The Soul of the Leningrad Blockade: Leonid Chupiatov’s Bogomater of the Protecting Veil

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie O'Bell
Keyword(s):  
Present Essay ◽  
Religious Paintings ◽  
Artistic Work ◽  
Religious Image ◽  
Traditional Image

The present essay is the first article devoted to the religious paintings of the Soviet artist Leonid Chupiatov (1890–1941), with special attention to his Veil of the Mother of God over the Dying City, created during the desolate Leningrad siege winter of 1941-42. Dmitry Likhachev memorably called this work the “soul of the siege.” The article analyzes what it offers the viewer directly, as a modern version of the traditional image. It goes on to place the painting in the context of Chupiatov’s religious production, both during the siege and previous to it and to explore the circumstances which ensured its preservation against all odds. An apocalyptic context which challenges even divine compassion and saving grace, one which recapitulates the forty days of Christ in the desert—such is the immediate context of Chupiatov’s icon of the Protecting Veil in his artistic work from the winter of 1941–42. In the end, the survival of this powerful image becomes comprehensible through the connections of a fragmented religious-philosophical confraternity. The article thus represents a step towards finally acknowledging the presence of the religious image in the artistic response to the Leningrad siege.

scholarly journals Reliance and Confinement: Washington Allston’s Dual Attitudes Towards European Ideals in His Paintings

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 224-232
Author(s):  
Muzhi Liu
Keyword(s):  
Proper Place ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Artistic Style ◽  
Religious Paintings ◽  
Artistic Work ◽  
American Romanticism ◽  
Dramatic Departure

The paper examines the dual attitudes reflected in the artistic work of Washington Allston. Born in 1779 and died in 1843, Allston is a famous American painter and poet whose artworks are greatly shaped by European philosophical concepts and artistic traditions. Allston's inheritance of such traditions could be mainly reflected by the deliberate representation of the concept of sublimity and divinity in his artistic creation. This could be readily seen from Allston’s artistic techniques, by which he better instills his aesthetics into his religious paintings while arousing greater empathy among the audience. However, against the background of American Romanticism, Allston was faced with the conflict between conforming to the European aesthetic standards in terms of “general air” and tradition, and the dramatic departure of objects from their “proper place”. As a result, Allston resorted to the institutional liberation, thus forming his distinct artistic style with an evident feature of dual attitudes.

scholarly journals Generative Models for Relief Perspective Architectures

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Baglioni ◽  
Federico Fallavollita
Keyword(s):  
Research Methodology ◽  
Affine Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Generative Models ◽  
Linear Perspective ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Three Dimensional Structure ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Santa Maria

AbstractThe present essay investigates the potential of generative representation applied to the study of relief perspective architectures realized in Italy between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In arts, and architecture in particular, relief perspective is a three-dimensional structure able to create the illusion of great depths in small spaces. A method of investigation applied to the case study of the Avila Chapel in Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome (Antonio Gherardi 1678) is proposed. The research methodology can be extended to other cases and is based on the use of a Relief Perspective Camera, which can create both a linear perspective and a relief perspective. Experimenting mechanically and automatically the perspective transformations from the affine space to the illusory space and vice versa has allowed us to see the case study in a different light.

With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South: Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Calling of Planetary Realisations

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802292110146
Author(s):  
Ananta Kumar Giri
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The South ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Multiple Cultures ◽  
The World ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Universe Of Discourse ◽  
The Human Condition

Our contemporary moment is a moment of crisis of epistemology as a part of the wider and deeper crisis of modernity and the human condition. The crisis of epistemology emerges from the limits of the epistemic as it is tied to epistemology of procedural certainty and closure. The crisis of epistemology also reflects the limits of epistemology closed within the Euro-American universe of discourse. It is in this context that the present essay discusses Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. It also discusses some of the limits of de Sousa Santos’ alternatives especially his lack of cultivation of the ontological in his exploration of epistemological alternatives beyond the Eurocentric canons. It then explores the pathways of ontological epistemology of participation which brings epistemic and ontological works and meditations together in transformative and cross-cultural ways. This helps us in going beyond both the limits of the primacy of epistemology in modernity as well as Eurocentrism. It also explores pathways of a new hermeneutics which involves walking and meditating across multiple topoi of cultures and traditions of thinking and reflections which is called multi- topial hermeneutics in this study. This involves foot-walking and foot-meditative interpretation across multiple cultures and traditions of the world which help us go beyond ethnocentrism and eurocentrism and cultivate conversations and realisations across borders what the essay calls planetary realisations.

