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M.Sc. (Electronics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This thesis presents drawing as epistemology for morphology through the development and dissemination of drawing practices that extend understanding of, and engagement with, the diversity of natural form. The interpretation of the term ‘morphology’ is based on Goethe’s original concept (1792) of morphology as the ‘study of form and formative process’. This research is situated in the context of the emerging fields of ‘Drawing Research’, ‘Art/Science’ and the cross-disciplinary domain where contemporary art practice and education intersect (the ‘educational turn’). Led by drawing practice, the methodology encompasses a set of experimental approaches including interdisciplinary collaboration, museum collection study, workshop design, and exhibition making. This mixed method approach is conducted within the context of scientific institutions like the Natural History Museum and Imperial College, London to address two research questions. The first asks what contribution an artist can make, especially through drawing in collaboration with scientific practices and instrumentation, on representations and forms of analysis and interpretation that could lead to new understandings of morphology (animal, mineral, vegetable) for both artists and scientists? The second asks what shared morphological characteristics (form and symmetry) of animal, mineral and vegetable species can be identified and represented through the process and object of drawing and whether this research can develop an extra-scientific model of classification that is complementary to the scientific approach? This enquiry has contributed to the development of two interlinked bodies of artistic research (and two new terms and practices) ‘Isomorphology’: the observational study of the shared forms and symmetries of animal, mineral and vegetable species, and ‘Isomorphogenesis’: the systematic representation of dynamic form through drawing. These practices have been shared with artists, natural scientists, students and the general public through participatory workshops, conferences, publications and exhibitions. Early chapters provide examples of drawing as a ‘way of knowing morphology’ in the context of contemporary natural science and mathematics (empirical and conceptual), which are followed by a narrative of the development of ‘drawing as a way of knowing’ in my own artistic practice through the Isomorphology study. The later chapters then discuss the evolution of the Isomorphology concept and practice, as a shift from observation to abstraction first in the ‘Goethe method’ and later in the conceptual study of the dynamic nature of form ‘Isomorphogenesis’ (adding the 4th dimension of time). These chapters build a narrative, towards drawing as epistemology for a dynamic, processoriented morphology. This developmental series of empirical and conceptual drawing practice and theory brings my work with natural science (empirical) and mathematics (conceptual) together. The final chapter documents how this research is then shared as an experimental educational model through the Cornwall Morphology and Drawing Centre project.

One of the main objectives of computer vision systems is to produce structural descriptions of the scenes depicted in images. Knowledge of the class of objects being imaged can facilitate this objective by providing models to guide interpretation, and by furnishing a basis for the structural descriptions. This document describes research into techniques for the representation and use of knowledge of object classes, carried out within the context of a computational vision system which interprets line drawings of human-like body forms. A declarative schemata format has been devised which represents structures of image features which constitute depictions of body parts. The system encodes relations between these image constructions and an underlying three dimensional model of the human body. Using the component hierarchy as a structural basis, two layers of representation are developed. One references the fine resolution features, and the other references the coarse resolution. These layers are connected with links representative of the specialization/generalization hierarchy. The problem domain description is declarative, and makes no commitment to the nature of the subsequent interpretation processes. As a means of testing the adequacy of the representation, portions have been converted into a PROLOG formulation and used to "prove" body parts in a data base of assertions about, image properties. The interpretation phase relies on a cue/model approach, using an extensive cue table which is automatically generated from the problem domain description. The primary mechanisms for control of interpretation possibilities are fashioned after network consistency methods. The operation of these mechanisms is localized and separated between operations at the feature level and at the model level. The body drawing interpretation system is consistent with aspects of human visual perception. The system is capable of intelligent selection of processing locations on the basis of the progress of interpretation. A dual resolution retina is moved about the image collecting fine level features in a small foveal area and coarse level features in a wider peripheral area. Separate interpretations are developed locally on the basis of the two different resolution levels, and the relation between these two interpretations is analyzed by the system to determine locations of potentially useful information. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

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The work presented in this thesis explores the possibility to integrate 2D drawings with 2.5D animated characters in 2.5D computer graphics. The purpose was to show the effects of the illustrated artistic style and produce an effective emotional and story in motion without realistic animation look. Inspiration for the story comes from a true story based on Iranian history and an epic story that occurred just thousands of years ago. I focused my work on the context of Iran's history. / Master of Fine Arts / This Thesis is divided into three parts. The first part describes a novel mathematical framework for decomposing a real world network into layers. A network is comprised of interconnected nodes and can model anything from transportation of goods to the way the internet is organized. Two key numbers describe the local and global features of a network: the number of neighbors, and the number of neighbors in a certain layer, a node has. Our work shows that there are other numbers in-between the two, that better characterize a node. We also give explicit means of computing them. Finally, we show that these numbers are connected to the way information spreads on the network, uncovering a relation between the network’s structure and dynamics on said network. The last two parts of the thesis have a common theme and study the same mathematical object. In the first part of the two, we provide a new model for the way riboswtiches organize themselves. Riboswitches, are RNA molecules within a cell, that can take two mutually opposite conformations, depending on what function they need to perform within said cell. They are important from an evolutionary standpoint and are actively studied within that context, usually being modeled as networks. Our model captures the shapes of the two possible conformations, and encodes it within a mathematical object called a topological space. Once this is done, we prove that certain numbers that are attached to all topological spaces carry specific values for riboswitches. Namely, we show that the shapes of the two possible conformations for a riboswich are always characterized by a single integer. In the last part of the Thesis we identify what exactly in the structure of riboswitches contributes to this number being large or small. We prove that the more tangled the two conformations are, the larger the number. We can thus conclude that this number is directly proportional to how complex the riboswitch is.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1956 T65

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01