The visual image in Epiphanic Short History

The visual image is a fundamental component of epiphany, stressing its immediacy and vividness, corresponding to the enargeia of the traditional ekphrasis and also playing with cultural and social meanings. Morris Beja in his seminal book Epiphany in the Modern Novel, draws our attention to the distinction made by Joyce between the epiphany originated in a common object, in a discourse or gesture and the one arising in “a memorable phase of the mind itself”. This type materializes in the “dream-epiphany” and in the epiphany based in memory. On the other hand, Robert Langbaum in his study of the epiphanic mode, suggests that the category of “visionary epiphany” could account for the modern effect of an internally glowing vision like Blake’s “The Tyger”, which projects the vitality of a real tyger. The short story, whose length renders it a fitting genre for the use of different types of epiphany, has dealt with the impact of the visual image in this technique, to convey different effects and different aesthetic aims. This paper will present some examples of this occurrence in short stories of authors in whose work epiphany is a fundamental concept and literary technique: Walter Pater, Joseph Conrad, K. Mansfield, Clarice Lispector. Pater’s “imaginary portraits” concentrate on “priviledged moments” of the lives of the characters depicting their impressions through pictorial language; Conrad tries to show “moments of awakening” that can be remembered by the eye; Mansfield suggests that epiphany, the “glimpse”, should replace plot as an internal ordering principle of her impressionist short-stories; in C. Lispector the visualization of some situations is so aggressive that it causes nausea and a radical revelation on the protagonist’s.

The brushstroke and materials of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso combined in an authentication tool

Nowadays, authentication studies for paintings require a multidisciplinary approach, based on the contribution of visual features analysis but also on characterizations of materials and techniques. Moreover, it is important that the assessment of the authorship of a painting is supported by technical studies of a selected number of original artworks that cover the entire career of an artist. This dissertation is concerned about the work of modernist painter Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. It is divided in three parts. In the first part, we propose a tool based on image processing that combines information obtained by brushstroke and materials analysis. The resulting tool provides qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the authorship of the paintings; the quantitative element is particularly relevant, as it could be crucial in solving authorship controversies, such as judicial disputes. The brushstroke analysis was performed by combining two algorithms for feature detection, namely Gabor filter and Scale Invariant Feature Transform. Thanks to this combination (and to the use of the Bag-of-Features model), the proposed method shows an accuracy higher than 90% in distinguishing between images of Amadeo’s paintings and images of artworks by other contemporary artists. For the molecular analysis, we implemented a semi-automatic system that uses hyperspectral imaging and elemental analysis. The system provides as output an image that depicts the mapping of the pigments present, together with the areas made using materials not coherent with Amadeo’s palette, if any. This visual output is a simple and effective way of assessing the results of the system. The tool proposed based on the combination of brushstroke and molecular information was tested in twelve paintings obtaining promising results. The second part of the thesis presents a systematic study of four selected paintings made by Amadeo in 1917. Although untitled, three of these paintings are commonly known as BRUT, Entrada and Coty; they are considered as his most successful and genuine works. The materials and techniques of these artworks have never been studied before. The paintings were studied with a multi-analytical approach using micro-Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence spectroscopy, micro-Infrared and Raman Spectroscopy, micro-Spectrofluorimetry and Scanning Electron Microscopy. The characterization of Amadeo’s materials and techniques used on his last paintings, as well as the investigation of some of the conservation problems that affect these paintings, is essential to enrich the knowledge on this artist. Moreover, the study of the materials in the four paintings reveals commonalities between the paintings BRUT and Entrada. This observation is supported also by the analysis of the elements present in a photograph of a collage (conserved at the Art Library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), the only remaining evidence of a supposed maquete of these paintings. The final part of the thesis describes the application of the image processing tools developed in the first part of the thesis on a set of case studies; this experience demonstrates the potential of the tool to support painting analysis and authentication studies. The brushstroke analysis was used as additional analysis on the evaluation process of four paintings attributed to Amadeo, and the system based on hyperspectral analysis was applied on the painting dated 1917. The case studies therefore serve as a bridge between the first two parts of the dissertation.

Urban sprawl analysis and modeling in Asmara, Eritreia: Application of Geospatial Tools

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

2D position system for a mobile robot in unstructured environments

Nowadays, several sensors and mechanisms are available to estimate a mobile robot trajectory and location with respect to its surroundings. Usually absolute positioning mechanisms are the most accurate, but they also are the most expensive ones, and require pre installed equipment in the environment. Therefore, a system capable of measuring its motion and location within the environment (relative positioning) has been a research goal since the beginning of autonomous vehicles. With the increasing of the computational performance, computer vision has become faster and, therefore, became possible to incorporate it in a mobile robot. In visual odometry feature based approaches, the model estimation requires absence of feature association outliers for an accurate motion. Outliers rejection is a delicate process considering there is always a trade-off between speed and reliability of the system. This dissertation proposes an indoor 2D position system using Visual Odometry. The mobile robot has a camera pointed to the ceiling, for image analysis. As requirements, the ceiling and the oor (where the robot moves) must be planes. In the literature, RANSAC is a widely used method for outlier rejection. However, it might be slow in critical circumstances. Therefore, it is proposed a new algorithm that accelerates RANSAC, maintaining its reliability. The algorithm, called FMBF, consists on comparing image texture patterns between pictures, preserving the most similar ones. There are several types of comparisons, with different computational cost and reliability. FMBF manages those comparisons in order to optimize the trade-off between speed and reliability.

