A veiling of identity : anamorphosis as double vision in contemporary art practice

The thesis examines the trope of anamorphosis as a formal dimension of art practice and as a critical tool for exploring subjective vision. Anamorphosis is a technique of perspective that produces a distorted image that may only be corrected and made coherent when viewed from a specific angle. In order to re-form an oblique anamorph, it is necessary to view the image from a position that is markedly different from the conventional, frontal viewpoint. This process of eccentric viewing relies on the observer of the work to actively locate the viewing position that will re-form the image and confer meaning. The beholder of anamorphic images becomes aware of herself as a viewing subject and consequently, this act of viewing affirms the construction of vision as reflexive and self-critical. The thesis takes as its point of departure the claim of the influential art critic and theorist, Rosalind E. Krauss that the art practice of the German-American artist Eva Hesse, specifically the work, Contingent, 1969, represented a reinvention for its own time of an anamorphic condition through a mutual eclipse of form and matter. Krauss deploys the device of anamorphosis as a means of addressing the problematic of the relationship between the categories of painting and sculpture, and the debates into which Hesse's work intervened during the late 1960s. The thesis outlines the history of anamorphosis and its relation to geometric perspective from its genesis in the Renaissance to contemporary artists' engagement with anamorphic strategies of disruption. The psychoanalytical model of vision proposed by Jacques Lacan deploys anamorphosis as an exemplary structure in the elaboration of the gaze. The thesis discusses various dimensions of the anamorphic in art practice since 1970, with reference to works by Hannah Wilke, Richard Hamilton, Rachel Whiteread, Christine Borland and Shirazeh Houshiary

Predicting and locating fracture in bone using acoustic emission

A novel way to predict intra-operative fracture during Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) using acoustic emission (AE) has been tentatively discovered. AE has also been shown to be able to predict the location of such fracture. This work has potential benefit for the THA surgeon as it gives him a warning of when fracture is imminent and secondly where on the bone it is likely to occur. Eight bovine femora were tested using a Materials Testing Machine. Mock implants were forced into the specially prepared femora until the femora fractured. Both strain guages and AE sensors were mounted on the femora. Strain was used as a control to indicate when the femur fractured. The data from the AE sensors was analyzed post test to determine a parameter that could be used to predict when fracture was imminent and indeed when it had occurred. It was discovered that the peak frequency of the AE waves reduced significantly just before fracture occurred. It is theorized that as the bone material undergoes microcracking, the properties of the materials alter resulting in this change in peak frequency.\ud Two AE source location algorithms were tested on rectangular samples of bone harvested from the mid diaphysis of bovine bone to determine the feasibility of predicting the location of the fracture by locating in real time the microcracks that occur as their prelude. The source location algorithms detected artificial AE sources (pencil lead breaks) to just over 1 mm (on average) of their true location. Then three samples were loaded in three point bending until they fractured. The source location algorithms located the microcracks using AE data collected during the tests. The computed locations showed that there was a close correlation between where the microcracks were detected and where the fractured occurred