Automated pebble mosaic stylization of images

Digital mosaics have usually used regular tiles, simulating the historical "tessellated" mosaics. In this paper, we present a method for synthesizing pebble mosaics, a historical mosaic style in which the tiles are rounded pebbles. We address both the tiling problem, where pebbles are distributed over the image plane so as to approximate the input image content, and the problem of geometry, creating a smooth rounded shape for each pebble. We adapt SLIC, simple linear iterative clustering, to obtain elongated tiles conforming to image content, and smooth the resulting irregular shapes into shapes resembling pebble cross-sections. Then, we create an interior and exterior contour for each pebble and solve a Laplace equation over the region between them to obtain height-field geometry. The resulting pebble set approximates the input image while presenting full geometry that can be rendered and textured for a highly detailed representation of a pebble mosaic

Older Artists and Acknowledging Ageism

Intergenerational (IG) learning has the potential to reinforce ageist ideas, through the culturally produced binary of old and young which often describes IG learning. This research with older artists revealed implicit age bias associated with a modernist tradition in art education which minimized the value of art production viewed as feminine. Language associated with ageism shares the descriptors of the feminine and seep into our perceptions. Cooperative action research with multi-age participants facilitated personal growth and through critical reflection, implicit ageism revealed in the researcher’s prior perspective is revealed

What\u27s New on Jane\u27s Bookshelf?

When I’m not teaching, I’m scouring bookstores and websites for interesting new releases in children’s and young adult literature. My dogs don’t even bark anymore when the UPS man shows up at the front door with a box of books; he’s sort of become part of our family. I’ve listed here a handful of books that recently piqued my interest—whether I was intrigued by the topic, the aesthetic post-modern appearance, and/or what I can do with the text in the classroom

ROTOЯ Review

The ROTOЯ partnership between Huddersfield Art Gallery and the University of Huddersfield was established in 2011. ROTOЯ I and II was a programme of eight exhibitions and accompanying events that commenced in 2012 and was completed in 2013. ROTOЯ continues into 2014 and the programme for 2015 and 2016 is already firmly underway. In brief, the aim of ROTOЯ is to improve the cultural vitality of Kirklees, expand audiences, and provide new ways for people to engage with and understand academic research in contemporary art and design. Why ROTOЯ , Why Now? As Vice Chancellors position their institutions’ identities and future trajectories in context to national and international league tables, Professor John Goddard1 proposes the notion of the ‘civic’ university as a ‘place embedded’ institution; one that is committed to ‘place making’ and which recognises its responsibility to engaging with the public. The civic university has deep institutional connections to different social, cultural and economic spheres within its locality and beyond. A fundamental question for both the university sector and cultural organisations alike, including local authority, is how the many different articulations of public engagement and cultural leadership which exist can be brought together to form one coherent, common language. It is critical that we reach out and engage the community so we can participate in local issues, impact upon society, help to forge well-being and maintain a robust cultural economy. Within the lexicon of public centered objectives sits the Arts Council England’s strategic goals, and those of the Arts and Humanities Research Council – in particular its current Cultural Value initiative. What these developments reveal is that art and design education and professional practice, its projected oeuvre as well as its relationship to cultural life and public funding, is now challenged with having to comprehensively audit its usefulness in financially austere times. It was in the wake of these concerns coming to light, and of the 2010 Government Spending Review that ROTOЯ was conceived. These issues and the discussions surrounding them are not completely new. Research into the social benefits of the arts, for both the individual and the community, was championed by the Community Arts Movement in the 1960s. During the 1980s and ‘90s, John Myerscough and Janet Wolff, amongst others, provided significant debate on the role and value of the arts in the public domain. What these discussions demonstrated was a growing concern that the cultural sector could not, and should not, be understood in terms of economic benefit alone. Thankfully, the value of the relationships between art, education, culture and society is now recognised as being far more complex than the reductive quantification of their market and GDP benefits. Writing in ‘Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century)’, Ernesto Pujol proposes:‘…it is absolutely crucial that art schools consider their institutional role in support of democracy. The history of creative expression is linked to the history of freedom. There is a link between the state of artistic expression and the state of democracy.’ When we were approached by Huddersfield Art Gallery to work collaboratively on an exhibition programme that could showcase academic staff research, one of our first concerns was to ask the question, how can we really contribute to cultural leadership within the town?’ The many soundbite examples of public engagement that we might underline within our annual reports or website news are one thing, but what really makes a difference to a town’s cultural identity, and what affects people in their daily lives? With these questions in mind we sought a distinctive programme within the muncipal gallery space, that would introduce academic research in art, design and architecture beyond the university in innovative ways

