Cultural Norms and Race Discrimination Standards: A Case Study in How the Two Diverge

The legal standard for race discrimination - the intent standard - has been scrutinized and justified for decades, but that conversation has occurred almost entirely within the legal community. Relatively little effort has been made to engage the public. This Article posits that the discussion of discrimination standards must account for and include public understandings of race and discrimination because race is a socially constructed concept and discrimination is culturally contingent. Race discrimination standards based solely upon the legal community’s perceptions are susceptible to significant flaws. This Article begins the incorporation of public understandings of race and discrimination by examining the public’s reaction to a recent cartoon that, on its face, is racially neutral or ambiguous, but in light of surrounding cultural context and history is arguably racist. The cartoon generated a flurry of internet postings, reactions, and polls. This Article systematically studies those reactions and finds that the public tends to conceptualize race discrimination differently than the courts and, thus, calls into question the validity of current legal standards

What do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About Human-Robot Interaction?

This is a collection of papers presented at the workshop What Do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About HRI , held at the 2010 Human-Robot Interaction Conference, in Osaka, Japan

Michelle Obama: A Contemporary Analysis of Race and Gender Discrimination through the Lens of Title VII

Pundits and commentators have attempted to make sense of the role that race and gender played in the 2008 presidential campaign. Whereas researchers are drawing on varying bodies of scholarship to illuminate the role that President-elect, Senator Obama\u27s race and Senator Clinton\u27s gender had on their campaigns, Michelle Obama has been left out of the discussion. As Senator Clinton once noted, elections are like hiring decisions. As such, new frontiers in employment discrimination law place Michelle Obama in context within the current presidential campaign. First, racism and sexism are both alive and well within the domains of politics and employment. Second, most racial and gender bias is not express, but unconscious. Third, under Title VII, employment discrimination may be directed at a third party for their association with members of a disliked group. Here, some voters\u27 unconscious race and gender biases against Mrs. Obama likely affected their voting decision vis-a-vis Senator Obama

Less realism : more meaning : evaluating imagery for the graphic designer

Typography\u27 as a defining term has become interchangcable with \u27graphic design\u27. and while font choice and application is seen as of paramount importance. image choice, virtually half , . of the communication design equation, is neglected in the theory and in pratice is left to the instinct of the designer. In this thesis I try to find approaches for graphic designers to understand image to the degree that they understand type. These approaches are tested through assignments for graphic design students and the results recorded and analysed. I seek to address the paradox that we are able to communicate more accurately through less accurately rendered images. I will explain how the human visual system. evolved over time by looking only upon the natural world in all its reality. can look upon a stick-figure and make an emotional and intellectual connection. I examine the design implications of this strange faculty of the visual system. Gombrich. Arnheim and others have explored realism in, and applied psychology to, art in order to become better art historians. I explore the implications in the more pragmatic. economically imperative field of design of moving away from realism in the visual aspects of communication

Exploration des figures de la métamorphose : du virtuel au réel

Ce projet de recherche-création repose sur une réinterprétation subjective de la métamorphose à travers les arts médiatiques et les nouvelles technologies de l'image numérique, inspirée des approches psychanalytiques de Freud et Jung et du récit des Métamorphoses d’Ovide. Ce mémoire porte principalement sur le questionnement suivant: Comment proposer une nouvelle interprétation de la thématique de la métamorphose en intégrant l’illusion du mouvement dans la matière sculpturale? À travers une brève contextualisation du rôle symbolique de la transfiguration dans les mythes de métamorphose, il est tout d’abord question d’explorer comment certains artistes plastiques ont évoqué la dimension transitoire de la transfiguration en relation avec la sculpture et la peinture. Puis, l’étude met tout d’abord en relation la dimension du temps, nécessaire à la représentation de la métamorphose, avec le concept de l’image-mouvement et de la temporalité spécifique à l’univers virtuel pour ensuite se concentrer sur la proposition d’une nouvelle interprétation de ces mythes à la lumière de l’approche artistique du mouvement « Maker » et de ses technologies de prototypage rapide. Reposant sur le récit de la progression de la recherche-création, de l’idéation à la création d’un projet d’exposition, ce mémoire entend contribuer au domaine de la sculpture en matérialisant des objets numériques afin de créer des ponts entre le virtuel et le réel

