Irony's architecture: Reflections on a photographic research project

This paper presents a research approach based on irony, rather than certainty. Using Richard Rorty's conception of irony, we contend that much traditional research in management presents a final language which is implicit in both the construction of a research method and its final presentation as findings. This paper suggests we should take irony more seriously, and deliberately construct research to allow and encourage re-description by our research's final arbiters - its readers, and even its subjects. Further, we advocate that by inviting irony into our work, we encourage greater identification between ourselves, our audience of readers, and the subjects of our work. We illustrate our argument by reflecting on a recent photographic research project which was a collaborative effort between management researchers and an artist. We show how the simple architecture of this project was built from doubt and how irony is communicated through the pictures. We then show how photography can be a useful technique that encourages readers to engage in re-description of petit récits (small stories), told through images. We discuss our reflections by focusing on the implications of our research for management education

Learning a face space for experiments on human identity

Generative models of human identity and appearance have broad applicability to behavioral science and technology, but the exquisite sensitivity of human face perception means that their utility hinges on the alignment of the model's representation to human psychological representations and the photorealism of the generated images. Meeting these requirements is an exacting task, and existing models of human identity and appearance are often unworkably abstract, artificial, uncanny, or biased. Here, we use a variational autoencoder with an autoregressive decoder to learn a face space from a uniquely diverse dataset of portraits that control much of the variation irrelevant to human identity and appearance. Our method generates photorealistic portraits of fictive identities with a smooth, navigable latent space. We validate our model's alignment with human sensitivities by introducing a psychophysical Turing test for images, which humans mostly fail. Lastly, we demonstrate an initial application of our model to the problem of fast search in mental space to obtain detailed "police sketches" in a small number of trials.Comment: 10 figures. Accepted as a paper to the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2018). *JWS and JCP contributed equally to this submissio

Photo2Relief: Let Human in the Photograph Stand Out

In this paper, we propose a technique for making humans in photographs protrude like reliefs. Unlike previous methods which mostly focus on the face and head, our method aims to generate art works that describe the whole body activity of the character. One challenge is that there is no ground-truth for supervised deep learning. We introduce a sigmoid variant function to manipulate gradients tactfully and train our neural networks by equipping with a loss function defined in gradient domain. The second challenge is that actual photographs often across different light conditions. We used image-based rendering technique to address this challenge and acquire rendering images and depth data under different lighting conditions. To make a clear division of labor in network modules, a two-scale architecture is proposed to create high-quality relief from a single photograph. Extensive experimental results on a variety of scenes show that our method is a highly effective solution for generating digital 2.5D artwork from photographs.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Compositional structures in mural design : towards a site-specific deconstructive mural methodology

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Murals have been the formal visual interpretation of the cultural, social and political life of all ages. Throughout they have been consistently combined with their architectural setting, for example, in ancient Egyptian tombs, in Renaissance churches and on the external walls of buildings in Mexico in the twentieth century. This is a central feature of mural painting. However many contemporary murals do not integrate with their architectural settings, in other words, do not fulfil the site-specificity of the architectural spaces for which they were made. This means that the most important aspect that distinguishes murals from other types of painting is absent. I studied and analysed a number of murals produced in the Italian Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo as this particular period is considered to be not only one of the most significant in the history of art but also a period in which painting and architecture were very closely allied as practices. In particular the radical developments in painting of pictorial space took place along side the developments in architecture. I argue that Renaissance murals could be described, using the terminology of contemporary art, as site-specific art. By identifying the relationship between pictorial space, architectural space and compositional structure I was able to test, through my own practice, the importance of these relationships in understanding the site-specificity of the compositional structure of murals. To address the issue of sitespecificity in murals, I investigated and developed a set of compositional structures through my mural practice that could be applied in the design, execution, and teaching of contemporary mural design. I have developed the notion of a deconstructive method of mural design in which the illusory space of the mural derives its compositional structure from the architectural space in which it sited. I have applied it, tested it and refined it through the execution of a number of hypothetical and live mural commissions. I believe that the approach to the study and practice of mural design I have developed from the perspective of a practice lead researcher contributes to the furtherance of mural design as both a profession and field of study. In particular the identification of compositional structures in mural design and the proposal of a deconstructive method contributes to our understanding of what a mural is as well as current notions of site-specificity in contemporary art

