Visual Logic Research Articles

Micrographia: Toward a Visual Logic of Persianate Painting

Previous articleNext article No AccessMicrographia: Toward a Visual Logic of Persianate PaintingDavid J. RoxburghDavid J. Roxburgh Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Res Volume 43Spring 2003 Published in association with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/RESv43n1ms20167587 Views: 153Total views on this site Copyright President and Fellows of Harvard CollegePDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Visual temporal logic as a rapid prototyping tool

Within this survey article, we explain real-time symbolic timing diagrams and the ICOS tool-box supporting timing-diagram-based requirements capture and rapid prototyping. Real-time symbolic timing diagrams are a full-fledged metric-time temporal logic, but with a graphical syntax reminiscent of the informal timing diagrams widely used in electrical engineering. ICOS integrates a variety of tools, ranging from graphical specification editors over tautology checking and counterexample generation to code generators emitting C or VHDL, thus bridging the gap from formal specification to rapid prototype generation.

Aspects of visual argument: A study of the March of Progress

The so-called March of Progress depicts human evolution as a linear progression from mohkey to man. Shelley (1996) analyzed this image as a visual argument proceeding through "rhetorical" and "demonstrative" modes of visual logic. In this paper, I confirm and extend this view of visual logic by examining variations of the original March image. These variations show that each mode of visual logic can be altered or isolated in support of new conclusions. Furthermore, the March can be included in a visual "frame" to produce new arguments, much as a verbal argument can be made a component of a new and larger argument.

Architectural Representations in the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili" (Aldus Manutius, 1499)

In December 1499 the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili appeared in Venice under the imprint of Aldus Manutius, in an edition whose woodcuts and typography make it one of the masterpieces of Italian printing. The enigmatic dream recounted in the book describes Poliphilo's struggle to win his love and his final happy union with his beloved Polia. The study focuses on the group of architectural representations in the book. Free from a slavish attempt to illustrate, they follow the course of the love story within the framework of an inner visual logic. A second part analyzes the section of the Temple of Venus Physizoa, an architectural representation that was omitted in Lotz's famous study of 1956. Issues of the history of technology, such as the modern cartographic method introduced by Alberti in the 1450s, are addressed in relation to this section. From a comparison with representations of space from the 1490s, however, one may conclude that, contrary to the thesis proposed by L. Lefaivre, there can have been no direct connection between the author or the artist of the Hypnerotomachia and the architectural theorist. At the same time, the Master of Polifilo appears to belong to the group of painter-architects, along with Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Leonardo, and Raphael.

A Visual Syntax for Logic and Logic Programming

It is commonly accepted that non-logicians have difficulty in expressing themselves in first-order logic. Part of the visual language community is concerned with providing visual notations which use visual cues (‘declarative diagrams’) to make the structuring of logical expressions more intuitive. One of the more successful metaphors used in such diagrammatic languages is that of set inclusion, making use of the graphical intuitions which most of us are taught at school. Existing declarative diagrammatic languages do not make full use of such set-based intuitions. We present a more uniform use of sets which allow simple but highly expressive diagrams to be constructed from a small number of primitive components. These diagrams provide an alternative notation for a computational logic and, as we show in this paper, are the basis of a visual logic programming language. The first implementation of this language and a heterogeneous logic programming environment are also presented in this paper.

Exceptional Artistic Development: The Role of Visual Thinking

Rudolf Amheim's writings have challenged and informed our understanding of artistic development in children and the role of art education in that development. His insights, once laid forth, seem so clear, simple, and true that they ought to have been obvious. Yet they were not, of course, until Amheim made them so. For instance, once one has read Growth, a chapter in Art and Visual Perception, one can no longer accept deficiency explanations of children's odd drawings. Instead, the underlying visual logic in children's drawings becomes evident. Once one has read Visual Thinking, one can no longer think of visual arts education as a luxury, or even as important because it stimulates creative and emotional development. Rather, one becomes convinced that the arts are a form of visual thinking and that visual thinking is central to all forms of human cognition. In my own work, Amheim's concept of visual thinking has shaped my thinking about giftedness in the visual arts and about how children should be educated in the visual arts. It is to these two topics that this article is devoted.

VLP: a visual logic programming language

In this paper, we argue that visual programming can be greatly enhanced by integrating some cognitive aspects when designing a visual language. We try to apply some interesting rules-established by Bertin on experimental evidence-to get graphical views which have a good picture quality and hence do not have to be read in a linear way. We introduce VLP, a visual logic programming language, which supports program composition and editing in both textual and graphical representations with correspondance between the two views of the program being automatically maintained by the system. The goal of this work is to facilitate the development and reuse of Prolog prototypes through a complementary use of graphical and textual views. In particular, we use graphics to put forward the relational nature of logic programming and, thus, help the user to get a deep understanding of the declarative semantics of his programs. We explain the motivation of design choices, provide an overview of system capabilities, and evaluate system advantages and drawbacks.

