#Lens & Pen Press

[lensandpenpress]

LOVER'S LEAP LEGENDS Garners Praise and Awards

LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS Garners Praise and Awards

Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale on all inventory. All titles now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for half the original price, postage paid.

[dnohito]

Image preprocessing (128x128)

Kaggleのベンガル語のコンペをやっていますが，機械学習始めたてで画像処理に対してどのようなPreProcessingをやっているか勉強も兼ねて調査しています．

今回は「Image preprocessing (128x128)」を模倣してみました．

Description

文字のアスペクト比を��持しながら128x128のサイズにクロップしています．シンプルなコードでクロップが出来ることを知りました．

Code

必要なパッケージを読み込みます

from tqdm import tqdm import zipfile import cv2 import matplotlib.pyplot as plt %matplotlib inline

次にデータを読み込みます．ここではオリジナルの画像サイズとリサイズ後のサイズを指定しています．

HEIGHT = 137 WIDTH = 236 SIZE = 128 TRAIN = ['/kaggle/input/bengaliai-cv19/train_image_data_0.parquet', '/kaggle/input/bengaliai-cv19/train_image_data_1.parquet', '/kaggle/input/bengaliai-cv19/train_image_data_2.parquet', '/kaggle/input/bengaliai-cv19/train_image_data_3.parquet'] OUT_TRAIN = 'train.zip'

今回の肝のコードになります．入力画像の角（4箇所）を取得するbbox()メソッドと，実際に画像をクロップしてリサイズするcrop_resize()メソッドになります．

def bbox(img): # anyメソッドで行・列ごとに輝度がALL0かそれ以外かを計算, TrueかFalseで返ってくる rows = np.any(img, axis=1) cols = np.any(img, axis=0) rmin, rmax = np.where(rows)[0][[0, -1]] # rowsのTrueの最初と最後を取得 cmin, cmax = np.where(cols)[0][[0, -1]] # colsのTrueの最初と最後を取得 return rmin, rmax, cmin, cmax def crop_resize(img0, size=SIZE, pad=16): #crop a box around pixels large than the threshold #some images contain line at the sides # 最初から5pix後と最後から5pix前の範囲において，80以上の輝度をTrueに変換してbboxに渡す # 80以下はFalseに変換される ymin,ymax,xmin,xmax = bbox(img0[5:-5,5:-5] > 80) #cropping may cut too much, so we need to add it back # クロッピングがカットしすぎる（負の値になるorオリジナルより大きくなる）可能性もあるので，それを考慮した処理をする xmin = xmin - 10 if (xmin > 10) else 0 ymin = ymin - 10 if (ymin > 10) else 0 xmax = xmax + 10 if (xmax < WIDTH - 10) else WIDTH ymax = ymax + 10 if (ymax < HEIGHT - 10) else HEIGHT # オリジナルからクロップ出来た範囲を指定して新しいimgを作成する img = img0[ymin:ymax,xmin:xmax] #remove lo intensity pixels as noise # 28以下の輝度を消去する（img0から新しいimgを作っていることに注意） img[img < 28] = 0 # 横幅と縦幅を取得 lx, ly = xmax-xmin,ymax-ymin # 横幅または縦幅の大きい方にpaddingする値を足し算 l = max(lx,ly) + pad #make sure that the aspect ratio is kept in rescaling # rescaleするときはアスペクト比を維持しなければならない # 0埋めする長さを計算���横幅の計算は縦の長さを使う（逆も然り）．そして縦横のimgのサイズを同じにする． # 上下で埋めるので2で割った余りを計算している w_pad = (l-ly)//2, h_pad = (l-lx)//2, img = np.pad(img, [w_pad, h_pad], mode='constant') return cv2.resize(img,(size,size))

