Mathematical Imaging and Surface Processing

Within the last decade image and geometry processing have become increasingly rigorous with solid foundations in mathematics. Both areas are research fields at the intersection of different mathematical disciplines, ranging from geometry and calculus of variations to PDE analysis and numerical analysis. The workshop brought together scientists from all these areas and a fruitful interplay took place. There was a lively exchange of ideas between geometry and image processing applications areas, characterized in a number of ways in this workshop. For example, optimal transport, first applied in computer vision is now used to define a distance measure between 3d shapes, spectral analysis as a tool in image processing can be applied in surface classification and matching, and so on. We have also seen the use of Riemannian geometry as a powerful tool to improve the analysis of multivalued images. This volume collects the abstracts for all the presentations covering this wide spectrum of tools and application domains

Manual / Issue 9 / Out of Line

Manual, a journal about art and its making. Out of Line. The nineth issue. This issue of *Manual*—themed Out of Line—is a collection about the way that lines disrupt, point outward. In poetry, the attention to detail one takes in crafting a line is all about making the line disappear, making something it holds to take front stage. . . . The space between the lines creating the image . . . the space around that argues for the importance of all that the lines hold. Manual 9 (Out of Line) complemented Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now, presented in collaboration with the British Museum, on view at the RISD Museum October 6, 2017 to January 7, 2018. Softcover, 76 pages. Published 2017 by the RISD Museum. Manual 9 (Out of Line) contributors include Fida Adely, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Stefano Bloch, Mimi Cabell, Namita Vijay Dharia, Douglas W. Doe, Jared A. Goldstein, Lucinda Hitchcock, Jan Howard, Kate Irvin, Douglas Kearney, Amber Lopez, Jeffrey Moser, Sheida Soleimani, and Craig Taylor.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/risdmuseum_journals/1035/thumbnail.jp

Underwater simulation and mapping using imaging sonar through ray theory and Hilbert maps

Mapping, sometimes as part of a SLAM system, is an active topic of research and has remarkable solutions using laser scanners, but most of the underwater mapping is focused on 2D maps, treating the environment as a floor plant, or on 2.5D maps of the seafloor. The reason for the problematic of underwater mapping originates in its sensor, i.e. sonars. In contrast to lasers (LIDARs), sonars are unprecise high-noise sensors. Besides its noise, imaging sonars have a wide sound beam effectuating a volumetric measurement. The first part of this dissertation develops an underwater simulator for highfrequency single-beam imaging sonars capable of replicating multipath, directional gain and typical noise effects on arbitrary environments. The simulation relies on a ray theory based method and explanations of how this theory follows from first principles under short-wavelegnth assumption are provided. In the second part of this dissertation, the simulator is combined to a continous map algorithm based on Hilbert Maps. Hilbert maps arise as a machine learning technique over Hilbert spaces, using features maps, applied to the mapping context. The embedding of a sonar response in such a map is a contribution. A qualitative comparison between the simulator ground truth and the reconstucted map reveal Hilbert maps as a promising technique to noisy sensor mapping and, also, indicates some hard to distinguish characteristics of the surroundings, e.g. corners and non smooth features.O mapeamento, às vezes como parte de um sistema SLAM, é um tema de pesquisa ativo e tem soluções notáveis usando scanners a laser, mas a maioria do mapeamento subaquático é focada em mapas 2D, que tratam o ambiente como uma planta, ou mapas 2.5D do fundo do mar. A razão para a dificuldade do mapeamento subaquático origina-se no seu sensor, i.e. sonares. Em contraste com lasers (LIDARs), os sonares são sensores imprecisos e com alto nível de ruído. Além do seu ruído, os sonares do tipo imaging têm um feixe sonoro muito amplo e, com isso, efetuam uma medição volumétrica, ou seja, sobre todo um volume. Na primeira parte dessa dissertação se desenvolve um simulador para sonares do tipo imaging de feixo único de alta frequência capaz de replicar os efeitos típicos de multicaminho, ganho direcional e ruído de fundo em ambientes arbitrários. O simulador implementa um método baseado na teoria geométrica de raios, com todo seu desenvolvimento partindo da acústica subaquática. Na segunda parte dessa dissertação, o simulador é incorporado em um algoritmo de reconstrução de mapas contínuos baseado em Hilbert Maps. Hilbert Maps surge como uma técnica de aprendizado de máquina sobre espaços de Hilbert, usando mapas de características, aplicadas ao contexto de mapeamento. A incorporação de uma resposta de sonar em um tal mapa é uma contribuição desse trabalho. Uma comparação qualitativa entre o ambiente de referência fornecido ao simulador e o mapa reconstruído pela técnica proposta, revela Hilbert Maps como uma técnica promissora para mapeamento atráves de sensores ruidosos e, também, aponta para algumas características do ambiente difíceis de se distinguir, e.g. cantos e regiões não suaves

Geometry of Faith: a Stereotomic Reconstruction of Sainte-Anne-la-Royale in Paris

Planned during the XVIIth century by the Italian architect Guarino Guarini, the church of Sainte-Anne-la-Royale was supposed to be built in Paris to honor the French Queen Anne of Austria. In an unfortunate twist of fate the church was only partially realized and later destroyed. Present history\u27s only memory comes in three engravings by Guarino Guarini himself: a plan, a transversal section, and the main elevation. An example of Italian Baroque Architecture, the building shines for its intriguing plan and complex system of vaults. Its execution was supposed to be realized according to the refined techniques of French stereotomy. Faithful to its original inspiration, Sainte-Anne is here rebuilt using a rational geometric system that links each element in the composition by projections and squaring of circles. Each of the elements composing the church has been individually analyzed and reconstructed. The main reference for this process has been provided by Guarini\u27s posthumous essay Architettura Civile. Though still unbuilt, Sainte-Anne-la-Royale has been reconstructed by a new set of drawings, both handmade (pencil on mylar, 30\u27\u27x40\u27\u27) and computer generated, and a physical model (3d-printed; about 41 tall)

