Cracks in the Glass: The Emergence of a New Image Typology from the Spatio-temporal Schisms of the 'Filmic' Virtual Reality Panorama

Virtual Reality Panoramas have fascinated me for some time; their interactive nature affording a spectatorial engagement not evident within other forms of painting or digital imagery. This interactivity is not generally linear as is evident in animation or film, nor is the engagement with the image reduced to the physical or visual border of the image, as its limit is never visible to the viewer in its entirety. Further, the time taken to interact and navigate across the Virtual Reality panorama’s surface is not reflected or recorded within the observed image. The procedural construction of the Virtual Reality panorama creates an a-temporal image event that denies the durée of its own index and creation. This is particularly evident in the cinematic experiments conducted by Jeffrey Shaw in the 1990s that ‘spatialised’ time and image through the fusion of the formal typology of the Panorama together with the cinematic moving-image, creating a new kind of image technology. The incorporation of the space enclosed by the panorama’s drum, into the conception and execution of the cinematic event, reveals an interesting conceptual paradox. Space and time infinitely and autonomously repeat upon each other as the linear trajectory of the singular cinematic shot is interrupted by a ‘time schism’ on the surface of the panorama. This paper explores what this conceptual paradox means to the evolution of emerging image-technologies and how Shaw’s ‘mixed-reality’ installation reveals a wholly new image typology that presents techniques and concepts though which to record, interrogate, and represent time and space in Architecture

Perspectival generation in/within the Sala della Pace: broadening the viewfield of spatialised images

It is everyday experience to look at a picture on a wall, (or on a computer screen) from a position that is out of alignment with its perspective, and then make a mental adjustment so as to allow for and ignore the distortion which results. To understand the limits and problem of this compensation it is necessary to look at works where there is an explicit attempt to relate the space of an image and the space in which the image exists. One such exemplar is the Sala della Pace, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338-40. The Sala della Pace may be of particular value today in helping us understand and evaluate the rapidly developing capacity of digital technology to represent dense visual and spatial information. Through Lorenzetti’s amalgam of multiple zones of extromissive generation within the images of the Sala della Pace, Lorenzetti‘s work suggests a potential compositional technique that subverts the reduction of spatial representation to a singular point of perspectival generation by broadening the viewfield in which to receive and construct multiple spatialised images. It is the aim of this paper to explore spatial concepts in Lorenzetti’s painting that may inform the way in which we conceptualise the spatial representation of both real and fictive space in/within images

Spatial Transfiguration: Anamorphic Mixed-Reality in the Virtual Reality Panorama

Spatial illusion and immersion was achieved in Renaissance painting through the manipulation of linear perspective’s pictorial conventions and painterly technique. The perceptual success of a painted trompe l’œil, its ability to fool the observer into believing they were viewing a real three-dimensional scene, was constrained by the limited immersive capacity of the two-dimensional painted canvas. During the baroque period however, artists began to experiment with the amalgamation of the ‘real’ space occupied by the observer together with the pictorial space enveloped by the painting’s picture plane: real and pictorial space combined into one pictorial composition resulting in a hybridised ‘mixed-reality’. Today, the way architects, and designers generally, use the QuickTime Virtual Reality panorama to represent spaces of increasing visual density have much to learn from the way in which Renaissance and baroque artists manipulated the three-dimensional characteristics of the picture plane in order to offer more convincing spatial illusions. This paper outlines the conceptual development of the QuickTime VR panorama by Ken Turkowski and the Apple Advanced Technology Group during the late 1980s. Further, it charts the technical methods of the Virtual Reality panorama’s creation in order to reflect upon the VR panorama’s geometric construction and range and effectiveness of spatial illusion. Finally, through a brief analysis of Hans Holbein’s Ambassadors [1533] and Andrea Pozzo’s nave painting in Sant ‘Ignazio [1691-94] this paper proposes an alternative conceptual model for the pictorial construction of the VR panorama that is innovatively based upon an anamorphic ‘mixed-reality’

Using Student-led Discussion Strategies to Motivate, Increase Thinking, Create Ownership, and Teach Citizenship

This study aimed to see how teacher implementation of a student-led discussion process influenced intrinsic motivation of students in a high school Language Arts classroom. There was a specific focus on how these discussions impacted the students’ critical thinking. A pre and post-survey, student journals, videos of discussions, and interviews were used to collect data regarding motivation and critical thought. The study verified prior research regarding student discussions as a useful tool in classrooms if implemented in an effective way. However, there were no new conclusions reached. With that said, student-reported intrinsic motivation and critical thinking showed an increase from pre to post-survey. Many students were able to learn the process of preparing and writing their own discussion questions. Students also confirmed that they believe student-led discussions are beneficial to help them see what they know and what they still need to learn. These findings, as well as other questions raised throughout the study, open the door for future research. Still, the research question cannot be answered conclusively without the consideration of other variables