実際にテストデータ0を読み込んで，動作を確認する

df = pd.read_parquet(TRAIN[0]) n_imgs = 8 fig, axs = plt.subplots(n_imgs, 2, figsize=(10, 5*n_imgs)) for idx in range(n_imgs): #somehow the original input is inverted # 背景が暗く，文字が白いので数値が逆転していたよう # 255で逆算する．（1~8行目のサンプルの画像に対して行っている） img0 = 255 - df.iloc[idx, 1:].values.reshape(HEIGHT, WIDTH).astype(np.uint8) #normalize each image by its max val # 画像内の最大値を255に揃えてる（例えば，画像内の最大値が230の場合は，全体を1.1倍くらいして230を255になるように揃える） img = (img0*(255.0/img0.max())).astype(np.uint8) img = crop_resize(img) axs[idx,0].imshow(img0) axs[idx,0].set_title('Original image') axs[idx,0].axis('off') axs[idx,1].imshow(img) axs[idx,1].set_title('Crop & resize') axs[idx,1].axis('off') plt.show()

たしかにクロップされ，アスペクト比を維持したままリサイズされていることがわかる

zipfileを使ってクロップ，リサイズした訓練データの結果をzip圧縮する

x_tot,x2_tot = [],[] with zipfile.ZipFile(OUT_TRAIN, 'w') as img_out: for fname in TRAIN: df = pd.read_parquet(fname) #the input is inverted data = 255 - df.iloc[:, 1:].values.reshape(-1, HEIGHT, WIDTH).astype(np.uint8) for idx in tqdm(range(len(df))): name = df.iloc[idx,0] #normalize each image by its max val img = (data[idx]*(255.0/data[idx].max())).astype(np.uint8) img = crop_resize(img) x_tot.append((img/255.0).mean()) x2_tot.append(((img/255.0)**2).mean()) img = cv2.imencode('.png',img)[1] img_out.writestr(name + '.png', img)

正規化するためにmeanとstdを計算

#image stats img_avr = np.array(x_tot).mean() img_std = np.sqrt(np.array(x2_tot).mean() - img_avr**2) print('mean:',img_avr, ', std:', img_std)

備考

Q. Great kernel! Quick question: how did you figure out the images are inverted and to normalize them? （最強のカーネルだ！ちょっといいかい．画像が反転してんのかってのとそれを正規化する方法をどうやってみつけたんだ？）

When I added 0 padding I realized that the background color corresponds to 255 rather than 0. Most likely it doesn't affect anything (just a little bit more convenient), but I prefer to have data similar to other handwriting recognition competitions I checked. （0埋めしたときに背景色が0じゃなくて255に対応してるってことに気づいちゃったのさ．まぁ特に問題はないんだけど，他の手書き文字コンペと同じようにしたいから反転しただけだよ）

Regarding normalizing, I saw several images with very low max value, like 116, while most images have high max value ~255. I think it corresponds to pressure on the pen during writing. So, normalizing the input by the maximum value of the pressure sounds reasonable in case if some people didn't press the pen hard enough. Also, in this case the thresholds used for cropping the images and noise elimination would not discourage such low intensity images. （ノーマライズするときにいくつかの訓練画像にマックスバリューが小さいものが混ざってるのに気づいたんだ，例えば１１６とか．逆にほとんどの画像はマックスバリューが２５５だったんだけどね．文字を書くときの圧の違いが関係してる気がするんだ．だから入力を最大値で正規化して誰かが強く書いた文字にも対応できるようにしたんだ．．．．）

[fionaharnett]

LOOKING AT THE WORK OF ODETTE ENGLAND ARTIST PHOTOGRAPHER

LOVE NOTES

2019 -

Unique silver gelatin and color prints from folded film negatives

Ongoing work in progress.

PUNCHED

2018-2019

Unique original snapshots, hand-punched and layered

Chromogenic prints, silver gelatin prints, Polaroids, archival tape

With this work, I punch out the main subjects. It is a playful and provocative act. It transitions the subject to one of process, and imposes a different kind of viewing. The circular shape of the punches become little clouds of thought, or speech bubbles in space. Black holes where information or knowledge continues to leak out. These spaces invite the imagination to fill them back up again.

THE OUTSKIRTS

2018

Archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth; layered with original pages from vintage family photo albums 17 x 22"

Unique (not editioned). Signed and titled verso

I remove pages from old family photo albums and use them to shield the main subjects of snapshots, which I have re-photographed and enlarged. The album pages perform the role of censor, of veil, and by extension, a manipulator of content. Contrary to the original album pages being a site ‘to have and to hold’ family history, the pages restrain and enclose. The periphery becomes the focus.

