Text Extraction on Chinese Paintings

[[abstract]]This paper presents a scheme to extract inscriptions from a traditional Chinese painting such that the inscriptions and the painting can be enjoyed or studied separately. A two phases morphological operation is used to remove most content of a painting (i.e. background) which makes inscriptions to become the principal object in the remaining image. Since inscriptions are written vertically, we use the alignment property to construct the center point map and use it to locate character lines. Character block is formed by clustering adjacent character lines. The proposed algorithm has been executed on a set of Chinese paintings and proved its efficacy.[[incitationindex]]EI[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20061008~20061011[[booktype]]紙本[[booktype]]電子版[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Taipei, Taiwa

An Analysis of Interactive Technology’s Effect on the Appreciation of Traditional Chinese Painting: A Review of Case Studies

From a perspective of safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage, this paper discusses how to enhance the appreciation of traditional Chinese painting through the support of interactive technology. The author analyses extensive yet current case studies based on the findings from the interactive appreciation of and engagement with paintings. The author then summarises four aspects of how to design interactive technology in order to support the appreciation of and engagement with traditional Chinese paintings: (1) deepening the aesthetic understanding of traditional Chinese paintings should not be a neglected aspect during the design process; (2) current case studies have not considered distinguishing the user experience between professional artists and amateurs (who are unskilled at painting); (3) it is vital to exploit interactive technology to improve the originality and subtlety of traditional Chinese painting; and (4) employing interactive systems to engage users in participatory appreciation (through encouraging them to talk about art or discussing their understanding of it) could provide potential design insights for future studies

Girl with Lotus and M-16: The ambiguous lineage of Vietnamese revolutionary visual communication

Even before the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was proclaimed and declared independent of France in 1945, the Việt Minh, the revolutionary organisation under the charismatic leadership of Hồ Chí Minh, began recruiting French-trained Vietnamese visual artists to produce visual communication materials, comprising posters, banners, billboards, murals, and other visual emblems of government. The political and military strategies of the Vietnam wars are the stuff of legend and subject to a vast literature and endless debate. However, the political messages produced by the DRV to mobilise popular support for independence and a prolonged ‘people’s war’ against the superior military might of two world powers, France and the United States of America (USA), remain in the shadows, undervalued as shrill ideological artefacts or amusing kitsch souvenirs of communist propaganda. In this thesis, I argue that DRV propaganda was a communist enterprise that drew on an amalgam of communist Sino-Soviet Marxist-Leninist styles, and a melange of other cultural influences, including Vietnamese literary traditions and French visual innovations. This ‘polyglot’ combination produced a vigorous cultural hybrid that was able to rise above party rhetoric and ‘speak’ to all Vietnamese in a ‘language’ they could understand. I contend that the efficacy of DRV propaganda was enabled, inadvertently, by colonial cultural reforms in literacy and visual arts as part of the French civilising mission, which sought to promote colonial rule to the Vietnamese and French populations. Contrary to design, these cultural reforms produced startling consequences for the Vietnamese revolutionary project, including a national writing system, and, an expert cohort of artists, trained in the aesthetics and techniques of visual communication. This thesis explores the cultural origins of DRV propaganda by considering the effects of those cultural reforms as vectors for Vietnamese nationalism, and, the motivations of the French colonial enterprise that propelled them. That cultural reform used as propaganda had unintended and perverse consequences for France’s imperial project is an enduring dialectical irony that Karl Marx himself might have found intriguing

Droping the Trowel: Three Discourses and One Creative Archaeology

Archaeology offers insight into the values of the contemporary world. From three separate discourses, which address different temporalities and sites, an overarching archaeological narrative has been established, which reflects the role of art and heritage in artistic destruction; education and archaeology as an educational and social tool; and materiality (in the present case, the Chinese pottery sherds in Al-Andalus) in the interpretations and acts of archaeologists. The visual values of archaeology and the role of the archaeological imagination to unify disparate archaeological practices will be explored here. The permeability of the spheres of archaeology and art allow us to explore both archaeological and artistic practices, as well as reflect on universal convictions and on the potentiality of archaeological practice to intervene in social contexts. With all this, archaeology acquires relevance insofar as it is a practice that is able to address the problems of the present day. In line with the so-called ‘creative archaeologies’, with their experimentation and creation of artistic works (in this case photographic), this paper aims to reflect on new ways to ‘see’ archaeology, which has never been more necessary

VIRTUAL RESTORATION OF STONE INSCRIPTIONS BASED ON IMAGE ENHANCEMENT AND EDGE DETECTION

A method of virtual restoration of inscribed texts is proposed for blurred inscriptions. Firstly, the image enhancement method is used to enhance the image of the current topos, and the optimal method is selected to highlight the text information. Secondly, the extracted text outline is extracted from the enhanced image, and the extracted text outline is partially processed to obtain a smooth outline, and finally the fill function is used to fill the text outline to complete the virtual restoration of the inscribed text. The experimental results prove that the method can restore for blurred text and retain the original stele text writing style. The results of this experiment can provide a reference basis for the virtual restoration of other inscriptions on the central axis

Figurations of Time in Asia

The experience and the ensuing structuring of time forms a constitutive part of human cultures. There are many ways of coming to terms with time, calendars and historiographies being its most common cultural representations. The contributions to this volume deal with lesser known figurations that result directly from the various perceptions about time and phenomena related to time. Diachronous investigations in various parts of Asia (predominantly South Asia) reveal a broad spectrum of such visual and literary figurative manifestations. While Hinduism recognizes a divine personification of time and allocates the ominous factor time in an ontological proximity to death, other cultures of Asia have developed their own specific concepts and strategies. This collection of essays combines perspectives of various disciplines on figurations in which time congeals, as it were. These figurations result from local time regimes, and beyond demonstrating their diversity of forms this volume offers coordinates for a comparison of cultures. The topics include chronograms as well as early Buddhist topoi of the vastness of time, the Indian Jaina representation of both temporality and non-temporality and the teachings of a Mediaeval Zen master hinting at the more stationary aspects of time

