An Investigation of Holographic Technologies Applied to Contemporary Art Practice A new approach to temporal aesthetics

The works of contemporary art using audio, 35mm slide, video, film and computer- based technologies are commonly referred to as time-based media, since they have duration as a dimension. By looking at artworks which are classified in this category, it appears that temporal visual perceptual interpretations are mainly created through the use of the illusion of movement, which is primarily constituted by sequential images. In art holography, the light-based characteristic qualities of this medium compose a kinetic and interactive visual syntax, which are not seen in other imaging technologies, stating its unique creative possibilities. Thus, this study intends to employ holography as an art medium to explore its temporal properties in order to establish a new approach to time-based media art practice. To review the practice and artworks created for this study, the author recognises that the characteristic qualities of a medium is key for the development of its own aesthetic culture. Moreover, the author also identifies that the combination of both the slips form of a hologram and a portable lighting device would be fundamental elements of the suggested new approach. This approach integrates the holographic image replaying process and the Chinese bamboo slips structure to create a scroll form of an artwork presentation, which suggests a viewer to observe with an unrolling activity, section by section. The role of light in this approach is essential as it not only reconstructs the image, but also acts as an intangible guide to indicate the viewing direction, which forms a directional linear temporal expression. This study combines the suggested approach with classical Chinese poetry to create a series of experimental artworks, demonstrating that the literal and figurative meaning of the poem could possibly be elevated through the manipulation of the light source and the scroll from of the image presentation, as the former creates the holographic kinetic expression and the latter reinforces the poetic linearity. This approach could be interpreted as a time-based holographic manifestation, as it unfolds the art to the viewer over time. Furthermore, in terms of the characteristic qualities of holography, the visual expressive techniques and aesthetic features created for this study indicate that such works cannot be recreated without the use of holography. This study reveals that the irreplaceable aesthetic qualities of holography, suggesting that it could expand and diversify the creative potential of time-based media art; and the discussion of this category would not be comprehensive unless taking this medium into consideration. This study establishes a creative possibility of holography and expects the finding to lead to a greater appreciation for future time-based media art practice, thus enriching the temporal artistic expressions. Moreover, as it is practice-based, the process of the research is primarily expressed through a series of holographic artworks, and combined with written format of discussion, which is presented in this thesis. For comprehensive understanding, reading the thesis in conjunction with viewing the artworks in person is suggested, as the photographic reproduction of the holographic images in this thesis is only for illustration purpose

A LITERATURE REVIEW OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM (1990-2016): DEVELOPMENT TRAJECTORY AND FRAMEWORK

Purpose of the study—Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world. Just like an enterprise today, sustainability is the long-term objective pursued by tourism industry. However, little effort has been made to systematically provide sufficient information to academicians and practitioners who have great research interests in sustainable tourism. Therefore, this paper aims to figure out the knowledge mapping of sustainable tourism and to indicate its research hot spots and trends for future research. Methodology—This paper surveys the development trajectory of sustainable tourism using a literature review and classification of articles retrieved from 5 online databases with solo keyword “sustainable tourism” from 1900 to 2016. Main findings—Based on the scope of 641 articles, this study reveals that the number of publication on sustainable tourism has significantly increased since 2006. In addition, these articles are scattered across 125 journals and mostly published in 23 academic journals. The majority of targeted countries/regions for sustainable tourism focus on Asia, Europe and America. Limitation—Restricted to limited knowledge, we make a brief literature survey on sustainable tourism from 1990-2016 to explore how sustainable tourism and its applications have developed in this period. Originality/value—In fact, sustainable tourism is a belief and an overall concept in every tourism activities. Though this research has done lots, it still has rooms to make more complete. Finally, we present a conceptual framework integrating 13 classifications criteria derived from our analysis with 3247 keywords. Most interestingly, we further present a conceptual framework with a visual effect to operationalize the coverage of sustainable tourism. Based on our analysis, any researcher can easily find the popular and right journal to get into it, if he/she is in need, he/she also can roughly know its applications so far and completely get a whole picture of sustainable tourism quickly