THE LONG WAY HOME

2017 - ongoing

Archival pigment prints from buried Kodak negatives, on Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag Unique in size, ranging from approx. 33 x 43” to approx. 42 x 60”

Edition of 1 + 1 AP. Signed & titled

Before leaving Rhode Island in 2012 to return to my birthplace of South Australia, I buried some negatives near the house I rented. The damaged negatives were of my childhood home in Australia, now in ruin. I’d laid them to rest with flowers I’d pressed, flowers that reminded me of home. In the fall of 2017, having returned to Rhode Island and bought a house three blocks from where I’d lived, I tried to remember where I’d hidden the negatives. I had only memory to go by. I buried 25 of them, the age I was when I first left Australia to live abroad. So far, I have found seven.

Every week I walk the neighborhood searching for these decaying artifacts. As I do, I get to know better the place in which I now live but find difficult to call home.

EXCAVATIONS

2015

Archival pigment prints, hand sanded with professional grade sandpaper, on Canson Infinity Rag Photographique Print 14.5 x 14.3" on paper 18.5 x 18.3"

Edition of 1 + 1 AP. Signed & titled

Unique original snapshots hand sanded with professional grade sandpaper Various sizes ranging from approx. 2 x 2" to approx. 6 x 6"

'Excavations' explores the complexities of material interface with intangible concepts. The social space of family storytelling is an invisible process into which we are born. We share colorful narratives, sometimes using snapshots as cues. We on-tell these stories and join them, or add to them, through photography. As a child, I loved learning the friendly arguments from mis-remembering or embellishing the visual 'facts'. It is this exaggeration that using sandpaper afforded. I blurred detail, smoothed areas, roughened up patches, and removed people or landscapes altogether. Grinding and polishing these photographs also is a literal assault. There is a ‘no turning back’. But the act of sanding was not spurred by contempt. Instead, it re-choreographs stories beyond the album. The space of the photograph is reset. Reworking manipulates the past, remaking it in the present.

DEVELOP BEFORE

2014-2015

Archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth Print 20 x 20" on paper 24 x 24"

Edition of 3 + 1 AP (AP NFS). Signed, numbered & titled

One of my grandpa's most curious collections was of Kodak 126 film boxes. On the outside of each box, where Kodak had printed 'Develop Before' together with the film’s expiry date (a practice that dates from the end of the 19th century) grandpa had circled the date in red pen. It was as if he wanted to ensure the snapshots he took would be revealed at their best and freshest.

There is homogeneity to how we make snapshots the world over. Grandpa's boxes have their own unique marks of age – wrinkles, scars, and marks – things we tend to avoid in family photography. They were also never intended to be subjects of photography: the boxes are trash – nothing of value, though to grandpa, they were worth something. I was compelled to photograph them using a modified Kodak Instamatic, expired chemistry and a scanner.

THRICE UPON A TIME

2012

Archival pigment prints from damaged negatives, on Museo Portfolio Rag Print 27.3 x 36" on paper 31.3 x 40"

Edition of 3 + 1 AP (AP NFS). Signed, numbered & titled

I grew up on a dairy farm in South Australia. Falling milk prices and rising maintenance costs forced my parents, under the threat of bankruptcy, to sell everything and leave in 1989.

Twenty-two years later, Mum and Dad performed a collaborative 'homecoming' on my behalf. Every month for one year, they revisited our former farm, wearing on the soles of their shoes a set of negatives I had made at the farm in 2005, when I took photographs of places where they had made snapshots of me as a child. As my parents walked the farm, the negatives became abraded and imprinted with local dirt and debris. The negatives were then returned to me, some so damaged they had to be pieced together with tweezers.

This series is a movement of reclamation and transcription. Since we no longer work the land with our hands, I work it through the lens, and tread, of my parents. The dominant motive for this work is my longing for an idealized vision of home. The resulting images mythologize my holy land.

