Univ., Diss.--Münster, 2002. / Literaturverz. S. 255 - 278.

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Techn. Universiẗat, Diss., 2006--Darmstadt.

As with other women`s garments, the kanga has always been closely linked with the perceptions and attitudes that the society has about women themselves. These perceptions and attitudes continue to shape and determine the place of women in their socio-cultural context. Just as women`s clothes are often taken to define, if partially, the beings that occupy them, similarly, in characteristically wearing certain garments and not others, women then assign to those garments what is perceived to be their `feminineness`. In Tanzania, the kanga indexes this `femininity` in a strong way, in spite of the fact that men also wear it.

This article deals with the communicative uses of the printed wrap cloth kanga. Specifically I will show how the kanga is constituted as a communicative sign and is at the core of ambiguation processes that are pervasive to this communicative genre. Because of its high degree of ambiguity the question arises whether we can, for communication by way of kanga, still speak of communication in any sense. In my opinion, we can only do so if it is possible to analyze the communication process within existing models of communication. Starting from the hypothesis that the kanga indeed has communicative potential communication is understood as social interaction, whereby the focus is not solely on meanings in a pragmatic or semantic sense, but rather on social meaning, i.e. the negotiation of relationships between the interactants in an area of tension between individual, social and cultural interests (within which meaning in a linguistic sense does play a role, too) (Anderson & Meyer 1988, Burgoon et aL 1996). This will be shown in the fust part of the analysis. In the second part of this article I will describe and explain the role of the medium kanga within this process of ambiguation. This article is based on material collected during two field periods in 1994/ 1995 and 1996 in Mombasa and, from 1995 onwards, in various archives in the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Women in East Africa appear to be in a unique position worldwide: their everyday dresses are not only significant in their habitual textile codes, but also as textures exhibiting meaningful verbal elements in complex density and seemingly endless variety These textual elements are proverbs or proverbial phrases written in Swahili, which seem to interact with the colour and design of the cloth (termed kanga), being either abstract or figurative in ornament, which the female wearer may choose according to cunent personal and interpersonal dispositions The paremiologist will find a traesury of signs, texts and contexts, which extend the conventional notions of literature and the verbal arts It appears rather curious to the reviewer that the Swahili proverb cloths have only recently come into scholarly focus, perhaps because of the meanwhile more advanced studies in gender relations and popular culture (though, for instance, truck slogans as another medium of proverb-like sentences were already recorded some 30 years ago)

As with other women`s garments, the kanga has always been closely linked with the perceptions and attitudes that the society has about women themselves. These perceptions and attitudes continue to shape and determine the place of women in their socio-cultural context. Just as women`s clothes are often taken to define, if partially, the beings that occupy them, similarly, in characteristically wearing certain garments and not others, women then assign to those garments what is perceived to be their `feminineness`. In Tanzania, the kanga indexes this `femininity` in a strong way, in spite of the fact that men also wear it. Even more so, the messages that appear on the kanga are viewed as a uniquely female form of communication, and women in Zanzibar, the area covered by this study, have been making increasing use of them as an additional strategy which allows them to make strong statements about their concems, while at the same time avoiding any direct conflict which may arise fiom their individual actions.

