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This article analyzes two types of visual perception in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955): camera obscura and camera lucida, terms that are taken from photography and painting, respectively. By applying these terms, this article identifies a visual dilemma in how an artist perceives the object during the process of artistic creation—in a sense, a photographer cannot see the object itself at the moment of capturing the exposure, and a painter has to cease looking at the object and depict it from memory. Based on this visual dilemma, this article analyzes the two types of writing in Lolita: Humbert Humbert's private diary written with his photographic memory and his manuscript for publication, his confession, written with his painterly imagination. This article argues that Humbert's two ways of inscribing, camera obscura and lucida, fail to capture the full reality of the object because they are both based on his memory and inspiration rather than a vision of reality. Humbert is seized by his own inspiration that has been derived from his illusion, Lolita, that does not necessarily represent the reality of the object, Dolores. These examples epitomize Nabokov's view that art has no or minimal relation to life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the concept of "perspective" as an embodied metaphor with ontological and epistemological implications for the modeling of historical understanding of contested pasts. The metaphors employed in modeling past reality shape how we make sense of the controversial past. In particular, I explore how perspectival metaphorical models conjure the notions of presence/proximity/engagement and absence/distance/detachment. To open this up, the paper juxtaposes two distinct models of seeing and knowing as sources of embodied metaphor: 1) static and distancing optical metaphors of cognition, and 2) a "post-cognitive" (i.e., enactive, embodied and dynamic) process of interaction. I argue that the shift towards the affective, experiential and immersive forms of engagement in historical representation is indicative of the growing importance of dynamic, embodied and interactive features in mediated models of the past. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of virtual reality as an emergent medium that offers a new way of modeling the past. Despite its novelty, however, virtual reality raises age-old questions about the dynamics of engagement and detachment in historical understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines women directors in Malayalam cinema as historical subjects, looking at the manner in which they place themselves within Kerala's cultural semiotics and its popular imaginary, disrupting or legitimising an illusion coded to the measure of gender desires and differences within its semiosphere. The logic of commercial cinema demands that women directors fall in sync with the representative politics of the male gaze and a capitalist libidinal economy, seducing women into passive codes of femininity and aligning men within the registers of a hegemonic masculinity, in effect foreclosing the play of alternative languages of desire. Malayalam cinema has had two kinds of women directors, one who tries to puncture this logic from within the male bastions of popular cinema, and the second who strives to be an 'other' to the mythmakers of the phallic order. The article attempts to read the first mode of intervention using the Marxian specular metaphor of the camera obscura as a hierarchical apparatus of ideological inversion where the real is substituted by a spectacle of the illusory. To analyse the latter, the article puts forward the metaphor of camera dentata – that modus of representation which seeks to topple the patriarchal and capitalist ideological predispositions of the cinematic apparatus, thus rendering it capable of diminishing the power of phallic signifiers and 'the moral panics of sexuality' they engender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High speed video cameras provide valuable information in dynamic events. Mechanical characterisation has been improved by the interpretation of the behaviour in slow-motion visualisations. In modal analysis, videos contribute to the evaluation of mode shapes but, generally, the motion is too subtle to be interpreted. In latest years, image treatment algorithms have been developed to generate a magnified version of the motion that could be interpreted by naked eye. Nevertheless, optical techniques such as Digital Image Correlation (DIC) are able to provide quantitative information of the motion with higher sensitivity than naked eye. For vibration analysis, mode shapes characterisation is one of the most interesting DIC performances. Full-field measurements provide higher spatial density than classical instrumentations or Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometry. However, the accurateness of DIC is reduced at high frequencies as a consequence of the low displacements and hence it is habitually employed in low frequency spectra. In the current work, the combination of DIC and motion magnification is explored in order to provide numerical information in magnified videos and perform DIC mode shapes characterisation at unprecedented high frequencies through increasing the amplitude of displacements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robot-world, hand-eye calibration is the problem of determining the transformation between the robot end-effector and a camera, as well as the transformation between the robot base and the world coordinate system. This relationship has been modeled as $${\mathbf {AX}}={\mathbf {ZB}}$$ , where $${\mathbf {X}}$$ and $${\mathbf {Z}}$$ are unknown homogeneous transformation matrices. The successful execution of many robot manipulation tasks depends on determining these matrices accurately, and we are particularly interested in the use of calibration for use in vision tasks. In this work, we describe