of the Researches in the considered Area are presented. Information Technologies of interest for Culture Heritage are presented: multimedia systems, data-bases, data protection, access to digital content, Virtual Galleries. Particular reference is reserved to digital images (Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts), regarding Cultural Institutions (Museums, Libraries, Palace - Monuments, Archaeological Sites). The International Conference includes the following Sessions: Strategic Issues; New Science and Culture Developments & Applications; New Technical Developments & Applications; Cultural Activities – Real and Virtual Galleries and Related Initiatives, Access to the Culture Information. One Workshop regards Innovation and Enterprise. The more recent results of the Researches at national and international level are reported in the Area of Technologies and Culture Heritage, also with experimental demonstrations of developed Activities

teamLab Research

teamLab undoubtedly opened a new era of art. It allows professionals in multi-industries to use the latest science and technology to create art, they are all popular for local audiences from Japan to the United States, from Italy to China, wherever they go. As a significant representative form of the trendy show and immersive exhibition, teamLab\u27s works are completely different from the past in terms of creative logic, exhibition experience, and collection methods. By going through the development history of teamLab, this article studies the characteristics of its exhibitions, audience, and the connection with traditional art, in order to explore the development of today\u27s art and look forward to the future of new art

Absorbing new subjects: holography as an analog of photography

I discuss the early history of holography and explore how perceptions, applications, and forecasts of the subject were shaped by prior experience. I focus on the work of Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) in England,Yury N. Denisyuk (b. 1924) in the Soviet Union, and Emmett N. Leith (1927–2005) and Juris Upatnieks (b. 1936) in the United States. I show that the evolution of holography was simultaneously promoted and constrained by its identification as an analog of photography, an association that influenced its assessment by successive audiences of practitioners, entrepreneurs, and consumers. One consequence is that holography can be seen as an example of a modern technical subject that has been shaped by cultural influences more powerfully than generally appreciated. Conversely, the understanding of this new science and technology in terms of an older one helps to explain why the cultural effects of holography have been more muted than anticipated by forecasters between the 1960s and 1990s

Shifting perspectives: holography and the emergence of technical communities

Holography, the technology of three-dimensional imaging, has repeatedly been reconceptualised by new communities. Conceived in 1947 as a means of improving electron microscopy, holography was revitalized in the early 1960s by engineer-scientists at classified laboratories. The invention promoted the transformation of a would-be discipline (optical engineering) and spawned limited artist-scientist collaborations. However, a separate artisanal community promoted a distinct countercultural form of holography via a revolutionary technology: the sandbox optical table. Their tools, sponsorship, products, literature and engagement with wider culture differentiated the communities, which instituted a limited ‘technological trade’. The subject strikingly illustrates the co-evolution of new technology along with highly dissimilar user groups, neither of which fostered the secure establishment of a profession or discipline. The case generalises the concept of 'research-technologists' and 'peripheral science', and extends the ideas of Langdon Winner by demonstrating how the political dimensions of a technology can be important but evanescent in the growth of technical communities

Luminous Realities: Projection and Video Art

Luminous Realities is part of a continuing series of exhibitions devoted to the exploration of concepts and processes in contemporary art. This exhibition wed artistic sensibility to modern technology by utilizing the talents of seven contemporary artists working with video and projection devices as their media. David Cort explains video and projection art as a process. The classical painter expresses an abstract idea on canvas, but I think a video artist expresses an idea through a process. Art for a video artist is the creative process, art for the audience is the participation. The following catalog attempts not only to serve as a record of the exhibition but also to introduce the reader to the work of the seven participating artists: David Cort, Tony Conrad, Douglas Davis, Anthony McCall, Nam June Paik, Paul Sharits, and Jud Yalkut. It is intended to be an introduction to the oeuvre of important contemporary artists brought together for the first time in a single exhibition.https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/restein_catalogs/1021/thumbnail.jp