Preserving the Picturesque: Perceptions of Landscape, Landscape Art, and Land Protection in the United States and China

The predominant environmental consciousness in both the United States and China reflects an underlying sense of separation of people from nature. Likewise, traditional landscape paintings in the United States and China share a common underlying aesthetic—i.e., the “picturesque”. Together, these similarities appear to have led to the preservation of similar types of landscapes in both countries. Because decisions regarding landscape preservation and subsequent management of preserved areas in both countries reflect aesthetic preferences more than they reflect economic values placed on ecosystem services, contemporary artists have an opportunity to help shape future societal decisions regarding what natural areas to conserve and protect.Organismic and Evolutionary Biolog

Color in Ancient and Medieval East Asia

With essays by Monica Bethe, Mary M Dusenbury, Shih-shan Susan Huang, Ikumi Kaminishi, Guolong Lai, Richard Laursen, Liu Jian and Zhao Feng, Chika Mouri, Park Ah-rim, Hillary Pedersen, Lisa Shekede and Su Bomin, Sim Yeon-ok and Lee Seonyong, Tanaka Yoko, and Zhao Feng and Long BoColor was a critical element in East Asian life and thought, but its importance has been largely overlooked in Western scholarship. This interdisciplinary volume explores the fascinating roles that color played in the society, politics, thought, art, and ritual practices of ancient and medieval East Asia (ca. 1600 B.C.E.–ca. 1400 C.E.). While the Western world has always linked color with the spectrum of light, in East Asian civilizations colors were associated with the specific plant or mineral substances from which they were derived. Many of these substances served as potent medicines and elixirs, and their transformative powers were extended to the dyes and pigments they produced. Generously illustrated, this groundbreaking publication constitutes the first inclusive study of color in East Asia. It is the outcome of years of collaboration between chemists, conservators, archaeologists, historians of art and literature, and scholars of Buddhism and Daoism from the United States, East Asia, and Europe

The Pattern of Modernity: Textiles in Art, Fashion, and Cultural Memory in Nigeria since 1960

This thesis explores the appropriation of printed and tie-dyed textiles in visual art and culture produced in Nigeria since 1960. By examining the social and political functions of the Yoruba indigo dyed fabric called adire as they evolved over the 20th century, the analyses of artistic appropriations are informed by the perspectives and histories of the cultural production of women in Nigeria's southwest dyeing centers. Questions related to the gendered production of both "traditional crafts" and "modern art" are raised and reformulated for the specific context of textiles. Additionally, the ideology of 'Natural Synthesis' that was a formative force for the post-Independence generation of artists is considered as an influence on the drive to appropriate textiles and their patterns, as well as to conceive of them as "traditional" culture within an artistic paradigm of tradition and modernity. It argues that appropriations of textiles by modernist artists seize and sometimes erase the modernity of female and indigenous cultural production. Since these late modernist movements, artistic appropriations of textiles have continued within the field of visual arts, but underwent significant evolution in terms of media, subject matter, and conceptual underpinnings. Artists no longer undermine the modernity of cultural producers, but use it as a critical tool. These changes represent both a departure from modernist styles that characterized artistic practices in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as a renegotiation with the relationship of textiles to the historical and cultural past of a young nation. As artists and designers of the late 20th and 21st centuries explore the textile in new media and on different terms from their predecessors, new themes emerge such as consumerism, memory and history that situate this generation of cultural producers within global artistic genres and spheres that have dominated since the 1980s

Striking Chords: Music in Ukiyo-e Prints (2021)

The book “Striking Chords: music in ukiyo-e prints” is a student version of a scholarly catalog that accompanies the RISD Museum’s ukiyo-e prints exhibition of the same title. ... This exhibition is a culmination of an ukiyo-e art history course taught at RISD in the fall of 2021. The project was generously accommodated by the RISD Museum. With the help of Wai Yee Chiong, Associate Curator of Asian Art, fifteen prints were selected from the collection of the RISD Museum. For the exhibition’s online component, which is still under construction, additional prints were chosen – two more from the RISD collection, four from the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia, and one from a private collection. All these works are included in the catalog. ... In the spirit of the exhibition topic, this project prompted the entire class to work in concordance as if an instrumental ensemble or even an orchestra. It is the students’ hope that their “Striking Chords” project does indeed strike a chord in the exhibition visitors. -- Foreword, Striking Chords: music in ukiyo-e prints Contributing Authors Joanne Ahn, Benjamin Anderson, Miranda Cancelosi, Yuanyuan Yuki Cao, Zhenrui Ray Cao, Naiqian Chen, Julia Chien, Lynn Cho, Yewon Chun, Zewei Feng, Jamie Gim, Nicholas Grassi, Tzu-Chun Hsu, Jessie Jing, Jackson Kneath, Yingshuet Celine Lam, Haoyu Li, Rilia Li, Jason Liao, Serene Lin, Yichen Ariel Pan, Lydia Pinkhassik, Xiaoqi Shen, Shuixin Wang, Jihyun Woo, Catherine Wu, Jack Wulf, Liu Yang, Yue Zi, Qi Caroline Zou.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/thad_studentwork_ukiyo-e_prints_exhibitioncatalogs/1008/thumbnail.jp