The History of Russian Empire’s Most Expensive Painting

The article describes the story of painting Nana (1881) by Marcel Suchorowsky known as the most expensive painting sold by a painter in the Russian Empire. But the art piece differs a lot from the general line of the local art market situation, which was defined by special institutions, such as the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. The main aspects are taken into consideration, such as: critical analysis of the painting, the story of the plot, which refers to Émile Zola’s novel Nana, the painter’s individual and innovative exposition strategy, etc. The history of Nana and its special exhibitions in Europe and the USA through the period of 1981–2012 are described. Reports in the USA periodics serve as a special source of analysis, as long as they allow tracing Nana’s movements and public interest. It was exhibited in the “panorama” style using special lightning and additional objects to imitate the three-dimension space and thus became a popular entertainment. Painting Nana is a very interesting cultural phenomenon as long as it obtained notorious glory due to its provocative plot and an excellent academic technique. It is not only the surprising price, but public reaction that is the most important

Мистецькі галереї як важлива складова розвитку арт-ринку Києва у 1990–2010-х роках

У статті йдеться про духовний клімат інтелігенції 1960-х років. Описано загальну культурну ситуацію та інтелектуальні запити творчої молоді того періоду. На прикладі контактів з художником та архітектором Анатолієм Суммаром показано проникнення модерного мистецтва в усталене середовище радянської молоді. Підкреслено роль молодих архітекторів у духовному визріванні покоління 1960-х років.The article focuses on the analysis of Kyiv Art Galleries during the period of Ukraine’s independence. Based on interviews with two renowned Kyiv gallerists Tetiana Savchenko (director of “Tryptykh Art” gallery) and Victor Khamatov (the founder of the “Soviart” center), we address problematic issues in galleries the art market in general. The art market is a holistic system that includes a number of components. Participants of the art market whose role is to implement works of art are as follow: an art dealer, who works directly with the artist and the buyer; a gallery owner, who keeps a special “shop”; and the auction house, which works with both individual pieces and collections at the top level. Galleries differ depending on their openness to the public. An Art Gallery serves as a moderator; is serves as an expert platform. The Gallery not only displays the contemporary state of art, emphasizing popular themes, trends and fashion trends, but also forms artistic tastes of the society, engaging it in a dialogue with all actors of the art market. There are three stages of Kyiv art galleries development, as it is observed by Viktor Khamatov. The first period (the late 1980s – early 1990s) is characterized as a stage of “uncontrolled formation of galleries.” The second period (the end of the 1990s) is “positioning and coordination of galleries in Ukraine.” At that time there were about 120 galleries that settled important tasks of institutional, cultural and creative development. The third period of the deployment of art galleries started in 2002 and continues to this day, resulting in “The transition to new technologies, exhibitions, information, management, creative opportunities, infrastructure development.” This leads to expansion of cooperation with foreign institutions and other cultural and artistic institutions. Kyiv plays an important role in the coordination of Ukrainian art galleries. Historical events in the country and political and economic changes in the society affect the development of modern Ukrainian art galleries. New conditions for the existence of national art provide further adaptation to international relations in the global art market

Structural features of persistent homology and their algorithmic transformations

We re-examine the theory and orthodox methods that underlie the study of persistent homology, particularly in its calculation of homological cycle representatives that are associated to persistence diagrams. A common background to the subject covers several aspects: schemes to process input data (embedding it in a low-dimensional manifold), categorical descriptions of persistence objects, and algorithms by which the barcode summarizing the homology is found. We overview these aspects, focusing on altered simplicial complexes, traditional computation of persistent homology, and the stability theorem for barcodes. By reformulating these notions in the language of category theory, we can speak more plainly on some recurring notions that are relevant to our discussion. This ultimately sets up for vector space filtrations that prove to be suitable tools for codifying the homology of complexes, including the (co)images and (co)kernels arising from morphisms of complexes. The main body of work then presents an alternative approach to persistent homology, based on filtrations of vector spaces. We elaborate with an interesting example whose persistent homology is readily computed as a quotient of appropriate filtrations; in the process, we produce a representative basis of homological cycles, a step that is often overlooked in existing literature. The proposed algorithm is also notable in that it easily handles the calculation of (co)images and (co)kernels for persistent morphisms, supplying us with the same level of detail; while other algorithms do exist for computing the barcodes of these universal objects, such methods are not easily generalizable. Finally, we compute appropriate homological cycles and use a certain algorithmic matching scheme that both implies the usual barcode matching and attempts to better interpret this interesting behavior

