Visual front-end wars : Viola-Jones face detector vs Fourier Lucas-Kanade

The performance of visual speech recognition (VSR) systems are significantly influenced by the accuracy of the visual front-end. The current state-of-the-art VSR systems use off-the-shelf face detectors such as Viola- Jones (VJ) which has limited reliability for changes in illumination and head poses. For a VSR system to perform well under these conditions, an accurate visual front end is required. This is an important problem to be solved in many practical implementations of audio visual speech recognition systems, for example in automotive environments for an efficient human-vehicle computer interface. In this paper, we re-examine the current state-of-the-art VSR by comparing off-the-shelf face detectors with the recently developed Fourier Lucas-Kanade (FLK) image alignment technique. A variety of image alignment and visual speech recognition experiments are performed on a clean dataset as well as with a challenging automotive audio-visual speech dataset. Our results indicate that the FLK image alignment technique can significantly outperform off-the shelf face detectors, but requires frequent fine-tuning.

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; Berlin.

Digital Image

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; Berlin.

Digital Image

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; New York.

Digital Image

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute.

Digital Image

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; New York.

Handwritten dedication signed by Lichtenstein

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; Berlin.

Digital Image

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; Berlin.

Digital Image

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; New York.

Digital Image

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute.

Digital Image

Portrait of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; New York.

Handwritten dedication signed by Lichtenstein

Studio portraits of Alfred Lichtenstein with his flute; New York.

Digital Image

STUDENT'S-t MIXTURE MODEL BASED MULTI-INSTRUMENT RECOGNITION IN POLYPHONIC MUSIC

We address the problem of multi-instrument recognition in polyphonic music signals. Individual instruments are modeled within a stochastic framework using Student's-t Mixture Models (tMMs). We impose a mixture of these instrument models on the polyphonic signal model. No a priori knowledge is assumed about the number of instruments in the polyphony. The mixture weights are estimated in a latent variable framework from the polyphonic data using an Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, derived for the proposed approach. The weights are shown to indicate instrument activity. The output of the algorithm is an Instrument Activity Graph (IAG), using which, it is possible to find out the instruments that are active at a given time. An average F-ratio of 0 : 7 5 is obtained for polyphonies containing 2-5 instruments, on a experimental test set of 8 instruments: clarinet, flute, guitar, harp, mandolin, piano, trombone and violin.

Cuarteto litúrgico “Eucarístico” : para 2 violines, viola y violoncello [música]

Partitura incorporada como material complementario de la revista.

O périplo da formação de Berardo Viola e de Franz Biberkopf: um estudo do Bildungsroman em Fontamara, de Ignazio Silone, e em Berlin Alexanderplatz, de Alfred Döblin

Esta pesquisa analisa Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), de Alfred Döblin, e Fontamara (1933), de Ignazio Silone, baseada nas novas concepções sobre o Bildungsroman, ou romance de formação, estabelecidas pelos olhares atualizadores de teóricos do século XX. O Bildungsroman, modalidade narrativa surgida no século XVIII, cuja obra paradigma é Os anos de aprendizado de Wilhelm Meister, de Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, ressalta o desenvolvimento humano, seu processo de amadurecimento e conscientização ao longo de sua trajetória existencial. Os corpora desta dissertação são romances escritos no período conflituoso do entreguerras, cujo enredo destaca a luta interior e exterior das personagens em sobreviver àquele período e a consequente tomada de consciência adquirida neste percurso. O périplo metafórico vivenciado pelos protagonistas, de Fontamara, Berardo Viola, e de Berlin Alexanderplatz, Franz Biberkopf, tem como consequência uma nova consciência política, para o primeiro protagonista, e uma nova consciência social, para o segundo. O caminho formativo dos protagonistas constitui-se de maneira diversa. O objetivo deste estudo é, portanto, analisar como se realiza o processo de formação de Berardo Viola e Franz Biberkopf, apontando identidades e diferenças entre os dois processos, e, por fim, apontando como tais romances podem atualizar o conceito de Bildungsroman na história literária