My love of learning, teaching, and providing creative spaces for people to connect informs my work and my life. For me, art is like life: messy, physical, and, if done with intent, beautiful. It is more about the process than the result; it is about recognizing that although we make choices, there are many things we cannot control; it is about being so present in the moment that everything else fades away. How I live, what I do, what I believe, and my art are all the same.

The purpose of this paper is to explore specific works that I have created as it relates to digital art and design. My works include abstract, organic objects that exist within surrealistic environments. First, I explain the dynamics of the imagery that has emerged from my career in broadcast television, my coursework in the Department of Art and Design at East Tennessee State University, and the works of fantasy, surreal, and abstract artists. In conclusion, the images discussed impose an idea of abstraction and surrealism with a sense of force, motion, life, and dynamic action.

The ability to create three-dimensional (3D) images offers a wide variety of solutions to meet ever increasing consumer demands. As popularity for 3D cinema and television continues to grow, 3D images will remain an important area of research and development. While there are a variety of ways to create a 3D model, textel images are quickly become the preferred solution that has been captured with a texel camera. The combination of multiple texel images taken around a scene can be used to form a texel model. Offering both visual and dimensional accuracy, texel models are becoming invaluable tools for disaster management, situational awareness, and even military application. However, displaying a texel model often provides challenges, and the problems that arise when viewing texel models will be discussed and corrected in this paper.

The automated Tree Identification and Delineation Algorithm (TIDA) was developed for application to high spatial resolution digital imagery of Australian native eucalypt forest. The algorithm is based on contiguous, threshold-based spatial clustering of pixels and was designed to cope with the complex asymmetric crowns typical of eucalypts. / To facilitate systematic algorithm evaluation, a forest scene simulation model was created for the simulation of visually realistic remotely sensed images. The model is based on the principles of ray-tracing and the geOll1etric description of scene objects and background. The model simulates the appearance of a forest scene viewed and illuminated from specific directions and under known atmospheric conditions. The distinctive 'modular' structure of eucalypts was represented by modelling crowns as small (branch-scale) spheroids distributed over a larger spheroidal envelope. / Using the simulation model, TIDA performance was evaluated in terms of forest structure (canopy cover, crown cover and canopy structural variability) and the remote sensing environment (view zenith angle, solar zenith angle and aerosol optical thickness). Prior to the evaluation, a methodology was developed for objectively estimating the optimum spatial resolution for TIDA application in a given image. The methodology was based on incremental Gaussian smoothing and exploited TIDA's sensitivity to changes in image spatial resolution. This process demonstrated the importance of individual crown cover, rather than crown size, as the main factor determining the optimum spatial resolution for tree delineation. / Results indicate that TIDA is most suited for application in forests with high canopy cover and high crown cover. The structural complexity of forest canopies, represented by the diameter and overlap of crowns and tree height, had a relatively small impact on TIDA performance. Increasing view zenith angle consistently caused a decrease in TIDA performance. A small phase angle between the sun and sensor produces optimum TIDA performance when both canopy and crown cover is high. As crown or canopy cover decrease, high positive and negative sun zenith angles yield superior TIDA results by decreasing the brightness of the background relative to the canopy and improving the identification of tree peaks. For both dense and sparse canopies, back-scattered radiation from the forest canopy was more suited to automated tree crown delineation than forward-scattered radiation. Imagery acquired under an optically thick atmosphere was found to increase TIDA performance compared to scene illumination under strong direct light. The advantage stemmed from a strengthening of the relationship between geometric and radiometric crown shape. / Through an awareness of limitations imposed by the remote sensing environment, the potential for manipulation of image characteristics, and preferential selection of acquisition conditions, TIDA performance can be optimised to suit various structural forest types. Canopy cover, crown cover, view zenith angle, sun zenith angle, background brightness and image spatial resolution are key criteria in assessing the suitability of automated tree crown delineation as an image interpretation procedure.

A picture is worth 1000 words. Great visuals can enhance, dramatize and even bend the narrative. From historical photos to modern-day digital images made of millions of pixels, images have always been instrumental in shaping our visual understanding of the world around us. As much as they have been instrumental in shaping reality, easy access to image manipulation has also resulted in wide spread misinformation. When anything can befaked, honest representation of reality in images has become a hard problem to crack. After multiple design explorations, I realized a need for a fundamental change in our interaction with images. The thesis resulted in building an alternate landscape for digital imagery called SHIFT, where images are connected entities that become an access point to multiple perspectives and alternate realities. It is not an attempt to challenge image manipulation technology but to use images as a means to develop a more informed understanding of the reality they represent.