137 research outputs found

    Fine arts edutainment: the amateur painter

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    A new scheme for painterly rendering (NPR) has been developed. This scheme is based on visual perception, in particular themulti-scale line/edge representation in the visual cortex. The Amateur Painter (TAP) is the user interface on top of the rendering scheme. It allows to (semi)automatically create paintings from photographs, with different types of brush strokes and colour manipulations. In contrast to similar painting tools, TAP has a set of menus that reflects the procedure followed by a normal painter. In addition, menus and options have been designed such that they are very intuitive, avoiding a jungle of sub-menus with options from image processing that children and laymen do not understand. Our goal is to create a tool that is extremely easy to use, with the possibility that the user becomes interested in painting techniques, styles, and fine arts in general

    The end of the art connoisseur? Experts and knowledge production in the visual arts in the digital age

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    In this digital age, declarations surface on the death of the expert and the democratization of information. Crowd wisdom is seen as the new guide in constructing and evaluating knowledge. In the context of the art world, this tension between the amateurs and the experts becomes particularly pronounced as popular meets high culture. Questions arise such as wh

    Automatic hand or head gesture interface for individuals with motor impairments, senior citizens and young children

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    Senior citizens, very young children and users with different kinds of impairments are often prevented from enjoying the benefits of latest technologies for assistance, accessibility and usability, often due to unfriendly or expensive interfaces. We present a friendly and inexpensive system that allows one to interact with a computer, using only a few distinct but intuitive gestures which are translated into mouse actions. The gestures can be carried out by the head or by the hand, which are automatically selected, without any kind of prior calibration or special environment. For each kind of user a different frontend is presented, adapted to specific needs, nevertheless access to all the functionalities of the operating systems can be given if requested

    Rollins Alumni Record, January 2001

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    Renaissance at Rollin

    Robber Barons and Humbuggers: The Rise of Philanthropic Museums in Nineteenth-Century New York

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    New York City\u27s most recognizable museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the support of wealthy benefactors. At the same time, social reformers, mostly Protestant and middle or upper-class, were combating the vice and poverty that they saw in the diversifying city with a moralizing rhetoric of character building. This paper will show that these two movements, the rise of Philanthropic Museums and the Social Reform movement were connected and that the large temple-like museums that thrive to this day were viewed as a way to improve the moral character of the poor by imposing the standards of the wealthy

    Learning as Leisure: Motivation, Outcome, Value

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    Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, 2009The purpose of this study was to determine the motivational orientations of leisure learning participants and to determine what the perceived outcomes and ascribed value associated with learner participation in various leisure learning activities. To achieve this a multi-method design was used to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. A questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data on participant motivational orientations. Demographic items were also included on the questionnaire to generate independent variables for analysis. A follow-up telephone interview with volunteers who completed questionnaires provided for qualitative data. Results of the questionnaire indicated three emergent primary motivational orientations: Social Contact, Cognitive Interest, and Social Stimulation. These orientations were different between younger and older adults, as well as between people who were taking courses which tended to be taken multiple times and people took classes which tended to be taken only once. The most salient outcome themes related to interpersonal ideas about interacting with others such as meeting new people and contact with social groups, and more individual intrapersonal outcomes such as pursing interests, enrichment, health, and enjoyment. Learners indicated a general sense of good feeling, especially about themselves. Course experiences were also described as activating or relaxing processes. Opportunity to try new things was important to many interviewees for both outcome and value. Findings from the study contribute to the idea that learning as leisure is perceived by participants to be good for them and were valued by them. Findings also offer some understanding about the nature of leisure learning behavior

    Fall \u2711-Winter \u2712

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    A Traditional Art in a Modern Museum: Internship at Museu do Vitral

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    This report aims to present a comprehensive reflection and description of the internship carried out for the completion of the Master’s degree in Intercultural Studies for Business from the Porto Accounting and Business School (ISCAP), which took place at Museu do Vitral, from February to May 2022. Museums have evolved considerably throughout history, from the cabinets of curiosities to the modern 21st century museum that makes use of technology. Museums can lead to economic and cultural gains at local, national and international levels, and their relationship with their communities has evolved through time. Museu do Vitral is located in the historic centre of the city of Porto and it exhibits artworks created by Vidraria Antunes, which was one of the oldest stained-glass studios in Portugal. This report describes the experience of being an intern at Museu do Vitral, with an analysis of the multiple tasks and functions carried out during the course of the internship, the knowledge obtained as well as the skills acquired during the master’s degree that contributed to the success of the internship, the challenges faced and overcome, with a final reflection on the results and impact of the experience

    Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts. EVA 2014 Florence

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    Information Technologies of interest for Culture Heritage are presented: multimedia systems, data-bases, data protection, access to digital content, Virtual Galleries. Particular reference is reserved to digital images (Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts), regarding Cultural Institutions (Museums, Libraries, Palace - Monuments, Archaeological Sites). The International Conference includes the following Sessions: Strategic Issues; EC Projects and Related Networks & Initiatives; 2D - 3D Technologies and Applications; Virtual Galleries - Museums and Related Initiatives; Access to the Culture Information. Three Workshops regard: International Cooperation; Innovation and Enterprise; e.Culture Cloud

