Web-Based Dynamic Paintings: Real-Time Interactive Artworks in Web Using a 2.5D Pipeline

In this work, we present a 2.5D pipeline approach to creating dynamic paintings that can be re-rendered interactively in real-time on the Web. Using this 2.5D approach, any existing simple painting such as portraits can be turned into an interactive dynamic web-based artwork. Our interactive system provides most global illumination effects such as reflection, refraction, shadow, and subsurface scattering by processing images. In our system, the scene is defined only by a set of images. These include (1) a shape image, (2) two diffuse images, (3) a background image, (4) one foreground image, and (5) one transparency image. A shape image is either a normal map or a height. Two diffuse images are usually hand-painted. They are interpolated using illumination information. The transparency image is used to define the transparent and reflective regions that can reflect the foreground image and refract the background image, both of which are also hand-drawn. This framework, which mainly uses hand-drawn images, provides qualitatively convincing painterly global illumination effects such as reflection and refraction. We also include parameters to provide additional artistic controls. For instance, using our piecewise linear Fresnel function, it is possible to control the ratio of reflection and refraction. This system is the result of a long line of research contributions. On the other hand, the art-directed Fresnel function that provides physically plausible compositing of reflection and refraction with artistic control is completely new. Art-directed warping equations that provide qualitatively convincing refraction and reflection effects with linearized artistic control are also new. You can try our web-based system for interactive dynamic real-time paintings at http://mock3d.tamu.edu/.Comment: 22 page

Hyper-Realist Rendering: A Theoretical Framework

This is the first paper in a series on hyper-realist rendering. In this paper, we introduce the concept of hyper-realist rendering and present a theoretical framework to obtain hyper-realist images. We are using the term Hyper-realism as an umbrella word that captures all types of visual artifacts that can evoke an impression of reality. The hyper-realist artifacts are visual representations that are not necessarily created by following logical and physical principles and can still be perceived as representations of reality. This idea stems from the principles of representational arts, which attain visually acceptable renderings of scenes without implementing strict physical laws of optics and materials. The objective of this work is to demonstrate that it is possible to obtain visually acceptable illusions of reality by employing such artistic approaches. With representational art methods, we can even obtain an alternate illusion of reality that looks more real even when it is not real. This paper demonstrates that it is common to create illusions of reality in visual arts with examples of paintings by representational artists. We propose an approach to obtain expressive local and global illuminations to obtain these stylistic illusions with a set of well-defined and formal methods.Comment: 20 page

The teaching process of visual arts activities: a case study

Mestrado em Criação Artística ContemporâneaIn this thesis, we studied (i.e., observed and analysed) the teaching process of visual arts activities (i.e., drawing and painting) in Colégio Oceanus, V. N. Gaia, Portugal, in the context of my 3-month internship. The Art Instructor for the classes of students (i.e., 7 to 10-year-old) that I attended was Ms. Fernanda Santos who followed the projectual methodology like the “Projectual Methodology” of Munari in the design of the artistic education plan (i.e., drawing and painting activities) that she applied.Nesta dissertação foram feitos estudos, observações e análises sobre o processo de ensino das artes visuais (desenho e pintura) no Colégio Oceanus, em V. N. Gaia, Portugal, no contexto de estágio com a duração de três meses. A instrutora de arte responsável pelas aulas que foram presenciadas, com alunos entre os sete e dez anos de idade, Professora Fernanda Santos, segue a metodologia projectual semelhante à “Metodologia Projectual” de Munari na concepção do plano de educação artística (actividades de desenho e pintura) que aplica

Beside our selves : panic as unbecoming

Beside Our Selves: Panic as Unbecoming is a creative PhD in an experimental container. Part autotheory, part experimental poetics and part literary performance, it explores the phenomenology of panic and the ontology of the panicked subject and their entangled relationship to the social, the political, the speculative and the material. I explore how subjectivity is constituted by panic within a practice situated at the intersections of pathology, philosophy, and politics⎯and also in excess of these categories. Through this intersectional lens I develop a complex politics of panic arising from a phenomenologically layered understanding of what happens to bodies and subjectivities in the event of a panic attack. “Beside Our Selves” makes these relations explicit through a creative experimental practice that is driven by situated knowledges gleaned from my personal experience with panic and its affective siblings across a lifetime. I employ Arts Based Methodology, mobilised via the practises of autotheory, experimental poetics and performance, to generate affective atmospheres and reveal the entangled nature of the body in and of the world, as well as what it is that panic can reveal about the existential condition. Using the autotheoretical work of sociologist Jackie Orr and employing Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the “flesh of the world”, I chart the complex ways in which panic can be both annihilating and transformational. The work of Karen Barad and Magdalena Gorska shine a light on these intra-active relations. As part of the original scholarship of this thesis I utilise the concepts of “ictic vocalities” and the “shimmer body”, to explore whether we can turn states of panic into sites of productive agency. “Beside Our Selves” is comprised of a dynamic and deconstructed website which can be navigated in a non-linear manner and is a container for texts, objects and ephemera which flesh out and augment the exegesis. The exegetical work and the website exist in a feedback loop, always mutually referential. This form mirrors the non-linearity and dissolving boundaries at the heart of the world of the panicked subject

A Silicon Valley Life: A Silicon Valley Love Story

In the last three decades, Silicon Valley has become one of the world’s most watched and imitated communities. Daily news reporters, long-form journalists, cinema and television-programming producers have crafted a public image, but it represents nothing of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Valley residents. These fabrications obscure and diminish our complex human profile and reduce our uniquely beautiful geography to a place to generate financial profits, with all the damaging disregard such attitudes foster. The essays of A Silicon Valley Life: A Silicon Valley Love Story seek to show our true self: our rich mix of people drawn from all regions of Earth seeking a better life in a veritable Eden, which, even in the face of violent ecological degradation, remains beautiful and worthy of our greatest care. Home and homelessness are major themes of A Silicon Valley Life. The research relies on the fundamental tools of all great nonfiction writing: honest and prolonged observation of human action and self expression combined with deep reading and reporting of statistical fact and historic record to render insightful analysis and conclusions within a meaningful context. The essays and introduction should be read holistically, not unlike an impressionist or pointillist painting. The result renders a portrait of the people and place of Silicon Valley far closer to the real images and experiences that constitute our actual lives

