14 research outputs found

    Behind the Image, Beyond the Image

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    The volume includes papers presented at the III International Conference of PhD students of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the State Institute for Art Studies of Moscow (Venice, 22-24 September 2021). The word ‘image’ derives from the Latin imago, a word that has many different meanings that go from ‘portrait’ to ‘ghost’, from ‘idea’ to ‘dream’, from ‘memory’ to ‘reflection’. We most commonly associate the word ‘image’ with a picture, but its etymology keeps reminding us of its infinite conceptual potential. In his famous book Behind the Image: The Art of Reading Paintings, Federico Zeri argues that there are infinite ways to observe the work of art as an image. But since the image is something that goes beyond its mere material and physical form and refers to the categories of perception and thought, the expression “beyond the image” encourages new formulations related to this polyvalent concept. The image, the imagination and the imaginable are the transversal categories that the papers collected in this volume aim to explore, inquiring the concept of image as a metaphor, a model, a method, a representation, a tool for a new understanding of reality

    VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage

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    This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage, VRTCH 2018, held in Brasov, Romania in May 2018. The 13 revised full papers along with the 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The papers of this volume are organized in topical sections on data acquisition and modelling, visualization methods / audio, sensors and actuators, data management, restoration and digitization, cultural tourism

    Visual Representation Learning with Limited Supervision

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    The quality of a Computer Vision system is proportional to the rigor of data representation it is built upon. Learning expressive representations of images is therefore the centerpiece to almost every computer vision application, including image search, object detection and classification, human re-identification, object tracking, pose understanding, image-to-image translation, and embodied agent navigation to name a few. Deep Neural Networks are most often seen among the modern methods of representation learning. The limitation is, however, that deep representation learning methods require extremely large amounts of manually labeled data for training. Clearly, annotating vast amounts of images for various environments is infeasible due to cost and time constraints. This requirement of obtaining labeled data is a prime restriction regarding pace of the development of visual recognition systems. In order to cope with the exponentially growing amounts of visual data generated daily, machine learning algorithms have to at least strive to scale at a similar rate. The second challenge consists in the learned representations having to generalize to novel objects, classes, environments and tasks in order to accommodate to the diversity of the visual world. Despite the evergrowing number of recent publications tangentially addressing the topic of learning generalizable representations, efficient generalization is yet to be achieved. This dissertation attempts to tackle the problem of learning visual representations that can generalize to novel settings while requiring few labeled examples. In this research, we study the limitations of the existing supervised representation learning approaches and propose a framework that improves the generalization of learned features by exploiting visual similarities between images which are not captured by provided manual annotations. Furthermore, to mitigate the common requirement of large scale manually annotated datasets, we propose several approaches that can learn expressive representations without human-attributed labels, in a self-supervised fashion, by grouping highly-similar samples into surrogate classes based on progressively learned representations. The development of computer vision as science is preconditioned upon the seamless ability of a machine to record and disentangle pictures' attributes that were expected to only be conceived by humans. As such, particular interest was dedicated to the ability to analyze the means of artistic expression and style which depicts a more complex task than merely breaking an image down to colors and pixels. The ultimate test for this ability is the task of style transfer which involves altering the style of an image while keeping its content. An effective solution of style transfer requires learning such image representation which would allow disentangling image style and its content. Moreover, particular artistic styles come with idiosyncrasies that affect which content details should be preserved and which discarded. Another pitfall here is that it is impossible to get pixel-wise annotations of style and how the style should be altered. We address this problem by proposing an unsupervised approach that enables encoding the image content in such a way that is required by a particular style. The proposed approach exchanges the style of an input image by first extracting the content representation in a style-aware way and then rendering it in a new style using a style-specific decoder network, achieving compelling results in image and video stylization. Finally, we combine supervised and self-supervised representation learning techniques for the task of human and animals pose understanding. The proposed method enables transfer of the representation learned for recognition of human poses to proximal mammal species without using labeled animal images. This approach is not limited to dense pose estimation and could potentially enable autonomous agents from robots to self-driving cars to retrain themselves and adapt to novel environments based on learning from previous experiences

    Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media

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    The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline

    A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 9: All Formats—Combined Alphabetical Listing

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    This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. This volume contains all listings in all formats, arranged alphabetically by author or main entry. In other words, it combines the listings from Volume 1 (Monograph and Serial Titles), Volume 3 (Periodical Articles), and Volume 7 (Audio/Visual Materials) into a comprehensive bibliography. (There may be additional materials included in this list, e.g. duplicate items and items not yet fully edited.) As in the other volumes, coverage of this material begins around 1994, the final year covered by De Waal's bibliography, but may not yet be totally up-to-date (given the ongoing nature of this bibliography). It is hoped that other titles will be added at a later date. At present, this bibliography includes 12,594 items

    A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 5: Periodical Articles--Secondary References, Alphabetical Listing

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    This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. Volume 5 includes "passing" or "secondary" references, i.e. those entries that are passing in nature or contain very brief information or content

    A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 6: Periodical Articles, Subject Listing, By De Waal Category

