Kaleidoscopic Images Research Articles

Kaleidoscope Aesthetics in Visual Media

The article researches into the evolution of the kaleidoscopic image. The first part surveys A.L. Coburns vortographic experiments of the 1910s, the kaleidoscopizing of a human body and natural objects in photography during the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, as well as the ideas of using it outside artistic practices.

Arhitektonski hibridi na kaleidoskopskoj fotografiji

This paper focuses on the topic that is somehow a crossroad between two fields: photography and architectural morphogenesis. The particular interest of the article is contemporary photographic tendency to explore the kaleidoscopic technique and aesthetics in relation to the architectural objects and urban environment. Paradoxically these are the photographers who investigate this special type of morphogenesis of architectural form. However some of them are architects originally. Giving attention to the historical and evolutional aspects of the kaleidoscopic image in 19th century and kaleidoscopic photographic practices of American artist Alvin Langdon Coburn and his followers in 20th and 21th centuries the paper aims to analyze the potential of photography in developing the architectural form by examples of projects of Mattia Mognetti, Borbála Sütő-Nagy, Cory Stevens, Stéphane Laniray, Panos Papanagiotou, Andrey Chegin, Mohammad Domiri and those photographers who were inspired by camera work from the movie "Inception"-Ben Thomas, Kazuhiko Kawahara, Simon Gardiner, Nickolas Kennedy Sitton.

Priming and implicit recognition depend on similar temporal changes in perceptual representations

Previous studies have reported that longer stimulus presentation decreases the magnitude of priming. In the present study, we used meaningless kaleidoscope images, which were reported to minimize conceptual processing, to investigate the mechanism of the phenomenon. We assessed the impact of stimulus duration on perceptual priming (Experiment 1) and implicit recognition memory (Experiment 2). Both the magnitude of priming and the accuracy of implicit recognition were lower with the longer stimulus presentation (350ms) compared with the shorter presentation (250ms). This coincidence of temporal dynamics between priming and implicit recognition suggests similar underlying memory mechanisms. In both cases, the decrease of performance with longer presentation can be explained by either changes in perceptual processes or interference from explicit memory retrieval.

Ecology of Adolescence in India

The kaleidoscopic images of Indian adolescents are colored by variations and inequities in region, gender, caste, and social class. The contrast between the privileged and the under privileged makes them appear as belonging to different worlds marked by the “freedoms” of the ‘haves’ and the “unfreedoms” of the have-nots. What offers hope is the significant improvement seen in literacy during the past decade. Although we are far off the mark in universalization of primary education and the enforcement of the right to education, there is reason for optimism due to significant improvements in literacy over the past decade. Adolescent health and nutrition continue to remain grave concerns. Poor reproductive health, especially of young women at risk of early marriage and pregnancy, contributes to the cycle of poor nutrition, health and poor well-being. Enlightened policies offer hope while poor implementations of programs for adolescent welfare cause for despair. The nation stands at the crossroads of economic development with a large expanding pool of adolescent population who can become contributing members of the society in the coming decades. Investment in their education and health can pay rich dividends even as the failure to do so will bring with it a high social cost. The current paper addresses these issues in the light of available empirical data. (An earlier version of the present paper based on data from the Census of India (2001) was published in Saraswathi, T. S. (2012) Ecology of Adolescence (pp188–210) in M. Kapur, H.M. Koot &M. Lamb (Eds.) Developmental Psychology and Education. New Delhi: Manek Publications Pvt. Ltd for ICSSR, NOW and ESRC. The present paper has used updated statistics from the Census of India (2001) and other statistical data wherever possible.).