Best Prompts for Text-to-Image Models and How to Find Them

Recent progress in generative models, especially in text-guided diffusion models, has enabled the production of aesthetically-pleasing imagery resembling the works of professional human artists. However, one has to carefully compose the textual description, called the prompt, and augment it with a set of clarifying keywords. Since aesthetics are challenging to evaluate computationally, human feedback is needed to determine the optimal prompt formulation and keyword combination. In this paper, we present a human-in-the-loop approach to learning the most useful combination of prompt keywords using a genetic algorithm. We also show how such an approach can improve the aesthetic appeal of images depicting the same descriptions.Comment: 13 pages (6 main pages), 7 figures, 4 tables, accepted at SIGIR '23 Short Paper Trac

Compact corrugatеd horn antenna initial design for microwave diagnostics in Uragan-2M stellarator

In this paper, a well-known design procedure is proposed for the design of wideband constant-beam width conical corrugated horn antennas, with minimum design and construction complexity. The inputs to the procedure are the operating frequency band, the required minimum beam width in the entire frequency band, and the frequency in which the maximum gain is desired to occur. Based on these values, the procedure gives a relatively good design with a relative bandwidth of up to 2.1:1 Based on the proposed procedure, a corrugated horn antenna with a constant beam width over the frequencies of 10 to 14 GHz was designed and simulated using commercial software. This paper presents initial design for the development of quasi-optical corrugated conical horn for reflectometry diagnostics for the Uragan-2M stellarator plasma experiments.Пропонується відома методика проектування широкосмугових конічних гофрованих рупорних антен з постійною шириною діаграми спрямованості яка має мінімальну складність проектування і побудови Вхідними даними для процедури є робоча смуга частот необхідна мінімальна ширина променю у всій смузі частот і частота на якій бажано досягти максимального коефіцієнта підсилення На основі цих значень процедура дає відносно хорошу конструкцію з відносною шириною смуги пропускання до 2.1:1 На основі запропонованої методики було спроектовано і змодельовано за допомогою комерційного програмного забезпечення гофровану рупорну антену з постійною шириною смуги пропускання у діапазоні частот від 10 до 14 ГГц У статті представлено початковий проект розробки квазіоптичної гофрованої конічної рупорної антени для рефлектометричної діагностики для плазмових експериментів стеларатора Ураган-2М

Supervised Autonomous Locomotion and Manipulation for Disaster Response with a Centaur-like Robot

Mobile manipulation tasks are one of the key challenges in the field of search and rescue (SAR) robotics requiring robots with flexible locomotion and manipulation abilities. Since the tasks are mostly unknown in advance, the robot has to adapt to a wide variety of terrains and workspaces during a mission. The centaur-like robot Centauro has a hybrid legged-wheeled base and an anthropomorphic upper body to carry out complex tasks in environments too dangerous for humans. Due to its high number of degrees of freedom, controlling the robot with direct teleoperation approaches is challenging and exhausting. Supervised autonomy approaches are promising to increase quality and speed of control while keeping the flexibility to solve unknown tasks. We developed a set of operator assistance functionalities with different levels of autonomy to control the robot for challenging locomotion and manipulation tasks. The integrated system was evaluated in disaster response scenarios and showed promising performance.Comment: In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, October 201