\u3cem\u3ela finta pazza di Venexia\u3c/em\u3e: Masking, performance and identity in Seventeenth century Venice

This paper briefly explores the relationship between the theatricality of Venice and the expression of Venice in the theatre. I will do so by focusing on the wildly popular performances in 1641 of La Finta Pazza and the architecture of the Teatro Novissimo in which the opera was performed. The masking of identities, a central theme in the original story on which the opera is based, was given a particularly Venetian twist in the operatic retelling. Essential to the performance was the double entendre of the character Deidama who, feigning madness, performed both as a masked actor on the stage and as a Venetian in the audience. Giacomo Torelli’s set design further blurred distinctions between the world of the stage and the city of Venice. Concurrent to the production of La Finta Pazza was the unprecedented construction of new theatres and specifically the development of palchi, or theater boxes, in the Teatro Novissimo. Such boxes, rented out for the season and occupied by masked Patricians and foreigners, allowed conversation between the two groups that was forbidden by law. It is my wager that the nature of identity and participation shifts within a context that is simultaneously both theater and city

Architectural Lessons of Carlo Lodoli (1690-1761): Indole of Material and of Self

Carlo Lodoli (1690-1761) exists as a footnote in most major history books of modern architecture. He is typically noted for either his influence on the Venetian Neoclassical tradition or as an early prophet to some sort of functionalism. Though I would not argue his influence, I doubt his role in the development of a structurally determined functionalism. The issue of influence is always present as very little of his writings have survived and his built work amounts to a few windowsills. He did, however, teach architecture. I propose to explore the pedagogic potential of Lodoli’s lessons of architecture. Lodoli’s teaching approach was not necessarily professional in that he did not instruct his students in the methods of drawing or construction techniques. Rather, his approach was dialogical. The topics were sweeping, often ethical, and ranged from the nature of truth to the nature of materials. Existing scholarship pertaining to Lodoli most often focuses upon his students’ production of texts, projects, and projections. Andrea Memmo’s Elementi dell’Architettura Lodoliana (1786, 1833) and Francesco Algarotti’s Saggio sopra l’architettura (1756) are both specifically named by the respective authors as advancing Lodoli’s architectural theories. Often overlooked are the apologues, or fables, used by Lodoli in lessons to his students. The main source for these fables is the Apologhi Immaginati (1787). Others were included in Memmo’s Elementi. Apologues from both sources have been translated for the first time into English and can be found in Appendix I of the dissertation. I look specifically to these stories to understand and illustrate Lodoli’s approach to making, teaching and thinking. This is understood through Lodoli’s characterisation of the identity of materials and of the self. Within this dissertation I intend to flesh out the textual and architectural fabric surrounding the pedagogic activities of the Venetian Friar known as the Socrates of Architecture, Carlo Lodoli

Myron Goldsmith: The Development of the Diagonally Braced Tube

Myron Goldsmith (1918-96) was a unique figure in the development of tall building design. He successfully blended the roles of architect, engineer and teacher throughout his tenure at Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) and in the Department of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Indeed, many of the projects supervised by Goldsmith and his colleagues, to include the pre-eminent structural engineer Dr. Fazlur Khan (1929-82), directly influenced built work. The few published studies of Goldsmith acknowledge, but do not fully explore, the innovations that Goldsmith oversaw as thesis advisor to many graduate students at IIT in the 1960s. An essential link between the student work and the large-scale office projects at SOM were the “Saturday Sessions.” There, architects, engineers and students met for weekly reviews at IIT and then a lengthy and lively lunch at Bertucci’s restaurant in Chicago. Goldsmith encouraged the free exchange of scholarly and practical ideas during these Saturday Sessions and we argue that this was a vital part of Goldsmith’s pedagogy. This paper will focus on a fascinating network of students, architects, and engineers that led to the innovation of the diagonally braced tube tall building

Core cracking and hydrothermal circulation can profoundly affect Ceres' geophysical evolution

