Automatic layouts for diagram drawing is described in this paper. Major methods, algorithms, metrics for automatic layouts are introduced in theretical part. Practical part of this work was developing algorithms for automatic layouts of organizational structures and business process model diagrams.

Residual Residence is an account of my process and how it is shaped and informed by the language of architecture and abstraction. It pinpoints shifts from a predominately drawing-based practice to one sensitive to the possibilities of drawing within physical space. Formal gestures of erasing, overlapping, layering and stacking are employed to play with relationships of space. For my thesis work, Residual Residence, I use the visual language of architecture and the literal physicality of building materials to create collaged drawings and site-specific installations.

This report chronicles the processes and influences relevant to my work as it has developed over the past three years. I examine how our human separateness and new technologies have effected myself and the work I create, ultimately exploring how technology has aggravated this separation rather than mitigate it. I explain my appropriation of digital, repetitious, and machine-like processes in order to recreate this separation, primarily in the form of drawings, sculptures, and photographs. / text

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In the last half-century, a number of artists have chosen to abandon notions of good taste, skill, and aesthetics in the field of drawing in order to investigate and critique our social and cultural landscape. Two very different approaches have been taken to accomplish this – the use of humor, borrowing from the format of comics; and confessional art, in which the artist ostensibly lays themselves bare in order to act as a mirror for the viewer. In my senior thesis project, I explored these two forms of drawing in relation to my own life and identified institutional (within the Claremont Colleges) and larger cultural threads within my work.

How does the act of drawing enable the costume designer to design costumes that work effectively with the physicality of the performing body? This research is located in the field of scenography and refers specifically to costume design practices within this field. The research project developed from a growing visibility of performances developed and created primarily from the physicality of the body rather than from a text. In these performance environments, where there is no initial text to work from and sound, lighting and set have yet to be developed the costume designer must predominantly respond to the physicality of the performing body. However, if the costume designer is to ensure that their designs and costumes work effectively with the ideas developed by the performer they must also address the relationship between their interpretation of the performing body and the intentions of the performer. My research responds to limited resources that examine and document how a costume designer can address this relationship and create designs that work with the physicality of the performing body rather than designs that work with a text. As a result of the limited resources in this area of costume design I refer to an additional field for reference. Using training practices based in figure skating to structure my drawing process my research provides new insight into how a costume designer can create costume designs that work with and enhance the physicality of the performing body. By using this repetitive drawing process to both interpret the performing body and initiate a dialogue with the performer my research enhances collaborative practices in costume design and within the field of scenography. In the absence of relevant literature in figure skating, the drawing and redrawing approach I use is primarily examined and supported using a combination of performance and training approaches developed by Jacques Lecoq. These approaches address and explore how performance is created through an awareness of the physicality of the body in relation to the physicality of mark making, and through a repetitive training structure similar to that used in figure skating. Drawing is used as the primary research method, applied within a methodology based on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological philosophy. This methodological approach both facilitates the costume designer's encounter with the physicality of the performing body and enables an examination of this encounter in order to understand how the designer interprets and makes sense of this body. These encounters are structured through and conducted within three ethnographic case studies based in theatre performance, costume design and figure skating. The research case studies are contextualised using interviews, diaries and background research and are analysed using a structure that draws on Corbin and Strauss's Grounded Theory. The research concludes by outlining three main stages through which the process of drawing and re-drawing is applied and used to create costume designs that work effectively with the physicality of the performing body. In describing and explaining these three stages I outline how the repetitive drawing process integrates within a performance process and as a result becomes a vehicle for collaboration between the costume designer and the performer.

Cavalier Perspective has previously been described as merely a pictorial technique of spatial representation within the history of Chinese painting. It is a common belief that this unique visual system is capable of providing an experience of three-dimensional spatial perception in both representational art and actual space, in a manner similar to technique of foreshortening and perspective in post-renaissance western art. However, as Chinese ancient artists have a different understanding of geometry and philosophy, it is difficult to either define the origin and nature of the technique itself or to identify which particular visual phenomena it is intended to communicate, when artists transform three-dimensional space into two-dimensional surface information. The thesis begins by presenting an iconological analysis of the Chinese visual representation of space, in order to develop this visual study into a psychological analysis of the perception of three-dimensional form. To redefine Cavalier Perspective, it is necessary to firstly conduct a historical survey based on available visual evidence of both architecture and landscape representation. In both cases, the represented objects are transformed into flattened forms; and a psychological consequence thus appears involving the loss of a sense of depth in vision, which consequently contributes to the psychology of visual perception. To reassemble, and thus reactivate a similar perception in the representation of space, Chinese ancient artists are also believed to have created specific visual schemes to help reconstitute the perception of depth; thus rendering pictorial space perceptible. Cavalier Perspective is seen as just such a perceptual system. Consequently, the theoretical part of the thesis conducts an iconological study by elaborating a hierarchy of form, technique, and scheme in the history of Chinese spatial representation. After that, a theoretical association is formulated between iconology and visual perception, in which visual techniques are identified as potential cues to indicate depth. The translation between visual technique and depth cue appears so compulsive for both modem scholars and ancient artists that, to a certain extent, the progress of the visual arts could be described as the discovery of techniques for presenting depth through purposive patterns of form. Symbolic images are therefore seen to have their concrete formal basis established upon both pictorial idea and, more importantly, the psychology of visual perception. The thesis aspires to challenge CP by means of this formal analysis. Whether it belongs to a simple technique or a sophisticated visual scheme of ancient Chinese artists; the representational space of geometry; the making of visual perception by means of technical implements; and the bodily experience in actual space, are all shown to be indispensible parts of the present research. A concluding case study of the Chinese landscape garden gives a further demonstration that the pictorial ideas and visual techniques that once contributed to the iconological and psychological understanding of Chinese painting have also delivered an idealised form of spatial perception within the garden - where the sense of depth is firstly eliminated, and then artistically reconstituted. In this way, the nature of cavalier perspective will therefore have been explored on two levels - in the form of both spatial representation and bodily perception in actual space.