Generating axial magnetic fields via two plasmon decay driven by a twisted laser

We propose a new way of axial magnetic fields generation in a non-relativistic laser intensity regime by using a twisted light carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) to stimulate two-plasmon decay (TPD) in a plasma. The growth of TPD driven by an OAM light in a Laguerre-Gauss (LG) mode is investigated through three dimensional fluid simulations and theory. A theory based on the assumption that the electron plasma waves (EPWs) are locally driven by a number of local plane-wave lasers predicts the maximum growth rate proportional to the peak amplitude of the pump laser field and is verified by the simulations. The OAM conservation during its transportation from the laser to the TPD daughter EWPs is shown by both the theory and the simulations. The theory predicts generation of ~40T axial magnetic fields through the OAM absorption via TPD, which has perspective applications in the field of high energy density physics.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

Tea Verification Using Triplet Loss Convolutional Network

To solve tea image classification problems, this study focuses on triplet loss convolutional neural network to classify six high-mountain oolong tea classes. In the experiment, instead of using traditional deep learning training approach for local feature of tea images, an innovative image verification approach is proposed to learn the global feature of tea images by integrating the distributed tea leaves’ features of all tea sub-images and using a majority voting mechanism to do classification. The results show that the proposed approach can work for small sample size dataset and have higher accuracy than normal transfer learning approach. The average accuracy of the proposed approach achieves 99.54%

Seq’ and ARMS shall find: DNA (meta)barcoding of Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures across the tree of life uncovers hidden cryptobiome of tropical urban coral reefs

Coral reefs are among the richest marine ecosystems on Earth, but there remains much diversity hidden within cavities of complex reef structures awaiting discovery. While the abundance of corals and other macroinvertebrates are known to influence the diversity of other reef-associated organisms, much remains unknown on the drivers of cryptobenthic diversity. A combination of standardized sampling with 12 units of the Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure (ARMS) and high-throughput sequencing was utilized to uncover reef cryptobiome diversity across the equatorial reefs in Singapore. DNA barcoding and metabarcoding of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I, nuclear 18S and bacterial 16S rRNA genes revealed the taxonomic composition of the reef cryptobiome, comprising 15,356 microbial ASVs from over 50 bacterial phyla, and 971 MOTUs across 15 metazoan and 19 non-metazoan eukaryote phyla. Environmental factors across different sites were tested for relationships with ARMS diversity. Differences among reefs in diversity patterns of metazoans and other eukaryotes, but not microbial communities, were associated with biotic (coral cover) and abiotic (distance, temperature and sediment) environmental variables. In particular, ARMS deployed at reefs with higher coral cover had greater metazoan diversity and encrusting plate cover, with larger-sized non-coral invertebrates influencing spatial patterns among sites. Our study showed that DNA barcoding and metabarcoding of ARMS constitute a valuable tool for quantifying cryptobenthic diversity patterns and can provide critical information for the effective management of coral reef ecosystems

Seq’ and ARMS shall find: DNA (meta)barcoding of Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures across the tree of life uncovers hidden cryptobiome of tropical urban coral reefs

Coral reefs are among the richest marine ecosystems on Earth, but there remains much diversity hidden within cavities of complex reef structures awaiting discovery. While the abundance of corals and other macroinvertebrates are known to influence the diversity of other reef-associated organisms, much remains unknown on the drivers of cryptobenthic diversity. A combination of standardized sampling with 12 units of the Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure (ARMS) and high-throughput sequencing was utilized to uncover reef cryptobiome diversity across the equatorial reefs in Singapore. DNA barcoding and metabarcoding of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I, nuclear 18S and bacterial 16S rRNA genes revealed the taxonomic composition of the reef cryptobiome, comprising 15,356 microbial ASVs from over 50 bacterial phyla, and 971 MOTUs across 15 metazoan and 19 non-metazoan eukaryote phyla. Environmental factors across different sites were tested for relationships with ARMS diversity. Differences among reefs in diversity patterns of metazoans and other eukaryotes, but not microbial communities, were associated with biotic (coral cover) and abiotic (distance, temperature and sediment) environmental variables. In particular, ARMS deployed at reefs with higher coral cover had greater metazoan diversity and encrusting plate cover, with larger-sized non-coral invertebrates influencing spatial patterns among sites. Our study showed that DNA barcoding and metabarcoding of ARMS constitute a valuable tool for quantifying cryptobenthic diversity patterns and can provide critical information for the effective management of coral reef ecosystems