Observations and models of Ceres suggest that its evolution was shaped by interactions between liquid water and silicate rock. Hydrothermal processes in a heated core require both fractured rock and liquid. Using a new core cracking model coupled to a thermal evolution code, we find volumes of fractured rock always large enough for significant interaction to occur. Therefore, liquid persistence is key. It is favored by antifreezes such as ammonia, by silicate dehydration which releases liquid, and by hydrothermal circulation itself, which enhances heat transport into the hydrosphere. The effect of heating from silicate hydration seems minor. Hydrothermal circulation can profoundly affect Ceres' evolution: it prevents core dehydration via “temperature resets,” core cooling events lasting ∼50 Myr during which Ceres' interior temperature profile becomes very shallow and its hydrosphere is largely liquid. Whether Ceres has experienced such extensive hydrothermalism may be determined through examination of its present-day structure. A large, fully hydrated core (radius 420 km) would suggest that extensive hydrothermal circulation prevented core dehydration. A small, dry core (radius 350 km) suggests early dehydration from short-lived radionuclides, with shallow hydrothermalism at best. Intermediate structures with a partially dehydrated core seem ambiguous, compatible both with late partial dehydration without hydrothermal circulation, and with early dehydration with extensive hydrothermal circulation. Thus, gravity measurements by the Dawn orbiter, whose arrival at Ceres is imminent, could help discriminate between scenarios for Ceres' evolution

Assessing Interdisciplinary Learning Styles

The interdependent world we live in is increasingly reflected in the interdisciplinary nature of our professions. As professors, we are frequently required to teach students from various disciplines in our courses and to engage in interdisciplinary research and teaching efforts. This is perhaps even more the case when teaching at a polytechnic university. While it is indisputable that such endeavors enrich our understanding of complex issues and benefit the learning experience of students and faculty alike, they also bring with them new challenges that need to be met. One such challenge is the diversity of learning styles that students bring to the classroom. Many of us are well aware of the vast literature on students’ learning styles (e.g. Myers, 1962; Schroder et. al., 1967; Paivio, 1971; Kolb, 1976; Messick, 1976; Dunn & Dunn, 1978; Keefe, 1979; Riding & Sadler-Smith, 1992; Larsen, 1992; Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993; Biggs, 1993; Vermunt, 1996). Far less research has been done on the distribution of learning styles across the disciplines and how they affect the learning behavior of students in different majors and their response to various teaching and assessment strategies. In order to derive the maximum benefit from interdisciplinary teaching, it is essential that we understand such differences. In a collaborative project that involves scholars from five different disciplines, we are asking the following research questions: 1) How are learning styles distributed across different majors? 2) Is there a tendency for students to self-select into different majors based on their learning styles, or are certain learning styles influenced by departmental and cultural pressures? 3) How do students in different majors perform in different learning environments? 4) Is there a correlation between students’ learning styles and how they respond to various assessment techniques? At the conference, we present preliminary findings from the survey that offers insight into the research questions listed above. In order to answer these questions, we will conduct a survey that measures learning styles and various aspects of learning and assessment both across learning styles and across disciplines. The survey will be administered to majors from architecture, engineering, political science, the social sciences, and urban planning. In order to fully answer our questions, we plan to conduct a four-year panel study that will allow us to observe students in a diversity of majors throughout their career at Cal Poly

Etude et construction de schémas de subdivision quasi-linéaires sur des maillages bi-réguliers

