I was very confused with this assignment at first because it's very different from an ordinary essay like the one we did for the 1st assignment. I've never tried visual essay in the form of slide before and I guess that is the same for most of us. More than that, the biggest problem I have encountered is the theme instead of how to present it. There are simply too many options for me!
But the workshop on the thursday after the fall break really gave me some ideas. I presented the picture of the city where I come from and it seems that they attracted some of my classmates. Then I restricted my options to the role public art is playing in displaying the culture of a city. However, culture is a very broad term because it involves so many aspects, making it impossible to compress the slide into 10 pictures.
The final theme I determined to do in my visual essay is Public Art and History. History is the origin of culture, culture is built based upon certain historical background. I chose 10 pictures I took before during my experience as a tour guide-by the way, back there in China I worked as a volunteer tour guide for Germans coming to visit our city-. Some of the pictures are post-processed, though they may look awkward, for example, the back-and-white picture of Dalian Hotel with modern automobile in it (I didn't realize that until I was making the presentation!).
I'm feeling alright for my presentation, it wasn't so bad. I really dedicated to preparing for it and wrote a rough draft in order to keep my mind in pace with the slide. I think my presentation has enough transitions, good conclusions and tight relatedness to my theme. If there's something to let anybody down is that this theme is so ordinary, it reallly lacks some creativity compared to the awesome topic of Hyun Ki Lee's visual essay.
2010年10月31日星期日
2010年10月12日星期二
Public art, surely, can be very cool!
I don't know if you guys have watched any public movies in the U.S. It was once really popular in China, people from the community gather in a plaza to watch a movie. There is usually a huge screen and a projector, just like a movie theatre but it is entirely in open air. Though we may not enjoy such good picture quality or sound effect as in a cinema, but the atmosphere is really rejoicing. The idea to share enjoyment with others is a key characteristic of Chinese community culture. And public movie is the best media to convey this. However, it disappeared after 2000 when people become more concerned with the quality as a result of Hollywood Movie bombardment.
Still, though they become rare but the technology advancement gradually make those public movies an art form. It is no longer for entertainment but for higher level of function, just like a sculpture or a monument does. Modern science has enabled people to project pictures onto high-pressure water fountains; the water curtain acts as the screen so the image formed is really impressive. There is a water fountain capable of playing movie in People's Square, Dalian, the city I come from. I once watched it and was immediately attracted by the magnificent effect made from the combination of projections and water curtain. But it has a big disadvantage: it consumes too much water. Therefore, the fountain movie is available only once a year!
Because this technology is so sophisticated, only a few cities in China can afford the cost of such a water fountain. It has become a symbol of prosperity (though from some aspect a symbol of extravagance). Such a luxurious art-piece add a special feature to the city.
Still, though they become rare but the technology advancement gradually make those public movies an art form. It is no longer for entertainment but for higher level of function, just like a sculpture or a monument does. Modern science has enabled people to project pictures onto high-pressure water fountains; the water curtain acts as the screen so the image formed is really impressive. There is a water fountain capable of playing movie in People's Square, Dalian, the city I come from. I once watched it and was immediately attracted by the magnificent effect made from the combination of projections and water curtain. But it has a big disadvantage: it consumes too much water. Therefore, the fountain movie is available only once a year!
Because this technology is so sophisticated, only a few cities in China can afford the cost of such a water fountain. It has become a symbol of prosperity (though from some aspect a symbol of extravagance). Such a luxurious art-piece add a special feature to the city.
Below is the most astonishing pulic art form I've ever seen: a 3-D stereoscopic projection movie on public building! The video is taken (not sure) on the national day of Ukraine this year. The technology used in this movie is fantastic; it is really incredible to have such stereoscopic images on a wall of a building!
2010年10月8日星期五
The multi-dimensional world (3)
Jumping out of 2-D and 3-D world, today we are going into the true 4-dimensional world, which is really a place of stunning view and amazingly beautiful objects.
To get more understanding of 4-D objects, I'd like to talk about the fundamental building brick of the simplest objects in each dimension. In 1-D space, an object consists of one single edge and two vertices (a line is a 1-D object). In 2-D space, we can get, for example, a triangle with 1 face, 3 edges and 3 vertices. In 3-D space, we have a tetrahedron with 4 faces, 6 edges and 4 vertices. We can deduce the construction of the simplest 4-D objects using mathematical induction: as the number of vertices increases by one as dimension goes up, the object should have 5 vertices. Similarly, we can get that it has 10 edges and 10 faces (just like something people usually do in intelligence quiz). Then we get a 4-simplex, a name to call 'the simplest object in n-dimensional world', just as the image below.
It's worth noting that what we see is only the projection of 4-simplex in the 2-D world. It's not what acually is like in 4-D world. In a tetrahedron (3-simplex), we get one surface by connecting three vertices together (a triangle). In 4-simplex, we get one surface by connecting four vertices. Thus, we have a 'tetrahedral surface' which sounds ridiculous. Actually it makes sense because the term 'surface' does not only apply to 2-D surfaces we see in daily life, but also 3-D surfaces, 4-D surfaces or whatever-we-what-D surfaces.
Well I think things are really getting confusing. But don't forget the main objective of this topic is to show the stunning pictures of multi-dimensional objects. I you can't understand anything just forget about it and enjoy watching them in the video shown below! There are even more incredible 4-D objects that really look so eve-catching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeHi1ol61eA
To get more understanding of 4-D objects, I'd like to talk about the fundamental building brick of the simplest objects in each dimension. In 1-D space, an object consists of one single edge and two vertices (a line is a 1-D object). In 2-D space, we can get, for example, a triangle with 1 face, 3 edges and 3 vertices. In 3-D space, we have a tetrahedron with 4 faces, 6 edges and 4 vertices. We can deduce the construction of the simplest 4-D objects using mathematical induction: as the number of vertices increases by one as dimension goes up, the object should have 5 vertices. Similarly, we can get that it has 10 edges and 10 faces (just like something people usually do in intelligence quiz). Then we get a 4-simplex, a name to call 'the simplest object in n-dimensional world', just as the image below.
