Sculptural Thinking in Fashion

Human thinking in relation to the body is conditioned by an understanding of the body as a three-dimensional form. The fashion designer Madame Gres said ‘I wanted to be a sculptor — for me it is just the same to work with fabric or stone.’ Sculpture and fashion both adopt figurative formations, a default position of representing human form in space, motion and time: both an art form receptive to the senses of sight, touch and gravitational pull. This research questions whether the thinking processes in fashion design are common with thinking in sculptural practices within fine art. The question emerged through conversations between a fashion designer and a contemporary artist and centered upon the use of language, thinking and reflective practices, and the articulation and application of material processes. To address these questions we focused upon two approaches: whether thought and its articulation in the lexicon of creative practice is common and whether there is a two way flow of visual, material and technical influences. The initial conversation centered upon the art historian, Rowan Bailey’s essay ‘Herder’s Sculptural Thinking.’ Our interpretations of this work identified that thought itself evolves in the experience of three-dimensions and sharing our experiences of touch. The idea of the sculptural therefore becomes social; a shared phenomena. We became interested in how thinking begins to take shape in material forms, or the notion of working creatively in three-dimensionality is in itself a structure of the emotions that connect to a line of thought. The first section of the paper establishes a platform for the second section by investigating the significance of touch and mimicry, and the philosophies behind thinking sculpturally. The second section considers the effects of influence between the two disciplines, noting an interaction between the creative processes in sculpture and fashion design, such as: modeling, draping, molding, stacking, casting, shaping and carving. The paper concludes by drawing together the two sections

Sculptural Thinking in Fashion

Human thinking in relation to the body is conditioned by an understanding of the body as a three-dimensional form. The fashion designer Madame Gres said ‘I wanted to be a sculptor — for me it is just the same to work with fabric or stone.’ Sculpture and fashion both adopt figurative formations, a default position of representing human form in space, motion and time: both an art form receptive to the senses of sight, touch and gravitational pull. This research questions whether the thinking processes in fashion design are common with thinking in sculptural practices within fine art. The question emerged through conversations between a fashion designer and a contemporary artist and centered upon the use of language, thinking and reflective practices, and the articulation and application of material processes. To address these questions we focused upon two approaches: whether thought and its articulation in the lexicon of creative practice is common and whether there is a two way flow of visual, material and technical influences. The initial conversation centered upon the art historian, Rowan Bailey’s essay ‘Herder’s Sculptural Thinking.’ Our interpretations of this work identified that thought itself evolves in the experience of three-dimensions and sharing our experiences of touch. The idea of the sculptural therefore becomes social; a shared phenomena. We became interested in how thinking begins to take shape in material forms, or the notion of working creatively in three-dimensionality is in itself a structure of the emotions that connect to a line of thought. The first section of the paper establishes a platform for the second section by investigating the significance of touch and mimicry, and the philosophies behind thinking sculpturally. The second section considers the effects of influence between the two disciplines, noting an interaction between the creative processes in sculpture and fashion design, such as: modeling, draping, molding, stacking, casting, shaping and carving. The paper concludes by drawing together the two sections

Spatial decomposition of on-nucleus spectra of quasar host galaxies

In order to study the host galaxies of type 1 (broad-line) quasars, we present a semi-analytic modelling method to decompose the on-nucleus spectra of quasars into nuclear and host galaxy channels. The method uses the spatial information contained in long-slit or slitlet spectra. A routine determines the best fitting combination of the spatial distribution of the point like nucleus and extended host galaxy. Inputs are a simultaneously observed PSF, and external constraints on galaxy morphology from imaging. We demonstrate the capabilities of the method to two samples of a total of 18 quasars observed with EFOSC at the ESO 3.6m telescope and FORS1 at the ESO VLT. ~50% of the host galaxies with sucessful decomposition show distortions in their rotation curves or peculiar gas velocities above normal maximum velocities for disks. This is consistent with the fraction from optical imaging. All host galaxies have quite young stellar populations, typically 1-2 Gyr. For the disk dominated hosts these are consistent with their inactive counterparts, the luminosity weighted stellar ages are much younger for the bulge dominated hosts, compared to inactive early type galaxies. While this presents further evidence for a connection of galaxy interaction and AGN activity for half of the sample, this is not clear for the other half: These are often undistorted disk dominated host galaxies, and interaction on a smaller level might be detected in deeper high-resolution images or deeper spectroscopic data. The velocity information does not show obvious signs for large scale outflows triggered by AGN feedback - the data is consistent with velocity fields created by galaxy interaction.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 19 pages, 12 figure

