ContextVP: Fully Context-Aware Video Prediction

Video prediction models based on convolutional networks, recurrent networks, and their combinations often result in blurry predictions. We identify an important contributing factor for imprecise predictions that has not been studied adequately in the literature: blind spots, i.e., lack of access to all relevant past information for accurately predicting the future. To address this issue, we introduce a fully context-aware architecture that captures the entire available past context for each pixel using Parallel Multi-Dimensional LSTM units and aggregates it using blending units. Our model outperforms a strong baseline network of 20 recurrent convolutional layers and yields state-of-the-art performance for next step prediction on three challenging real-world video datasets: Human 3.6M, Caltech Pedestrian, and UCF-101. Moreover, it does so with fewer parameters than several recently proposed models, and does not rely on deep convolutional networks, multi-scale architectures, separation of background and foreground modeling, motion flow learning, or adversarial training. These results highlight that full awareness of past context is of crucial importance for video prediction.Comment: 19 pages. ECCV 2018 oral presentation. Project webpage is at https://wonmin-byeon.github.io/publication/2018-ecc

The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice and the Quakers

Today\u27s Quakers are considerably less hard-shelled and mole-eyed and there are signs on both sides of the Atlantic that the Society of Friends has made progress toward making peace with the theatre. Indeed, one could argue that the situation has changed radically in the last three hundred fifty years, but there remains an ambiguity at best, an antipathy at worst, between Quaker thought and the theatre. This topic is too broad to be encompassed within the limits of this essay, which can merely open doors slightly to a subject that should be treated in more depth at another time and place. Accordingly, this essay will only survey and illustrate the changes in Quaker position toward the theatre and suggest some of their implications. Specifically, it will attempt two things: (1) to sketch historically the development of Quaker attitudes toward the theatre prior to the 1960\u27s, and (2) to document some of the changes in attitude since 1960

Christendom’s Narratives and the Stained Glass Designs of Yusuf Cameron Adebayo Grillo

Stained glass paintings, the most distinctive accessory in the interior repertoire of Christian ecclesiastic spaces, is the subject matter of this study. This paper attempts a recast of Christendom’s narratives in the stained glass designs of Yusuf Cameron Adebayo Grillo as the distinctive overarching mechanism of the evangelisation paradigm of the post Vatican II Church. It, therefore, draws attention to the delimitation of time frames in the history of the art form. Using the Grillo genre as the cipher that under girds the new evangelisation, the study narrates a new sense of time in the story of the development and growth of stained glass in the constellation of Church art. Yusuf Grillo’s images of the post Vatican II Church, albeit Nigerian independence era, with its unique modern representation imageries is the kernel of this study. For in spite of their peculiar imageries, they recite the same Bible and Christos story that the earlier European ones served. Utilising the adage “God lies in the details”, the iconographical details in the new images crafted by Grillo are employed as a distinctive typology that defines the style of the new evangelisation. This study presents a story of the emergence of a new art form. It, however, points to a set of new imageries that reflect the place of Christ as a central magnet that holds the entire Bible and Christos story together. That story-line emphasises the liturgical transmission of a new experience of time. It is a theological history in which the past, present and future make contact in the presence of the living Christ.Key Words: ecclesiastic, evangelization, cipher; representation, iconographic, centralmagne

Initial Stage of Fluid-Structure Interaction of a Celestial Icosahedron Shaped Vacuum Lighter Than Air Vehicle

The analysis of a celestial icosahedron geometry is considered as a potential design for a Vacuum Lighter than Air Vehicle (VLTAV). The goal of the analysis is ultimately to understand the initial fluid-structure interaction of the VLTAV and the surrounding airflow. Up to this point, previous research analyzed the celestial icosahedron VLTAV in relation to withstanding a symmetric sea-level pressure applied to the membrane of the structure. This scenario simulates an internal vacuum being applied in the worst-case atmospheric environmental condition. The next step in analysis is to determine the aerodynamic effects of the geometry. The experimental setup for obtaining aerodynamic effects is validated prior to analyzing the deformed celestial icosahedron geometry by analyzing a perfect sphere utilizing the same manufacturing process and setup expected to be adopted for the celestial icosahedron experiments. The data received from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of the deformed structure in collaboration with Wright State University is used to determine the significance of aerodynamic effects on the structure. The pressure profiles experienced in the wind tunnel experiments and CFD analysis are comparatively similar. Therefore, the CFD data is used to conduct a structural analysis in which aerodynamic effects are incorporated. The research concluded that the aerodynamic pressures do not significantly affect the stress on the structure. As a result, it recommended that a full nonlinear fluid-structure interaction analysis is not necessary for this structure

‘Many Lamps Same Light’: The Stained Glass Paintings of Nigeria’s Prime Artists, Y.C.A. Grillo and D. H. Dale

Many lamps same Light’ investigates the place of agency in the transmutation of indigenous imageries in the art works of the pictorial turn. Through an investigation that entailed an empirical analysis of the works of two Nigerian prime stained glass artists, Yusuf Grillo and David Dale, this study established that in spite of their diversity in picture making tooling mechanisms, both artists met the purposes of the “new thinking” paradigm shift in the post Vatican II evangelisation regime. In a hermeneutic discourse, however, the study investigates Grillo’s exclusive use of indigenous thought systems’ imbued lexiconology as visual tooling mechanisms to affect imagery for the episteme of ecclesia in Africa. In effect that novel art form did not only affect the enlargement of the series in images of this, otherwise, European art form but also a change in imagery in the entire constellation of Church art. In fact, through art as agency utilsing the iconographical imageries from Nigeria as ciphers of the pictorial turn, distinguishing the paradigm shift in Christianity, it was possible to tell the Christos story with Christ as the magnate holding the ecclesiologies together.Keywords: stained glass, pictorial turn, evangelisation, iconographical imagery, tooling mechanism, agency, light, lam

PHCN, Please Help Clean Nigeria. “Ise Ni Ounise, Mura Si Ise Ore Mi” - Work Is an Antidote for Poverty: An Exhibition of Paintings by Master Water Colourist/ Artist and Social Critic, Ijalobomo

This essay is a critique of the “Nigerian condition” engaging the medium of painting. Categorising Ijalobomo’s water colours as “Windows” enables an understanding of messages captured within the paintings’ frames; and what statements they make as artifacts. Hence, it makes possible an analysis of the data, and evaluation beyond contemporary margins of subject matter in art, to understanding their functions as social symbolisms. In an empirical analysis, therefore, that is kernelled on the hermeneutic, specific images are looked at and evaluated beyond the customary margins of subject matter, to the understanding of their function as social criticism. Hence, subsequent information on statements about subject matter, medium and form engages Erwin Panofsky’s style Iconological/Iconographical analysis to give meaning to the paintings contents through a coherent merging of original, internal and external contexts. This coherent merging takes into consideration the subject matter of the picture, Ijalobomo’s social background, cultural conventions lyricised in a tableau of versed wisdom; and how such conventions have informed his themes. With a combination of theoretical frames drawn from Marxist and materialist perspectives on art are employed to address culture and economics as it functions in society. The strengths of the methods of interpretations of the images yield insights for critical social commentary. The PHCN water colours reveal Ijalobomo’s effectiveness at engaging a discourse of “change in the Nigerian condition” via the genre of tragedy lyricised in versed form, but couched in the vituality of painting. A return to the choreographed values rhymed in childhood and the hard work ethos is the recipe for change!Keywords: critique, “the Nigerian Condition”, Windows, Mirrors, Contexts, Chang