EVM: Incorporating Model Checking into Exploratory Visual Analysis

Visual analytics (VA) tools support data exploration by helping analysts quickly and iteratively generate views of data which reveal interesting patterns. However, these tools seldom enable explicit checks of the resulting interpretations of data -- e.g., whether patterns can be accounted for by a model that implies a particular structure in the relationships between variables. We present EVM, a data exploration tool that enables users to express and check provisional interpretations of data in the form of statistical models. EVM integrates support for visualization-based model checks by rendering distributions of model predictions alongside user-generated views of data. In a user study with data scientists practicing in the private and public sector, we evaluate how model checks influence analysts' thinking during data exploration. Our analysis characterizes how participants use model checks to scrutinize expectations about data generating process and surfaces further opportunities to scaffold model exploration in VA tools

Image and Performance, Agency and Ideology: Human Figurative Representation in Anglo-Saxon Funerary Art, AD 400 – 750

This thesis investigates the topic of human imagery and hybrid human imagery rendered on metalwork of early Anglo-Saxon date recovered within eastern England. It presents the first definitive catalogue of its kind in this region and timeframe. Taking inspiration from recent transitions in thinking on early Anglo-Saxon art, the major topics of consideration include: a) the interrelationship between image, object and the user, b) the changing portrayal of human representation and the social implications of such developments and c) the emergence of new bodily gestures in representational art. These key themes might provide an understanding of how and why human imagery changed as it did, how and by whom it was deployed in life and death and the role this type of imagery performed in the construction and presentation of social identity

Cultural Appropriation and Cook Island Visual Identity

The issues surrounding appropriation leads this study to investigate if cultural appropriation is detrimental to Cook Island culture. The research focuses on Cook Island culture with the aim of identifying if appropriation occurs and if it leads to loss of Cook Island visual identity. Furthermore, the research considers the references utilised by Cook Island young adults with the aim of identifying the associations made with their visual identity. This extends to consider if Cook Island young adults have stronger associations with brands who appropriate Cook Island designs to their own culture. Thus, giving thought to consider if the influence of cultural primes utilised by foreign agencies generate a loss of identity within the youth culture of the Cook Islands, and ultimately generate a loss of cultural identity for future generations. However, the limitations of this research and lack of literature, hindered the ability to substantiate if cultural appropriation leads to loss of Cook Island visual identity. Nonetheless, the research did provide recognition of the issues faced by the Cook Islands regarding cultural appropriation, identifying its ability to afford the same protection of its cultural forms as provided to those within Western society, are hindered due to the nature of its arts and culture. Furthermore, the research acknowledges the difficulty surrounding the identification of motifs considered to be distinct to the Cook Islands is predicated upon motifs generalised as Polynesian. The research also provided insight into the cues utilised by Cook Island young adults in the formation of their visual identity and, acknowledges the existence of brands utilising cultural forms as references utilised for representations of their visual identity

Analyzing Data-Centric Properties for Graph Contrastive Learning

Recent analyses of self-supervised learning (SSL) find the following data-centric properties to be critical for learning good representations: invariance to task-irrelevant semantics, separability of classes in some latent space, and recoverability of labels from augmented samples. However, given their discrete, non-Euclidean nature, graph datasets and graph SSL methods are unlikely to satisfy these properties. This raises the question: how do graph SSL methods, such as contrastive learning (CL), work well? To systematically probe this question, we perform a generalization analysis for CL when using generic graph augmentations (GGAs), with a focus on data-centric properties. Our analysis yields formal insights into the limitations of GGAs and the necessity of task-relevant augmentations. As we empirically show, GGAs do not induce task-relevant invariances on common benchmark datasets, leading to only marginal gains over naive, untrained baselines. Our theory motivates a synthetic data generation process that enables control over task-relevant information and boasts pre-defined optimal augmentations. This flexible benchmark helps us identify yet unrecognized limitations in advanced augmentation techniques (e.g., automated methods). Overall, our work rigorously contextualizes, both empirically and theoretically, the effects of data-centric properties on augmentation strategies and learning paradigms for graph SSL.Comment: Accepted to NeurIPS 202