a collection of methods consisting of two cost function classes, three different parameterizations of rotation components, and separable versus simultaneous formulations. We explore the behavior of this collection of methods on real datasets and simulated datasets and compare to seven other state-of-the-art methods. Our collection of methods returns greater accuracy on many metrics as compared to the state-of-the-art. The collection of methods is extended to the problem of robot-world hand-multiple-eye calibration, and results are shown with two and three cameras mounted on the same robot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today restoring ancient 'camera obscura sundials' by drilling holes in building façades appears as an overly intrusive intervention in historical architecture. For this reason, our study proposes an innovative, low-cost gnomonic instrument, capable of adapting to any type of relationship between the façade where the original gnomonic hole was located) and the sundial on the floor. The tool that we have designed allows incoming sunlight to be caught by a reflection system of flat mirrors, appropriately tilted, thus producing a solar ray that exits the instrument with a different inclination. We created new angular relationships between the gnomonic hole and the astronomic data engraved along the sundial in two case studies of historic sundials that are now inactive and abandoned. The research was conducted weaving astronomy and gnomonics with geometry and mathematics, to create a 3D model to verify, plan and execute the restoration of historic sundials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a study conducted by Sarah Kofman related to camera obscura. Topics discussed include efforts of philosopher Auguste Comte in underlining the intimate link between modern science and fetishism; the Haitian critical tradition of interrogating European science following Toussaint Louverture's radical abolition of slavery; and role of science and technology in bringing truth and transparency.

Se presenta una serie de fotos de estructuras, personas y paisajes, demostrando el fenómeno físico-lumínico de una cámara obscura.

This work presents a machine vision system for weed detection in vegetable crops using outdoor images, avoiding lighting and sharpness problems during acquisition step. This development will be a module for a weed removal mobile robot with camera obscura (Latin for "dark room") for lighting controlled conditions. The purpose of this paper is to develop a useful algorithm to discriminate weed, using image filtering to extract color and area features, then, a process to label each object in the scene is implemented, finally, a classification based on area is proposed, including sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predicted values in order to evaluate algorithm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various types of targetry are used nowadays in laser matter interaction experiments. Such targets are characterized using different methods capable of acquiring information about the targets such as density, spatial distribution, and temporal behavior. In this mini-review paper, a particular type of target will be presented. The targets under consideration are gas puff targets of various and novel geometries. Those targets were investigated using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-ray (SXR) imaging techniques, such as shadowgraphy, tomography, and pinhole camera imaging. Details about characterization of those targets in the EUV and SXR spectral regions will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquiring general material appearance with hand-held consumer RGB-D cameras is difficult for casual users, due to the inaccuracy in reconstructed camera poses and geometry, as well as the unknown lighting that is coupled with materials in measured color images. To tackle these challenges, we present a novel technique for estimating the spatially varying isotropic surface reflectance, solely from color and depth images captured with an RGB-D camera under unknown environment illumination. The core of our approach is a joint optimization, which alternates among solving for plausible camera poses, materials, the environment lighting and normals. To refine camera poses, we exploit the rich spatial and view-dependent variations of materials, treating the object as a localization-self-calibrating model. To recover the unknown lighting, measured color images along with the current estimate of materials are used in a global optimization, efficiently solved by exploiting the sparsity in the wavelet domain. We demonstrate the substantially improved quality of estimated appearance on a variety of daily objects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the heart of the 21st century, we have been surprised witnesses of a coarse pinhole projection among different professionals. This fact shows that in spite of the thorough study made by specialists, the so called Camera Obscura is something that has been talked about but only a few have experimented. Without the help of a lens, the image projected by a camera is dim and not clear. Only in ideal luminous circumstances, a good hole quality and total darkness would it be possible to efficiently trace the outline of the projected image. Once this fact has been confirmed since very old times, it was only a matter of time that curiosity or a stroke of luck led to place a lens in the little opening. While all these was going on, innumerable authors devoted to study the whole process. But, nevertheless, the graphic or written evidence that have reached us, is certainly poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses today's perception, production and consumption of the digital image in the context of historical mechanization, photographic development and the prototypical design of a chemical reactive hypertemporal setting. Digital materiality is explicitly designed through a time-based performative image transiimage