Arbitrary sounds facilitate visual search for congruent objects

Multisensory correspondences are thought to form through Hebbian-type learning, whereby repeated exposure to coincident auditory and visual signals promotes the formation of auditory-visual associations. Previous research has demonstrated that feature-based multisensory correspondences influence perceptual processing (Iordanescu et al., 2010). For example, when searching for keys among clutter, participants are faster to detect the spatial location of the keys when the characteristic sound of keys jingling is played at the onset of search. It remains unclear, however, whether such facilitation in perceptual processing relies on natural correspondences or whether newly learned associations might similarly facilitate processing. In the present study, we demonstrate that learned arbitrary sounds facilitate visual processing of an associated object, despite the absence of spatial information in the auditory signal. We trained participants to associate two pairs of visual stimuli each with a single arbitrary sound. Visual stimuli consisted of kaleidoscope images that varied in spatial frequency, shape, size, and color. Learning was verified with a two-alternative task in which participants had to correctly match a presented sound to the associated kaleidoscope image. Following training, participants performed a visual search for target kaleidoscopes from one of the previously learned sets with simultaneous presentation of target-congruent or target-incongruent sounds. We demonstrated that a non-spatially informative target-congruent sound speeds visual search to the associated target object. Accuracy did not significantly differ across the two sound congruency conditions and there was no evidence of a speed-accuracy trade-off. These results suggest audiovisual integration may facilitate visual processing and detection by increasing the salience of target objects. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013

Sign Languages (review)

Reviewed by: Sign Languages Miako Rankin (bio) Sign Languages, edited by Diane Brentari (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 691 pp., ISBN 978-0-52-188370-2) The task is daunting: to survey sign language linguistic study to date, to create a work that will stand among its Cambridge Language Surveys series siblings as representative of not just the typological features but also the genetic relationships and sociolinguistic issues of signed languages around the globe, to introduce spoken language linguists to the field-broadening insights of the visual modality, to provide an introductory framework for students of deaf studies and sign language studies that is simultaneously enticing and relevant for those who have laid the linguistic groundwork in our field. A daunting task indeed. Having been assigned to the task, Sign Languages, edited by Diane Brentari, takes on its role with remarkable grace and poise. Though fifty years ago one could scarcely imagine the linguistic study of signed languages, a mere half century later the idea of a single-volume survey of sign language seems unequal to the task. So much ground has been broken, so many questions have been studied, so many approaches applied, and so many languages explored, yet we have only begun to scratch the surface. Sign Languages situates itself clearly and specifically at this moment in the development of our field. Rather than attempt to paint one single picture representing linguistic findings about signed languages the world over, Sign Languages pieces together chapters, resulting in a kaleidoscopic image. Findings and examples from more than forty sign languages are included in the volume, throwing light on both the myriad sign languages that exist and the remarkable dearth of knowledge about them and the people who use them in so many areas of the world. The volume is [End Page 141] populated with the work of more than fifty scholars at varying stages of their careers, writing individually and collectively to shape pieces of the image into unique sizes and shapes. Each chapter stands alone, and yet all work together, showing parallels across languages and history and approaches, while at the same time drawing our mind’s eye to the vivid contrasts. The three section divisions in the book work as primary colors by tying the disparate aspects of the image together. The first section describes the history and transmission of certain sign languages across generations, focusing primarily on areas for which there has been less documentation of the transmission process and/or where the process of transmission has been different from that found in the most widely studied cases. This purposeful choice to highlight languages and areas that are less well known carries throughout the book and serves as a welcome and all-too-often necessary reminder of the breadth of experience of sign language users. At the same time, the authors in the volume overtly recognize that their accounts of language use are by no means evenly weighted due to scarcity of information available and the difficulty in gaining access to the necessary foundational statistics, reliable language examples, and signing communities, as well as to the constraints of writing a single chapter and making the larger notions as generalizable as possible. All of the chapters in the transmission section follow a similar outline: first situating each sign language within the country’s spoken-language situational context and then tracing the sign-language situation in that country through official recognition, use in educational settings, relationship of the signing community to national society, and linguistic research, all the way to opinions on the future of each language. Chapter 2, titled “Transmission of Sign Languages in Northern Europe,” for example, focuses on Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. The authors highlight the fact that the ways in which sign languages in these countries have been transmitted are different from those of other European and North American sign languages. Each chapter presents a parallel discussion, albeit about a different language or group of languages and from the unique position of that language. For example, chapter 6 is somewhat grandiosely titled “Transmission of Sign Languages in Africa,” though it focuses entirely on the situation of Ugandan Sign Language (USL). However, [End Page...

Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (review)

Yingjin Zhang Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China University of Hawai'i Press, 2010. xii, 257 pp. $49.00 (cloth) Yingjin Zhang, who has previously written seven books on Chinese film studies, views what he terms as the messy state of contemporary Chinese (26) through several theoretical frameworks, namely that of place, space, translocality, or the coexistence of different locales in the same urban area, and polylocality, or the tension among these translocalities. His frameworks seem to come in threes: three concepts of space (1), three theoretical frameworks of space and cinema (2), three conceptualizations of globalization (5), three areas of translocality (9), not to mention three significant shifts in Chinese and three avant-garde movements in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in the 1980s (21). At times his analysis is choppy and repetitive, perhaps reflecting his dense references and quotes in the opening chapters. His most valuable contribution is to move criticism beyond films by the so-called Fifth Generation of directors, who came of age in 1982 as the first graduates from film academy since the end of the Cultural Revolution, to more contemporary films and documentaries, many of which were produced independently of state production facilities and/or with capital from outside China. With China's rapid rise on the global stage over the past thirty years, it is inevitable that globalization and the dislocation of millions of people from the hinterland to the coastal cities in search of factory jobs has affected its film industry. In fact, the salient difference between the so-called Sixth Generation of Chinese directors, dating from the early 1990s, and the Fifth Generation of directors, is the former's focus on what Doreen Massey terms as stories-so-far(i), characterized by Zhang as protagonists cut off from a rooted past: More than 'mapping'-an attempt to formulate a rigidly coordinated mental map of the cityscape, Chinese cinema of the new century seems to have discovered in an aesthetically gratifying, cognitively challenging, and psychologically complicating mode of urban imagination. Drifting captures a raw documentary effect, projects fantastic kaleidoscopic images, and enables perpetually changing psychological and emotional flows. (78) To illustrate drifting as a new mode of cinematic remapping (78) Zhang uses four films from the first decade of the new millennium, each with a different mode of transportation as central focus: the bicycle in Beijing Bicycle (2001), the motorcycle in Big Shot's Funeral (2001), the taxi in I Love Beijing (2001), and the airplane in The World (2004). …

Implicit Recognition Based on Lateralized Perceptual Fluency

In some circumstances, accurate recognition of repeated images in an explicit memory test is driven by implicit memory. We propose that this “implicit recognition” results from perceptual fluency that influences responding without awareness of memory retrieval. Here we examined whether recognition would vary if images appeared in the same or different visual hemifield during learning and testing. Kaleidoscope images were briefly presented left or right of fixation during divided-attention encoding. Presentation in the same visual hemifield at test produced higher recognition accuracy than presentation in the opposite visual hemifield, but only for guess responses. These correct guesses likely reflect a contribution from implicit recognition, given that when the stimulated visual hemifield was the same at study and test, recognition accuracy was higher for guess responses than for responses with any level of confidence. The dramatic difference in guessing accuracy as a function of lateralized perceptual overlap between study and test suggests that implicit recognition arises from memory storage in visual cortical networks that mediate repetition-induced fluency increments.

Mild traumatic brain injury: Graph-model characterization of brain networks for episodic memory

Episodic memory is among the cognitive functions that can be affected in the acute phase following mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). The present study used EEG recordings to evaluate global synchronization and network organization of rhythmic activity during the encoding and recognition phases of an episodic memory task varying in stimulus type (kaleidoscope images, pictures, words, and pseudowords). Synchronization of oscillatory activity was assessed using a linear and nonlinear connectivity estimator and network analyses were performed using algorithms derived from graph theory. Twenty five MTBI patients (tested within days post-injury) and healthy volunteers were closely matched on demographic variables, verbal ability, psychological status variables, as well as on overall task performance. Patients demonstrated sub-optimal network organization, as reflected by changes in graph parameters in the theta and alpha bands during both encoding and recognition. There were no group differences in spectral energy during task performance or on network parameters during a control condition (rest). Evidence of less optimally organized functional networks during memory tasks was more prominent for pictorial than for verbal stimuli.

The Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists: The Greek Tradition and its Many Heirs (review)

Reviewed by: The Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists: The Greek Tradition and its Many Heirs Markus Asper Paul T. Keyser and Georgia L. Irby-Massie (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists: The Greek Tradition and its Many Heirs. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Pp. x, 1062. $360.00. ISBN 978-0-415-34020-5. Following up on their sourcebook Greek Science of the Hellenistic Era (2002), Keyser and Irby-Massie now add the monumental Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists to the increasing body of literature on ancient Mediterranean science. One hundred and twenty-one scholars have contributed 2,043 entries, most of which are about "scientists" or anonymous texts; 276 of which are new (that is, not found in the Real-Encyclopädie or the Neue Pauly). As the editors point out, the Brill's New Pauly will cover about 40 percent of the entries collected here. Although most authors and texts discussed are Greek or Roman/Latin, the reader is also introduced to, among others, Arabic, Armenian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Pahlavi, Sanskrit, and Syriac writers. This is a very important work of reference. The editors have cheerfully opted for an inclusive approach, thus avoiding the anachronisms that easily come with the modern notion of "science." One finds here, beyond medicine, astronomy, mechanics, pharmacology, and mathematics, also alchemy, astrology, geography, ethnology, paradoxography, and physiognomy, as well as sculptors, architects, and grammatikoi if they comment on authors like Aratus or Nicander, and even the occasional theologian. Sometimes, inclusions appear questionable: do artifacts such as the Antikythera device, which adorns the cover, belong in a collection of scientists? Or someone who writes a short poem on a hot spring (Hilarius of Arles)? Or "a good doctor who wrote bad verse—on unspecified topics" (635)? What about mere readers, such as the many Romans drawing on Greek scientific writing? Again, the Encyclopedia includes them: thus we find entries on Ennius, Vergil, Lucan, and Claudian. Of course, the notion of [End Page 113] what is "ancient" cannot be easily defined: most entries discuss people active between the sixth century b.c. and the seventh century a.d., although there are some earlier and many later entries. Even fictional authors are included, like Orpheus and Hermes Trismegistos (though both only as pseudo-authors,), Zarathustra and Pythagoras. There are, however, still some surprise entries: e.g., the Dissoi logoi, Hieron of Soloi, Poseidippos of Pella, Sallust, Satyros of Kallatis. I missed entries on Apollonius of Rhodes and Victoria medica (a gynecologist whom Theodorus Priscianus' Gynaecia mentions, ed., V. Rose [Leipzig 1894] 224 f.). Unavoidably, articles differ widely in style, scope, and engagement. Overall, the Encyclopedia treats less prominent authors more kindly. Many of the entries on fifth- to third-century celebrities of science are disappointing (but then, more detailed information on those authors is easy to come by in other resources). Especially useful, on the other hand, are the entries on the different writings in the Hippocratic corpus, on pharmacy, and alchemy. The discussions of anonymous texts and texts preserved in papyri will also be much appreciated. Owing to the wealth of facts collected, the Encyclopedia provides a kaleidoscopic image of ancient Mediterranean science, fractured in hundreds of snapshots that become synoptic only when used with the more than two hundred pages of indices. This is where the truly encyclopedic spirit of the Encyclopedia shows: a fifty-five-page gazetteer discusses all places and regions named, including political history and secondary literature; a twenty-four-page glossary explains all terms that might be foreign to the reader (see also the even longer index of medicinal plants at the end, in itself a tool much needed). In both cases, references to the entries enable a reverse use. You can now find ancient recipes that contain, say, Butcher's-broom (Ruscus aculeatus), plus a precise discussion of the plant and a full bibliography. Similarly, a fifty-two-page time line lists all individuals included in chronological order, that is, provides the time-equivalent to the gazetteer, enabling geographic–synchronic as well as diachronic study of the material. Moreover, there are most useful lists of entries according to topics, enabling exhaustive topic-centered study. Lists follow that...