It's worth noting that what we see is only the projection of 4-simplex in the 2-D world. It's not what acually is like in 4-D world. In a tetrahedron (3-simplex), we get one surface by connecting three vertices together (a triangle). In 4-simplex, we get one surface by connecting four vertices. Thus, we have a 'tetrahedral surface' which sounds ridiculous. Actually it makes sense because the term 'surface' does not only apply to 2-D surfaces we see in daily life, but also 3-D surfaces, 4-D surfaces or whatever-we-what-D surfaces.
Well I think things are really getting confusing. But don't forget the main objective of this topic is to show the stunning pictures of multi-dimensional objects. I you can't understand anything just forget about it and enjoy watching them in the video shown below! There are even more incredible 4-D objects that really look so eve-catching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeHi1ol61eA
Public Art and the Culture of a City
Public Art, especially in the form of architecture or sculpture, is the best reflection of the culture of a city. They can make a direct impression on the tourists what the city is like, what residence in the area likes to do or what the city is famous for.
The city where I come from, Dalian (in the northeast of China), for example, is famous for its soccer team. We were once the national champion for 10 consecutive years! And the team of Dalian can easily out-perform our National Team. Therefore, our city decided to build a giant football in downtown area as tall as 100-feet! There's another big football in the CBD around Central Plaza. It is transparent and can emit different colors of light at night.
These two giant footballs are the symbol of Dalian, as a city of soccer sport. They are now the most frequently visited place in our city today.
2010年10月3日星期日
Micro-photography: Not only a change of way of seeing (3)
Let's take a look at the big-guns we are using in Micro-photography: microscopes.
This is an optic microscope, the most commonly-used observing tool in Biology. It is not a high-techie tech that emerged in recent years. Its history traces back to more than 300 years ago, when Robert Hooke, an English scientist built the first optic microscope from the inspiration of Galileo's telescopes. Yes, it does works similarly with refracting telescopes: they all use a set of convex lenses to magnify the objects. But microscopes deal with very small objects at a very close distance, while telescopes are used to watch distant stars and galaxies. Though the theory is very simple-even a high school student today knows how it works-it is not so easy to make one. As the power increases, the lens needs to be polished very precisely, and the composition of glass used for making lenses becomes very important because even a tiniest bit of impurity would disable the microscope from working. Therefore, only a few manufacturers in the world can build high-power optic microscopes, with up to 2500x magnification power.
Though the magnification power is enough to observe most of the microscopic cells and crystals, optic microscopes are rarely used in micro-photography because they work poorly with cameras. Cameras also use sets of lenses to form images, so optical distortions may occur if these lenses are combined with the lenses in the microscopes. There are, in fact, some microscopes that work in coordinate with cameras, but they are hard to build, even more complicated than the other type of microscope I'm introducing next, the Electron Microscope.
The invention of electron microscopes is definitely one of the biggest victory of Quantum Physics (another one is CD-Player). In wave-particle dualism theory, any substance in the world have both characters of wave and particle. But we never consider ourselves a bunch of waves because our wavelength is too small to measure, only sub-atomic particles travelling at high speeds can express an observable dualism, one example is electron.
But why electron instead of light? This is because the wavelength of visible light is 390-780 nm. Higher magnification power means shorter focus length. As the power goes to beyond 1600x, the focus length is so close to the wavelength of visible light that the light no longer focus in the manner it has to be. Thus, we can barely get a clear image when the power is too high. One solution is using UV rays, and this can extend the ability of optic microscopes to 2500x. But still, 2500x is not enough to let us see viruses or molecules.
Therefore, we use electrons, which has a wavelength of only 0.1 nm. Though electrons don't focus when going through a lens, they can focus in magnetic fields. Now imagine a combination of an electron accelerator and a magnetic lens-how similar it is to an optic microscope! It is true that electron microscopes work just in the same way of an optic one. The only difference is the "light" we are using, namely high speed electrons and visible light.
Electron microscopes work in coordinate with electron sensors, so when electrons hit the sensor, a dot will appear on the screen. Thus we can directly have an image without observing it with our own eyes (caution: human cannot detect electron rays, but they are harmful to eyes). What's more, by adjusting the speed of electron and the intensity of magnetic field, we can get any magnification power we want. In comparison, optic microscopes can only provide a certain sets of power and the photographer may be caught in the dilemma of having either too big or too small pictures.
All these advantages make electron microscopes the favorite of many micro-photographers. Over 90% of the micro-photos are taken by electron microscopes.
Compared to this gigantic monster, however, even electron microscopes are but an entertainmant-level equipment. This is the STM (scanning tunnel microscopes), the most delicate machine on the planet-it requires even higher precision than building a spaceship. It is the only thing that can bring us to atomic level-namely less than 0.1nm. Their working principle is very complicated so I'm not going to introduce it here. The only thing you need to know is: it has a magnification power of over a million times!
The picture above shows only the smallest STM, take a look at this guy! It is the biggest microscope ever built, finished in 2007 in Oxford University, UK. Its size is equivalent to 5 soccer fields, or 150 meters in diameter. It can produce the highest light intensity in the whole universe: 1 million times brighter than all the light source ever detected in the universe! What a monster!
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