Human Artists Research Articles

Witnessing, Trans-“Species” Trauma Testimony, and Sticky Wounds in Contemporary Australian Poetry

Literary trauma theory has traditionally been a humanist concern, and the concept of witnessing, so central to the theorization of trauma, has focused on human experience and relationships. This article stages an interdisciplinary intervention by conceptualizing trans-“species” trauma testimony as a literary encounter involving a double-layered witnessing; the human artist witnessing nonhuman animals’ witnessing to the failings and crises brought about by human society. Focusing on a selection of contemporary Australian poems, a view emerges of poetic witnessing and testimony that exceeds and complicates the sub-genre lenses of old such as “nature poetry,” “ecopoetry,” and “protest poetry.” I propose a new conceptual category that testifies to traumatic structures and consequences of human practices. I explore how this testimony proceeds through a two-way channel of witnessing in which nonhuman animals are active witnessing agents and not merely witnessed by humans. I concentrate on witnessing as primarily experiential, as a corporal, affective operation in which the senses figure centrally. I argue that when poets witness nonhuman animal experience in poetry, testimony advances as an ethical engagement in an act of solidarity and advocacy. Poetry offers productive potential in this respect due to its affinity for engagement with the senses, its capacity to communicate heightened affect, and its scope for expression, articulation, and evocations of meaning outside of conventional sense-making and the limits of rational understanding.

Discussion on how humanoid robots could possibly replace humans at works

In this paper, it has been briefly discussed that the present situation of humanoid robots utilizations from several aspects and according to the information collected the possibility of robots replacing humans has been analyzed independently. Humanoid robots are considered as invulnerable and durable and these benefits have been utilized in several different areas such as military and space and they are expected to conquer those objective problems that are difficult for a human. Other areas like industry and medicine have included humanoid robots to accomplish mechanical and repetitive work because of their characteristics of precision and energy-saving. Additionally, robots with flexible outlooks give them the ability to take part in advanced medical innovations such as micro-robots for tumor cell killing, and they are expected to make a breakthrough in difficult miscellaneous disease treatment. On the other hand, the shortage of humanoid robots that they cannot generate human emotions has been discussed and the representation of robots in the art field - the AI artwork generators cannot completely replace human artists.

Stroke-GAN Painter: Learning to paint artworks using stroke-style generative adversarial networks

It is a challenging task to teach machines to paint like human artists in a stroke-by-stroke fashion. Despite advances in stroke-based image rendering and deep learning-based image rendering, existing painting methods have limitations: they (i) lack flexibility to choose different art-style strokes, (ii) lose content details of images, and (iii) generate few artistic styles for paintings. In this paper, we propose a stroke-style generative adversarial network, called Stroke-GAN, to solve the first two limitations. Stroke-GAN learns styles of strokes from different stroke-style datasets, so can produce diverse stroke styles. We design three players in Stroke-GAN to generate pure-color strokes close to human artists’ strokes, thereby improving the quality of painted details. To overcome the third limitation, we have devised a neural network named Stroke-GAN Painter, based on Stroke-GAN; it can generate different artistic styles of paintings. Experiments demonstrate that our artful painter can generate various styles of paintings while well-preserving content details (such as details of human faces and building textures) and retaining high fidelity to the input images.

«СОЮЗ» ХУДОЖНИКА С НЕЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСКИМ АГЕНТОМ – УТОПИЯ ИЛИ РАБОЧАЯ МОДЕЛЬ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОГО ПРОИЗВОДСТВА?

The subject of the article: works of contemporary art created by non-human agents, on the example of which one can analyze the ways of interaction of contemporary artists with non-trivial media (algorithms, robots, "half-life artists", etc.). The object of the article: the impact of technological innovations on contemporary art production, as well as the need, in connection with the artist's appeal to science and the latest technologies, to rethink the goals and objectives of communication through images and the very concept of art. The purpose of the project: to update the information for the scientific world about the strategies of interaction between a human artist and a non-human agent, as well as about the nature of this interaction. Results of the work: the study showed that the creation of a work of art (both physical and as part of a post-production strategy, as a re-significance) – despite the criticism of anthropocentrism by representatives of the Actor-Network Theory and individual media theorists, should still be understood as purposeful activity inherent in a human, but not in a non-human agent. Appeal to non-human agents can be considered within the framework of the paradigm of "assistive technologies" and "chimerical" actor. Scope of the results: expanding the boundaries of the application of art history methodology and related disciplines, which contributes to the development of a language for describing the phenomena of contemporary art in the interdisciplinary field of modern media, in particular, in the dynamically developing field of art & science. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, key trends were identified that determine the nature of our interaction with the other in the process of creating a work of art and interacting with it.