Science and technology impact most aspects of modern daily life. It is therefore important to create a scientifically literate society. Since the majority of Americans do not take college-level science courses, strong K-12 science education is essential. At the K-5 level, however, many teachers lack the time, resources and background for effective science teaching. Elementary teachers and students may benefit from scientist-led outreach programs created by Cooperative Extension or other institutions. One example is the University of Arizona Insect Discovery Program, which provides short-duration programing that uses insects to support science content learning, teach critical thinking and spark interest in science. We conducted evaluations of the Insect Discovery programming to determine whether the activities offered were accomplishing program goals. Pre-post tests, post program questionnaires for teachers, and novel assessments of children’s drawings were used as assessment tools. Assessments were complicated by the short duration of the program interactions with the children as well as their limited literacy. In spite of these difficulties, results of the pre-post tests indicated a significant impact on content knowledge and critical thinking skills. Based on post-program teacher questionnaires, positive impacts on interest in science learning were noted as much as a month after the children participated in the program. New programming and resources developed to widen the potential for impact are also described.

The present study investigated the relationship between self concept and children's figure drawings. The principle variable under consideration in each child's drawing were (a) size of the drawing and (b) number of colors used. The Tennessee Self Concept Scale (Fitts, 1965) was administered to 80 students selected from the seventh grade at Logan Junior High School, Logan, Utah. The subjects were then instructed to draw a picture of themselves. No further instructions were given regarding specific details of the requested picture. Ten colored pencils along with a regular pencil were made available to each student. No instructions were given as to the type or number of pencils to be used in their figure drawing. After the subjects completed their respective drawings, the experimenter rated each picture in terms of (a) number of colors used for the drawing, and (b) the height or vertical size of the drawing measured in millimeters from top to bottom of the drawing. It was hypothesized that students who obtain high scores on a measure of self concept (positive self concept) will use a greater number of colors in drawing a picture of themselves than will students who score low (negative self concept) on the same self concept measure. Students with high score on the measure of self concept will also draw a picture of themselves which is larger in size (height) than will students with low scores on the self concept measure. In addition to the two major hypotheses, it was also hypothesized that: (1) the high self concept group will have more smiles on the faces of their drawings than the low self concept group; (2) the high self concept group will draw more full figures than the low self concept group; (3) the high self concept group will use more total space on the paper than the low self concept group; and (4) the high self concept group will draw their figures more in the top two-thirds of the page and the low concept group will draw their figures more in the bottom two-thirds of the page. All of the subjects were ranked from high to low scores obtained on the Tennessee Self Concept Scale and were then divided into a high self concept group (top 20 scores) and a low self concept group (bottom 20 scores). Scores for the total sample of 80 students ranged from 193 to 394. Thus, the high self concept group was comprised of students with scores from 314 to 394. The low self concept group scores ranged from 193 to 246. The figure drawings of high and low scores on the Self Concept Scale were then compared to determine any apparent relationship between measured self concept and (a) number of colors used in the drawing and (b) overall size of the drawing. Analysis of the figure drawings indicated no significant differences, either in number of colors used, or in size of figure between high and low scorers on the Self Concept Scale. the mean number of colors used by high scorers was 3.5 millimeters. Thus, the basic hypotheses of the study were not substantiated by the results obtained. However, subjective inspection of the pictures in terms of the four sub-hypotheses did produce two significant findings in terms of projective-type ratings of the pictures and statistical analysis by the chi square method. In brief, these particular differences were that students who scored high in self concept drew more pictures with smiling faces and utilized the top two-thirds of the drawing paper, while students with low self concept drew pictures with sadder-looking faces and more toward the bottom of two-thirds of the paper. The data also showed a significantly higher number of boys than girls in the high self concept group.