The lower bound of nonlocal gradient for non-convex and non-smooth image patches based regularization

In the inverse problem of image processing, we have witnessed that the non-convex and non-smooth regularizers can produce clearer image edges than convex ones such as total variation (TV). This fact can be explained by the uniform lower bound theory of the local gradient in non-convex and non-smooth regularization. In recent years, although it has been numerically shown that the nonlocal regularizers of various image patches based nonlocal methods can recover image textures well, we still desire a theoretical interpretation. To this end, we propose a non-convex non-smooth and block nonlocal (NNBN) regularization model based on image patches. By integrating the advantages of the non-convex and non-smooth potential function in the regularization term, the uniform lower bound theory of the image patches based nonlocal gradient is given. This approach partially explains why the proposed method can produce clearer image textures and edges. Compared to some classical regularization methods, such as total variation (TV), non-convex and non-smooth (NN) regularization, nonlocal total variation (NLTV) and block nonlocal total variation(BNLTV), our experimental results show that the proposed method improves restoration quality.

A Comparison Review of Kevin Lynch’s Urban Theory with the Chinese Cosmography of Feng Shui in the Heritage Area, Case Study: Pasar Baru, Jakarta

Jakarta is facing the reality of becoming one of the megacities in the world. As a megacity, Jakarta will continue to face critical problems, including environmental issues that occur not only in Jakarta but also in the surrounding areas. The research area is Pasar Baru, the oldest shopping area in Central Jakarta established in 1820. Naturally, this area should have a high historical value for the development of the City of Jakarta. This study explored the “shopping arcade” corridor from Kevin Lynch’s urban theory of “The Image of The City” to strengthen the implementation of re-planning the Pasar Baru in the future. This study aims to find how the view of The Image of The City can support the idea of re-planning the Pasar Baru from a tangible point of view, physically visible, and an intangible point of view through the spiritual approach of Feng Shui cosmography. The research uses qualitative methods supported by collecting data in literature reviews, surveys and analyzing them. The study found that the concept given by Kevin Lynch can help decision-makers of a city to be more responsible in making policies in designing a sustainable city to carry out conservation actions, not only political goals.

Images On The Street : Fashion, Personal Style, And The Sartorialist

Drawing on urban modernity and subcultures, the street photography of the online site, The Sartorialist, is interpreted within a history of everyday style on the streets (or "streetstyle") since the mid-twentieth century. The paper argues that, as a digital archive of streetstyle, The Sartorialist creates a convincing portrait of the mythic notion of self-invention through fashion by tying style to a variety of elements of the real. Through a distant reading of the archive and semiotic analysis of the images, the underlying structures of meaning-making on the site are revealed. Through a condensation of Nancy's theory of the image and Benjamin's conception of the wish in the dream, I argue that The Sartorialist both validates and highlights the ultimate limitations of the urban project of fashion and encourages a particular way of looking at the world.

Images On The Street : Fashion, Personal Style, And The Sartorialist

Drawing on urban modernity and subcultures, the street photography of the online site, The Sartorialist, is interpreted within a history of everyday style on the streets (or "streetstyle") since the mid-twentieth century. The paper argues that, as a digital archive of streetstyle, The Sartorialist creates a convincing portrait of the mythic notion of self-invention through fashion by tying style to a variety of elements of the real. Through a distant reading of the archive and semiotic analysis of the images, the underlying structures of meaning-making on the site are revealed. Through a condensation of Nancy's theory of the image and Benjamin's conception of the wish in the dream, I argue that The Sartorialist both validates and highlights the ultimate limitations of the urban project of fashion and encourages a particular way of looking at the world.

Norm-Critical Comics and the Comics Pedagogy of Lynda Barry

This article contextualizes the use of comics for norm-critique by considering the field of comics pedagogy, and in particular the pedagogical comics of Lynda Barry. Barry’s comics pedagogy, described in her works What It Is (2008) and Syllabus (2014), is inspired by the spontaneous drawing exercises of Ivan Burnetti, and rooted in her theory of the image as an embodied, living experience. I moreover discuss the parallel developments of norm-critical pedagogy and feminist comics in Sweden in order to explore comics as a medium for questioning the norms of gender and identity in visual media. The article shows how many contemporary Swedish graphic novels lend themselves to a norm-critical approach that challenges conventional representations of gender and identity through an aesthetics of play and surprise, in part by way of the influence of Barry’s pedagogical works in Swedish comics publications and comics curricula. Rather than mainstreaming or institutionalizing norm-critique, contemporary feminist comics actively involve the reader in a dialogic process of challenging and reimagining dominant norms of representation.

Od schematyzmu transcendentalnego do montażu. Pojetyczny i krytyczny model wyobraźni

The book closes a significant gap in Polish philosophical thought on imagination. It expands the current reflections on it (in such areas as hermeneutics, phenomenology, the theory of the image), strengthening contemporary solutions in Kant’s philosophy and showing its uses and conceptual transformations.

Media aesthetic environment of image formation

This paper is devoted to the “nature of image” in the new media environment. The author re-conceptualizes the image as a basis of textual, visual and audial culture. Two factors of this revision are explained: (1) the facilitation of the complex creation and consumption of communicative unities, or artifacts (complexes of video, audio, texts and other forms), (2) the ability to capture a massive interest for new forms of imagery in social networks and the internet (a research evidence of this interest). The theory of the image, presented in the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, is applied to the actual facts of communicative exchange allowing to identify some new directions for the development of media aesthetic phenomena. The main empirical material of the article is the growing mass interest in video and audio clips, such as #oddlysatisfying and ASMR. The author uses this material to confirm Nancy’s idea on the concentration of image formation in an “invisible” zone (beyond the representation of the object itself: the image is interlined, it is between sounds, it is behind pictures).

Theory of the Image, Thomas Nail (2019)

Review of: Theory of the Image, Thomas Nail (2019) New York: Oxford University, 432 pp., ISBN 978-0-19005-008-5, p/bk, £19.99

Theory of the Image

We live in the age of the mobile image. Our world is now saturated with moving images of all kinds, both analog and digital. This sea change in image production and circulation is nothing less than the Copernican revolution of our time. The centrality of the movement and mobility of the image has never been more dramatic. And just like the Copernican revolution, the aesthetic revolution of the image has consequences not only for the way we think about the contemporary image but also the way we think about all previous images. Theory of the Image offers a new and systematic philosophy of art and aesthetics from the perspective of movement—the first of its kind. Throughout history, the image has been understood in many ways, but rarely has it been understood to be, primarily and above all, in motion. Thus, Theory of the Image offers not only the first aesthetics of motion but also the first history of the mobility of the image in the Western art tradition, from prehistory to the present.

Conclusion

This chapter concludes the book, summarizing its three main contributions: the kinetic theory of the image, the kinetic history of the image, and a theory of the contemporary kinetic image. The chapter also recapitulates the limits of the project and offers suggestions for future applications of the kinesthetic project more broadly. The advent of the digital image, defined by a continuous flow of electricity, forces us to see that the image is not and never has been a representation of a static model. Images have always had a material agency. Movement, and not representation, has always been central to the image, making possible a new materialist aesthetics.