Selection V: French watercolors and drawings from the museum\u27s collection, ca. 1800-1910

French art from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries forms one of the strongest areas of our holdings. In addition to the paintings and sculpture that are normally on view in our galleries, the Department of Graphic Arts is blessed with an impressive array of watercolors and drawings by most of the figures that gave such prominence to the period. Yet the breadth and quality of this collection has only been suggested by those few drawings by Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh that are exhibited with some regularity. We have long felt the need to systematically research, publish and exhibit a larger group of these sheets, thus sharing with our several publics one of the true treasures of this Museum.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/risdmuseum_publications/1007/thumbnail.jp

English for Geodesy and Land Management Students: tutorial.

English for Geodesy and Land Management Students is the manual for the students majoring in this specialty «Geodesy and Land Management» at higher education institutions and aimed at mastering the English language for specific purposes in this domain. The manual consists of 2 parts comprising the key theoretical issues students study at their special classes. The 1st part consists of 11 units. The 2nd part consists of 14 units. Each unit is designed in the way to provide students with the possibility to practice all language skills giving them flexibility in the field of future professional sphere. In the last part of the tutorial students can find texts for supplementary reading useful for efficient independent work

Ceramics of the Tyne-Forth Region, C. 3500-1500 BC.

Since the beginnings of archaeology, the study of the past in the Tyne-Forth region has been shadowed by the influence of the political boundary that divides it. Although it has long been acknowledged by archaeologists that the modern polities of Scotland and England did not exist in the past, this divide has continued to affect research design, interpretation and publication. In addition to this, the focus on 'core areas', such as Wessex and Orkney, have long been used to interpret the findings in this region, although the remains found between the Tyne and Forth continue to demonstrate that this area was unique and did not necessarily adhere to the same lifeways as these distant lands. For too long this has caused the area to be seen as a periphery. This research has attempted to consider the Neolithic and Bronze Age of this area as a whole, by ignoring the Anglo-Scottish border and by considering the archaeological remains of the entire region using a single methodology and the data was evaluated to establish the norms for the region first, before relating it to what is known nationally. Experimental work was first carried out to learn more about the material and the ways ceramics can be studied in order to design the research so that it would yield the greatest amount of data. A provenance study of the archaeological remains was then carried out. A total of 333 vessels from the Middle Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age, including: Impressed Ware, Grooved Ware, Beaker, Food Vessel, Vase Urns, Collared Urns, Cordoned Urns and Bucket Urns were examined. The resulting data were statistically analysed and evidence for cultural interaction, particularly during the introduction of Beakers, was found. The presence local influence on some pottery (previously identified as Neolithic-derived pottery by Millson et al. 2012 in the Milfield Basin, Northumberland) was also recorded throughout the region. Both of these important findings were considered in-depth and a better understanding of the Late Neolithic/Bronze Age transition is proposed for this region

A Collection Divided: an Analysis of Accession 16082, the Ohio Hopewell Site Collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum

This thesis investigates and documents sixty-one Ohio Hopewellian objects that form a collection currently housed at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM). The objects were excavated from the Hopewell site of Ross County, Ohio which lends its name to a renowned and geographically expansive archaeological cultural horizon. The meaning and interpretation of these MPM objects, and the site itself have evolved over time through decisions made by Native peoples, archaeologists, and museum curators. The MPM’s collection can be used as a conduit enabling discussion of the evolution of interpretations for the entire Hopewell site and the extraordinary number of artifacts which have been removed from it. Further, this collection is a mechanism for understanding decisions and practices in the nineteenth and twentieth century fields of archaeology and museology. To fill displays at the Chicago World’s Colombian Exposition of 1893, Warren K. Moorehead excavated mounds at the Hopewell Mound Group in Ohio from 1891 to 1892. Thousands of objects removed from the site were transported to Chicago, later becoming one of the founding collections for the Field Museum (FM). Objects from the Hopewell site were used as a representative specimen type collection for identification of other Hopewellian sites throughout the Eastern Woodlands of the United States. On April 6th, 1945, the Milwaukee Public Museum received 61 objects from the Hopewell site in an exchange with the FM. This thesis contains two components: a review of decisions made by varying constituents which affected and currently affect the objects and a descriptive analysis of the Hopewell collection at the MPM. First, the review focuses on the transition of these Hopewellian objects’ meaning over time though the decisions of Native peoples, archaeologists, and museum professionals. This begins with a history of the Hopewell site and archaeological practices associated with the site. Next, an object biography is presented, following the MPM Hopewell site collection artifacts journey from southern Ohio to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The final portion of the review discusses the transition of Hopewellian objects’ interpretation over time in museums and National Parks. The second component of this thesis, includes examination and photography of the physical objects, assessment of provenience information, and a comparison to the larger Hopewell collection at the FM. The goals of this thesis are to gather information and associate a largely unresearched collection at the MPM to an important archaeological site, connect to an expansive archaeological cultural horizon, and explore the related professional practices of the previous era. Data collected for this thesis will be provided to the MPM and submitted to the FM for potential incorporation into their “Ohio Hopewell” digital project. By including this information in the digital project, this small collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum will be linked to other Hopewellian objects now spread throughout the world, and as a result, will be more accessible for future research