    Virtual Heritage: new technologies for edutainment

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    Cultural heritage represents an enormous amount of information and knowledge. Accessing this treasure chest allows not only to discover the legacy of physical and intangible attributes of the past but also to provide a better understanding of the present. Museums and cultural institutions have to face the problem of providing access to and communicating these cultural contents to a wide and assorted audience, meeting the expectations and interests of the reference end-users and relying on the most appropriate tools available. Given the large amount of existing tangible and intangible heritage, artistic, historical and cultural contents, what can be done to preserve and properly disseminate their heritage significance? How can these items be disseminated in the proper way to the public, taking into account their enormous heterogeneity? Answering this question requires to deal as well with another aspect of the problem: the evolution of culture, literacy and society during the last decades of 20th century. To reflect such transformations, this period witnessed a shift in the museum’s focus from the aesthetic value of museum artifacts to the historical and artistic information they encompass, and a change into the museums’ role from a mere "container" of cultural objects to a "narrative space" able to explain, describe, and revive the historical material in order to attract and entertain visitors. These developments require creating novel exhibits, able to tell stories about the objects and enabling visitors to construct semantic meanings around them. The objective that museums presently pursue is reflected by the concept of Edutainment, Education + Entertainment. Nowadays, visitors are not satisfied with ‘learning something’, but would rather engage in an ‘experience of learning’, or ‘learning for fun’, being active actors and players in their own cultural experience. As a result, institutions are faced with several new problems, like the need to communicate with people from different age groups and different cultural backgrounds, the change in people attitude due to the massive and unexpected diffusion of technology into everyday life, the need to design the visit by a personal point of view, leading to a high level of customization that allows visitors to shape their path according to their characteristics and interests. In order to cope with these issues, I investigated several approaches. In particular, I focused on Virtual Learning Environments (VLE): real-time interactive virtual environments where visitors can experience a journey through time and space, being immersed into the original historical, cultural and artistic context of the work of arts on display. VLE can strongly help archivists and exhibit designers, allowing to create new interesting and captivating ways to present cultural materials. In this dissertation I will tackle many of the different dimensions related to the creation of a cultural virtual experience. During my research project, the entire pipeline involved into the development and deployment of VLE has been investigated. The approach followed was to analyze in details the main sub-problems to face, in order to better focus on specific issues. Therefore, I first analyzed different approaches to an effective recreation of the historical and cultural context of heritage contents, which is ultimately aimed at an effective transfer of knowledge to the end-users. In particular, I identified the enhancement of the users’ sense of presence in VLE as one of the main tools to reach this objective. Presence is generally expressed as the perception of 'being there', i.e. the subjective belief of users that they are in a certain place, even if they know that the experience is mediated by the computer. Presence is related to the number of senses involved by the VLE and to the quality of the sensorial stimuli. But in a cultural scenario, this is not sufficient as the cultural presence plays a relevant role. Cultural presence is not just a feeling of 'being there' but of being - not only physically, but also socially, culturally - 'there and then'. In other words, the VLE must be able to transfer not only the appearance, but also all the significance and characteristics of the context that makes it a place and both the environment and the context become tools capable of transferring the cultural significance of a historic place. The attention that users pay to the mediated environment is another aspect that contributes to presence. Attention is related to users’ focalization and concentration and to their interests. Thus, in order to improve the involvement and capture the attention of users, I investigated in my work the adoption of narratives and storytelling experiences, which can help people making sense of history and culture, and of gamification approaches, which explore the use of game thinking and game mechanics in cultural contexts, thus engaging users while disseminating cultural contents and, why not?, letting them have fun during this process. Another dimension related to the effectiveness of any VLE is also the quality of the user experience (UX). User interaction, with both the virtual environment and its digital contents, is one of the main elements affecting UX. With respect to this I focused on one of the most recent and promising approaches: the natural interaction, which is based on the idea that persons need to interact with technology in the same way they are used to interact with the real world in everyday life. Then, I focused on the problem of presenting, displaying and communicating contents. VLE represent an ideal presentation layer, being multiplatform hypermedia applications where users are free to interact with the virtual reconstructions by choosing their own visiting path. Cultural items, embedded into the environment, can be accessed by users according to their own curiosity and interests, with the support of narrative structures, which can guide them through the exploration of the virtual spaces, and conceptual maps, which help building meaningful connections between cultural items. Thus, VLE environments can even be seen as visual interfaces to DBs of cultural contents. Users can navigate the VE as if they were browsing the DB contents, exploiting both text-based queries and visual-based queries, provided by the re-contextualization of the objects into their original spaces, whose virtual exploration can provide new insights on specific elements and improve the awareness of relationships between objects in the database. Finally, I have explored the mobile dimension, which became absolutely relevant in the last period. Nowadays, off-the-shelf consumer devices as smartphones and tablets guarantees amazing computing capabilities, support for rich multimedia contents, geo-localization and high network bandwidth. Thus, mobile devices can support users in mobility and detect the user context, thus allowing to develop a plethora of location-based services, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits and cultural or tourist sites according to visitors’ personal interest and curiosity
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