Unsupervised Text Extraction from G-Maps

This paper represents an text extraction method from Google maps, GIS maps/images. Due to an unsupervised approach there is no requirement of any prior knowledge or training set about the textual and non-textual parts. Fuzzy CMeans clustering technique is used for image segmentation and Prewitt method is used to detect the edges. Connected component analysis and gridding technique enhance the correctness of the results. The proposed method reaches 98.5% accuracy level on the basis of experimental data sets.Comment: Proc. IEEE Conf. #30853, International Conference on Human Computer Interactions (ICHCI'13), Chennai, India, 23-24 Aug., 201

Beckett’s “no-man’s-land” : the influence of paintings on Beckett’s 1930s practice

This thesis investigates the development of Beckett’s early writing process through the impact of paintings and the techniques of painters on his practice during the 1930s. The chief contributions offered by my thesis are not only to be found in the topic and methodology themselves, but also in the argument for the centrality of the doodles in Beckett’s Murphy Notebooks (UoR MS5517). The thesis explores the relationship between Beckett and paintings during the 1930s, using a triangular analysis to deepen the understanding of his Murphy Notebooks, the only surviving handwritten draft of work published in this period. This method allows the analysis to focus on a 10-year timeframe in the life of a writer by considering the development of Beckett’s narrative and writing process during this early period.My analysis of the visual aspects of the manuscript enhances the critical landscape around Beckett’s 1930s practice. It showcases how Beckett’s imagery developed in three phases, influenced by painterly elements such as background and foreground. It also argues that the dark-light dichotomy of chiaroscuro allowed for the dual characterisation of Beckett’s pairs to develop. In discussing Beckett’s integration of elements found in paintings in his practice, this thesis also explores his personal interactions with painters, such as Jack B. Yeats, Bram van Velde and Karl Ballmer. It also explores the impact of the trip he undertook to Germany (1936-7) in relation to the the Murphy Notebooks and “Human Wishes” manuscript doodles by highlighting the impact of his exposure to Expressionist paintings, in particular Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s and Emil Nolde’s paintings

Cipher Books in the Southern Historical Collection

The Southern Historical Collection (SHC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill holds over 15 million manuscript items, thousands of which have not been viewed by researchers since they were placed on the shelves. Some of these items are eighteenth and nineteenth century American cipher books, bound manuscript books illustrating rules and examples of mathematical calculations. The SHC cares for over 50 cipher books, some of which represent the author's artistic talent as well as his or her abilities in arithmetic. The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential research value these unknown manuscripts contain by providing a history of education during the time period, and a brief description of each manuscript. Some more ornate books have accompanying images to display the intricacies and care in creating these mathematical workbooks. Subject areas which may benefit from further study of cipher books include early American education, history of the teaching of mathematics, gender roles in colonial education and cultural influences of education. The paper can be used as a guide to the cipher book collection

Manuscript Subculture: Risk and Radical Practice in Art and Archives

Manuscript Subculture: Risk and Radical Practice in Art and Archives Christian Julien Siroyt Master of Fine Arts 2018 Criticism and Curatorial Practice OCAD University Manuscript Subculture: Risk and Radical Practice in Art and Archives presents a hand-made, one-of-a-kind artist’s book as a practical demonstration of the possibilities and limitations that arise from an engagement with manuscript subcultures in curatorial practice. The site-specific and self-referential nature of the thesis object, which includes original manuscript material embedded within its pages, enacts the concepts to which it refers through a selection of curatorial, archival and artistic contexts that are analyzed in three essays. The selections exemplify traditional and experimental modes of engagement with manuscript objects, and present strategies for integrating the radical implementation of new practices and theories alongside traditional ways of doing. This thesis argues that by actively troubling the conventions of curatorial and archival practice through experimentation with the formal properties of the manuscript object and the artist’s book, discourse in the field expands and encourages new modes of practice

An empirical study on writer identification and verification from intra-variable individual handwriting

