The material image: Artists’ approaches to reproducing texture in art

Since the introduction of computers, there has been a desire to improve the appearance of computer-generated objects in virtual spaces and to display the objects within complex scenes exactly as they appear in reality. This is a straightforward process for artists who through the medium of paint or silver halide are able to directly observe from nature and interpret and capture the world in a highly convincing way. However for computer generated images, the process is more complex, computers have no capability to compare whether the rendering looks right or wrong—only humans can make the final subjective decision. The evolving question is: what are the elements of paintings and drawings produced by artists that capture the qualities, texture, grain, reflection, translucency and absorption of a material, that through the application of coloured brush marks, demonstrate a convincing likeness of the material qualities of e.g.wood, metal, glass and fabric? This paper considers the relationship between texture, objects and artists’ approaches to reproducing texture in art. However texture is problematic as our visual system is able to discriminate the difference between natural and patterned texture, and incorrectly rendered surfaces can hinder understanding. Furthermore to render surfaces with no discernible pattern structure that comprises unlimited variations can result, as demonstrated by the computer generated rendering, in exceptionally large file sizes. The paper explores the relationship between imaging, artists’ approaches to reproducing representations of the attributes of material qualities, the fluid dynamics of a painterly mark, and 2.5D relief in printing. The objective is not to reproduce existing paintings or prints, but to build the surface using a deposition of pigments, paints and inks that explores the relationship between image and surface

Collage Sculptures

In this thesis, I develop a program to automatically assemble collage sculptures, sets of arbitrary, non-overlapping elements arranged to fill out a recognizable target shape according to a set of procedural rules. A user provides the target and element shapes and the program procedurally places the elements in spherical holes in the target space. A signed distance function defined over the target space keeps track of the remaining holes to fill. Elements are preprocessed to determine the size of their smallest enclosing bounding sphere. They are placed in holes based on the radius of their bounding sphere. After each placement, the signed distance function is efficiently updated to account for the newly added element. Elements are placed from largest to smallest, filling the space to a predefined threshold. To demonstrate this program, I generated a number of collage sculptures. In accordance with our procedural rules, the elements in the resulting collage sculptures recognizably represent the target shape, do not overlap, are not deformed from their original shape, and display variety in size, position, and orientation

3D Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse: Current Status and Future Possibilities

Moving from a set of independent virtual worlds to an integrated network of 3D virtual worlds or Metaverse rests on progress in four areas: immersive realism, ubiquity of access and identity, interoperability, and scalability. For each area, the current status and needed developments in order to achieve a functional Metaverse are described. Factors that support the formation of a viable Metaverse, such as institutional and popular interest and ongoing improvements in hardware performance, and factors that constrain the achievement of this goal, including limits in computational methods and unrealized collaboration among virtual world stakeholders and developers, are also considered

3D textural and geochemical analyses on carbonado diamond : insights from pores and the minerals within them

Carbonado is an enigmatic variety of polycrystalline diamond found only in placer deposits in Brazil and the Central African Republic, with unknown primary origin. These highly porous dark nodules possess a narrow range of isotopically light carbon (δ13C -31 to -24 ‰), a primarily crustal inclusion suite unusually enriched in REEs and actinides filling the pore spaces, a loosely constrained crystallization age between 2.6 and 3.8 Ga, and other atypical features which have led to a variety of formation theories, from extra-solar to deep mantle. Unravelling the circumstances responsible for the diamond material and inclusion suite may provide evidence of not-yet-understood mantle processes and/or geochemical reservoirs. This study represents the first multi-sample 3D textural analysis of carbonado diamond using high resolution X-ray computed tomography. We document a variety of textures in both pore structure and mineralogy within pores. All samples feature a foliation with a mild preferred orientation. We observe the same fabric in a framesite diamond, a less porous polycrystalline diamond found in kimberlites and thought to crystallize shortly before eruption. The similarity in fabrics suggests a similar process could have formed both. Additionally, spatially coherent 3-D volumes of pores with similarly attenuating filling material juxtaposed against volumes with differently attenuating material suggests that secondary minerals formed from the spatially-limited in-situ breakdown of primary inclusion phases. These observations, combined with the presence of euhedral cavities and pseudomorphs, supports the hypothesis that the material comprising the secondary minerals within carbonado is largely primary. Step-leaching and ICP analysis of three African and two Brazilian samples reveals that the modern-day inclusion suite is highly enriched in REE (average ΣREE = 2.3 wt. %), with REE and trace element patterns that match those of melts derived from low degree (< 1 %) partial melting of primitive mantle (i.e. kimberlite and carbonatite), suggesting a link between carbonado and primitive melts. These textural and chemical findings support the origin of both carbonado and its pore-filling material in a mantle environment. The origin of light carbon in the mantle before 2.6 Ga remains unknown, but subduction of organic material is a possible mechanism.Geological Science

The Merchant of Venice at UMASS: An Exploration in Collaboration and Representation

Through an analysis of the details of The Merchant of Venice, I will show that a costume design which only satisfies the basic role of articulating the relationships, status, time and place, etc of the play but has no point of view regarding that text’s inherent assumptions will always support, rather than subvert, any problematic issues present therein. Secondly, I will show that without tandem movement from the creative team, no rehabilitation or subversion is possible

Graffiti as a limit case for the concept of style: a genealogy of aesthetic impropriety

This paper examines graffiti as an object that has historically confounded stylistic or formal analysis proper, although elements of this deviant form of mark making have been appropriated as expressive resources within the recognisable styles of modern and contemporary art. Critiques of the concept of style are now well established and this formerly dominant method of approaching the analysis of art historical objects has largely fallen out of favour in current scholarship. Beyond rehearsing these familiar critical points, it will be argued that a consideration of the limitations of this foundational disciplinary concept may be a paradoxically productive exercise if an approach is taken that examines the boundaries, or limits, to the kinds of objects and images to which the concept of style has been applied. It will be argued that a number of historically liminal categories of person – children; primitives; the mentally ill; and criminals – inform the genealogy of perception of the contemporary liminal ‘styles’ of graffiti, post-graffiti and street art; and that these limit cases, rather than being marginalised exclusions not worthy of analytic attention, are generative of the very coherence of the notion of style. Following Rancière, it is argued that contemporary applications of the concept of style may lie in attending to the contingency and primacy of the processes of perception itself, an essential component of seminal approaches to style (e.g., Wölfflin, 1915) in determining our practices of looking

Costume Design for Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca

The following thesis explains the process used to create and implement the costume design for the production of Life is a Dream produced at the University of Arkansas in the spring of 2018. In this thesis I will detail the process of moving from research, to renderings, to finished costumes. This design process includes a script analysis, inspiration collages, portrait gallery, sketches, renderings, production photographs, and an assessment of the success of the process overall