scholarly journals Image Preprocessing in Classification and Identification of Diabetic Eye Diseases

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubina Sarki ◽  
Khandakar Ahmed ◽  
Hua Wang ◽  
Yanchun Zhang ◽  
Jiangang Ma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Image Processing ◽  
Image Quality ◽  
Geometric Transformation ◽  
Diabetic Patients ◽  
Fundus Image ◽  
Classification Problems ◽  
Specificity And Sensitivity ◽  
Retinal Fundus Image ◽  
Retinal Fundus ◽  
Traditional Image

AbstractDiabetic eye disease (DED) is a cluster of eye problem that affects diabetic patients. Identifying DED is a crucial activity in retinal fundus images because early diagnosis and treatment can eventually minimize the risk of visual impairment. The retinal fundus image plays a significant role in early DED classification and identification. An accurate diagnostic model’s development using a retinal fundus image depends highly on image quality and quantity. This paper presents a methodical study on the significance of image processing for DED classification. The proposed automated classification framework for DED was achieved in several steps: image quality enhancement, image segmentation (region of interest), image augmentation (geometric transformation), and classification. The optimal results were obtained using traditional image processing methods with a new build convolution neural network (CNN) architecture. The new built CNN combined with the traditional image processing approach presented the best performance with accuracy for DED classification problems. The results of the experiments conducted showed adequate accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity.

scholarly journals Enhanced network optimized generative adversarial network for image enhancement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingyu Yan ◽  
Jiarun Fu ◽  
Chunzhi Wang ◽  
Zhiwei Ye ◽  
Hongwei Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Image Enhancement ◽  
Image Recognition ◽  
Generative Adversarial Networks ◽  
Low Light ◽  
Generative Adversarial Network ◽  
Adversarial Network ◽  
Adversarial Networks ◽  
Enhancement Method ◽  
New Space ◽  
Traditional Image

AbstractWith the development of image recognition technology, face, body shape, and other factors have been widely used as identification labels, which provide a lot of convenience for our daily life. However, image recognition has much higher requirements for image conditions than traditional identification methods like a password. Therefore, image enhancement plays an important role in the process of image analysis for images with noise, among which the image of low-light is the top priority of our research. In this paper, a low-light image enhancement method based on the enhanced network module optimized Generative Adversarial Networks(GAN) is proposed. The proposed method first applied the enhancement network to input the image into the generator to generate a similar image in the new space, Then constructed a loss function and minimized it to train the discriminator, which is used to compare the image generated by the generator with the real image. We implemented the proposed method on two image datasets (DPED, LOL), and compared it with both the traditional image enhancement method and the deep learning approach. Experiments showed that our proposed network enhanced images have higher PNSR and SSIM, the overall perception of relatively good quality, demonstrating the effectiveness of the method in the aspect of low illumination image enhancement.

scholarly journals Human-Mimetic Estimation of Food Volume from a Single-View RGB Image Using an AI System

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (13) ◽  
pp. 1556
Author(s):  
Zhengeng Yang ◽  
Hongshan Yu ◽  
Shunxin Cao ◽  
Qi Xu ◽  
Ding Yuan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Diseases ◽  
Volume Estimation ◽  
Portion Size ◽  
Inner Product ◽  
Probability Vector ◽  
Internal Reference ◽  
Single View ◽  
Unhealthy Diet ◽  
Simplified Procedure ◽  
Traditional Image

