Customized Visual Computing

Author(s):  
Paul A. Fishwick

Aesthetic computing is defined as the application of art theory and practice toward the field of computing. This chapter introduces Aesthetic Computing and its approach for the task of multimedia representation of formal structures. We chose the structure of a simple computer program to illustrate the method. Examples used to represent the program illustrate how we may customize formal structures—such as programs—to allow users to employ visualization and human interaction as means to achieve a variety of diverse presentation artifacts. To date, the method has been used in education, to promote creativity in computing and model building, and as a technique for bridging the arts with computer science.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 205395172110343
Author(s):  
Salomé Viljoen ◽  
Jake Goldenfein ◽  
Lee McGuigan

Mechanism design is a form of optimization developed in economic theory. It casts economists as institutional engineers, choosing an outcome and then arranging a set of market rules and conditions to achieve it. The toolkit from mechanism design is widely used in economics, policymaking, and now in building and managing online environments. Mechanism design has become one of the most pervasive yet inconspicuous influences on the digital mediation of social life. Its optimizing schemes structure online advertising markets and other multi-sided platform businesses. Whatever normative rationales mechanism design might draw on in its economic origins, as its influence has grown and its applications have become more computational, we suggest those justifications for using mechanism design to orchestrate and optimize human interaction are losing traction. In this article, we ask what ideological work mechanism design is doing in economics, computer science, and its applications to the governance of digital platforms. Observing mechanism design in action in algorithmic environments, we argue it has become a tool for producing information domination, distributing social costs in ways that benefit designers, and controlling and coordinating participants in multi-sided platforms.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
Rebekah Lamb

This essay introduces and examines aspects of the theological aesthetics of contemporary Canadian artist, Michael D. O’Brien (1948–). It also considers how his philosophy of the arts informs understandings of the Catholic imagination. In so doing, it focuses on his view that prayer is the primary source of imaginative expression, allowing the artist to operate from a position of humble receptivity to the transcendent. O’Brien studies is a nascent field, owing much of its development in recent years to the pioneering work of Clemens Cavallin. Apart from Cavallin, few scholars have focused on O’Brien’s extensive collection of paintings (principally because the first catalogue of his art was only published in 2019). Instead, they have worked on his prodigious output of novels and essays. In prioritising O’Brien’s paintings, this study will assess the relationship between his theological reflections on the Catholic imagination and art practice. By focusing on the interface between theory and practice in O’Brien’s art, this article shows that conversations about the philosophy of the Catholic imagination benefit from attending to the inner standing points of contemporary artists who see in the arts a place where faith and praxis meet. In certain instances, I will include images of O’Brien’s devotional art to further illustrate his contemplative, Christ-centred approach to aesthetics. Overall, this study offers new directions in O’Brien studies and scholarship on the philosophy of the Catholic imagination.


2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Hamish Todd ◽  
Paul Emsley

Biological macromolecules have complex three-dimensional shapes that are experimentally examined using X-ray crystallography and electron cryo-microscopy. Interpreting the data that these methods yield involves building 3D atomic models. With almost every data set, some portion of the time put into creating these models must be spent manually modifying the model in order to make it consistent with the data; this is difficult and time-consuming, in part because the data are `blurry' in three dimensions. This paper describes the design and assessment of CootVR (available at http://hamishtodd1.github.io/cvr), a prototype computer program for performing this task in virtual reality, allowing structural biologists to build molecular models into cryo-EM and crystallographic data using their hands. CootVR was timed against Coot for a very specific model-building task, and was found to give an order-of-magnitude speedup for this task. A from-scratch model build using CootVR was also attempted; from this experience it is concluded that currently CootVR does not give a speedup over Coot overall.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Schoch ◽  
Thomas Ostermann

As a transdisciplinary questionnaire combining psychometrics and art theory, RizbA enables a quantitative measurement of pictorial expression in terms of a formal image analysis. This study explores its factor structure and a potential gap between theory and empirics.The sample consists of 275 contemporary pictorial works by artists and nonprofessionals, rated by 179 experts in a randomized online survey. Three path models were specified and computed as CFA: models A and B based on the results of the two previous studies, model C on the theoretical framework of the initial study. Model C was additionally tested on a combined dataset of all three studies.While models A and B did not converge, model C was associated with fit indices as follows: χ2 = 1299.752, df = 278, p = .000, RSMEA = .122 (90% CI = .116, .129), CFI = .712, TLI = .679, SRMR = .135 and for the combined dataset: χ2 = 6860.824, df = 278, p = .000, RSMEA = .086 (90% CI = .084, .088), CFI = .740, TLI = .696, SRMR = .084.Studies implicate reliability, but there might not be a globally stable factor structure across artworks. Only model C partly suggests an acceptable fit for the combined data. The results speak to a methodological gap between empirics and theory due to art being highly ambiguous with various analysis options. Further postdisciplinary approaches are needed to develop a theory-based measurement model for pictorial expression, which might to do justice to the arts.


2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Swanwick

A brief review of the state of music education in the UK at the time of the creation of the British Journal of Music Education (BJME) leads to a consideration of the range and focus of topics since the initiation of the Journal. In particular, the initial requirement of careful and critical enquiry is amplified, drawing out the inevitability of theorising, an activity which is considered to be essential for reflective practice. The relationship of theory and data is examined, in particular differentiating between the sciences and the arts. A ‘case study’ of theorising is presented and examined in some detail and possible strands of future development are identified.


Author(s):  
Ningxin Chen

Abstract A new and general approach for curvatures of conjugate surfaces is provided in this paper. The main characteristic of the approach is that relative curvatures and geodesic torsions of the conjugate surfaces are directly calculated in terms of the normal curvatures and geodesic torsions of the generating surface on two non-orthogonal tangents of surface curvilinears in global surface system. In comparison with the current approaches that use two orthogonal tangents or the principal directions in local system at each calculating point, the approach developed in this paper has a simple calculating process and a simple computer program. Based on the curvature equations, sliding velocities and sliding ratios of the conjugate surfaces are studied. The approach is illustrated by a numerical example of a plane enveloping globoidal wormgear drive.


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