Les schémas de subdivision et les schémas de subdivision inverse sont largement utilisés en informatiquegraphique; les uns pour lisser des objets 3D, et les autres pour minimiser le coût d encodagede l information. Ce sont les deux aspects abordés dans cette thèse.Les travaux présentés dans le cadre de la subdivision décrivent l études et la construction d un nouveautype de schémas de subdivision. Celui-ci unifie deux schémas de subdivision de type géométriquesdifférents. Cela permet de modéliser des objets 3D composés de zones issues de l applicationd un schéma approximant et de zones issues de l application d un schéma interpolant. Dans le cadrede la subdivision inverse, Nous présentons une méthode de construction des schémas de subdivisionbi-réguliers inverses (quadrilatères et triangles)Subdivision schemes are commonly used to generate a smooth shape from a much more coarseone. The reverse subdivision is designed to describe a high resolution mesh from a coarse one. Bothof these tools are used in numerous graphical modelisation domains. In this thesis, we focused ontwo distinct aspects: on one hand the construction of quasi-linear subdivision schemes and on theother hand the construction of reverse quad/triangle subdivision schemes. The work, presented inthe context of the subdivision, describes the construction of a new type of subdivision schemes, andtheirs applications to solve some problems coming from the application of linear subdivision schemes.The work presented in the context of the reverse subdivision describes a new method to reverse thequad/triangle subdivision schemesDIJON-BU Doc.électronique (212319901) / SudocSudocFranceF

A Hollow-Waveguide Gas Correlation Radiometer for Ultra-Precise Column Measurements of Formaldehyde on Mars

We present preliminary results in the development of a miniaturized gas correlation radiometer that implements a hollow-core optical fiber (hollow waveguide) gas correlation cell. The substantial reduction in mass and volume of the gas correlation cell makes this technology appropriate for an orbital mission -- capable of pinpointing sources of trace gases in the Martian atmosphere. Here we demonstrate a formaldehyde (H2CO) sensor and report a detection limit equivalent to approximately 30 ppb in the Martian atmosphere. The relative simplicity of the technique allows it to be expanded to measure a range of atmospheric trace gases of interest on Mars such as methane (CH4), water vapour (H2O), deuterated water vapour (HDO), and methanol (CH3OH). Performance of a formaldehyde instrument in a Mars orbit has been simulated assuming a 3 meter long, 1000 micron inner diameter hollow-core fiber gas correlation cell, a 92.8 degree sun-synchronous orbit from 400 km with a horizontal sampling scale of 10 km x 10 km. Initial results indicate that for one second of averaging, a detection limit of 1 ppb is possible

Toward a real-time tracking of dense point-sampled geometry

4 pagesInternational audienceIn this paper, we address the problem of tracking temporal deformations between two arbitrary densely sampled point-based surfaces. We propose an intuitive and efficient resolution to the point matching problem within two frames of a sequence. The proposed method utilizes two distinct space partition trees, one for each point cloud, which both are defined on a unique discrete space. Our method takes advantage of multi-resolution concerns, voxel adjacency relations, and a specific distance function. Experimental results obtained from both simulated and real reconstructed data sets demonstrate that the proposed method can handle efficiently the tracking process even for very large point clouds. Moreover, our method is easy to implement and very fast, which provides possibilities for real-time tracking applications

Variational geometric modeling with black box constraints and DAGs

CAD modelers enable designers to construct complex 3D shapes with high-level B-Rep operators. This avoids the burden of low level geometric manipulations. However a gap still exists between the shape that the designers have in mind and the way they have to decompose it into a sequence of modeling steps. To bridge this gap, Variational Modeling enables designers to specify constraints the shape must respect. The constraints are converted into an explicit system of mathematical equations (potentially with some inequalities) which the modeler numerically solves. However, most of available programs are 2D sketchers, basically because in higher dimension some constraints may have complex mathematical expressions. This paper introduces a new approach to sketch constrained 3D shapes. The main idea is to replace explicit systems of mathematical equations with (mainly) Computer Graphics routines considered as Black Box Constraints. The obvious difficulty is that the arguments of all routines must have known numerical values. The paper shows how to solve this issue, i.e., how to solve and optimize without equations. The feasibility and promises of this approach are illustrated with the developed DECO (Deformation by Constraints) prototype.The authors would like to thank the two French Institutes Carnot ARTS and Carnot STAR for their support to this research project. Lincong Fang thanks for their support the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61272300), the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LQ13F020003) and the China Scholarship Council