Fotorealistisches Rendering ist eines der Hauptziele der Computer Grafik. Mittels physikalischer Simulation ist eine fotorealistische Darstellung immer noch rechenaufwändig. Diese Arbeit stellt neue Methoden für Bild-basiertes Rendering komplexer Objekte am Beispiel von Kleidung vor. Die vorgestellten Methoden nutzen Kamerabilder und deren fotorealistische Eigenschaften für komplexe Animationen und Texturmodifikationen. Basierend auf der Annahme, dass für eng anliegende Kleidung Faltenwurf hauptsächlich von der Pose des Trägers beeinflusst wird, schlägt diese Dissertation ein neues Bild-basiertes Verfahren vor, das neue Bilder von Kleidungsstücken abhängig von der Körperpose einer Person aus einer Datenbank von Bildern synthetisiert. Posen-abhängige Eigenschaften (Textur und Schattierung) werden über Abbildungsvorschriften zwischen den Bildern extrahiert und im Posenraum interpoliert. Um die Erscheinung eines Objekts zu verändern, wird ein Verfahren vorgestellt, das den Austausch von Texturen ohne Kenntnis der zugrundeliegenden Szeneneigenschaften ermöglicht. Texturdeformation und Schattierung werden über Bildregistrierung zu einem geeigneten Referenzbild extrahiert. Im Gegensatz zu klassischen Bild-basierten Verfahren, in denen die Synthese auf Blickpunktänderung beschränkt und eine Veränderung des Objekts nicht möglich ist, erlauben die vorgestellten Verfahren komplexe Animationen und Texturmodifikation. Beide Verfahren basieren auf örtlichen und photometrischen Abbildungen zwischen Bildern. Diese Abbildungen werden basierend auf einem angepassten Brightness Constancy Constraint mit Gitternetz-basierten Modellen optimiert. Die vorgestellten Verfahren verlagern einen großen Teil des Rechenaufwands von der Darstellungsphase in die vorangegangene Trainingsphase und erlauben eine realistische Visualisierung von Kleidung inklusive charakteristischer Details, ohne die zugrundeliegenden Szeneneigenschaften aufwändig zu simulieren. / One principal intention of computer graphics is the achievement of photorealism. With physically-based methods, achieving photorealism is still computationally demanding. This dissertation proposes new approaches for image-based visualization of complex objects, concentrating on clothes. The developed methods use real images as appearance examples to guide complex animation or texture modification processes, combining the photorealism of images with the ability to animate or modify an object. Under the assumption that wrinkling depends on the pose of a human body (for tight-fitting clothes), a new image-based rendering approach is proposed, which synthesizes images of clothing from a database of images based on pose information. Pose-dependent appearance and shading information is extracted by image warps and interpolated in pose-space using scattered data interpolation. To allow for appearance changes in image-based methods, a retexturing approach is proposed, which enables texture exchange without a-priori knowledge of the underlying scene properties. Texture deformation and shading are extracted from the input image by a warp to an appropriate reference image. In contrast to classical image-based visualization methods, where animation is restricted to viewpoint change and appearance modification is not possible, the proposed methods allow for complex pose animations and appearance changes. Both approaches build on image warps, not only in the spatial but also in the photometric domain. A new framework for joint spatial and photometric warp optimization is introduced, which estimates mesh-based warp models under a modified brightness constancy assumption. The presented approaches shift computational complexity from the rendering to an a-priori training phase and allow a photo-realistic visualization and modification of clothes, including fine and characteristic details without computationally demanding simulation of the underlying scene and object properties.

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Der sozialwissenschaftliche Beitrag von Sandra Tausch (M. A.), Frühkindliche Differenzkategorisierung – eine explorative Analyse von Kinderkleidung, analysiert intersektional und in kritischer Abgrenzung zu Positionen und Intentionen des Gender-Marketings, die Interferenzen von ‚Class‘ und ‚Gender‘, indem er die Vergeschlechtlichung von Kinderbekleidung mit ihrem geschlechtersemantischen Impact und ihrer Normierungsmacht für Käufer*innen und Träger*innen untersucht. Ausgehend von der These, dass Kleidung und Mode generell als symbolische kulturelle Bedeutungsträger wesentliche Konstituenten persönlicher Identitäten und sozialer (Gruppen-) Zugehörigkeiten darstellen und diese kommunizieren, zeigt die explorative empirische Analyse der Verfasserin am Beispiel einer ausgewählten Produktgruppe (Oberteile) und ihrer farblichen und bildmotivischen Designs, welche (hetero-) stereotypen und asymmetrischen Vorstellungen von Weiblichkeit und Männlichkeit hier transportiert werden und frühkindliche Differenzkategorisierungen (re-) produzieren oder hinterfragen.