transition from the static image to the image as palimpsest in a post-digital era. First, it introduces the topic by providing a historical overview of devices that allowed the generation, construction and the change in perception of the image. Starting from the invention of the Camera Obscura as a device of image projection, the article highlights a change of representation from as early as fifteenth-century drawing machines to today's plethora of image-generating devices. The article investigates in more detail the transition of the image through mechanical production and the change of medium in the form of photographic image development and its consequences. Furthermore, it presents research into the hyper-temporality of a chemical image in relation to the digitalization and computer numeric controlled drawing machines. Each chapter of the article is related to one of my artistic works - Virtual Sunset, Urban Scan, Slow Selfie and the ongoing project titled Liquid Light. Each of the works is associated with an image production and perception property, gradually articulating the current state of the images as a hybrid. The research concludes with a focus on the hybrid image combining computer-controlled construction through sensorial data and vector-based input with photo-chromic reactions stimulated by multiple overlaying light emitters. The result is a chemical animated image - a piece de resistance and transformation of the a-temporality of digital data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The camera re-invented theatre, prior to photography, then, frame by frame, shifted still imagery into moving film. Before the advent of camera obscura there was no quadrilateral framing of scene whilst, cardage conceived for the painted image parodied the arched window. Within the camera's throw of light, dramatic narrative came to be viewed introspectively, in a darkened room, the stage bathed in light and bellowing sound. Prior to the lens nothing was out of focus, the scale of one figure relative to another a matter of cultural and hierarchical significance, not distance - the lens, positioned within a camera obscura, changed all of that. More than geometrics enabling portable application of perspective, that of camera and screen compressing three to two dimensions, led one-point perspective to the "duke's chair," centre, back of the theatre. Replacement of the third with the fourth dimension extended a period of time to the life of a fixed image to its physical support. Mutability of sequential images rendered movement editable. Nonetheless, the event of encapsulating a tiny piece of the real maps photography closer to chaos than all other forms of representation, and the camera significantly posited to create theatre out of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Rêveries du promeneur solitaire" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is presented. The use of sight and memory is examined with regard to the optique technology or the peepshow box. Also tackled are Rosseau's appreciation for optical devices in the 18th century, mental health, and the camera obscura.

The article discusses the role of camera obscura in determining the mechanics of sensation and the metaphysics of the soul. It highlights the history of philosophical appeals to the camera obscura in the 17th century. Topics include the mechanisms of the projection of images through small holes in dark spaces, German astronomer Johannes Kepler's analysis of visual model of camera obscura, and philosophical materialism and idealism.

In his crucial prism experiment, Newton noted the position of the final image, but not its shape or coloring. Most scholars describe the image as a single-colored representation of the selective aperture; some report multiple colors. When the experiment is re-enacted as the transformation of a camera obscura image, it becomes clear that the final image is a rainbow-colored representation of the outside world. Backward ray tracing enhances Newton's demonstration of diverse refrangibility. Using a projector, teachers can easily bring this historical experiment into the classroom and build a bridge to modern applications in hyperspectral imaging and spectral encoding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the early 1660s through the late 1690s, Robert Hooke conducted experiments with the camera obscura and other methods of optical projection, demonstrating how they could be used expressly for the purpose of painting. Then described as "Mr. Hooke's reflecting box," the camera obscura is well known in studies of early modern art and visuality, where it has figured as a "model." Drawing upon recent work in analytic philosophy of science, this essay uses Hooke's projected-image experiments to rethink the meanings of the camera obscura's modeling and their broader implications for artistic practice in the long eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six camera obscura installations by New York-based artist Zoe Leonard, made between 2011 and 2014, offered spaces of imagination that were both primal and timely. These darkened rooms, with their wondrous projected images, did not ‘redefine photography’ – an untenable claim that is all too readily made in the discourse of contemporary art. Rather than look at photography and its many technologies categorically, it would be better to assess the perceptions that individual photographic works afford on the technological situation of their time. Leonard’s installations threw into relief the false interactivity and utter commodification of the self that dominate in today’s e-culture – problems addressed in recent writing by Jonathan Crary as well. They heightened awareness of our fleeting human vision, leading to an intensity of thought and feeling without a portable or recorded image. With their invitation to contemplate reversibility at several levels – including, importantly, the switching between oneness and aloneness that stands at the heart of a living community – these works