© 2013 IEEE. The handwriting of a person may vary substantially with factors, such as mood, time, space, writing speed, writing medium/tool, writing a topic, and so on. It becomes challenging to perform automated writer verification/identification on a particular set of handwritten patterns (e.g., speedy handwriting) of an individual, especially when the system is trained using a different set of writing patterns (e.g., normal speed) of that same person. However, it would be interesting to experimentally analyze if there exists any implicit characteristic of individuality which is insensitive to high intra-variable handwriting. In this paper, we study some handcrafted features and auto-derived features extracted from intra-variable writing. Here, we work on writer identification/verification from highly intra-variable offline Bengali writing. To this end, we use various models mainly based on handcrafted features with support vector machine and features auto-derived by the convolutional network. For experimentation, we have generated two handwritten databases from two different sets of 100 writers and enlarged the dataset by a data-augmentation technique. We have obtained some interesting results

Drawn to the light: the freehand drawing from the dramatic text as an illumination of the theatre designer’s eye of the mind

This practice-based research is drawn from the broader field of the Dramatic Arts and lies within the specific discipline of theatre design. The principle aim is to investigate and analyse the methodology of freehand drawing as the unique means of imaging the dramatic text for theatre and to contextualise my own practice within a theoretical framework. It is driven by the argument that the thinking drawings, more so than the finished, built design, exist as the primary site of revelation for the Australian theatre designer. This research is underpinned by the formal methodologies of Stephen Scrivener, Donald Schön and Douglas Hofstadter; my unconscious practice emerges organically through the unstructured reflective process of Peggy Phelan s performative writing . The hypothesis driven model has been replaced with the equally rigorous model of reflective practice, by which the unending transformative spiral of research has spawned multiple avenues for future research examining drawing from the dramatic text. One such avenue is the discovery of the unrecognised secret autonomous drawing (a drawing that exists outside the original theatre production process). It is this drawing, in particular, that is potentially a door or portal, deep in the consciousness of the theatre designer. The ghosts inhabiting the dark space of the empty stage are illuminated in the designer s eye of the mind where the spectral presence embedded in the palimpsest of the autonomous drawing becomes the seminal source of revelation, of originality and innovation. Integral to this practice-based research was an exhibition, held at the COFA Space, of a personal body of dramatic drawings that accompanied the text. The explorations documented in the text were tested for their potential to become a primary outcome, such as an exhibition of works before a different type of audience in a different style of venue from that of a theatrical production. This exhibition complemented the written dissertation with a critical and reflective focus on the creative or practice component. The principle focus of this exhibition was an interrogation of the process of creating new spaces in the dramatic drawing - the transformation of the dramatic text into the performative scenographic script and in so doing open up new possibilities and artistic and design potential. In the Twenty-First Century the drawings of the contemporary Australian theatre designer are an exclusive personal insight into the intricate nuances of the imaging of the dramatic text and are exceptional in their ability to illuminate a space in constant flux, a site of infinite mutable signs, which excite cognitive surprise , wonder and astonishment. Importantly, they are also the only door into the theatre designer s uncensored private thoughts in an innately collaborative art form

Literary Language as a Tool for Design: An Architectural Study of the Spaces of Mervyn Peake's The Gormenghast Trilogy and 'Boy in Darkness'

The thesis discusses the relationship between the disciplines of literature and architecture. It opens up the potential of literary language to act as a design tool. In order to examine this hypothesis the literary spaces of Mervyn Peake's The Gormenghast Trilogy (1946-59) and 'Boy in Darkness' (1956) are examined as latent architectural spaces. The ensuing discussion poses questions regarding what an architectural language, practice or theory (in respect to the thesis) might be. The thesis questions traditional means of literary analysis, the importance of the author within the text and the related conventions. Spaces extracted from Peake's text form the basis for the analysis. This research uses architectural practice, in the form of maps, sectional drawing and model making, to analyse and render the spaces of the text and their architectural potential. The spatial renditions enable their literary counterparts to be analysed as architectural proposals. An understanding of scale and inhabitation provide the basis from which these spaces can be examined. The positions of author, character, reader and architectural-draughtsman as inhabitants of the text are used to examine the relationship between the self and the other within the text and the architecturally rendered forms. The concept of poetic inhabitation, derived from Bachelard, is extended to draw the apparently disparate aspects of the thesis together in order to argue for literary language to form a tool for architectural design. The thesis provides a position from which the questions are brought up and new avenues explored