SELF DIAGNOSIS

2011

Archival pigment prints on Canson Infinity Rag Photographique Print 6.5 x 9.3” on paper 8.5 x 11”

Edition of 3 + 1 AP (AP NFS) Signed, numbered & titled

Self Diagnosis is a part-photographic, part-psychological study of failure. I expose personal snapshots on the back of each of the ten inkblots from the Rorschach inkblot test. The work investigates the consequences of opening myself up to visual interpretation; the exposure of items typically guarded; and the construction of truth versus fiction in the family album.

PHOTOS OF ME WITHOUT ME

2011

Unique snapshots, hand cut and mounted to Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Trimmed to 12 x 12”

In this series of unique original prints, I reenact the family album through the deliberate DIY act of scissoring myself from snapshots and then realigning the hand-cut splinters. The works are more than altered souvenirs of my childhood; they are gestural, spatial re-recordings. There is preciousness to my existing in the album, which I call into question. This exercise of elimination, re-appropriation, and change gives me the chance to re-determine and redesign how my past is displayed from hereon.

ATTENTIONAL LANDSCAPES

2007-2008

Archival digital c-prints Paper 35.6 x 35.6"

Edition of 3 + 1 AP (AP NFS). Signed, numbered & titled

The Ishihara Colour Test is the most common clinical test for color blindness. But like mirages, the circles of randomized dots are just optical phenomena. In this series, I undertake quasi-scientific experiments in manipulating the intended meaning and function of family photographs. Selectively and meticulously exposing snapshots through the Ishihara test plates, I explore how we search and process imagery.

[johnbardenblog-blog]

Review Of Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus – Flagship Smartphone For 5 Quirky Features

We have successfully started using the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus, which is equipped with a three-lens rear camera, an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, and of course the iconic S-Pen

Earlier this month, Samsung finally launched the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Plus smartphones, after months of expectations.

The announcement marks the first time Samsung has introduced two sizes of Note smartphones, adding a 6.8-inch Note 10 Plus.

This week, we have successfully started using the new large smartphone, which is equipped with a three-lens rear camera, an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, and of course the iconic S-Pen.

Here are five of our favorite features in Samsung's new flagship phone.

1. S-Pen Gesture Control

Like the Galaxy Note 9, S-Pen now has a Bluetooth connection that allows the stylus to act effectively as a remote control.

However, S-Pen now also has gesture control - they will make you feel like a wizard waving a wand.

To use gesture control, press and hold the button on the S-Pen and swipe up, down, left, right or rotate the pen in the air.

This allows you to control the screen without touching it!

Currently, gesture control is only compatible with several applications such as Spotify and Camera App.

However, I hope that in the near future, more applications will add gesture control so that you can continue to guide your inner Harry Potter.

2. AR Doodle Function

Another interesting S-Pen feature is the new feature in Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Plus, called AR Doodle.

As the name implies, this feature allows you to graffiti on your photos and see your work become lively.

To activate this feature, open the Camera app and click S-Pen from the bottom of your smartphone.

Open AR Doodle and your camera will flip to self-timer mode. Whether it's a fancy hairstyle or glasses, you can apply it as you like.

If you are satisfied with your creation, click on the record and the smartphone will start shooting.

You will notice that when you move your face, the graffiti will move with you!

3. Real-Time Focus Video

Samsung has expanded its real-time focus video capabilities in the Galaxy Note 10 and 10 Plus, allowing you to use a variety of funky effects.

Live Focus Video works with front and rear cameras to blur the background of the image.

There are four effects to choose from - blur, big circle, color point and burr.

My personal favorite is Color Point, which keeps your theme color, but the background is black and white!

4. Amplify The Audio

One of the strangest features of Note 10 Plus is the ability to zoom in on the microphone.

As the name implies, this feature allows you to zoom in on the audio and video itself.

For example, if you are watching a musician playing on the street, you can zoom in on the audio to make sure you can hear the music in the background noise.

5. Super Fast Charging

Galaxy Note 10 and 10 Plus are Samsung's fastest charging phones ever.