Discussion of the selection and use of teaching aids and standard materials in the lower school at Perkins School for the Blind

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

The development of local solar irradiance for outdoor computer graphics rendering

Atmospheric effects are approximated by solving the light transfer equation, LTE, of a given viewing path. The resulting accumulated spectral energy (its visible band) arriving at the observer’s eyes, defines the colour of the object currently on the line of sight. Due to the convenience of using a single rendering equation to solve the LTE for daylight sky and distant objects (aerial perspective), recent methods had opt for a similar kind of approach. Alas, the burden that the real-time calculation brings to the foil had forced these methods to make simplifications that were not in line with the actual world observation. Consequently, the results of these methods are laden with visual-errors. The two most common simplifications made were: i) assuming the atmosphere as a full-scattering medium only and ii) assuming a single density atmosphere profile. This research explored the possibility of replacing the real-time calculation involved in solving the LTE with an analytical-based approach. Hence, the two simplifications made by the previous real-time methods can be avoided. The model was implemented on top of a flight simulator prototype system since the requirements of such system match the objectives of this study. Results were verified against the actual images of the daylight skies. Comparison was also made with the previous methods’ results to showcase the proposed model strengths and advantages over its peers

Holography

This book depicts some differences from the typical scientific and technological literature on the theoretical study of holography and its applications. It offers topics that are not very commercial nor known, which will allow a different view of the field of optics. This is evident in chapters such as "Electron Holography of Magnetic Materials", "Polarization Holographic Gratings in Polymer Dispersed Formed Liquid Crystals", and "Digital Holography: Computer-generated Holograms and Diffractive Optics in Scalar Diffraction Domain". The readers will gain a different view of the application areas of holography and the wide range of possible directions that can guide research in the fields of optics

Multispectral imaging of Mars from a lander

Multispectral imaging of Mars from lande

Effect of shadowing and diffraction on the received GNSS signal

Abstract. The characteristics of the GNSS received signal depend on the propagation medium environment. Typically, the transmitted signal interacts with several numbers of obstacles which leads to the multipath propagation to receiver end. In such cases, diffraction over the edges or wedges of the obstacles in the propagation path should be considered. The effects of diffraction and shadowing are the important elements in radio wave propagation because of their strong influence on the received signal quality. Especially, received signal strength and characteristics are very significant for GNSS applications. This master’s thesis investigates the effect of knife-edge diffraction model and shadowing environment on the received GNSS signal. Characterization of the received signal is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. In the measurement, a dual circular polarized antenna has been used to receive the multipath GPS signal in the shadow region in which antenna was placed in the zenith direction. The measurement was performed for two scenarios 1) the receiver was in the static position, and 2) in motion for the second measurement. Measurement results show that, the received signals following the Knife-edge diffraction pattern for both measurements case. In the first measurement case, knife-edge diffraction has been identified in received signal attenuation whereas the interference pattern in the LoS propagation can be observed because of multipath effect. In the deep shadow region, a linearly polarized signal has been received in both antennas because the incident RHCP signal turned into a linearly polarized signal after diffraction. For the second measurement case, knife-edge attenuation pattern is also visible. A clear agreement between the measured and theoretical aspects has been achieved in the case of knife-edge diffraction