Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University Dept. of Art.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University Dept. of Art. / Electronic thesis. Also available in print ed.

Energy consumption of large commercial buildings has become higher than before, and a major part of the energy is on their lighting systems. This thesis aims at reducing the energy consumption of a building's lighting system. Our solution is to minimize the total number of necessary light fixtures in a commercial building, and thus we formulate the Constrained Light Deployment Problem (CLDP). The CLDP problem is tightly related to the Art Gallery Problem (AGP), a classical problem in computational geometry that finds the minimum number of guards to monitor a polygon area. Unlike the traditional AGP, however, our problem poses a new challenge that the illuminance of any spot in the building must be higher than a required threshold. To address the new challenge, we first propose an algorithm based on polygon partition and iteratively remove redundant light fixtures to obtain a tighter upper bound on the necessary number of light fixtures. We further improve the algorithm with clustering and binary search to reduce the number of light fixtures. Our algorithm can return the locations of resulted light fixtures, which are not necessarily the vertices of the orthogonal polygon. Simulation results demonstrate that our algorithm is fast and effective. / Graduate

This thesis explores the possibility that a well designed and situated urban art gallery might improve a problematic urban condition in Vancouver. The aim is to vitalize a neglected urban space, and connect the waterfront seawall with the downtown core, while exposing the gallery to the public. By playing on the potential of a formally rich urban context— characterized by viaducts, SkyTrain rails, tunnels, underpasses and abrupt elevation changes — the project aims to celebrate the site’s unusual formal qualities while reclaiming it for human, rather than vehicular, activity.

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Magister Artium - MA / My research considers the vessels of select women ceramists in and from rural KwaZulu-Natal and reflects on the changing contexts in which their work is utilized, consumed and displayed. The emphasis of my research is on the significance of ceramics in cultural practices and how this has changed or been maintained due to altered social and political circumstances and the changing dynamics of research. Additionally, when ceramic vessels are purchased by tourists, collectors and patrons they are subjected to a range of dialogues between maker and buyer. Finally, vessels may be selected to be displayed in exhibitions or held in collections of museums and galleries; once again, then they will be spoken about and they will speak to us on different terms. Each one of these movements in the life of a pot is reflected in the artist’s consideration of form, pattern, balance, shape, colour and symmetry of the vessels. Similarly, each one of these steps in the process engages with a different type of audience in a dynamic and significant way. I investigate how the authors of these vessels become involved in and negotiate a dialogue between themselves, their work and an exterior context that always projects its own voice about the artists and their work.

This dissertation is an account of an internship in painting conservation undertaken at the Auckland City Art Gallery during the period January to August 1983. It has been divided into three parts with six associated appendices. Part one discusses the functions and facilities of the Conservation Department. The functions being classed into two main categories, that concerned with the Auckland City Art Gallery and that concerned with National Conservation. The facilities of the Department are not only the equipment and materials of the Conservation studios but the equipment and design around the Gallery that facilitate the task of the conservators whether it be through treatment or by preventative means. Part two covers the programme of work carried out. As indicated in Part one, the conservation department has many other functions apart from the treatment of works of art, and as a member of the department during my internship, I was involved in a number of these which are discussed in this section. This includes packing, meetings and visits to other institutions. Part three deals with the conservation treatments carried out. Section one summarizes the methods and materials used, section two lists the works treated in the order that they were begun, and section three covers the condition and treatment reports for each work. Finally, six appendices have been included which augment information in the text such as a description of the present renovations to the Auckland City Art Gallery and a brief history of conservation in New Zealand.

To make computations on large data sets more efficient, algorithms will frequently divide information into smaller, more manageable, pieces. This idea, for example, forms the basis of the common algorithmic approach known as Divide and Conquer. If we wish to use this principle in planar geometric computations, however, we may require specialized techniques for decomposing our data. This is due to the fact that the data sets are typically points, lines, regions, or polygons. This motivates algorithms that can break-up polygons into simpler pieces. Algorithms that perform such computations are said to compute polygon decompositions. There are many ways that we can decompose a polygon, and there are also many types of polygons that we could decompose. Both applications and theoretical interest demand algorithms for a wide variety of decomposition problems. In this thesis we study two different polygon decomposition problems. The first problem that we study is a polygon decomposition problem that is equivalent to the Rectilinear Art Gallery problem. In this problem we seek a decomposition of a polygon into so-called r-stars. These r-stars model visibility in an orthogonal setting. We show that we can compute a certain type of decomposition, known as a Steinercover, of a simple orthogonal polygon into r-stars in polynomial time. In the second problem, we explore the complexity of decomposing polygons into components that have an upper bound on their size. In this problem, the size of a polygon refers to the size of its bounding-box. This problem is motivated by a polygon collision detection heuristic that approximates a polygon by its bounding-box to determine whether an exact collision detection computation should take place. We show that it is NP-complete to decide whether a polygon that contains holes can be decomposed into a specified number of size-constrained components.