Aspects of design in Iron Age and early Roman Europe

This research offers design practices and processes as an approach for exploring matters of making artefacts, with particular reference to the Iron Age and early Roman period in Europe (c. 500 BC to c. AD 200). The concept of design links individuals and groups who creatively engage with materials, offering a means of thinking about artefacts in interconnected ways beyond the framing of material culture through typologies and chronologies. Designing artefacts involves networking people with other objects conceived, made and recreated in different media and within conditions of socio-cultural affordances and constraints ranging from the household to the inter-regional. Ways of seeing (and not seeing) have fundamentally informed past research directions and continue to do so. Beyond the visual experience of artefacts, spoken and written terminologies have framed and categorized how artefacts have been perceived and how ideas about them have been transmitted, frequently preserving particular ways of seeing. The idea of an ‘art object’ remains at the core of many approaches to material culture studies. A review of existing literature on ‘Celtic art’ demonstrates that the dichotomy between ‘art’ and ‘technology’, combined with persistent terminologies, remain influential. Design theory applied in fields other than archaeology, such as architecture, shows that such divisions are redundant for the understanding of creative processes and practices. In this thesis, design is offered as a potentially more useful approach in its constituency of social process with all aspects and associations of constructed objects; portable and fixed artefacts, buildings and landscapes. This approach has been constructed from archaeological theory, design theory and art criticism, combined with ideas from both personal experience of design practice and from discussions with designer-makers within their own creative spaces. Aspects of design of Iron Age and early Roman artefacts are explored through four case studies in order to assess the visibilities, invisibilities and transmissions of the concepts of their socio-cultural associative networks

Gestural patterns: a new method of printed textile design using motion capture technology

The aim of this research is to develop a new method, Hybrid Printing System (HPS) to explore digital craft methods to create surface patterns for printed textile design. This novel method of creating ‘handcrafted’ prints is a result of the integration of two technologies such as motion-capture (MOCAP) and digital textile printing (DTP). The research towards such an innovation required a current, historical, contextual and experimental study of use of motion capture in Art &Design. The research contextualises the hand and its relationship to digital crafting methods in printed textile design, the digital medium and the process of audience participation in printed textile design to create a new conceptual framework balanced in practice and theory. The practical research then develops three new methods of motion capture such as, motion tracing, motion sensing and motion tracking to generate gestural motifs and gestural patterns. This thesis and the accompanying set of experimental work demonstrates that HPS culminates in developing new aesthetics through a new mode of creation in a new medium, which will impact the user, the designer and the product as a part of the cyclical process. HPS is an advancement of printed textile design, centred in active participation of its audience at the generative stage of design. This results in a shifting role of a designer and subverts the current model of printed textile design practice. HPS is a democratic design process where the participants design for themselves, have their own voice, which induces a sense of community, togetherness and harmony in the creative process

Exploring Late Bronze Age systems of bronzework production in Switzerland through Network Science

YesMany hundreds of Bronze Age bronze artefacts are known from excavations in Switzerland, yet the interpretation of production networks from the object find locations remain problematic. It is proposed that the decorative elements used on items, such as ring-jewellery, can be used as elements to assist in the identification of artisanal traditions and ‘schools’, and also regional or community preference and selection of specific designs. Combining the analysis of over 1700 items of ring-jewellery from Switzerland with approaches from network science has facilitated the identification of regional clustering of design elements, comparable with cultural typologies in the area. It is also possible to identify potential instances of cultural differentiation through decoration within the broader regional cultural traditions. The study highlights important facets of bronzework production in the region of Switzerland, while also demonstrating future potential directions which could build upon the European wide dataset of prehistoric bronzework.Primary research conducted under previous funding at University of Basel, Switzerland – SNF gran

Developing Animal and Human Relationships in Prehistoric South India: A Spatial and Contents Analysis of Petroglyphs at Maski, Karnataka

This thesis is the result of an in-depth investigation into the rock art of a local region in South India. It has explored the significance of tangible landscape placement in rock art production, a form of visual culture which remains intangible in many aspects of meaning. This thesis elaborates on current forms of archaeological knowledge in South India, generated through social understandings of landscape, contrasted against current knowledge of rock art in South India. It provides a means to intersect rock art documentation with archaeological research projects within an Indian context in a cost effective and widely applicable manner. A spatial analysis regarding the wider contexts of rock art sites, comparing their spatial proximity to variable natural and anthropogenic landscape features demonstrate the ubiquity of rock art production in this region of South India, associated with developed and ephemeral prehistoric habitation patterns. Additionally, a close scale analysis of technical details at panel level reveal different methods of continual interaction with motifs subsequent to their initial production phase, along with enhanced visualisations of motif forms. Overall, this thesis makes suggestions about the role of rock art in visualising developing relationships with animals and humans throughout the prehistoric period in South India, with a particular focus on cattle motifs. This thesis argues that the nature of that relationship is a continually transformative one, extending beyond the prehistoric period. Results presented in this thesis supports the integration of rock art documentation and analysis into other archaeological research projects within the Indian subcontinent, providing an added dimension to the complexity of archaeological human-landscape interactions