Real-Time Neural Signals of Perceptual Priming with Unfamiliar Geometric Shapes

Perceptual priming is a type of item-specific implicit memory that is distinct from explicit memory. Neural signals of the processing responsible for perceptual priming can be difficult to isolate due to concurrent conceptual processing and explicit recognition. We successfully identified neural correlates of perceptual priming by using minimally meaningful, difficult-to-recognize, kaleidoscope images. Human participants were required to quickly indicate the number of colors present in each stimulus, and priming was shown by faster and more accurate visual discriminations for repeated compared with initial presentations. Electroencephalographic responses linked with this differential perceptual fluency were identified as negative potentials 100-300 ms poststimulus onset. Furthermore, different potentials recorded during initial presentations were indicative of perceptual learning, in that their amplitude predicted the magnitude of later priming. These electrophysiological findings show that the degree of perceptual learning engaged upon first encountering a novel visual stimulus predicts the degree of perceptual fluency experienced when the stimulus is processed a second time. It is thus possible to isolate multiple neural processing stages relevant to perceptual priming by using real-time measures of relevant neurophysiological activity in conjunction with experimental circumstances that limit the contaminating influences of other neurocognitive events.

Material-Specific Difficulties in Episodic Memory Tasks in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

ABSTRACTThe study examines acute, material-specific secondary memory performance in 26 patients with mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) and 26 healthy controls, matched on demographic variables and indexes of crystallized intelligence. Neuropsychological tests were used to evaluate primary and secondary memory, executive functions, and verbal fluency. Participants were also tested on episodic memory tasks involving words, pseudowords, pictures of common objects, and abstract kaleidoscopic images. Patients showed reduced performance on episodic memory measures, and on tasks associated with visuospatial processing and executive function (Trail Making Test part B, semantic fluency). Significant differences between groups were also noted for correct rejections and response bias on the kaleidoscope task. MTBI patients’ reduced performance on memory tasks for complex, abstract stimuli can be attributed to a dysfunction in the strategic component of memory process.

An electrophysiological signature of unconscious recognition memory

Contradicting the common assumption that accurate recognition reflects explicit-memory processing, we describe evidence for recognition lacking two hallmark explicit-memory features: awareness of memory retrieval and facilitation by attentive encoding. Kaleidoscope images were encoded in conjunction with an attentional diversion and subsequently recognized more accurately than those encoded without diversion. Confidence in recognition was superior following attentive encoding, though recognition was remarkably accurate when people claimed to be unaware of memory retrieval. This “implicit recognition” was associated with frontal-occipital negative brain potentials at 200-400 ms post-stimulus-onset, which were spatially and temporally distinct from positive brain potentials corresponding to explicit recollection and familiarity. This dissociation between behavioral and electrophysiological characteristics of “implicit recognition” versus explicit recognition indicates that a neurocognitive mechanism with properties similar to those that produce implicit memory can be operative in standard recognition tests. People can accurately discriminate repeat stimuli from new stimuli without necessarily knowing it.

Remembering and knowing: Electrophysiological distinctions at encoding but not retrieval

Contemporary memory theories often distinguish between contextual recollection and acontextual familiarity as two fundamentally different types of recognition memory. It is currently unclear whether recollection and familiarity are supported by two correspondingly distinct retrieval mechanisms, or whether the same type of retrieval processing supports both phenomena. Electrophysiological findings in humans have widely been cited as support for the former, two-process position, in that late-onset parietal “LPC” potentials have been linked to recollection and earlier frontal “FN400” potentials to familiarity. However, recognition memory is generally studied using conceptually rich stimuli such as words, which leaves open an alternative interpretation that one or both of these electrophysiological signals reflect conceptual processing distinct from recollection and familiarity per se. We tested this hypothesis using conceptually impoverished kaleidoscope images, such that opportunities for conceptual processing were minimized. Recollection-based and familiarity-based recognition in a remember/know paradigm were both indexed by LPC potentials. Old/new amplitude differences were greater for recollection compared to familiarity. Despite ample familiarity-based recognition, FN400 old/new effects were not observed, consistent with the contention that these potentials index conceptual processing rather than familiarity. These results cast doubt on interpretations of prior electrophysiological evidence obtained using conceptually rich stimuli as dissociating neural mechanisms of recollection and familiarity. We also found that neural events during encoding differentially predicted later recollection versus later familiarity. Collectively, these findings suggest that the engagement of distinct encoding processes can preferentially lead to recollection or to familiarity even if one type of retrieval process is responsible for both memory expressions.