Computational Creativity or Automated Information Production?

Algorithms and automated learning systems have been successfully applied to produce images, pieces of music, or texts that are appealing to humans and that are often compared to artworks. Computational technologies are able to find surprising and original solutions–new patterns that humans cannot anticipate– but does this mean we ascribe to them the kind of creativity that is expressed by human artists? Even though AI can successfully detect humans’ preferences as well as select the objects that satisfy taste, can we ascribe to them the capacity of recognizing the intrinsic value of artworks? To answer these questions, I am first going to explain the kind of creativity that is expressed by contemporary predictive systems, then, in the second part of this paper, I will try to show the difference between the creativity of algorithms and the creativity of artists by expanding on Deleuze’s reflections.

AN EVALUATION OF TECHNOLOGY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE'S RELATIONSHIP WITH CULTURE AND ART IN TERMS OF LITERATURE

The main purpose of artificial intelligence is to create new works of art by developing the creativity of the machine. However, the idea that the pieces generated by artificial intelligence are evaluated as human imitations and do not reflect art in the true sense has become the focus of discussions. There are many different opinions on whether the works generated by artificial intelligence should be accepted as works of art and whether artificial intelligence has overtaken human artists. Aim: The aim of this study is to review and interpret the literature on artworks prepared and generated using artificial intelligence. Method: The method of the research is the interpretation of the works prepared with the use of artificial intelligence in the literature and brought to the literature. In addition, the study was expanded by making interpretative and personal approaches to the general flow of the study. Conclusion: In the context of research and studies, artificial intelligence, which is the combination of technology and art, and its artistic works have become an important topic of discussion in the art world. Artificial intelligence's contribution to the evolution of art and new perspectives has the potential to explore the limits of art and move it forward. However, whether it will completely replace human creativity and affect the value of the human touch in artworks is an important issue that needs to be explored in more depth in the future. The role and impact of artificial intelligence in the art world will be better understood through future studies and will shape the future of the art world.

Creators Matter. Perception and Pricing of Art Made by Human, Cyborgs and Humanoid Robots

Not only does the art market include human and nonhuman creators, it also incorporates technologically augmented artists, called cyborgs. They use wearables, sensors, chips, and even new organs to process various stimuli, such as electromagnetic radiation, atmospheric pressure, or ultraviolet rays, to produce artworks. Little is known however, how the objects produced by them are perceived by the art recipients. This paper applies an experimental study with 373 non-experts in the field of art. The results show that the perceived value of the painting depends on the type of agent and on the context of the evaluation. The price of objects created by a human artist is significantly higher if the context cue is the price of the canvas made by humanoid robot than another human. People value cyborg's artwork similarly to human-generated artwork when contextual cue is human, and similarly to robot-generated artwork when contextual cue is humanoid robot.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL PROJECT OF HUMAN INTEGRITY IN I. STRAVINSKY'S MUSICAL POETRY

Emphasis is placed on the urgency of the problem of human integrity as a cultural and historical fact of society and art, in particular music. The aim of the article is to define the phenomenon of differential ontology and anthropology as a musical gestalt in the context of I. Stravinsky's musical creativity and reflection. The research methodology is a systematic, comparative approach, transcendental, phenomenological, dialectical methods that implement the program of seeing the anthropological semiosphere of music as a cultural unity. The scientific novelty of the article is that the implicit and explicit modes of anthropology of music in the work of I. Stravinsky are determined. I. Stravinsky has Ukrainian roots, his influence on the formation of European culture is still underestimated from the standpoint of Ukrainian mentality, cordocentrism, which was explicitly defined in the theoretical reflection of the author as the search for "whole man". The folklore and mythological motifs of the works created for the Diaghilev seasons are characterized, as well as the disposition "avant-garde - neoclassic", which becomes the main epicenter of the composer's thoughts on the musical phenomenon. Conclusions. It is proved that the stage synthesis in the works of I. Stravinsky has its own musical image, where the impetus to the search for the musical integrity of the work as an analogue of a harmonious, integral person dominates. The symbiosis of musical and choreographic constellations took place as a stimulus to universal harmony, and the musical fabric of the work was formed as a universal synthesis of sacred, mythological, creative intentions. Stage synthesis, which can be described as a kind of musical can not be separated from the choreographic, scenographic images that form a single whole. Stravinsky was a charismatic leader of the musical avant-garde of the twentieth century, who defined the Frying Pan line of "two hearts" - a profane and sacred element of the musical phenomenon as a universal ontology of the whole human artist.