The Effect of Personal Portrait Photographs on Cultural Attitude among Jewish and Arabic Expressive/Art Therapists in Israel

The purpose of this research was to offer young expressive therapists in Israel, a country with a complex cultural narrative, a tool that might enhance ethno-cultural empathy competencies. The research question was: What is the effect of Personal Portrait Photographs on cultural attitude among Jewish and Arabic expressive/art therapists in Israel? A qualitative arts based study based in constructivist empirical phenomenology was executed collecting data via photo elicitation, through use of portrait photographs of faces of women wearing three religious head dresses: Jewish, Muslim and Christian. The photographs were revised to portray participants’ faces in the portrait photo. Participants were 9 women expressive therapists of 3 religions; 2 religious and 1 secular of each religion. Facilitators were two women expressive therapists, Jewish and Christian Arab. Data was analyzed using inductive thematic analysis by researcher and facilitators, compared, coded and observed for prominent themes and sub-themes. Themes were viewed by a Gestalt therapy approach and concepts. Themes found were: 1. Pattern, and sub-themes were projection, women, personal identity and religion 2. Breaking patterns with sub themes of women (new), self-awareness. 3. Integration of parts, and sub-theme of new self-awareness. 4. Between cultures and sub-themes of affiliation group, fear of the ‘other’ and caution. 5. Professional identity. Findings show that the research tool offered participants an insightful and meaningful experience and extended their ethno-cultural empathy competencies. Furthermore, the study presents a unique Gestalt approach observation on the multicultural learning process participants experienced. The research tool can have significant future use in training expressive therapists, especially within the intricate cultural setting of Israel, to enhance ethno-cultural empathy and competencies

More Than Just a Party: How the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Boosted Participation by Young Adults

Describes an after-hours program designed to boost attendance among young adults and factors contributing to its success, including the elimination of perceptual barriers, encouragement of informal interaction, and exploration of galleries

Artistic Process Over Product: A Portrait of the High-Achieving High School Student

Using surveys, interviews, and student art work, this study explores the relationship between art curriculum and female students in a private, college preparatory environment. I worked with a fine and digital art course to determine if encouraging students to make more artistic choices would impact the educational priorities of these high-achieving students. Subsequently, art students were introduced to a process-based style of assessment in the hopes they could make stronger connections to art education and their future goals. The research results illustrated that, within the participants in this study, older art students prefer classes that bring them enjoyment or personal fulfillment, while the younger students gravitate toward classes that are less challenging

Interactive portraiture : designing intimate interactive experiences

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006.Includes bibliographical references.In this thesis I present a set of interactive portrait experiences that strive to create an intimate connection between the viewer and the portrayed subject; an emotional experience, one of personal reflection. My interactive portraits extend traditional photographic portraiture in two ways: adding motion and interaction. I present seven interactive portraits prototypes that react to viewer's presence and gender, as well as portraits that react to neighboring portraits. I demonstrate how interaction design decisions influence the viewer's experience and give Design Guidelines for the design of intimate interactive experiences. I ground my work in a theoretical framework called the "subject-object continuum", created for the art of portraiture (Brilliant, 1987). I show the relevancy of this framework for photographic portraiture, modern interactive portraits and intimate interactive experiences. Designers and artists follow (or consciously break) design guidelines when creating visual experiences. For example, photographers must train themselves to recognize the influence that light and composition have on the viewing experience of their portrait.(cont.) In the same way, designers and artists of interactive experiences must inform themselves about the influence that different interaction techniques have on the viewing experience of their interactive experience. In my thesis I focus on two design factors: (1) the style of the interaction and (2) the viewer's expectations. I evaluated these design factors using interactive portraits prototypes, and based on my findings, developed a set of design guidelines that can inform interaction designers and portraiture artists about the design factors relevant for intimate interactive experiences.by Orit Zuckerman.S.M