The box contains a 25W charger, which is definitely an improvement of the previous Note smartphone, which only supports charging up to 15W.

However, if you are willing to spend a little more, you will get faster.

Samsung also sells 45W ultra-fast chargers for £40, which can deliver up to 3 amps of current, much faster than standard chargers!

 If you are looking for a samsung repair centre in the UK for high quality phone repair service, then look no further Samsung Repairing is the right place where you can get high quality phone repairs with 12 month warranty.

 For quality phone repair service, visit Samsungrepairing.uk

[juliandmouton30]

"Architecture as intellectual inquiry needs to take more risks"

The second Chicago Architecture Biennial tackles the broad and tempestuous topic of history, but plays it too safe, says Mimi Zeiger in this Opinion column.

I'm not going to define history. No matter how heavily that word weighs on the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which opened last weekend. Neither will artistic directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee; although they provocatively titled the second iteration of the event "Make New History", a phrase borrowed from the title of an artist book by Ed Ruscha.

In remarks to the press, they pointed to the many works displayed in the Chicago Cultural Center as explanation. And if these works are to be trusted, then history is not the dark angel haunting philosophers and historians, but rather something lighter: a shiny treasure trove of references – called forth by Google image search – to be appropriated and stylised.

Deadpan Rushca understood the irony of his slogan. With three simple words he poked fun at the impossibility of escaping our past. An edition of Make New History sits on the shelves of Johnston Marklee's office (or so says editor Sarah Hearne – the inaugural biennial's co-curator – in her introduction to the biennial catalog).

Published in 2009 to mark the occasion of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's 30th anniversary, the book's 600 deliberately blank pages were meant to evoke hope in the future, perhaps, hope in the newborn Obama administration. Eight years later, the title unwittingly captures an anxiety to reproduce novelty and its imperative eerily echoes #MAGA sloganeering.

It is from those white pages that the curatorial framework emerges, and with it an exhibition that reveals a truth about contemporary practice: the desire to surf the wave of history rather than to challenge it. Organised around themes such as building histories, material histories, and civic histories, the overall show indicates a scope of interest internal to the discipline.

A selection of photographs curated by Jesús Vassallo weaves through and across the Chicago Cultural Center's many facades, rooms, and corridors. Dreamlike images by artist James Welling or hyperrealistic digital prints by Filip Dujardin suggest an only slightly wider interpretation of the built environment, as the lens continually points back at an architectural subject – Mies van der Rohe's IIT campus or a speculative Chicago skyline.

The overall show indicates a scope of interest internal to the discipline

This recursive redundancy is in full bloom not once, but twice in the biennial: within the grand hall on the second floor under the title Horizontal City and again on the fourth floor with the Vertical City. In both cases the exhibitors produced original work in response to a brief.

For Horizontal City the two-dozen designers were asked to remake an image of an architectural interior. For example Bureau Spectacular created a fur-covered interpretation of Adolf Loos' Villa Müller and Welcomeprojects offered a surrealist take, complete with oversized popsicles, of Le Corbusier's De Beistegui Apartment.

Riffing on the skyscraper as a symbol of modernity and an ongoing site of reinterpretation, the Vertical City brief asked 16 teams to design a 16-foot-tall tower in the spirit of the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition – of which Loos' oversized Doric column as tower/tower as column scheme is seared into architectural pedagogy – and the even more looping "Late Entries" postmodern revival in 1980 by the Chicago Seven.

Favourites include Sam Jacob Studio's pastiche of 150 other buildings into single wedding cake-like stack, Productora's hand-coloured model (an ode to the labor of scribbling with a BIC pen), and Tatiana Bilbao's collaborative high rise. Her informal pastiche entitled (Not) Another Tower, is a brief within a brief; it aggregates the work of fifteen studios, each asked to design a piece of her "vertical community".

The curatorial difficulty of both Horizontal City and Vertical City, however, is flatness. By soliciting responses to given briefs, the already referential works become even more circumscribed and self-conscious.

It is near impossible for any one work to pop, to transcend the rules of the exercise, or resist the curatorial constraint. The act of viewing becomes comparative (who solved the problem better, wittier?) and the possibility of resonance between individual pieces is radically eclipsed.