permitted a critical and poetic respite from conventions of our all-too-mobile moment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Camera-projector systems are increasingly being used in many different applications, including object reconstruction. In recent years, a number of approaches have been proposed to calibrate such devices; in this paper a calibration method is presented which can be used with monochromatic systems. The method is based on open-source code, makes use of planar calibration patterns, is fully automatic, easy to use and fast. Additionally, no initial information regarding the camera interior orientation is needed, and both sensors (camera and projector) are fully calibrated during the process. The method is validated by a series of tests, where root mean square errors (RMSEs) in image space are kept below 1 pixel. Finally, the applicability of the method is demonstrated by implementing two different strategies to automatically reconstruct objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brunelleschi's lost panel painting of the Florence Baptistery, created in the early 15th century, is frequently cited as the first work to accurately use perspective. The system he used is unknown, and the only information about the painting mentions a demonstration by which the painting was viewed through a hole in the panel as a reflected image in a mirror. The author argues here that the image was created in a camera obscura using the panel and a mirror in the same relationship as used in the demonstration. The author also proposes that the process revealed perspective's basic "rule": Vanishing points for parallel, horizontal lines exist at the eye level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photographs of several art-related images are presented including an image of artist Katsura Isobe performing in the show "UKIYO," an image projected inside a camera obscura box and a screenshot of a data map from the art installation "echo::system."

This paper considers the archipelago as a model of exchange and commerce to explore the meeting place between art and what Denis Cosgrove has described as the "geographical imagination." It does so by considering two artistic projects in which the domains of art making overlap the author's interest in sea kayaking-the two together constituting a vernacular, personally inscribed practice. These projects, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2006) and as part of Tasmania's biennial Ten Days on the Island (2011), are contextualized by the work of theorists coming from geography and visual arts. The paper extends Katherine Harmon's observation about the way that maps, "like artworks", may highlight "differences between collective and individual experience." Like the form of handdrawn maps, another seemingly obsolete technology, the camera obscura, is presented as a means of invoking a heightened, experiential engagement with the (island) landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the presentations of homosexuality and pleasure in the writings of twentieth-century French author André Gide, and particularly his essay "Corydon, quatre dialogues socratiques." Topics mentioned include the use of the camera oscura as a metaphor for an intimate or inner space, the processes by which Corydon and other characters discover themselves and their own sexuality, and the use of the fields of psychiatry and medicine as an epistemological technique in the dialogues.

Images of natural history are moving, in that they have the capacity to affect our emotions. It is this emotive capacity of images of the natural world, and their power to change perceptions and behaviour, that is the main focus of this article. It is suggested that images of natural history permit the creation of narratives, anthropomorphic reflection and knowledge transfer within the realms of audience experience and may potentially lead to aesthetic and emotional attachments. Critical reflections of the history of the moving image are presented, featuring pioneering technological advancements as well as pioneering people. Instances whereby our knowledge of the natural world has been significantly advanced are described. In a contemporary context, the role of new languages of the moving image is discussed, including interpretation and interactive forms of communication, with particular reference to engaging new audiences and changing behaviours towards the natural world. A critique is offered regarding the unpredictable and unquantifiable impact of visual narratives as well as the often false perceptions they can create. However, it is suggested that within the contexts of natural history and environmental conservation, the artistic growth of the moving image disciplines requires an innovative and transformative approach to create meaningful visual experiences for new audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a report of a studio experiment to explore how images from the camera obscura could have been used directly by artists of Vermeer's era. It has a pragmatic and practical approach, bringing a painter's eye and experience to the problems of transferring images from the lens to a canvas, using the primitive technology and unrefined materials available then. It addresses how an artist could use the condensed, flattened images from camera obscura projections in his painting process, when the subject could appear reversed and inverted on the screen or on the wall. It considers how the limitations of the materials that make transfers possible might affect studio practice, and ultimately the stylistic qualities of the work produced. This paper outlines a simple printing method that would enable the seventeenth-century painter to transfer monochrome images, corrected in orientation, from the lens to a canvas with relative ease, for use as the painting progressed in the stages prescribed at the time. Prints made on the ground layer could form the basis of underpainting, while those on top layers could transfer