Detection of purkinje images for automatic positioning of fixation target and interferometric measurements of anterior eye chamber

In cataract surgery, the eye’s natural lens is removed because it has gone opaque and doesn’t allow clear vision any longer. To maintain the eye’s optical power, a new artificial lens must be inserted. Called Intraocular Lens (IOL), it needs to be modelled in order to have the correct refractive power to substitute the natural lens. Calculating the refractive power of this substitution lens requires precise anterior eye chamber measurements. An interferometry equipment, the AC Master from Zeiss Meditec, AG, was in use for half a year to perform these measurements. A Low Coherence Interferometry (LCI) measurement beam is aligned with the eye’s optical axis, for precise measurements of anterior eye chamber distances. The eye follows a fixation target in order to make the visual axis align with the optical axis. Performance problems occurred, however, at this step. Therefore, there was a necessity to develop a new procedure that ensures better alignment between the eye’s visual and optical axes, allowing a more user friendly and versatile procedure, and eventually automatizing the whole process. With this instrument, the alignment between the eye’s optical and visual axes is detected when Purkinje reflections I and III are overlapped, as the eye follows a fixation target. In this project, image analysis is used to detect these Purkinje reflections’ positions, eventually automatically detecting when they overlap. Automatic detection of the third Purkinje reflection of an eye following a fixation target is possible with some restrictions. Each pair of detected third Purkinje reflections is used in automatically calculating an acceptable starting position for the fixation target, required for precise measurements of anterior eye chamber distances.

Mansfield and Lewis: impressionism and vorticism in the short story

The affinities of the short story with the style of painting dominating the period in which it is produced have often been debated by critics. The effects of the application of impressionist and vorticist principles in painting turns out differently in Katherine Mansfield and Wyndham Lewis’ short stories structure and strategies, according to their conceptions of Art and Life and to his career as a painter.

A SDK improvement towards gesture support

Human-Computer Interaction have been one of the main focus of the technological community, specially the Natural User Interfaces (NUI) field of research as, since the launch of the Kinect Sensor, the goal to achieve fully natural interfaces just got a lot closer to reality. Taking advantage of this conditions the following research work proposes to compute the hand skeleton in order to recognize Sign Language Shapes. The proposed solution uses the Kinect Sensor to achieve a good segmentation and image analysis algorithms to extend the skeleton from the extraction of high-level features. In order to recognize complex hand shapes the current research work proposes the redefinition of the hand contour making it immutable to translation, rotation and scaling operations, and a set of tools to achieve a good recognition. The validation of the proposed solution extended the Kinects Software Development Kit to allow the developer to access the new set of inferred points and created a template-matching based platform that uses the contour to define the hand shape, this prototype was tested in a set of predefined conditions and showed to have a good success ration and has proven to be eligible for real-time scenarios.

O Figural no Cinema Contemporâneo: Articulações e Disjunções do Visível e do Dizível

O que significa hoje um pensamento do figural? Qual a sua importância no quadro hegemónico do Arquivo Audiovisual e Multimédia Contemporâneo? Qual a relação que o cinema, enquanto assimilável ao pensamento do figural, tem com o Arquivo, tendo em conta a recente apropriação, interpretação, reconfiguração e interrogação das estruturas arquivísticas e materiais de arquivo, por parte de cineastas que usam o cinema, ele próprio, uma forma de arquivagem e material de arquivo, como ferramenta privilegiada de interpelação do Arquivo? Qual a potencial relevância do cinema, encarado nesta perspectiva, face à necessidade política de conceber um exterior do Arquivo? Estas são algumas das perguntas que estão na origem desta tese e a que ela procura responder, através da proposta de (re)corte de um arquivo de filmes e enunciados teóricos e da sua interpelação mútua. Com efeito, a imagem ou ideia de figural supõe uma reconfiguração das relações entre visível e dizível que não só nos serve de topos inspirador da metodologia da tese, num esforço de procurar inscrever a espacialização exigida pelo pensamento do figural na sua própria estrutura, como, sobretudo, nos fornece o quadro teórico de partida para pensar hoje, na senda de autores como Jean- François Lyotard, Michel Foucault e Gilles Deleuze, a relevância simultaneamente epistemológica e política da assimilação de certos gestos cinematográficos contemporâneos a uma imagem do pensamento com estes contornos. Assim, o cinema, sobretudo na sua forma ensaística, é identificado com a possibilidade de pôr em prática, um pensamento do interstício figural, que contraria a identidade dominante do ver e do falar, que rege o paradigma contemporâneo da comunicação, assente na respectiva conversão mútua - as imagens reduzem-se à sua significação ou conteúdo e as palavras convertem-se em imagens legíveis. Através das possibilidades oferecidas pela montagem cinematográfica, trata-se, então, de reenviar as imagens a uma leitura que só elas podem dar, e as palavras a um novo tipo de escuta e entendimento, o que se traduz, em termos da relação do cinema ao Arquivo contemporâneo, na sugestão de que o cinema é uma ferramenta de requalificação do saber que aquele supõe. A nossa hipótese é, pois, a de que o cinema em geral, e certos filmes em particular, ao permitirem a perscrutação arqueológica do Arquivo, introduzem delay na nossa relação aos “documentos”, sendo que é aí, nesse intervalo entre o registo e a sua retoma, que se joga a possibilidade de resistência face ao poder difuso do Arquivo, tal como se manifesta na internet, na televisão, nas redes que hoje geram a regulação, tratamento e transmissão da informação; porque possui uma dimensão audiovisual que lhe permite articular e desarticular arquivos e corpos, e dado que as relações entre dizível e visível não estão estabilizadas, o cinema torna possível a reescrita das figuras, ou seja, um pensamento que não dispõe de uma forma já feita de verdade para o encontro das frases e das experiências, mas que extrai relações essenciais e verdadeiras dos acontecimentos do nosso presente e da nossa história, precisamente a partir da exploração do intervalo instável entre discurso e figura, e da experimentação ao nível da recolagem entre enunciados e visibilidades.