Shape Modeling of Plant Leaves with Unstructured Meshes

The plant leaf is one of the most challenging natural objects to be realistically depicted by computer graphics due to its complex morphological and optical characteristics. Although many studies have been done on plant modeling, previous research on leaf modeling required for close-up realistic plant images is very rare. In this thesis, a novel method for modeling of the leaf shape based on the leaf venation is presented. As the first step of the method, the leaf domain is defined by the enclosure of the leaf boundary. Second, the leaf venation is interactively modeled as a hierarchical skeleton based on the actual leaf image. Third, the leaf domain is triangulated with the skeleton as constraints. The skeleton is articulated with nodes on the skeleton. Fourth, the skeleton is interactively transformed to a specific shape. A user can manipulate the skeleton using two methods which are complementary to each other: one controls individual joints on the skeleton while the other controls the skeleton through an intermediate spline curve. Finally, the leaf blade shape is deformed to conform to the skeleton by interpolation. An interactive modeler was developed to help a user to model a leaf shape interactively and several leaves were modeled by the interactive modeler. The ray-traced rendering images demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in the leaf shape modeling

The alignment of screens

This thesis makes a distinction between screen and surface. It proposes that an inquiry into screens includes, but is not limited to, the study of surfaces. Screens and screening practices are about doing both divisions and vision. The habit of reducing screens to the display neglects their capacity to emplace separations (think of folding screens). In this thesis an investigation of screens becomes a matter of asking how surfaces and the gaps in between them articulate alignments of people and things with displays that, in practice, always leave something out of sight. Rather than losing touch with screens by reducing them to surfaces, in other words, I am interested in alternative screen configurations. For this task I sketch an approach that touches on screens through the figures of lines, surfaces, textures, folds, knots and cuts. Lines help me to make the case for thinking about screens as alignments. I then ask what kinds of observers emerge from reducing screens to single or digital surfaces. I trace that concern with Google Glass, a pair of “smartglasses” with a transparent display. To distinguish between screen and surface I suggest, through a study of biodetection and assistance dogs, how to qualify or texture screens within webs of relations. I further outline, with snapshots of my workplace and two screens named Vig and Ben, two modes of touching or un/en/folding their locations. Finally, with knots and cuts, I underline the unfolding of self checkouts in supermarkets, and the enfolding of automated tellers outside banks. All of these reconfigurations experiment with screens by moving sideways in order to approach their displays laterally, and make visible their (ab)use by those in power. This method is a way of grasping the embodiment and the materiality of screens, while responding to the practices, agencies, and affects aligned around, through, and away from their displays

Cartography

The terrestrial space is the place of interaction of natural and social systems. The cartography is an essential tool to understand the complexity of these systems, their interaction and evolution. This brings the cartography to an important place in the modern world. The book presents several contributions at different areas and activities showing the importance of the cartography to the perception and organization of the territory. Learning with the past or understanding the present the use of cartography is presented as a way of looking to almost all themes of the knowledge

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

Expanding Fields of Architectural Discourse and Practice: Curated Works from the P.E.A.R. Journal.

Expanding Fields of Architectural Discourse and Practice presents a selection of essays, architectural experiments and works that explore the diversity within the fields of contemporary architectural practice and discourse. Specific in this selection is the question of how and why architecture can and should manifest in a critical and reflective capacity, as well as to examine how the discipline currently resonates with contemporary art practice. It does so by reflecting on the first 10 years of the architectural journal, P.E.A.R. (2009 to 2019). The volume argues that the initial aims of the journal – to explore and celebrate the myriad forms through which architecture can exist – are now more relevant than ever to contemporary architectural discourse and practice

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

Becoming-child as imagistic process

Essa tese, ao procurar definir a noção operativa que anima o conceito de DevirCriança como processo imagético, apresenta um duplo propósito: postular a infância como devir e não como ser individualizado; e, subsequentemente, elaborar a predicação processual da infância como Devir-Criança e, em seu sentido mais amplo, como emergência processual. Desse modo, deseja-se deslocar a compreensão da infância e seu desdobramento conceitual para uma formulação heterogênea, aberta e indeterminada, que se expressa ao longo de linhas processuais e imagéticas, a fim de indicar o seu movimento. Colocamos o processo como imagético, baseando-o no pensamento cinematográfico de Henri Bergson e Gilles Deleuze, que identifica a imagem como um conjunto dinâmico de ações e reações, em que o cinematógrafo intervém como produtor da diferença, tanto como diferenciação quanto diferençação. O processo imanente que emerge da interação imagética é, simultaneamente, encarnado e perceptivo, sendo denominado devir. Quando dissocia-se os dois termos de Devir-Criança, produz-se dois problemas: primeiro, o de explicar o devir; e, segundo, o de associar a criança, como um agente epistêmico, ao devir. Como uma solução especulativa para a primeira aporia, com fundamentação em Gilbert Simondon, criamos uma ontogênese transindividual heterogênea e concreta, que vai além do indivíduo e produz um devir processual associado incorporado. O segundo problema consiste em desdobrar o aspecto processual da infância, identificando o movimento epistêmico que ele oferece e que designamos como noção comum em termos espinosistas. O aspecto final do trabalho trata das implicações imagéticas de uma dinâmica materialista do processo como expressão pragmática.We look to define the operative notion that animates the concept of BecomingChild as imagistic process. Our purpose is twofold: to posit childhood as a becoming rather than an individualised being and subsequently to elaborate the processual predication of childhood as becoming-child in its most general sense as processual emergence. As such, we wish to displace the understanding of childhood and its conceptual unfolding to a less stable, open-ended and indefinite heterogeneous formulation which is expressed along processual, imagistic lines in order to be able to indicate the movement. We posit process as imagistic by basing it on the cinematic thought of Bergson and Deleuze which ideates the image as a dynamic assemblage of action and reaction where the cinematograph intervenes as the producer of difference, both as differentiation and differenciation. The immanent process which emerges from imagistic interaction is simultaneously embodying and perceptual and is termed becoming. When dissociating the two terms in conceptualizing becoming-child, we perceive that we produce two problems: first, that of explicating becoming; and second, what the child represents as an epistemic agent when applied to becoming. As a speculative solution to the first aporia, we create a transindividual ontogenesis that is heterogeneous and concrete and bypasses the individual to produce an embodied associated processual becoming. The second problem consists in coming to terms with the processual aspect of childhood by identifying the epistemic movement that it affords and which we label the Common Notion. The final aspect of the work deals with the imagistic implications of a materialist dynamics of process as pragmatic expression