highlights and optical effects, not seen with the naked eye. This technique would allow the painter to be in the light of his studio, facing his motif, when working in colour. Reference is made to art historical literature and contemporary workshop treatises, and all materials used are authentic. The results obtained using this process are consistent with the visual evidence of the way in which Vermeer applied his paint, and with recent scientific examination of his work. The findings suggest possible causes for some of the unusual qualities of Vermeer's work, in particular the strong tonal polarity in the underpainting with no evidence of drawing, his choice of material in the ground layers, and the qualities of variable focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensors of various modalities and capabilities, especially cameras, have become ubiquitous in our environment. Their intended use is wide ranging and encompasses surveillance, transportation, entertainment, education, healthcare, emergency response, disaster recovery, and the like. Technological advances and the low cost of such sensors enable deployment of large-scale camera networks in large metropolises such as London and New York. Multimedia algorithms for analyzing and drawing inferences from video and audio have also matured tremendously in recent times. Despite all these advances, large-scale reliable systems for media-rich sensor-based applications, often classified as situation-awareness applications, are yet to become commonplace. Why is that? There are several forces at work here. First, the system abstractions are just not at the right level for quickly prototyping such applications on a large scale. Second, while Moore's law has held true for predicting the growth of processing power, the volume of data that applications are called upon to handle is growing similarly, if not faster. Enormous amount of sensing data is continually generated for real-time analysis in such applications. Further, due to the very nature of the application domain, there are dynamic and demanding resource requirements for such analyses. The lack of right set of abstractions for programing such applications coupled with their data-intensive nature have hitherto made realizing reliable large-scale situation-awareness applications difficult. Incidentally, situation awareness is a very popular but ill-defined research area that has attracted researchers from many different fields. In this paper, we adopt a strong systems perspective and consider the components that are essential in realizing a fully functional situation-awareness system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is highly probable that Gutenberg came to the idea of mass producing books via his involvement with another mass production enterprise - the production of wildly popular, and affordable, pilgrim badges. Little notice has, however, been given to this important component of Gutenberg's expertise and career trajectory. Similar, to a certain extent, to modern-day souvenirs, these late medieval mementos of pilgrimages were, in addition, coveted tokens of piety, devotion, and belief, not unlike manuscripts and books, which, both before and after Gutenberg's revolution, were prized and revered objects. In the course of examining the relevance, to the development of moveable type, of Gutenberg's involvement with the manufacture and marketing of mirror pilgrim badges, consideration will also be given to the expertise in metalworking he brought to both tasks, as well as to the ways in which beliefs about mirrors and their imagined magical powers relate to printing and reading. Gutenberg's achievement will be presented accordingly not as an isolated invention, but rather as an achievement reflecting his having been influenced by, and having capitalized on, the convergence of several technologies and manufacturing enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is concerned with the first decade of photography and the efforts of William Henry Fox Talbot to conceptualize paper photography. It examines the epistemological status of the early photograph by analysing the specific scientific, philosophical, and aesthetic historical conditions within which the conception of photography took place. It argues that the early photograph was not conceived to be identical to the image of the camera obscura because the two image types belong to different regimes of knowledge. Thus the shift from ‘the artist’s hand’ to ‘nature’s pencil’ did not point to increased levels of resemblance or accuracy, but to time as the new condition of knowledge in the early nineteenth century. By pointing to the historical specificity of early photography, this essay reconsiders the prevalent use of terms such as ‘index’ and ‘simulacrum’ in postmodern theories of photography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative analysis is made between photography and infographics, proceeding from the basis of Renaissance and camera obscura perspectives. Other less successful forms of perspective are analysed, such as curvilinear perspectives and their computing and optical counterparts. The feature of photography whereby it permits remembrance of the past is examined here, as is its nature, according to Barthes, as a “noesis without noema”. This is linked to Hegel’s analysis of knowledge, where he indicates that “mere knowledge does not demonstrate that one is actually present”. Finally we consider and discuss the scope of computer graphics as the descendant of the viewpoint of the Renaissance perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on how to develop a simple optical bench, an apparatus for teaching physics. It says that the optical bench will be developed from a plastic surface cable raceway also known as cable conduit. It suggests the use of a hot glue gun to fix the lenses to their holders. Moreover, it explores three experiments for which the use of a simple optical bench is more convenient such as the principle of camera obscura.