It is well known that many chronic diseases are associated with unhealthy diet. Although improving diet is critical, adopting a healthy diet is difficult despite its benefits being well understood. Technology is needed to allow an assessment of dietary intake accurately and easily in real-world settings so that effective intervention to manage being overweight, obesity, and related chronic diseases can be developed. In recent years, new wearable imaging and computational technologies have emerged. These technologies are capable of performing objective and passive dietary assessments with a much simplified procedure than traditional questionnaires. However, a critical task is required to estimate the portion size (in this case, the food volume) from a digital image. Currently, this task is very challenging because the volumetric information in the two-dimensional images is incomplete, and the estimation involves a great deal of imagination, beyond the capacity of the traditional image processing algorithms. In this work, we present a novel Artificial Intelligent (AI) system to mimic the thinking of dietitians who use a set of common objects as gauges (e.g., a teaspoon, a golf ball, a cup, and so on) to estimate the portion size. Specifically, our human-mimetic system “mentally” gauges the volume of food using a set of internal reference volumes that have been learned previously. At the output, our system produces a vector of probabilities of the food with respect to the internal reference volumes. The estimation is then completed by an “intelligent guess”, implemented by an inner product between the probability vector and the reference volume vector. Our experiments using both virtual and real food datasets have shown accurate volume estimation results.

scholarly journals The Law Challenged and the Critique of Identity with Emmanuel Levinas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Petrilli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

AbstractIdentity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: (1) Premiss; (2) Justice, uniqueness, and love; (3) Sign and language; (4) Dialogue and alterity; (5) Semiotic materiality; (6) Globalization and the trap of identity; (7) Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; (8) Ethics; (9) The World; (10) Outside the subject; (11) Responsibility and Substitution; (12) The face; (13) Fear of the other; (14) Alterity and justice; (15) Justice and proximity; (16) Literary writing; (17) Unjust justice; (18) Caring for the other.

scholarly journals How America’s Corporations Lost their Public Purpose, and How it Might be (Partially) Restored

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ciepley
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Control ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Business Corporation ◽  
Public Benefits ◽  
Public Purpose ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The U.S

AbstractIn honor of Lynn Stout’s efforts to better suit the business corporation for the pursuit of long-term, publicly-beneficial purposes, the present essay reviews critically the historical process by which the corporation’s tie to public purposes—a precondition of the earliest grants of corporate powers to business enterprisers—was slowly severed. And it explores a form of corporate control, once widespread in the U.S. and easily revivable, that could partially restore corporate emphasis on public benefits—the foundation-controlled corporation.

What is military labour? War, logistics, and the Mughals in early modern South Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 096834452091861
Author(s):  
Pratyay Nath
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Early Modern South Asia

The category of ‘military labour’ has traditionally been used to designate ‘combat labour’ – the labour of soldiers. Focusing on the case of early modern South Asia, the present essay argues that this equivalence is misplaced and that it is a product of a distorted view of war defined primarily in terms of combat. The essay discusses the roles played by the logistical workforce of Mughal armies in conducting military campaigns and facilitating imperial expansion. It calls for broadening the category of ‘military labour’ to include all types of labour rendered consciously towards the fulfilment of military objectives.

scholarly journals Multi-Feature Guided Low-Light Image Enhancement

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 5055
Author(s):  
Hong Liang ◽  
Ankang Yu ◽  
Mingwen Shao ◽  
Yuru Tian
Keyword(s):  
Image Enhancement ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Low Light ◽  
Low Contrast ◽  
Light Image ◽  
Affine Model ◽  
The Neural Network ◽  
Low Visibility ◽  
Model Robustness ◽  
Traditional Image

Due to the characteristics of low signal-to-noise ratio and low contrast, low-light images will have problems such as color distortion, low visibility, and accompanying noise, which will cause the accuracy of the target detection problem to drop or even miss the detection target. However, recalibrating the dataset for this type of image will face problems such as increased cost or reduced model robustness. To solve this kind of problem, we propose a low-light image enhancement model based on deep learning. In this paper, the feature extraction is guided by the illumination map and noise map, and then the neural network is trained to predict the local affine model coefficients in the bilateral space. Through these methods, our network can effectively denoise and enhance images. We have conducted extensive experiments on the LOL datasets, and the results show that, compared with traditional image enhancement algorithms, the model is superior to traditional methods in image quality and speed.

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