A Conceptual World: Why the Art of the Twentieth Century is So Different From the Art of All Earlier Centuries

This paper surveys 31 new genres of art that were invented during the twentieth century, chronologically from collage, papier colle, and readymades through installation, performance, and earthworks. This unprecedented proliferation in art forms was a direct consequence of the dominant role of conceptual innovation in the century's art, as a series of young iconoclasts deliberately broke the conventions and rules of existing artistic practice in the process of devising new ways to express their ideas and emotions. This overview affords a more precise understanding of one conspicuous and important way in which twentieth-century art differed from that of all earlier eras. The proliferation of genres has fragmented the advanced art world. A century ago, a great painter could influence nearly all advanced artists, but today it is virtually impossible for any one artist to influence practitioners of genres as diverse as painting, video, and installation. This survey also underscores the central role of Picasso in the advanced art of the past century, as he not only created the first, and one of the most important, of the new genres, but in doing so he also provided a new model of artistic behavior that became an inspiration for many other young conceptual artists.

Spartan Daily, March 24, 2005

Volume 124, Issue 40https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10112/thumbnail.jp

Hidden Consequences of a First-Born Boy for Mothers

We show that in the US, the UK, Italy and Sweden women whose first child is a boy are less likely to work in a typical week and work fewer hours than women with first-born girls. The puzzle is why women in these countries react in this way to the sex of their first child, which is chosen randomly by nature. We consider two explanations. As Dahl and Moretti (2008) we show that first-born boys positively affect the probability that a marriage survives, but differently from them and from the literature on developing countries, we show that after a first-born boy the probability that women have more children increases. In these advanced economies the negative impact on fertility deriving from the fact that fewer pregnancies are needed to get a boy is more than compensated by the positive effect on fertility deriving from the greater stability of marriages, which is neglected by studies that focus on married women only.preference for sons, female labour supply, mothers’ behaviour

Content-aware photo collage using circle packing

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The Currents of Learning Motivation: Learners’ Stories From Arts-Integrated, Regular Classroom Landscapes

Intrinsic learning motivation can facilitate learners’ meaningful scholarship, creativity, and interest in life-long learning. Over time, however, elementary learners’ intrinsic motivation can decline. To meet this challenge, some inclusive educators have turned to arts-integrated instruction, which can facilitate positive outcomes for diverse learners in various subject areas. Our understanding, however, of learners’ quality of motivation when learning through the arts is limited. Accordingly, I explored four research puzzles through a narrative inquiry methodological framework, two of which included, (a) What stories do learners tell about their motivation when learning through the arts in their inclusive classrooms? and (b) What do learners’ stories reveal about their quality of motivation when learning through the arts in their inclusive classrooms? To explore my research puzzles, the experiences of ten Grade 6, 7, and 8 learners were garnered from two inclusive classrooms in Ontario, Canada. Informed by self-determination theory, several meanings were gleaned from participants’ accounts, including (a) arts integration facilitated learners’ expressions of their identity, flexible thinking, and positive classroom relationships and (b) learners’ quality of motivation when learning through the arts varied in response to changing personal and social factors. The former finding highlights the ways in which arts integration can foster diverse learners’ quality of motivation by supporting their feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness; the latter finding underscores the importance for educators to provide their learners with multiple entry points and ways over the course of a lesson or task through which they can engage meaningfully with their learning