Humanoid robot painter: Visual perception and high-level planning

Abstract -This paper presents visual perception discovered in high-level manipulator planning for a robot to reproduce the procedure involved in human painting. First, we apply a technique of 2D object segmentation that considers region similarity as an objective function and edge as a constraint with artificial intelligent used as a criterion function. The system can segment images more effectively than most of existing methods, even if the foreground is very similar to the background. Second, we propose a novel color perception model that shows similarity to human perception. The method outperforms many existing color reduction algorithms. Third, we propose a novel global orientation map perception using a radial basis function. Finally, we use the derived model along with the brush's position-and force-sensing to produce a visual feedback drawing. Experiments show that our system can generate good paintings including portraits

Accurate and discernible photocollages

There currently exist several techniques for selecting and combining images from a digital image library into a single image so that the result meets certain prespecified visual criteria. Image mosaic methods, first explored by Connors and Trivedi[18], arrange library images according to some tiling arrangement, often a regular grid, so that the combination of images, when viewed as a whole, resembles some input target image. Other techniques, such as Autocollage of Rother et al.[78], seek only to combine images in an interesting and visually pleasing manner, according to certain composition principles, without attempting to approximate any target image. Each of these techniques provide a myriad of creative options for artists who wish to combine several levels of meaning into a single image or who wish to exploit the meaning and symbolism contained in each of a large set of images through an efficient and easy process. We first examine the most notable and successful of these methods, and summarize the advantages and limitations of each. We then formulate a set of goals for an image collage system that combines the advantages of these methods while addressing and mitigating the drawbacks. Particularly, we propose a system for creating photocollages that approximate a target image as an aggregation of smaller images, chosen from a large library, so that interesting visual correspondences between images are exploited. In this way, we allow users to create collages in which multiple layers of meaning are encoded, with meaningful visual links between each layer. In service of this goal, we ensure that the images used are as large as possible and are combined in such a way that boundaries between images are not immediately apparent, as in Autocollage. This has required us to apply a multiscale approach to searching and comparing images from a large database, which achieves both speed and accuracy. We also propose a new framework for color post-processing, and propose novel techniques for decomposing images according to object and texture information

Cloud animation

Clouds are animate forms, shifting and evanescent, mutable and always in movement. They have also long been a subject of imagery, especially painting, because paint, most notably watercolour, as John Constable knew, seeped into thick drawing papers much as a cloud seeped itself through the sky. The drama of clouds in the 20th century was seized by film and it is striking to note that many Hollywood Studio logos use clouds. Clouds from Constable to the Hollywood logos are Romantic clouds. They drift and float, produce ambience and mood, along with weather. But the cloud appears in the digital age too, in more ways than one. Clouds have been constituted digitally by commercial animation studios and used as main characters in cartoons; they are available in commercial applications, such as architecture and landscaping packages; they have been made and represented by art animators. This body of work, kitsch and dumb as some of it is, is treated in this article as emblematic of an age in which the digital cloud looms as a new substance. The cloud in the digital age is a source of form, like a 3D printer, a source of any imaginable form. As such it comes to be less a metaphor of something else and more a generator of a metaphor that is itself. Now we live alongside – and even inside - a huge cloud metaphor that is The Cloud. In what ways do the clouds in the sky speak across to the platform and matter that is called The Cloud? What is at work in the digitalising of clouds in animation, and the production of animation through the technologies of the Cloud? Are we witnessing the creation of a synthetic heaven into which all production has been relocated and the digital clouds make all the moves? Keywords Cloud, day-dreaming, dust, digital, metaphor, Romanticis

The Machine as Art/ The Machine as Artist

The articles collected in this volume from the two companion Arts Special Issues, “The Machine as Art (in the 20th Century)” and “The Machine as Artist (in the 21st Century)”, represent a unique scholarly resource: analyses by artists, scientists, and engineers, as well as art historians, covering not only the current (and astounding) rapprochement between art and technology but also the vital post-World War II period that has led up to it; this collection is also distinguished by several of the contributors being prominent individuals within their own fields, or as artists who have actually participated in the still unfolding events with which it is concerne

Robert Smithson: writings, sculptures, earthworks.

