2022s


Instructor
TA



MAT255 Techniques, History & Aesthetics of the Computational Photographic Image


George Legrady | http://vislab.mat.ucsb.edu
Yixuan Li

Course materials are protected by US Copyright laws and by University policy. Contents of this course may not be reproduced, distributed, or displayed without my express prior written consent.

Elings Hall, lab 2611, CNSI Building 2nd floor - Tues-Thurs 1-2:50pm


Course Information
An interdisciplinary course that examines, thorugh case studies, the state of the photographic image, its history, the theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical underpinnings. The course bridges studio arts, engineering, and humanities. This course may be of interest to artists, humanities researchers or programmers as there are three directions to explore:
  1. The aesthetic creative applications, opportunities and constraints,

  2. The computational processes from image processing to machine-learning, and

  3. The social considerations – to what degree can we believe in the image given the considerable software-based processing and autonomous image detail generation we are seeing through machine-learning processes.

The end goal is to investigate the photograph’s transformation through weekly presentations of projects, methods and discussion leading up to the impact of machine-learning on the creative process resulting in computational generated artworks.


Course Workload

Attendance and participation at zoom lectures
Weekly contribution to course journal at Student Forum | Legal agreement
Final presentation pdf documentation of either a research paper OR project


03/29
ppt


03/31
ppt
Chrono-Photography
Decisive Moment
Abstract


Aesthetic Discussion
Legal References

Apparatus Fundamentals
Camera Obscura | Leica | Kodak Digital | SphereCam | DroneExhCatalog [Legrady article]
Single-View Synthesis | DeepView Synthesis | Raskar

Photographic History Selection (1830-1990)
Niepce
| Talbot | Fenton's Crimea | Rejlander [img] [2] | Cameron | Emerson | Atget | Connor
Bragaglia | Picabia | Carra | Marey | Muybridge | Duchamp | Abbott | Edgerton | Time/motion
Daguerre [2] | Cartier-Bresson | Winogrand | Friedlander | Barrow
Coburn | Bruguiere | Steinert | Abbott | Lerner | Ray | Moholy-Nagy | Krull | Schad | Siskind | Polke

What is an image? [Studio International] | Aesthetic Primitives
Analogy | Digital Manipulation | Evidence USDA Evidence (Sultan, Mandel) | Fake Photos [Farid] | AB730 | AB602

04/05
ppt

04/07

ppt



Pixel

Statistical
Material, Machine-Generated Images
Rossiter | Oppenheim | Breuer | Brandt | Muniz [2] | Paik | Vasulka | Rath | Baecker | Beshty

Raster/Pixel Digital Photographic Explorations (1960-1990)
Harmon [cover] | Knowlton | Dali [1] [2]| Cordeiro [moma] | Gaines | Campbell | pixelFace | Schwartz | form&code | Timeline | Douglas [DCT info] | Continuous_discreet_p26 | Hoy [thesis] | Elkins

Kahn | Hyposurface | Fujihata [video] | Moeller

Manovich_automation | shapetime | motion deblur |
Burson | Najjar | Salavon | Kahn | Kurant |


04/12
ppt


04/14

ppt
Image Processing / Computer Vision Fundamentals
Greenaway | Factum Arte | Computer Vision | Object recognition | Edge detection | Motion vision | Video tracking | image classification | dimensional convolution | image analysis

Data, Signal & Noise/Glitch
Ikeda | Kurokawa [2] [3] | Miyajima [MCA] | Reas | Legrady | Menkman | Vasulka Transformations | Nechvatal [interview] [article] | ScanLab | Calre Strand | Wooldridge


04/19
ppt


04/21

ppt
Volumetric Data Points, Photogrammetry
Kinect | Depth Sensing Cameras | Lidar | 3D Scanner | Photogrammetry [Factum]
Holdsworth | Colinart | Ghost Cell [explanation] | Parragirls

Computational photography
Resources | Frankencamera [Leica adaption] | Lytro [Plenoptic] | LightField Camera | LightField Video [Debevec] | Femto | PhotoSynth [Obama] | GigaPixel |

Information Transmission - ElectroMagnetic Spectrum (Analog-Digital)
Spectrum | InfoTheory | Electromagnetic audio | Gramophone | Firebirds | RainDance


04/26


04/28

ppt
Computational Aesthetics
Hoenig | Visual Aesthetics | Reconstructing Histories | Computational Aesthetics

Generative Art & Electrostatic Experiments
Jäger | Molnar | Mohr | Lewitt | Nake | Cohen [Siggraph] [2] [3] | artNews | Sonia Sheridan [Systems] | Fredrikson | Galanter


05/03
ppt

05/05
ppt


Vision Science & Perception
Crary | Marr | Visual Perception | Vision Science | Virilio | Foveated Style Transfer

Machine-Learning, CNN, Deep Learning
Weihao CNN presentation [video] | poloclub | CNN | CNN Online Demo |
DeepDream | Image-to-Image | Excavating AI

05/10
ppt
ArtWorld
Artists
Conferences
Cultural Critique

05/12
Guest Speaker

DEMO


Aesthetic Explorations of ML, CNN, DL, GANS
Kyle McDonald [CNN video] | GAN Art | WeihaoList | Artnet | Neural Aesthetics | MLforArtists |
Christie's AI | Ars Electronica | Barbican | Nature Morte |
Atken [video] | Atken/Quayola| | Anna Ridler | Tom White | Sougwen Chung
neurIPS | Papers | aiartists | aiartonline | Lumens Prize | Elgammal |
Zylinska [video] |

Fabian Offert Lecture
Fabian Offert UCSB [video]| Aby Warburg | PFOM | SOM | History of Science | Tega Brain | Picture Theory | Gradient Article | imgs.ai | Publications |
Texture Synthesis [video]| Texture Synthesis [wxs] | VGG19 | Keras | Tenserflow | Imagenet

05/17
Discussion
In the News
Fake Videos
Art & Entertainment
Market

05/19


Various Deep Fakes, Social Implications
Dockray [Artificial Imagination][Fake News][Dissertation]
Forbes | NY Times | MIT Tech Review
Putin | Star Trek | 2min DeepFakes
James Coupe [video] | Tamiko Thiel | Disney | James Dean
CSO | Face++

Project Discussion: Individual Meetings (by zoom)

05/24

05/26

In class presentations of Project Concept

Individual Work/Meetings (by zoom)

05/31

06/02


Individual Work/Meetings (by zoom)

Final Class Presentation (PDF Project documentation due latest June 10, 2022)

Historical References



Six Stories from the End of Representation, James Elkins
Picture Industry: A Provisional History of the Technical Image 1844-2018, Walead Beshty
Artificial Presence, Lambert Wiesing
Peripheral Vision Bell Labs, the S-C 4020, and the Origins of Computer Art, Zabet Patterson
From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics, Meredith Ho
Information Theory and Esthetic Perception, Abraham Moles
Aaron's Code: Meta-Art, Artificial Intelligence, and the Work of Harold Cohen, Pamela McCorduck
Anamorphic Art, Jurgis Baltrusaitis
Universe Technical Images, Villem Flusser
Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Vilem Flusser