Visions of heaven: the dome in European architecture

There's an ethereal magic to standing beneath a dome, neck craned, looking up at a vision of the heavens created by some long ago figure of genius. From the Pantheon to the Hagia Sophia, the power of the dome seems transcendent. Photographer David Stephenson's magnificently kaleidoscopic images of dome interiors capture this evanescent drama, and make Visions of Heaven one of the most spectacularly beautiful books we've ever produced. Traveling from Italy to Spain, Turkey, England, Germany, and Russia, among other countries, and photographing churches, palaces, mosques, and synagogues from the second to the early twentieth century, Stephenson's work amounts to a veritable typology of the cupola. His images present complex geometrical structures, rich stucco decorations, and elaborate paintings as they have never been seen before. Brilliantly calibrated exposures reveal details and colors that would otherwise remain hidden in these dimly lit spaces. Visions of Heaven shows more than 120 images, including the Roman Pantheon, the Byzantine churches of Turkey, the great domes of the Renaissance, the decorative cupolas of the Baroque and the Rococo ages, and a nineteenth century synagogue in Hungary.

In the Waiting Room of Literature: Helen Grund and the Practice of Travel and Fashion Writing

Helen Grund was one of Weimar Germany's most intriguing authors of fashion journalism and short prose. Her essays, published between 1925 and 1935 in the Frankfurter Zeitung and Die Dame , enriched in various ways the generic spectrum of the feuilleton and the travelogue ( Reisebericht ) and thus constructed a medium of expression frequently preferred by many women writers and reporters of that time. Grund's short prose could also serve as an example of the representation of a specifically feminine experience in the modern metropolis and can be read as a testimony of the German flâneuse .

Iamascope: a graphical musical instrument

The Iamascope is an interactive, electronic kaleidoscope. The Iamascope combines computer video, graphics, vision, and audio technology for performers to create striking imagery and sound with this aesthetically uplifting interactive device. In the installation, the user takes the place of a colourful piece of floating glass inside the kaleidoscope, and simultaneously views a kaleidoscopic image of themselves on a huge screen in real time. By applying image processing to the kaleidoscopic image, users’ body movements also directly control music in a beautiful dance of symmetry with the image. The image processing uses simple intensity differences over time which are calculated in real-time. The responsive nature of the whole system allows users to have an intimate, engaging, satisfying, multimedia experience.

Electronic Kaleidoscopes for the Mind

AbstractThe goal ofthis article is to present an informal introduction and tutorial on aestheticallypleasing kaleidoscopic images. The article is intended for the non‐mathematical reader interested in computer art. Simple generating formulas and recipes are included.

Archaic Bronzes and Tibetan Jade

The idea that Tibetan art can be highly sophisticated and refined is not likely to occur to the average student of art. Even to most of those whose interest lies in the Far East, the word Tibet conjures up the kaleidoscopic image of yaks, snow, filth, lamas, of grotesque idols and masks, and perhaps some greasy temple banners. It is then somewhat of a shock to realize that the exquisite jades on display at Ton-Ying and Company were made in Tibet as New Year gifts and sent to China for the delectation of the Manchu Emperor, Ch'ien Lung.

Archaic Bronzes and Tibetan Jade

The idea that Tibetan art can be highly sophisticated and refined is not likely to occur to the average student of art. Even to most of those whose interest lies in the Far East, the word Tibet conjures up the kaleidoscopic image of yaks, snow, filth, lamas, of grotesque idols and masks, and perhaps some greasy temple banners. It is then somewhat of a shock to realize that the exquisite jades on display at Ton-Ying and Company were made in Tibet as New Year gifts and sent to China for the delectation of the Manchu Emperor, Ch'ien Lung.