The thesis examines the writings, sculptures and earthworks of the American artist Robert Smithson (1938 - 1973). Its aim is to reconstruct and analyse the major theoretical concerns that informed his practice. Various critical and theoretical aspects of his writings are examined in order to show how each was developed in relation to his reading. After demonstrating the relations between his library and his critical concerns, it then analyses the ways in which these concerns informed his artistic practice. These reconstructions and analyses also build up a broader picture of the ways in which Smithson's work changed in its underlying concerns over the course of his career. The thesis traces Smithson's concerns over six different areas of intellectual enquiry. The first chapter is concerned with religion, and focuses on his early work of the period 1959-63. This includes a detailed reconstruction of the influence of Catholicism and the English Imagist movement on his conception of art and art history. The second chapter traces his sources and arguments as an art critic, specifically his use of Mannerism as an interpretative critical paradigm for Minimalism. It also examines his rejection of formalist criticism, showing how his differences with the critic Michael Fried were pursued using a form of deconstruction different from the methods of Jacques Derrida. The third chapter addresses his concern with philosophy, particularly his use of the dialectics of materialism / idealism and mind / matter. It then examines his understanding of phenomenology to show how his conception of the' Site / Non-site' provided an alternative philosophical basis to that of Conceptual art. The fourth chapter concerns linguistics, showing how Smithson utilised the work of Wittgenstein, Carnap and communications theory in developing his own physicalist theory of language. It discusses how he adapted these analytic theories of language to suit his materialist and phenomenological concerns. The fifth area of concern to be traced is that of psychoanalysis. In order to analyse Smithson's psychoanalytic understanding of vision, an early sculpture is interpreted in terms of Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage and the objet (petit) a. After discussing Smithson's reading in psychoanalytic theory, it is shown how this theory was played out in his conception of the earthwork sculpture Spiral Jetty. The sixth and final chapter traces his preoccupation with making a socially engaged earthwork art. An examination of his general political views leads to a discussion of how Smithson developed a politically oriented conception of earthwork art that drew eh1ensively on his understanding of psychoanalysis and structuralist anthropology. It is shown how he tried to develop a general theory for the arts in which they acted to mediate in social conflicts

