User:Inge Hoonte/Thesis Research

Some notes on Ivan Sutherland's PhD Thesis text Sketchpad

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Applying Two Constraints to Two Lines
topology for simulation
"I made two basic errors which have subsequently been corrected." (p33)
"If a thing upon which other things depend is deleted, the dependent things must be deleted also. For example, if a point is to be deleted, all lines which terminate on the point must also be deleted. Otherwise, where would these lines end? Similarly, deletion of a variable requires deletion of all constraints on that variable; a constraint must have variables to act on. (...) As soon as it is found that a block must be deleted, it is declared “dead” by placing its

TYPE pair in a generic ring called DEADS. The ﬁrst dead thing is then examined to see if it forces other things to be declared dead, which is done until no more dead things are generated by the ﬁrst dead thing. The ﬁrst dead thing is then declared “free” and the new ﬁrst dead thing is examined in exactly the same way until no more dead things exist. (p.79, or.90/91)

"If two things of the same type which are independent are merged, a single thing

of that type results, and all things which depended on either of the merged things depend on the result∗ of the merger. For example, if two points are merged, all lines which previously terminated on either point now terminate on the single resulting point. If two things of the same type which do depend on other things are merged one will be forced to merge with the things depended on by the other. The result ∗ of merging two dependent things depends respectively on the results∗ of the mergers it forces.

(p.80)

THE MECHANICS OF COPYING ∥ Needless to say, when a piece of ring structure is copied the definition picture used is not destroyed; the copying procedure reproduces its ring structure

elsewhere in memory. However, the reproduction is not just a duplication of the numbers in some registers. The parts of the deﬁnition drawing to be copied may be topologically related, and the parts of the copy must be related to each other in the same way rather than to the parts of the master. Worse yet, some parts of the deﬁnition may be related to things which are not being copied. For example, an instance is related to the master picture of which it is an instance, and the copy of the instance must be related to the same master picture, not to a copy of it. (p.91)

CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION (p.93)
"THE RELAXATION METHOD (...) for complex systems of variables, especially directly

connected instances, relaxation is unacceptably slow. Fortunately, it is for just such directly connected instances that the one pass method shows the most striking success. The relaxation method of satisfying conditions is as follows: Choose a variable. Re-evaluate it to reduce the total error introduced by all constraints in the system. Choose another variable and repeat. (p.96)

He had to follow a stumbling trail to become convinced of what others had been telling me all along.
display spots in random sequence makes it appear to twinkle (earliest giff??)

Nice pictures

Museum of Jurassic Technology

Write up on a blog (Via Amy)
Mr. Wilson's cabinet of wonder, Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, Lawrence Weschler - from googlebooks: "Pronged ants, horned humans, a landscape carved on a fruit pit--some of the displays in David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology are hoaxes. But which ones? As he guides readers through an intellectual hall of mirrors, Lawrence Weschler revisits the 16th-century "wonder cabinets" that were the first museums and compels readers to examine the imaginative origins of both art and science. Illustrations."

Museums and Memory, Susan A. Crane, Stanford University press 2000
Geoffrey Sonnabend: Memory is an illusion. Just a human fabrication to deal with fleeting life and irretrieveability of moments and events. Memories are artificial constructions built on experiences that we attempt to make live again by infusions of imaginations. He questions all memory: "there is only experience and its decay," rendering short term memory as the decay of an experience. He was obsessed with how experiences decayed. He created the Model of Obliscence (model of forgetting), in which shapes and forms represent the various attributes that contribute to the process of forgetting. Basically, the Cone of Obliscence intersects the Plane of Experience, which is always in motion. Their intersection is called the Spelean Disc.

The Cult of Remembrance - Paula Findlen

Cern: art&science residency

(Sidetracked with Amy in mind)
A laboratory of the imagination. Currently, there are three ways to combine art & science:

art as a communicator of science
science as a means of art production
science as art

And more subtly:

art and science in a fluid interchange: oscillations between sameness and differences. Both are driven by curiosity, discovery, the aspiration for knowledge of the world or oneself. But they express themselves in different ways: the arts through the body and mind, often driven by the exploration of the ego, contradictions and the sheer messiness of life; science through equations, directed, collaborative research and experimentation that works in a progressive, linear fashion. As Dr Michael Doser, the experimental physicist on Cern's cultural board for the arts, says: “What I find wonderful about working with artists is that they are just as fascinated by side routes and diversions as they are by the direction in which they are going. This is what makes artistic work really different from scientific work.”

Mariko Mori: A space for connection: "Drawing upon the Buddhist principle that all forms of life in the universe are interconnected, Wave UFO seamlessly united actual individual physical experience with Mori's singular vision of a cosmic dream world. Within the tranquil interior of the work, Mori sent participants, three at a time, on an aesthetic voyage that sought to connect three individuals to each other and to the world at large. "