Comparison of Cognitive Differences of Artworks between Artist and Artistic Style Transfer

This study explores how audiences responded to perceiving and distinguishing the paintings created by AI or human artists. The stimuli were six paintings which were completed by AI and human artists. A total of 750 subjects participated to identify which ones were completed by human artists or by AI. Results revealed that most participants could correctly distinguish between paintings made by AI or human artists and that accuracy was higher for those who used “intuition” as the criterion for judgment. The participants preferred the paintings created by human artists. Furthermore, there were big differences in the perception of the denotation and connotation of paintings between audiences of different backgrounds. The reasons for this will be analyzed in subsequent research.

Human and machine collaboration for painting game assets with deep learning

Modern games are among the most intricate pieces of software ever devised. However, artists have little to no means of porting their creative work from title to title as the aesthetics change and older models grow to look obsolete. Zooming into the topic of assisted game art generation, the literature is notably scarce, although advances towards automated asset generation are of paramount interest to the field. In this work, we investigate the use of deep learning algorithms to create pixel art sprites from line art sketches to produce artwork of sufficient quality to be used within a game product with little to no manual editing by human artists. Such a problem contrasts with well-known tasks studied in the literature, which are based on natural pictures, boast massive datasets, and are much more tolerant to noise. In addition, we conducted a case study of applying current technology to the drawing pipeline of an upcoming game title, attaining useful and positive results that may fast-track the game development, supporting the argument that current image generation state-of-the-art is ready to be used in some real-world tasks.

Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics by Rocío G. Sumillera

Reviewed by: Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics by Rocío G. Sumillera Catherine Bates Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics. By Rocío G. Sumillera. Cambridge: Legenda. 2019. x+159 pp. £75. ISBN 978–1–781883–20–4. Keeping good company with the current surge of interest in Renaissance poetics, this meticulously researched and useful book shows how the concept of 'invention' undergoes a critical development during the early modern period. Through a series of carefully marshalled arguments and extensively illustrated examples, Rocío Sumillera convincingly demonstrates that the 'conceptual richness' (pp. 2, 125) of Renaissance inventio results from its intermediary position between classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, on the one hand, and Romanticism, on the other. While referring widely to Italian, French, and Spanish sources, Sumillera focuses specifically on sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England to trace the evolution of this critical concept, as it shifts from being a functional term in classical logic and rhetoric to assuming much wider connotations of artistic originality and creativity. Key to this development is the change from invention as a form of finding (from in +venire, literally 'to come upon') to invention as a form of devising, making, or creating. To explore how and when this change takes place, Sumillera considers inventionʼs relation to imitation and imagination, respectively. With their origins in Plato and Aristotle, theories of imitation have always struggled with the question of ideality—whether the object imitated or the imitation itself might be in some way exemplary—and this problem comes to the fore when the object being imitated is another author. While there is little dignity in slavish copying, imitatio assumes an altogether more 'inventive form' (p. 49) when—differentiated as aemulatio—it aims to alter, personalize, and surpass the original. As for theories of the imagination—although originating in the quite different discipline of natural philosophy and associated there with questions of perception and cognition—the 'image-making faculty' was similarly understood to work with both 'what had already been experienced' and 'new realities never even perceived' (p. 111): in other words, to be capable of producing something potentially better and new. The idea that a human artist might create something out of nothing—surpassing not only literary forebears but nature herself in 'making things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew', as Philip Sidney puts it in the Defence of Poesy—was alien to the Greeks; for the polytheistic societies of antiquity saw the gods or Muses as sources of inspiration rather than as the single, ideal, creator God of Christianity in whom the human artist might find the ultimate model, 'the heavenly Maker of that maker' (Sidney, again). It was in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, interestingly enough—when scholastic Christianity was at the [End Page 278] height of its reach and power—that the notion of inventio first entered the field of poetics: through the poetic treatises of men such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf and John of Garland, and through the medieval artes poetriae that taught the principles of composition and interpretation (that is, the writing and reading of literary texts). By the same token, however, in exercising a creative power more properly deemed divine, the human artist ran the risk of presumption if not of sacrilege and blasphemy, which is why such creativity also roused strong opposition (especially among the Calvinists, with their emphasis on human depravity): an anti-poetic sentiment that was to feature particularly strongly in the English Reformation. All in all, this is a detailed yet wide-ranging scholarly book that will serve students and scholars equally well. Although its focus is English Renaissance poetics, the breadth of reference to European sources gives this study a notable ballast and breadth. Sumillera is particularly adept at the selection and presentation of primary quotations, finding the perfect examples—and plenty of them—to illustrate her argument. This makes the book a great resource, as well as a pleasure to read. Catherine Bates University of Warwick Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Real noise image adjustment networks for saliency-aware stylistic color retouch