To make computations on large data sets more efficient, algorithms will frequently divide information into smaller, more manageable, pieces. This idea, for example, forms the basis of the common algorithmic approach known as Divide and Conquer. If we wish to use this principle in planar geometric computations, however, we may require specialized techniques for decomposing our data. This is due to the fact that the data sets are typically points, lines, regions, or polygons. This motivates algorithms that can break-up polygons into simpler pieces. Algorithms that perform such computations are said to compute polygon decompositions. There are many ways that we can decompose a polygon, and there are also many types of polygons that we could decompose. Both applications and theoretical interest demand algorithms for a wide variety of decomposition problems. In this thesis we study two different polygon decomposition problems. The first problem that we study is a polygon decomposition problem that is equivalent to the Rectilinear Art Gallery problem. In this problem we seek a decomposition of a polygon into so-called r-stars. These r-stars model visibility in an orthogonal setting. We show that we can compute a certain type of decomposition, known as a Steinercover, of a simple orthogonal polygon into r-stars in polynomial time. In the second problem, we explore the complexity of decomposing polygons into components that have an upper bound on their size. In this problem, the size of a polygon refers to the size of its bounding-box. This problem is motivated by a polygon collision detection heuristic that approximates a polygon by its bounding-box to determine whether an exact collision detection computation should take place. We show that it is NP-complete to decide whether a polygon that contains holes can be decomposed into a specified number of size-constrained components.

Not until the 60¡¦s did art galleries start to exist in Taiwan. However, they were mostly sporadic, short-lived and weak in operation. It is only in the 80¡¦s when the art gallery industry in Taiwan started to take shape. Different from galleries back in the 60¡¦s and before the lift of Martial Law, galleries mushroomed in the late 80¡¦s and the 90¡¦s. In addition to the growing number of galleries, all the other factors, such as the return of a generation of young artists from Europe and the U.S. back to Taiwan, rising importance of museum establishment, fast expansion of media after the lift of Martial Law and newspaper restrictions as well as rapid changes in the economic and social environments, also helped bring about the unprecedented prosperity of the arts development in Kaohsiung. This prosperity was extremely valuable for Kaohsiung which had been wrongly ridiculed as a ¡§Cultural Desert¡¨ back then. This research focuses on the development and transition of the art galleries in the 90¡¦s with a view to keeping a record of the golden period of the art market in Kaohsiung. There are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter 1 is the introduction to the motivation, goal, scope, limitations, research methods and process of this study. Chapter 2 discusses the interactions and relationships among artists, collectors, art media and museums. Chapter 3 attempts to provide a historical review of art galleries in Kaohsiung and discuss their operations by dividing the history of art galleries in Kaohsiung into five stages: the ¡§Foundation Period¡¨ before the 70¡¦s, the ¡§Taking-off Period¡¨ from the 80¡¦s to the lift of Martial Law, the ¡§Prime Period¡¨ after the lift of Marital Law and before the inauguration of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (KMFA), the ¡§Waning Period¡¨ after the inauguration of the KMFA to the outbreak of SARS, and the ¡§Stagnation Period¡¨ after the SARS outbreak up to now. Chapter 4 focuses on the ¡§Prime Period¡¨ of Kaohsiung¡¦s art gallery industry in the 90¡¦s and its impacts on the art market in Kaohsiung. Chapter 5 is the conclusion. The research methods adopted in this study are literature review, in-depth interview and observation. Through data collection, comparison, review and cross-analysis, this study helps reconstruct the history of Kaohsiung¡¦s art galleries and provides an observation of the changes and impacts of the industry in the 90¡¦s as well as its current development so as to help predict the future of art galleries in Kaohsiung. Even though Taiwan is not a large island, the two largest cities in its north and south are actually quite different in their population compositions and city characteristics. The purpose of this study is to break the stereotypical belief in the visual arts industry that ¡§Taipei is the only representative city of Taiwan.¡¨ and to explore from a local viewpoint the history and operations of the art galleries in Kaohsiung and their impacts on the art market in southern Taiwan. Hopefully, this study can provide references for working and future art gallery managers in their operations as well as for related governmental departments in helping healthy development of local art galleries.