FACING EXPERIENCE: A PAINTER’S CANVAS IN VIRTUAL REALITY

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.This research investigates how shifts in perception might be brought about through the development of visual imagery created by the use of virtual environment technology. Through a discussion of historical uses of immersion in art, this thesis will explore how immersion functions and why immersion has been a goal for artists throughout history. It begins with a discussion of ancient cave drawings and the relevance of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Next it examines the biological origins of “making special.” The research will discuss how this concept, combined with the ideas of “action” and “reaction,” has reinforced the view that art is fundamentally experiential rather than static. The research emphasizes how present-day virtual environment art, in providing a space that engages visitors in computer graphics, expands on previous immersive artistic practices. The thesis examines the technical context in which the research occurs by briefly describing the use of computer science technologies, the fundamentals of visual arts practices, and the importance of aesthetics in new media and provides a description of my artistic practice. The aim is to investigate how combining these approaches can enhance virtual environments as artworks. The computer science of virtual environments includes both hardware and software programming. The resultant virtual environment experiences are technologically dependent on the types of visual displays being used, including screens and monitors, and their subsequent viewing affordances. Virtual environments fill the field of view and can be experienced with a head mounted display (HMD) or a large screen display. The sense of immersion gained through the experience depends on how tracking devices and related peripheral devices are used to facilitate interaction. The thesis discusses visual arts practices with a focus on how illusions shift our cognition and perception in the visual modalities. This discussion includes how perceptual thinking is the foundation of art experiences, how analogies are the foundation of cognitive experiences and how the two intertwine in art experiences for virtual environments. An examination of the aesthetic strategies used by artists and new media critics are presented to discuss new media art. This thesis investigates the visual elements used in virtual environments and prescribes strategies for creating art for virtual environments. Methods constituting a unique virtual environment practice that focuses on visual analogies are discussed. The artistic practice that is discussed as the basis for this research also concentrates on experiential moments and shifts in perception and cognition and references Douglas Hofstadter, Rudolf Arnheim and John Dewey. iv Virtual environments provide for experiences in which the imagery generated updates in real time. Following an analysis of existing artwork and critical writing relative to the field, the process of inquiry has required the creation of artworks that involve tracking systems, projection displays, sound work, and an understanding of the importance of the visitor. In practice, the research has shown that the visitor should be seen as an interlocutor, interacting from a first-person perspective with virtual environment events, where avatars or other instrumental intermediaries, such as guns, vehicles, or menu systems, do not to occlude the view. The aesthetic outcomes of this research are the result of combining visual analogies, real time interactive animation, and operatic performance in immersive space. The environments designed in this research were informed initially by paintings created with imagery generated in a hypnopompic state or during the moments of transitioning from sleeping to waking. The drawings often emphasize emotional moments as caricatures and/or elements of the face as seen from a number of perspectives simultaneously, in the way of some cartoons, primitive artwork or Cubist imagery. In the imagery, the faces indicate situations, emotions and confrontations which can offer moments of humour and reflective exploration. At times, the faces usurp the space and stand in representation as both face and figure. The power of the placement of the caricatures in the paintings become apparent as the imagery stages the expressive moment. The placement of faces sets the scene, establishes relationships and promotes the honesty and emotions that develop over time as the paintings are scrutinized. The development process of creating virtual environment imagery starts with hand drawn sketches of characters, develops further as paintings on “digital canvas”, are built as animated, three-dimensional models and finally incorporated into a virtual environment. The imagery is generated while drawing, typically with paper and pencil, in a stream of consciousness during the hypnopompic state. This method became an aesthetic strategy for producing a snappy straightforward sketch. The sketches are explored further as they are worked up as paintings. During the painting process, the figures become fleshed out and their placement on the page, in essence brings them to life. These characters inhabit a world that I explore even further by building them into three dimensional models and placing them in computer generated virtual environments. The methodology of developing and placing the faces/figures became an operational strategy for building virtual environments. In order to open up the range of art virtual environments, and develop operational strategies for visitors’ experience, the characters and their facial features are used as navigational strategies, signposts and methods of wayfinding in order to sustain a stream of consciousness type of navigation. Faces and characters were designed to represent those intimate moments of self-reflection and confrontation that occur daily within ourselves and with others. They sought to reflect moments of wonderment, hurt, curiosity and humour that could subsequently be relinquished for more practical or purposeful endeavours. They were intended to create conditions in which visitors might reflect upon their emotional state, v enabling their understanding and trust of their personal space, in which decisions are made and the nature of world is determined. In order to extend the split-second, frozen moment of recognition that a painting affords, the caricatures and their scenes are given new dimensions as they become characters in a performative virtual reality. Emotables, distinct from avatars, are characters confronting visitors in the virtual environment to engage them in an interactive, stream of consciousness, non-linear dialogue. Visitors are also situated with a role in a virtual world, where they were required to adapt to the language of the environment in order to progress through the dynamics of a drama. The research showed that imagery created in a context of whimsy and fantasy could bring ontological meaning and aesthetic experience into the interactive environment, such that emotables or facially expressive computer graphic characters could be seen as another brushstroke in painting a world of virtual reality

Future Renaissance

Name: Chris Luginbuhl University Name: OCAD University Thesis Title: Future Renaissance Degree Title: MFA Program Title: Digital Futures Year of Defence: 2019 This document explores image making in collaboration with neural networks, particularly Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Research creation is used to develop a collaborative relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) which moves beyond the use of the computer as a simple tool in the image-making process. As a way of deepening this reflection, the images are developed using speculative fiction to imagine what intelligent machines’ creation myths might look like in the distant future, and this helps suggest how we might form AI in the present. GANs are found to help express visual ideas by providing a wealth of imagery and textural detail which can be modified with the selection of training data and transfer learning. The difficulty of training GANs can be mitigated by using other machine learning techniques such as object detection to gather training data, and by working with low-resolution imagery that reduces computational demands, increasing accessibility