The Fading Free Exercise Clause

This Article uses the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Christian Legal Societyv. Martinez as a point of departure for analyzing the current state of free exercise doctrine. I argue that one of the most notable features of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) case is its almost total lack of engagement with the Free Exercise Clause. For the core of CLS’s complaint was unambiguously about the declaration and exercise of religious beliefs: the group claimed that it was being excluded from campus life because it required its members to live according to shared religious principles and to subscribe to a Statement of Faith. Yet notwithstanding the clear religious basis of its claims, CLS devoted a mere two pages to the Free Exercise Clause in its brief. The Court’s Free Exercise Clause analysis was similarly elliptical: the majority dispensedwith the free exercise argument in a single footnote. For his part, Justice Alito did not even mention the Free Exercise Clause once in his lengthy dissent. What accounts for this paucity of treatment? The following sections explorethis question. I begin by tracing the fading status of the Free Exercise Clause from Employment Division v. Smith in 1990 to Christian Legal Society v. Martinez in 2010. I show that while the Clause has occasionally played a supporting role in Supreme Court decisions over the past two decades, it has not provided an independent basis for constitutional relief in a single case since 1993. I then suggest that the fact that the Free Exercise Clause has become so doctrinally otiose is itself an argument for reinvesting the Clause with independent meaning. But what kind of meaning should it have? Unlike commentators who have reasoned that free exercise doctrine must either treat all citizens equally or give religious believers special privileges, I outline an approach to the Free Exercise Clause that seeks to accomplish both. Specifically, I propose that the Clause be reinvigorated to provide some exemptions from generally-applicable laws for conscientious objectors—but that these exemptions must be available to religious and secular claimants on an equal footing. To illustrate how my proposal might operate in practice, I then apply the reinvigorated Free Exercise Clause to Christian Legal Society v. Martinez itself.I conclude that even though a reinvigorated Free Exercise Clause might not have changed the result in the CLS case, there are nevertheless strong arguments in favor of giving greater weight to the Clause in future cases

Analysis and Construction of Engaging Facial Forms and Expressions: Interdisciplinary Approaches from Art, Anatomy, Engineering, Cultural Studies, and Psychology

The topic of this dissertation is the anatomical, psychological, and cultural examination of a human face in order to effectively construct an anatomy-driven 3D virtual face customization and action model. In order to gain a broad perspective of all aspects of a face, theories and methodology from the fields of art, engineering, anatomy, psychology, and cultural studies have been analyzed and implemented. The computer generated facial customization and action model were designed based on the collected data. Using this customization system, culturally-specific attractive face in Korean popular culture, “kot-mi-nam (flower-like beautiful guy),” was modeled and analyzed as a case study. The “kot-mi-nam” phenomenon is overviewed in textual, visual, and contextual aspects, which reveals the gender- and sexuality-fluidity of its masculinity. The analysis and the actual development of the model organically co-construct each other requiring an interwoven process. Chapter 1 introduces anatomical studies of a human face, psychological theories of face recognition and an attractive face, and state-of-the-art face construction projects in the various fields. Chapter 2 and 3 present the Bezier curve-based 3D facial customization (BCFC) and Multi-layered Facial Action Model (MFAF) based on the analysis of human anatomy, to achieve a cost-effective yet realistic quality of facial animation without using 3D scanned data. In the experiments, results for the facial customization for gender, race, fat, and age showed that BCFC achieved enhanced performance of 25.20% compared to existing program Facegen , and 44.12% compared to Facial Studio. The experimental results also proved the realistic quality and effectiveness of MFAM compared with blend shape technique by enhancing 2.87% and 0.03% of facial area for happiness and anger expressions per second, respectively. In Chapter 4, according to the analysis based on BCFC, the 3D face of an average kot-mi-nam is close to gender neutral (male: 50.38%, female: 49.62%), and Caucasian (66.42-66.40%). Culturally-specific images can be misinterpreted in different cultures, due to their different languages, histories, and contexts. This research demonstrates that facial images can be affected by the cultural tastes of the makers and can also be interpreted differently by viewers in different cultures