Venus rising, Furies raging: bodies redressed in contemporary visual art

The research centres on the power of the female body in activist feminist art as a medium for women's experience. The survey of visual representations of women's bodies in historical art and contemporary feminist practice, together with investigation of the enduring debates within feminism about the signification of bodies, led to a conviction that imaging of the body remains a central issue for creative practice. More specifically, the research problematises the residual 'essentialism' attributed to women through representations of their bodies whereby (stated simply and in the context of feminist theory and practice), women are assumed to share unique, unchanging and, hence, 'essential' attributes. Furthermore, this spectre of essentialism, and the debate about this concept during the second wave of feminism, presents, I argue, ongoing implications for the contemporary politics of representation in an activist practice and for the methodology of creative practice research. The resulting extended analysis of feminist theory and art practice has led to the adoption of parafeminism as articulated by Amelia Jones (2006, 2008, 2009) and extended by Laura Castagnini (2013, 2015a, 2015b) to enlist parodic humour to invigorate representations of the body amid the shifting appropriations of feminism and femininity in contemporary culture. Parafeminism, in its dual orientation of avowal and critique of past feminist art, enables scrutiny of some lingering ambiguities in aspects of second wave feminist art. In the exegesis, this is traced to the 1970s, when feminists contested the historical signification of 'nature' in patriarchal imaging of women's bodies and the resulting critique (within feminism) of 'essentialism'. Artists adopted a range of approaches to the body to address or circumvent this critique. Issues stemming from the debates and practices remain, I argue, unresolved for contemporary artists and are readdressed in the parafeminist works created for exhibition. 'Woman as nature' and the 'nature of woman' are therefore posed as axes of a lingering contradiction that is experimentally redressed in the works in which (female) bodies are represented in a range of media, forms and spaces, and using diverse methods, notably the second-wave techniques of collage and femmage. My research on the debates about essentialism debates propelled me to adopt a strategic form of essentialism as an element of parafeminist parody, whereby the spectacle and politics of the woman/nature nexus are critically embraced, rather than evaded, as a necessary tactic to convey the subjective experiences of women, while recognising that no universal experience exists. In Venus Rising, Furies Raging: Bodies Redressed, figures from classical mythology (Venus and the Furies) are counterpointed with contemporary popular culture figures and images of women, and the evocative power of meaning in materials is explored in femmage-based installations. The works celebrate, pay homage to and playfully parody second-wave feminist art and the surrounding debates about its perceived essentialism, while affirming the female body as a motif and site of resistance in contemporary activist practice. Selected works by contemporary artists are examined and situated as parafeminist precedents for their comparable use of motifs, methods and materials. The parafeminist remit is expanded through examination of Castagnini's claims for the potency of parody of feminist art, derived from Linda Hutcheon's (2000, 2002) notion of postmodern parody as 'critical distance', and Griselda Pollock's (2007) notion of time and the archive in the 'virtual feminist museum'. Examination of the contextualising literature and visual practice contributes to the formulation of a set of guiding principles for the practice, summarised as the aims to: connect with and celebrate the achievements of earlier feminist practices, while engaging creatively with the history of the debate about essentialism; contest the connection between the body and nature (or what is 'natural') in visual representation; recollect, restore and revision images of women's bodies; apply humorous and parodic critique of appropriated imagery; embody meaning in materials and evoke sensual and aesthetic pleasure in looking for women looking at art about women. Through the application of these principles, the political potential and material effects of images of the female body are enacted in the works created. An Interconnective model of Creative Practice Research (CPR) is presented in the exegesis as a framework for the expansion of contemporary feminist practice. The Interconnective model develops and extends CPR, which combines engagement in theoretical debate with informed application of contemporary and historical artistic practices. The project therefore interconnectively extends activist art practice through a process of engagement with, and critique of, parafeminism. The research contributes substantial documentation of prevalent strategies in feminist art over a lengthy period to identify issues concerning representations of the body, and in particular the problem of essentialism in relation to imaging of bodies. This documentation, in the form of a Data Repository, is appended to the exegesis (Appendix 1). My critical appraisal of the debates relating to essentialism provide new knowledge about the history of these discourses and how they influenced the course of contemporary feminist art practices. This knowledge, and my analysis of the concept of the virtual feminist archive, comprise a significant critique of the theory of parafeminism and the claims of an impasse in feminist art made by Jones (2006, p. 14; 2008 p. 9) (Chapters One and Two). Informed by this critique of parafeminist theory, I reflect on the work of a group of artists – Pipilotti Rist, Kate Davis, Deborah Kelly and Sally Smart – who present specific precedents to my adoption of parafeminist parody in the creative practice (Chapter Three). I contribute new analytic perspectives on the works of Rist, Davis, Kelly and Smart, which illuminate how their representations of bodies are reinvigorated by the use of diverse materials and methods, inspired by earlier activist feminist practices. Utilising such diverse media, particularly collage and femmage, I apply a strategically essentialist approach to portraying the body to intervene constructively in contemporary cultural discourses. This approach eludes the impasse of 'bad girl' feminist art and offers a potentially pleasurable experience for a range of audiences (Chapters Two and Three). The decision to work with the classical figures of Venus and the Furies, and my investigation of their representations in historical (patriarchal), popular cultural and contemporary feminist art expands knowledge of these mythical bodies as motifs and bearers of meaning. Iterations of Venus and the Furies in a parafeminist framework widen the range of their meaning and relevance for contemporary feminist practice (Chapters Three, Four and Five). As parafeminist practice critically attends to historical and contemporary feminist practices, it is facilitated by the Interconnective methodology that I have devised for this project. Interconnective creative practice research represents an innovation upon Connective methodology, especially in its elevation of the role of a set of guiding principles for formulating a cohesive research practice. While Jones's theory of parafeminism is critically appraised, its dual aims of critique and celebration of earlier feminist art are upheld in the creative practice, which adopts a limited, strategic, parodic and, hence, critically-allusive 'essentialism' to affirm the centrality of the body as a motif of women's subjectivities and experiences

Three-dimensional model of an ancient Egyptian falcon mummy skeleton

Published ArticlePurpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the first detailed three-dimensional (3D) print from micro-computed tomography data of the skeleton of an ancient Egyptian falcon mummy. Design/methodology/approach – Radiographic analysis of an ancient Egyptian falcon mummy housed at Iziko Museums of South Africa was performed using non-destructive x-ray micro-computed tomography. A 1:1 physical replica of its skeleton was printed in a polymer material (polyamide) using 3D printing technology. Findings – The combination of high-resolution computed tomography scanning and rapid prototyping allowed us to create an accurate 1:1 model of a biological object hidden by wrappings. This model can be used to study skeletal features and morphology and also enhance exhibitions hosted within the museum. Originality/value – This is the first replica of its kind made of an ancient Egyptian falcon mummy skeleton. The combination of computed tomography scanning and 3D printing has the potential to facilitate scientific research and stimulate public interest in Egyptology

Conversations: The Data Route

Keynote presentation at Conversations: The Data Route, a conference in connection with the BIG BANG DATA exhibition at ArtScience Museum Singapore. Are you ready for the era of Big Data? Join us as we discuss and investigate the route that Big Data has taken, and how this affects the way information is communicated, shared and used in our digital age. Speakers included co-curator of Big Bang Data, Jose Luis, artists Ingo Gunther, Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway, psychotherapist Teodora Pavkovic amongst other esteemed speakers