Comparing a Surface Collection to an Excavated Collection in the Lower Skagit River Delta at 45SK51

In the Puget Sound Lowland of the Pacific Northwest, archaeologists have investigated a shift in settlement and subsistence patterns occurring in the mid-Holocene Epoch. The artifacts used as the evidence of this shift are interpreted with a concept known as resource intensification. This shift in artifact frequencies has been studied only in the last thirty years and in limited areas of the Puget Sound Lowlands. An opportunity to investigate a site dating to after the shift presented itself when Central Washington University acquired the Lower Skagit River Delta Surface Collection (LSRDSC). This artifact assemblage was collected from a plow-zone surface in the Lower Skagit River Delta with permission of the landowner. This plowed field is the same location as site 45SK51, a sample of which was excavated in the 1960s. The purpose of this study is two-fold: to determine if LSRDSC can be combined with the 1960s excavated sample and used to detect the presence of resource intensification and then compare those results to two other site analyses from the Lower Puget Sound. Differences in the selective conditions are proposed to account for differences in artifact types between 45SK51 and the other two sites. These differences may be tied to uneven distributions of relative frequencies for tool technologies across different microenvironments, which is a consistent pattern found in earlier research in the area

Mana, the socio-cultural facets and spatial morphology of Tangale domestic spaces

An increase in population recorded in traditional Nigerian communities facing rapid urbanization created a demand for housing. This has necessitated research regarding the socio-cultural needs of different cultures in the country. This gap is most evident the North East region where little or no intense architectural studies have been carried out in part due to mountainous terrain. Furthermore, no culture specific studies have addressed the relationship between social problems such as insecurity, delinquency and slum environments with changes in lifestyle nor investigate the failure of prototype housing in some of these communities. The present study addresses these issues via two surveys in Tangale land, North East Nigeria. Interdisciplinary approaches combined in ethnography were employed to document the culture and lifestyle of the community for possible relationships between changes in the culture and social problems. Space syntax techniques, scaled drawings and space use patterns were utilized in a measured survey to document and analyse housing in the community. These became instrumental in explaining changes in housing typologies, the sustained use of some socio-cultural values/themes and functional spaces such as courtyards, forecourts for outdoor living as well as spatial and morphological differences between community-produced housing and government-provided prototype units. Results reveal that changes in the culture of the community largely due to external influences are linked to the observed social problems. Four housing typologies and compound transformation patterns also exist in the study area, correlating with four major historical events. Furthermore, the socio-cultural factors of kinship, security and basic needs were not adequately reflected in the design and location of the prototype units which may account for their abandonment and modification. This has implications for future policies in urban planning and architectural design in Tangale land

Telepresence: Joan Jonas and the Emergence of Performance and Video Art in the 1970s

This dissertation is a study of the early career of the American artist Joan Jonas that spans the years 1970-1984. At the turn of the 1970s, Jonas was one of the first artists to pick up a video camera. Exploring “live” video’s unique capacity to mediate the present moment, Jonas actively integrated the technology into her live pieces, which are some of the earliest examples of what was then first called “performance art.” Performance art has often been aligned with presence. In contrast, I argue that what at stake in the proliferation of live artworks by Jonas and others that merged performance and video was not a reserve of unmediated experience, but a presence that was newly technologized: telepresence. As Jonas investigated the novel ability to perform at a distance enabled by electronic media, her work led somewhere surprising: to telegraphy, telepathy, and the earliest telephones—“tele”-technologies that appear long obsolete (or completely fantastical). Evoking optical telegraphs, spirit mediums, speaking trumpets, and science fictional prostheses, Jonas’s early oeuvre reactivates the historical contexts and unrealized potentials surrounding these dead media. In so doing, she illuminates enduring formations of the body, subjectivity, and teletechnology underlying not only the twinned emergence of performance and video art in the 1970s, but also telepresence as a seemingly very contemporary (and increasingly pervasive) category of experience

Jewellery theory and practice: an investigation into emotionally invested and mnemonic jewellery through sensitising materials

This research explores the capacity of jewellery to be emotionally embedded and to perform a mnemonic function. It investigates the work of European jewellers, jewellery design methods and thought-provoking ways of displaying jewellery in an atypical setting. It is situated in the context of contemporary jewellery design and practice and aims to expand our knowledge of the potential of materials and new technologies to advance opportunities for the making of jewellery as an artefact with the capacity to be a carrier of emotions and memories. Throughout, the author utilises concepts of sensitising materials and notions of narrative quality. A body of work comprising nineteen publications including a chapter from a monograph book by the author is presented. The academic outputs illustrate a range of approaches from the theoretical and the experimental to exploratory qualitative methods. The findings, testing innovative materials and new technologies contribute to our understanding of technical and aesthetic solutions to the problematics of investing jewellery with memories and emotions through the application of both digital technologies and traditional craft techniques. The results were then applied in qualitative contexts, firstly to explore their capacity to support the designing and making and secondly, in a collaborative setting to explore the capacity of this novel practice for enhancing well-being. The distinctive contribution to knowledge comprises, in part, reflections on the materiality of the object from the jewellery maker’s perspective. The purpose is to further an understanding of the role of emotionally and mnemonically embedded jewellery both in everyday life and as an agent of well-being. In doing so, it can be seen as: extending the work of anthropologist Ingold; informing the theory of jewellery initiated by Lindermann; and as refining conceptualisations of the capacity of emotionally charged jewellery for enhancing well-being.</div