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    This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. Volume 6 presents the periodical literature arranged by subject categories (as originally devised for the De Waal bibliography and slightly modified here)

    Teacher roles during amusement park visits – insights from observations, interviews and questionnaires

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    Amusement parks offer rich possibilities for physics learning, through observations and experiments that illustrate important physical principles and often involve the whole body. Amusement parks are also among the most popular school excursions, but very often the learning possibilities are underused. In this work we have studied different teacher roles and discuss how universities, parks or event managers can encourage and support teachers and schools in their efforts to make amusement park visits true learning experiences for their students

    Housing quality and lost (public) space in Croatia

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    IN ENGLISH: In the post-socialist period and within the current social transition context, urban and rural Croatia has, just like other transition countries, experienced many changes in the social structure and space. One example is the housing quality which is a replica of the situation in the Croatian society and has also undergone some major changes. Socially oriented housing construction co-financed by the state and the cities is in an unfavourable position compared to private housing construction. In the last twenty years the amount of the social housing construction has been only a minor part of the total contruction work in the country. For instance, out of nine newly planned residential housing developments in Zagreb, the capital city, only three have been completed and the work on the rest of them has stopped and is unlikely to continue. Private construction work prevails especially on the edge of the city and is characterised by high density housing. This type of housing construction doesn't benefit the majority of citizens in search of accommodation (price per square meter is too high, low-quality building). There is also a big problem of the community facilities (primary and secondary infrastructure, schools, kindergartens, playgrounds, green areas, sidewalks, public transport etc.). The existing globalisation-transition circumstances of the Croatian society corroborate the fact which experts of various profiles often point out: ignoring the process of (urban) planning will irreparably damage the space. The city transformation shows the absence of comprehensive urban planning which results in an ever increasing number of random buildings which do not fit in the surroundings. This leads up to yet another important issue – the shrinking and, in some cases, disappearance of public space which becomes the “lost space“. In recent years there has been a lot of building in the city core and on the edge which does not quite fit in the existing urban structure, image or the skyline of the city. The current situation in the process of planning can be characterized as a conflict and imbalance between the powerful actors (mostly political and economic) and less powerful actors (mostly professional and civil). The actors who have the political power and influence and the ones who possess the capital are forming an “alliance” between two important layers of the social structure. The lack of civil and professional actors, “lost spatial actors”, and therefore of civic aggregation is also present and that is also the cause of public space “disappearance” and undermined process of public participation. --------------- IN CROATIAN: U postsocijalističkom razdoblju i trenutnom tranzicijskom kontekstu urbana i ruralna Hrvatska su, kao i ostale tranzicijske zemlje, doživjele mnoge promjene u društvenoj strukturi i samom prostoru. Na primjeru kvalitete stanovanja kao replike stanja u hrvatskom društvu mogu se vidjeti značajne promjene. Društveno usmjerena stambena izgradnja sufinancirana od strane države i gradova je stoga rjeđa i u nepovoljnijoj je situaciji prema privatnoj stanogradnji. Zadnjih dvadeset godina udjel socijalne stambene gradnje je zanemariv u ukupnoj izgradnji na razini zemlje. Primjerice, od devet planiranih stambenih naselja izgrađenih po modelu POS-a u Zagrebu samo su tri i završena. Na ostalima je proces gradnje zastao i ne čini se da će se privesti kraju. Privatna je gradnje prisutnija, posebno na rubovima grada, a obilježava je visoka gustoća gradnje. Ovakav tip gradnje ne odgovara većini stanovnika koji su u procesu potražnje stambene nekretnine (visoka cijena kvadratnog metra, a slaba kvaliteta gradnje). Postoji također i problem nedostatne opremljenosti susjedstva (primarna i sekundarna infrastruktura, škole, vrtići, igrališta, zelene površine, pješačke staze, javni transport itd.). Navedene globalizacijsko-tranzicijske okolnosti hrvatskog društva potvrđuju ono što eksperti različitih profila ističu, a to je da će ignoriranje procesa (urbanog) planiranja nepovratno uništiti prostor gradova. Ovakve transformacije pokazuju nedostatak sustavnog urbanog planiranja što rezultira sve većim brojem zgrada koje se ne uklapaju u neposrednu okolinu. To nadalje dovodi do drugog važnog aspekta – smanjivanja i u nekim slučajevima, nestanka javnog prostora koji postaje „izgubljeni prostor“. Posljednjih je godina izgrađen velik broj zgrada, i u središtu i na rubovima grada, koje se ne uklapaju u postojeću urbanu strukturu, izgled ili vizuru grada. Ovakvu situaciju obilježavaju sukob i neravnoteža između moćnijih društvenih aktera (većinom političkih i ekonomskih) i onih manje moćnih (većinom profesionalnih i civilnih). Politički i ekonomski akteri se često povezuju u „savez“ dvaju najjačih u društvenoj strukturi. S druge strane nedostatak utjecaja civilnih i profesionalnih aktera kao „izgubljenih prostornih aktera“ dovodi do „nestanka“ javnih prostora te smanjenja važnosti procesa participacije (sudjelovanja javnosti)
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