Automatic Image Adjustment (AIA) mainly aims to realize stylistic color retouch in images. Recent years have witnessed unprecedented success in learning-based AIA methods, especially convolutional neural networks (CNNs). However, existing AIA methods usually handle images without real noise from ideal scenarios, resulting in poor retouch performance when processing real noise images. Furthermore, these AIA methods lack attentive capability when learning salient areas to perform stylistic color retouch as human artists do. To address these problems, we first remodel the adjustment task for real noise images to remove the real noise. Then, we further propose the Real Noise Image Adjustment Networks (RNIA-Nets) using saliency-aware stylistic color retouch and adaptive denoising methods. Specifically, the saliency-aware stylistic color retouch predicts visual salient areas to learn stylistic color mapping using a proposed multifaceted attention (MFA) module. The adaptive denoising mechanism effectively predicts the denoising kernel for various real noise images. Eventually, to equitably verify the effectiveness of the proposed RNIA-Nets, a new challenging benchmark dataset collected from real noise images is established. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve favorable results on real noise image adjustment, providing a highly effective solution to practical AIA applications. The code and datasets will be released athttps://github.com/JiangBoCS/RNIA-Nets.

Copyright in generative deep learning

AbstractMachine-generated artworks are now part of the contemporary art scene: they are attracting significant investments and they are presented in exhibitions together with those created by human artists. These artworks are mainly based on generative deep learning (GDL) techniques, which have seen a formidable development and remarkable refinement in the very recent years. Given the inherent characteristics of these techniques, a series of novel legal problems arise. In this article, we consider a set of key questions in the area of GDL for the arts, including the following: is it possible to use copyrighted works as training set for generative models? How do we legally store their copies in order to perform the training process? Who (if someone) will own the copyright on the generated data? We try to answer these questions considering the law in force in both the United States and the European Union, and potential future alternatives. We then extend our analysis to code generation, which is an emerging area of GDL. Finally, we also formulate a set of practical guidelines for artists and developers working on deep learning generated art, as well as some policy suggestions for policymakers.

THE AVENGARDIAN IMAGE OF THE PERSON IN CHOREOGRAPHY OF THE EARLY XX CENTURY

Formulation of the problem. The relevance of the article is due to the appeal to the work of two Ukrainian ballet dancers, choreographers of Polish origin, Vaclav and Bronislava Nezhinsky, who were avant-garde reformers of the stage image of the tank in the space of choreographic synthesis of the early twentieth century. The problematic field of interpretation of the philosophy of the act of the brother and sister Nezhinsky in choreography is metaphorically described as “cubism”, requiring a separate stylistic and morphological analysis as an aesthetic phenomenon. The purpose of the article is to determine the aesthetic features of the philosophical reflection of innovative choreographers in the context of the synthesis of the arts. The research methodology is determined by phenomenological and dialectical methods, which allows us to determine the image of a human artist in the context of the transformation of choreographic culture, the integrity of the phenomenon of play, tanka and the dialectics of stylistic transformations of theatrical synthesis of arts. The novelty of the article. V. Nizhinsky transformed the classical tanka system, created a polysystemic whole of choreography, where discrete elements of poses acquire signs of a continual weaving of “cubism”. Sister Bronislava, like her brother, also grew up on the platforms of Diaghilev’s seasons, became a peculiar, rather extravagant choreographer. They entered the world culture not by surprise, choreographers comprehend and reflect in their work what exists around them as an aesthetic synthesis. Conclusions. V. Nezhinskaya and B. Nezhinskaya formed a certain “anti-system” in the space of the classical tank, began the avant-garde transformation of choreographic culture, which brought choreography closer to modern painting, and encouraged the emergence of the latest stage syntheses. Vaclav was an avant-garde choreographer. Sometimes they look for confirmation of avant-garde in Dalcroze’s theory of rhythm, it is believed that Dalcroze seemed to have influenced him – Diaghilev provided Dalcroze’s assistant to Nezhinsky to help. Nevertheless, V. Nezhinsky did not know the artsy logistics of the French master. And if he knew, he was not a logician, he was a more intuitive actor of the large theater of the Tank.