Characterization of Acantharea-Phaeocystis photosymbioses: distribution, abundance, specificity, maintenance and host-control

Microbial eukaryotes (protists) are important contributors to marine biogeochemistry and play essential roles as both producers and consumers in marine ecosystems. Among protists, mixotrophs—those that use both heterotrophy and autotrophy to meet their energy requirements—are especially important to primary production in low-nutrient regions. Acantharian protists (clades E & F) accomplish mixotrophy by hosting ​Phaeocystis spp.​ as algal endosymbionts and are extremely abundant in subtropical low-nutrient regions where they form productivity hotspots. Despite their ecological importance, acantharians remain understudied due to their structural fragility and inability to survive in culture. In order to overcome these challenges and illuminate key aspects of acantharian biology and ecology—including distribution, abundance, and specificity and specialization of symbioses—single-cell RNA sequencing methods were developed for acantharians and used alongside environmental metabarcode sequencing and high-throughput, in-situ imaging. Major findings from this thesis were that i) acantharian cell (> 250 µm) concentrations decrease with depth, which correlates to patterns in relative sequence abundances for acantharian clades with known morphologies but not for those lacking known morphology, and that ii) while individual acantharians simultaneously harbor multiple symbiont species, intra-host symbiont communities do not match environmental communities, providing evidence for multiple uptake events but against continuous symbiont turnover, and that iii) photosynthesis genes are upregulated in symbiotic Phaeocystis​, reflecting enhanced productivity in symbiosis, but DNA replication and cell-cycle genes are downregulated, demonstrating that hosts suppress symbiont cell division. Moreover, storage carbohydrate and lipid biosynthesis and metabolism genes are downregulated in symbiotic ​Phaeocystis​, suggesting fixed carbon is relinquished to acantharian hosts. Gene expression patterns indicate that symbiotic ​Phaeocystis​ is not nutrient limited and likely benefits from host-supplied ammonium and urea, thus providing evidence for nutrient transfer between hosts and symbionts. Interestingly, genes associated with protein kinase signaling pathways that promote cell proliferation are downregulated in symbiotic ​Phaeocystis​. Deactivation of these genes may prevent symbionts from overgrowing hosts and therefore represents a key component of maintaining the symbiosis. This research contributes new insights into the ecologically relevant photosymbioses between Acantharea and ​Phaeocystis​ and illustrates the benefits of combining single-cell sequencing and imaging technologies to illuminate important microbial relationships in marine ecosystems.Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate Universit

Alien Registration- Brisbin, Charles E. (Auburn, Androscoggin County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/30929/thumbnail.jp

An ALMA survey of submillimeter galaxies in the COSMOS field: Multiwavelength counterparts and redshift distribution

We carried out targeted ALMA observations of 129 fields in the COSMOS region at 1.25 mm, detecting 152 galaxies at S/N ≥ 5with an average continuum RMS of 150 μJy. These fields represent a S/N-limited sample of AzTEC/ASTE sources with 1.1 mm S/N≥ 4 over an area of 0.72 square degrees. Given ALMA’s fine resolution and the exceptional spectroscopic and multiwavelength photometric data available in COSMOS, this survey allows us unprecedented power in identifying submillimeter galaxy counterparts and determining their redshifts through spectroscopic or photometric means. In addition to 30 sources with prior spectroscopic redshifts, we identified redshifts for 113 galaxies through photometric methods and an additional nine sources with lower limits, which allowed a statistically robust determination of the redshift distribution. We have resolved 33 AzTEC sources into multi-component systems and our redshifts suggest that nine are likely to be physically associated. Our overall redshift distribution peaks at z ~ 2.0 with a high-redshift tail skewing the median redshift to z = 2.48 ± 0.05. We find that brighter millimeter sources are preferentially found at higher redshifts. Our faintestsources, with S_(1.25 mm) 1.8 mJy, have a median redshift of z = 3.08 ± 0.17. After accounting for spectral energy distribution shape and selection effects, these results are consistent with several previous submillimeter galaxy surveys, and moreover, support the conclusion that the submillimeter galaxy redshift distribution is sensitive to survey depth