It is near impossible for any one work to pop

Which is why in the skyscraper hall it is an artwork that trumps all the towers. Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle's Beehives with Asteroid and Prototype for Re-entry (2012) – composed of a grid of white standardised Langstroth beehives, an aluminium replica of an asteroid once predicted to collide with Earth and a reproduction of Constantin Brancusi's Bird in Space – presents a collection of hyper-charged objects as a reflection on modernism. The work is strange, and it is precisely the artist's ability to amp up uncanny tension that makes it almost vibrate with, well, history.

Given the profiles of the studios represented in the two galleries, it is tempting to ascribe generational divisions between Horizontal City and Vertical City: Millennial versus Gen X, emerging versus emerged practices. Certainly there seems to be a youthful playfulness among the interiors crowd.

Due to dollhouse-like typology, a menagerie of sundries and scale figures fill the models: lawn chairs, golden lucky cats, cacti, Oldenberg binoculars, Doritos. Yet overall, generational conditions may not be as important as historical or cultural conditions in uniting these two groups.

Many of the practices represented were founded or came of age during the Obama administration. Pre-Brexit, pre-Trump, pre-Syrian refugee crisis, those years presented a relatively safe space for architects in the US and elsewhere to turn inwards and puzzle disciplinary questions.

Broadly, for those hit by the global economic downturn of the late 2000s there's lingering PTSD and precarity. That double dose of insecurity dampens desires for risk taking or moving too far afield from academic props.

Within the greater context of the biennial and the Chicago Cultural Center, this translates to an exhibition that is uniformly technically and aesthetically virtuous (the "make" is on point), but stuck in the shallows. And yes, exceptions exist.

The exhibition is uniformly technically and aesthetically virtuous, but stuck in the shallows

Some of the best pieces are placed in some of the most awkward places in the building. Under the back stair sits An American Temple by The Empire with Illaria Forti, Joseph Swerdlin, and Barbara Modolo. A black monolith, with echoes of the designs of Aldo Rossi, the piece is a replica of the first nuclear pile, which once sat in a racquetball court on the University of Chicago campus.

An accompanying book of archival drawings and photographs makes visible a dark slice of the past that today's dealings with nuclear ambitious North Korea and Iran make clear is still very present.

Similarly, works that edge towards the interdisciplinary are nimble enough to escape curatorial constraints and may point a new way forward. Bridging architectural history, preservation, and environmental science, Jorge Otero-Pailos's The Ethics of Dust exhibits a series of latex casts of the pollution gathered on monuments around the world.

And Constructions and References, Caruso St John's collaboration with artist Thomas Demand and photographer Hélèn Binet, includes the firm's models as well as large prints of details of the Obama White House and the fake stack of folders President Trump used as a press conference prop.

Among other things, these works prove that formal considerations (historic and contemporary) can not only co-exist with political moments (past and present), but also truly benefit from such frictions.

If architecture as intellectual inquiry (biennials, academy, books) and profession (high rises, houses, mini-malls) is to continue to carry meaning it needs to take more risks and find allies in resistance. History – new, now, and otherwise – has never been a safe space.

Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles-based journalist and critic. She has covered art, architecture, urbanism and design for a number of publications including The New York Times, Domus, Dwell, Architects' Newspaper, and Architect.

Related story

Second Chicago Architecture Biennial will "look back to look forward" say artistic directors

The post "Architecture as intellectual inquiry needs to take more risks" appeared first on Dezeen.

from ifttt-furniture https://www.dezeen.com/2017/09/26/opinion-mimi-zeiger-second-chicago-architecture-biennial/

[lensandpenpress]

Moving the Blog to LENS & PEN PRESS

Moving the Blog to LENS & PEN PRESS

We’re consolidating our blogs into one platform on Lens & Pen Press (the parent platform if you will) where we will continue to discuss our books–the Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks, the James Fork of the White (coming 2017), Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and See the Ozarks–and many other favorite topics like the Ozarks and water resources. Please join us there!

Damming the Osageblog archive…