Visual logic programming

This paper presents an object-oriented environment VPP, which generates and validates Prolog code from a visual representation of labelled directed graphs. Conversely, Prolog code can be represented graphically and edited visually, The main applications are for knowledge acquisition/reverse engineering, and target system code generation and configuration.

Piers versus Vault Shafts in Early English Gothic Architecture

One of the most important differences between French and English Gothic architecture concerns the relationship between the arcade piers and the articulation of the rest of the elevation above. In France there is always some connection between the two by means of vault shafts integrated with the pier or set on its abacus, while in England there is often a clear break between the vault shafts corbeled into the arcade spandrel or set still higher in the elevation and the piers below. The reason for this English departure from French tradition was not the result of misunderstanding or carelessness but rather a deliberate aesthetic decision closely connected with the development of new pier forms difficult to integrate with continuous vault shafts. This inventiveness in pier design was unique to Early English Gothic, and the English masters clearly preferred to emphasize these new and often complex forms by separating them from the rest of the elevation and particularly from any attachments that would have compromised their autonomy. The analysis of this development reveals an essential difference in the architectural thinking of French and English masters, with the former emphasizing the integration and subordination of individual parts in a scheme of overall visual logic and the latter emphasizing the separation of individual parts in elevations that allowed for greater variety and richness in the designs of those parts.

Drawing Seifert Surfaces that Fiber the Figure-8 Knot Complement in S3 Over S1

Few areas of contemporary mathematics can boast of such an abundance of elementary and compelling examples as low dimensional topology. This is the study of curves, surfaces and 3-manifolds. The intense preoccupation of its practitioners with the concrete, tangible arrangement of plastic forms has led them to adopt a vividly pictorial genre of exposition. The process of inventing these apt examples, call it descriptive topology, appears to have its own visual logic and graphical rules. These also deserve serious study. As a pedagogical utility, descriptive topology should be straightforward and technically uncomplicated. It should never distract from the mathematics it means to illustrate. Above all, the topological design of its pictures should be memorable, ready to hand at the tip of a pencil or a piece of chalk. Apt, easy, unambiguous and memorable pictures are what this article is about. In order not to try the reader's patience or offend editorial hospitality, however, I shall avoid vague generalities and focus on a particular example. Technical details on drawing pictures were outlined in [5] and a primer for a general method is in preparation [6]. Here I shall tell a picture story about visualizing the fibration over the circle of the figure-8 knot complement. This exercise of the imagination consists of filling up the void of space, closed by a point at infinity to form the 3-sphere, S3, with a continuous succession of surfaces spanning the knot. That is, through each point not on the knot, K, there will pass a unique copy of a compact, connected, bordered, 2-sided surface, F, called a Seifert surface, whose boundary is the knot. The reasons why one should want to do this, and why it should be possible at all, belong to the fascinating biography of this remarkable knot. It is too long to tell about here. May this brief anecdote serve as an invitation to a rewarding treasure hunt in the literature. For a start, you should look at Rolfsen's masterpiece of descriptive topology [12] and then proceed to [9]. My own interest in it stems from a project to illustrate some ideas in [3] and [20]. This example is of particular interest to me because it belongs to an area of topology that already has a highly developed and effective graphical shorthand. This shorthand consists of schematic diagrams which are highly abstract, and often terse. Recognizable pictures of familiar shapes, arranged in space as dictated by the diagrams, help us see and remember the encoded information. Sometimes, a particularly well-designed picture can lead directly to an insight that is hard to decode from all the algebra generated in the service of precision. What follows is meant to be readable on an undergraduate level not much beyond advanced calculus. John Stillwell's clear and superbly illustrated text [17] covers the topological gaps. The more sophisticated reader, whose indulgence I beg for frequent abus de langage, is invited to read into my pictures many more ideas from the theory of fibered knots than can be explained at this level. At the end are solutions to some of these implied exercises.

"To Agree Would be to Commit an Act of Artistic Suicide...": The Revision of the Design for the Law Courts

The 16 years of labor that George Edmund Street devoted to the Royal Courts of Justice were filled with artistic and political controversy. Amidst that turmoil Street created a design whose pragmatism and visual logic marked the end of the intensely intellectual, High Victorian phase of the Gothic Revival. "Without it," Robert Kerr concluded in 1884, "the whole process of the Revival had been quite incomplete."

The Game of Logic

MR. “LEWIS CARROLL'S” new book has both the merit and the sterility which might be expected from a fresh and rather independent system of diagrammatic or visual logic. That is to say, it is ingenious and closely worked out, but cannot be said to advance either our theoretic knowledge of reasoning processes or the more practical craft of dealing with assertions and arguments as found in ordinary life. Perhaps so trying a standard ought not in fairness to be applied to the work before us, which is intended—so the preface and the title hint—to amuse those who would otherwise play with some less instructive puzzle. But it is because it seems unlikely that “The Game of Logic” will be patiently studied as a game, or would reward such patience by providing “an endless source of amusement,” that one is inclined to consider it rather as a contribution to visual logic than to any other form of literature. The Game of Logic. By Lewis Carroll. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1887.)