Literary Processes In America in the 50s of the XXth Century

Above mentioned article describes development of literary process in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. The article discusses the most influential figure of American Poetry Edgar Allan Poe. His immersive influence on art field. Generally his poetry is distinguished with expressing bitter truth about dark side of human nature. His works definitely express sympathy and love toward humans. Edgar Allen Poe is an inspiration for many modern writers, among them is Steven King. Generally Edgar Allen Poe’s works contain different genres, in the end he is genius, honest and human artist who worries about human’s condition.

The Robot is Present: Creative Approaches for Artistic Expression With Robots.

There is growing interest in developing creative applications for robots, specifically robots that provide entertainment, companionship, or motivation. Identifying the hallmarks of human creativity and discerning how these processes might be replicated or assisted by robots remain open questions. Transdisciplinary collaborations between artists and engineers can offer insights into how robots might foster creativity for human artists and open up new pathways for designing interactive systems. This paper presents an exploratory research project centered on drawing with robots. Using an arts-led, practice-based methodology, we developed custom hardware and software tools to support collaborative drawing with an industrial robot. A team of artists and engineers collaborated over a 6-month period to investigate the creative potential of collaborative drawing with a robot. The exploratory project focused on identifying creative and collaborative processes in the visual arts, and later on developing tools and features that would allow robots to participate meaningfully in these processes. The outcomes include a custom interface for controlling and programming robot motion (EMCAR) and custom tools for replicating experimental techniques used in visual art. We report on the artistic and technical outcomes and identify key features of process-led (as opposed to outcome-led) approaches for designing collaborative and creative systems. We also consider the value of embodied and tangible interaction for artists working collaboratively with computational systems. Transdisciplinary research can help researchers uncover new approaches for designing interfaces for interacting with machines.

Art Integrated Learning Techniques in Artificial Intelligence

This research paper is designed on planning meaningful visual arts integration and AI, it is based on the discussion of the contemporary design and inheritance protection of arts and crafts, and the influence of artificial intelligence on arts and crafts, this paper makes clear the integration of the two in the historical period of the epoch development and the scientific progress of arts and crafts. From project re-engineering to educational modernization, it promotes the allowance of the value and innovative apparatus of arts and dexterities, so as to realize its defensible expansion in the Artificial Intelligence atmosphere. Artificial Intelligence creativity escalations for empathetic art and artistes in the 21st century. Sponsored by our training in computer science and art history , we claim for the reflexion of AICAN’s works as art, relate AICAN works to the fashionable art context, and itch a reassessment of how we might define human and machine inventiveness. Our effort in emerging Artificial Intelligence progressions for art creation, flamboyance investigation, and peculiar large-scale style decorations in art antiquity has commanded us to judiciously consider the antiquity and delicacies of human art-making and to perceive how those summaries can be exhibited and trained to the machine. We campaigner for a assembly between machine imagination and art broadly defined as parallel to but not in conflict with human artists and their passionate and social targets of art making. Rather, we urge a partnership between human and machine imagination when called for, seeing in this alliance a means to capitalize on both partners’ imaginative strengths.

If Not for Her Spots

This essay explores an interdisciplinary art practice of un/naming rooted in the complex fascination of one human artist with a special breed of domestic beast of burden, known as the American Spotted Ass. Through almost two decades of creative adventures — and, more importantly, daily care and intimate becomings with one gentle, wise tri-colored donkey and her herd of kin — this practice has explored fertile cracks found within hidden histories and colorful promises of this peculiarly “American” ass breed. For all the critical questions and biopolitical frissons that append to the act of splattering spots onto the hides of unassuming Equus asinus, I reckon here with a certain complicity, with knotty shames and passions borne in the privileges of breeding domestic species to suit cultural and personal tastes. After all, it was those troublesome spots that brought me to meet her in the first place, and so to live long and happily with a beloved barnyard companion, one special so-called spotted ass respectfully (un)named Aliass.

