Algorithms for sketching surfaces

CISRG discussion paper ; 1

Care for a Sample? De Minimis, Fair Use, Blockchain, and an Approach to an Affordable Music Sampling System for Independent Artists

Thanks, in part, to social media and the digital streaming age of music, independent artists have seen a rise in popularity and many musicians have achieved mainstream success without the affiliation of a major record label. Alongside the growth of independent music has come the widespread use of music sampling. Sampling, which was once depicted as a crime perpetrated by hip-hop artists, is now prevalent across charttopping hits from all genres. Artists have used sampling as a tool to integrate cultures, eras, and styles of music while experimenting with the bounds of musical creativity. Artists whose works are sampled have profited from royalties and the exposure of their original work in modern art. However, the laws that shaped the sample licensing system helped solidify financial and political obstacles that prevent independent artists from sampling. Therefore, while major label-affiliated artists can use their status and financial capital to bypass the obstacles, it is practically impossible for independent artists to afford sampling and participate in modern music’s sonic creativity

Creativity and Culture in Copyright Theory

Creativity is universally agreed to be a good that copyright law should seek to promote, yet copyright scholarship and policymaking have proceeded largely on the basis of assumptions about what it actually is. When asked to discuss the source of their inspiration, individual artists describe a process that is intrinsically ineffable. Rights theorists of all varieties have generally subscribed to this understanding, describing creativity in terms of an individual liberty whose form remains largely unspecified. Economic theorists of copyright work from the opposite end of the creative process, seeking to divine the optimal rules for promoting creativity by measuring its marketable byproducts. But these theorists offer no particular reason to think that marketable byproducts are either an appropriate proxy or an effective stimulus for creativity (as opposed to production), and more typically refuse to engage the question. The upshot is that the more we talk about creativity, the more it disappears from view. At the same time, the mainstream of intellectual property scholarship has persistently overlooked a broad array of social science methodologies that provide both descriptive tools for constructing ethnographies of creative processes and theoretical tools for modeling them

Maintaining cultural identity in design: shape grammar as means of identifying and modifying design style.

This research is an attempt to find an objective system for maintaining cultural identity in design. The proposed framework will guide interior designers to identify the key features and design language of their traditional style, and then to modify it to give more variety to the developed style and to help it keep pace with fast developments in the field of design. This work came from the need to find a solution to the fact that there is a lack of cultural identity in the field of design such as those of furniture, decor and facades, in particular in the state of Kuwait. The lifestyle of the people of Kuwait has changed dramatically since oil was discovered, the lifestyle of its people has changed dramatically. The development of its economy have resulted in a more wealthy and up-to-date society. Such a transformation was not imposed on them, but was rather their choice. The problem is not in modernisation, but in the rush towards it without comprehending its consequences. There is no doubt that the traditional crafts are an important source of inspiration when generating new ideas, but what if the process of generation leads to cliché designs? The focus of this research involves the analysis of a popular traditional Kuwaiti product called Sadu. Style in art and architecture is measured in terms of consistency over a series of artifacts which can be recognised through the similarity between them. The aim of this research is to create a link between consistency in style and the Kuwaiti style, and it does this by dividing the work into three sections, each with an associated milestone. The first employed focus groups to identify the Kuwaiti style. The results of the test clarified the most common features of geometric shapes and symmetry rules among the Sadu products that directly influence the approach which the study proposes. Then the shape grammar method was adopted as a means of identifying the Sadu design language. The second section developed the traditional style using knowledge gained from the first step as a means of generating new designs. Seven design groups were created, each with a unique approach to creating patterns. The groups were tested to evaluate whether that the new designs had not lost their original identity, and to identify which method produces the most recognisable patterns of the Kuwaiti Sadu style, and what are the common rules in the seven groups that successfully generate this Kuwaiti style. Also the test measured the likability of the design group amongst Kuwaitis. In the final section, a design tool was created which incorporated features inspired by the data and evidence gathered throughout the study. The tool was then tested and evaluated to measure the consistency of the patterns it produced with the Kuwaiti cultural style. The tool produces inspirational designs that can be used for architecture or product design that has a theme of cultural identity, such as furniture, illumination, flooring and plan layout. Methods of developing a Kuwaiti style whilst at the same time maintaining its original identity have been presented. The key to developing the original style was firstly to measure it by identifying the common style features. Sadu was used as a case study as this was deemed an iconic representation of traditional Kuwaiti style. Specific geometric shapes and symmetry rules were established among the tested designs and these features were found to capture the essence of the original style. Shape grammars were applied to explore the style and the results produced a set of rules that were indicative of that style. In the second step, Kuwaiti Sadu was developed by shape grammars and the common rules of the established style were augmented with new rules that would produce recognisable and likable patterns which were still of the Sadu style. The degree to which these were recognised and liked by a sample of Kuwaiti people was tested. The end stage of this research was to develop a software tool with features established from the data gathered in the previous stages that produced consistent Sadu patterns so that Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis would be able to produce designs that maintain the original style. The framework and design tool that were used to develop a traditional style proved to be successful. These were used to generate 2D developed style designs that were translated into 3D models, through action research from an interior designer. These were found to emulate the Kuwaiti style