Shakespeare, Technicity, Theatre by W. B. Worthen, and: Shakespeare, Spectatorship, and the Technologies of Performance by Pascale Aebischer

Reviewed by: Shakespeare, Technicity, Theatre by W. B. Worthen, and: Shakespeare, Spectatorship, and the Technologies of Performance by Pascale Aebischer Sarah Kriger (bio) Shakespeare, Technicity, Theatre By W. B. Worthen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 278. Shakespeare, Spectatorship, and the Technologies of Performance By Pascale Aebischer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 256. Shakespeare, Technicity, Theatre By W. B. Worthen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 278. Shakespeare, Spectatorship, and the Technologies of Performance By Pascale Aebischer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 256. During the COVID-19 pandemic, theater companies across the globe have turned in unprecedented numbers to technologies such as online streaming. This brave new world of liveness mediated through screens and software suggests many fruitful lines of questioning of the relationships between performance, meaning, and technological affordances. Though each of their books was written and researched pre-pandemic, theater scholars W. B. Worthen and Pascale Aebischer both address similar areas especially pertinent to studies of COVID-era productions. In Shakespeare, Technicity, and Theatre, Worthen explores the technicity of contemporary theater using recent performances, predominantly of Shakespeare or Shakespearean adaptations, as case studies. Worthen's "technicity" encompasses all the technologies of theater and theatricality: those representing technologies to the audience during performance (such as props), those that make the performance possible (such as audio equipment), and those made material in architecture, texts, and the bodies of performers. Worthen uses "technicity" to avoid reifying technologies as mere material tools used in theater, or oversimplifying theater by identifying it as another technology in itself; instead, he wants the reader to understand the blurry collaboration between ever-evolving technologies, human artists and audiences, and the acts of performance themselves. In the chapters that follow his explanation of the project's theoretical foundation, Worthen discusses the use of live-feed video via three recent productions adapted from Shakespearean sources; examines the technologies (particularly smartphone apps) used to manage the texts of plays for both pedagogical and production purposes; analyzes contemporary performance spaces' definition and application of technological practices alleged to resemble those of Shakespeare's time; challenges the idea of immersive theater as a distinct theatrical technology by considering the recent immersive re-working of Macbeth, Punchdrunk's Sleep No More; and reflects on the ramifications of what he terms an "algorithmic" model, in which text (such as script) is considered to be an algorithm that generates a specific theater piece. If this sounds both ambitious and eclectic, that's because it is; Worthen's book encompass a dazzling variety of texts, performances, and productions [End Page 652] and draws from various theories of theater as well as of technology. His thesis is less a standalone argument accessible to scholars of other disciplines as it is a rebuttal to certain perceptions of the role of technology within theater production and scholarship: theatrical technology can't be understood as a distinct set of tools with particular outcomes for performance but must instead be considered a fluid and ubiquitous network of contributors to the creation of meaning. Due to this context, familiarity with both theatrical scholarship and recent productions is necessary to follow several key threads of the book; Worthen doesn't linger on, for example, descriptions of the productions he credits as "collaborators" in his analysis, rendering some otherwise interesting examples opaque, nor does he precisely define the scope of his project. For instance, all but a few trivial examples draw from the Western European theater tradition that traces its roots to ancient Greece, but Worthen doesn't explicitly define the area or period of study, adding to his focus on contemporary Shakespeare productions extended examples from the work of mid-twentieth-century playwright Samuel Beckett. While this variety makes some fascinating connections possible, it can also make it difficult to follow each example's relationship with the stated overall argument. Overall, Worthen's marriage of fundamental concepts from the philosophy of technology to wide-ranging theories from theater scholarship may require readers to arrive to his text with more knowledge of the latter than most scholars of technology typically cultivate; however, for those with a background in both subjects, Worthen's analysis suggests many exciting avenues of exploration—not only...

Controllable Sketch-to-Image Translation for Robust Face Synthesis.

In this paper, we propose a novel controllable sketch-to-image translation framework that allows users to interactively and robustly synthesize and edit face images with hand-drawn sketches. Inspired by the coarse-to-fine painting process of human artists, we propose a novel dilation-based sketch refinement method to refine sketches at varied coarse levels without the need for real sketch training data. We further investigate multi-level refinement that enables users to flexibly define how "reliable" the input sketch should be considered for the final output through a refinement level control parameter, which helps balance between the realism of the output and its structural consistency with the input sketch. It is realized by leveraging scale-aware style transfer to model and adjust the style features of sketches at different coarse levels. Moreover, advanced user controllability in terms of the editing region control, facial attribute editing, and spatially non-uniform refinement is further explored for fine-grained and semantic editing. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of visual quality and user controllability through extensive experiments including qualitative and quantitative comparison with state-of-the-art methods, ablation studies and various applications.