Hispanic graffiti artist exalts women in works on L.A. walls

Hispanic graffiti artist Sand One uses the walls of Los Angeles buildings as a canvas to exalt the role of women in society with depictions of big-eyed faces with curly eyelashes, and voluptuous body shapes.

The Mexican-Guatemalan artist's empowerment of femininity seeks, in addition, to remind women that they do not need a man on their side as they can be self-sufficient.

Source: EFE

Banksy paints Bridge Farm Primary Bristol wall as 'present'

The elusive artist composed the mural at Bridge Farm Primary after it recently named a school house after him.

It was discovered as teachers returned from the half-term break along with a letter saying "it's always easier to get forgiveness than permission".

A spokesman for Banksy confirmed to BBC News that the artwork is genuine.

Head teacher Geoff Mason intends to preserve the mural and has "no plans to sell it".

He said the surprise addition to the school's surroundings is "inspirational and aspirational" for his pupils.

Source: BBC

Art disasters: Boy reduces £10,000 Lego statue to rubble

The statue is said to have cost more than 100,000 yuan (£10,382) and taken creator Mr Zhao three days and nights to build.

He posted before and after photos of Nick on the Sina Weibo social network.

A "no touching" sign in place at the Chinese Lego expo seems to have been of little help.

Following the incident, the hashtag #ManSpends3DaysAndNightsBuildingBlocks has been used over 13,000 times on Chinese social media.


Source: BBC

Dali helps scientists crack our brain code

Pioneering research in the field of cognitive neuroimaging has revealed how brains process what we see.

The work has been led by Prof Philippe Schyns, the head of Glasgow's school of psychology, with more than a little help from Voltaire and Salvador Dali.

How Dali's mind worked is a matter of continuing conjecture. But one of his works has helped unlock how our minds work. Or more precisely, how our brains see.

Prof Schyns, who is also Director of the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, explains: "Our main interest was to study how the brain works as an information processing machine.

"Typically we observe brain signals but it is quite difficult to know what they do.

"Do they code information from the visual world - do they not? If so, how?

"Do they send information from one region of the brain to another region of the brain? If so, how?"

Which is where Salvador Dali comes in. And for that matter Voltaire.

In 1940, Dali completed his painting "Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire".

And there at the heart of the image is Voltaire. Or is it?

His bust is what some people see. Others see Voltaire's "eyes" as the heads of two figures - usually a pair of nuns.

This visual ambiguity was of course Dali's intention. But by asking test subjects which image they saw - or neither - the researchers were able to map how the brains processed the information.

As expected, the right side of the brain handled the left side of the image and vice versa.
But Prof Schyns says the research revealed much greater detail: "We found very early on, after around 100 milliseconds of processing post-stimulus, that the brain processes very specific features such as the left eye, the right eye, the corner of the nose, the corner of the mouth.

"But then subsequent to this, at about 200 milliseconds {...} we also found that the brain transfers features across the two hemispheres in order to construct a full representation of the stimulus."
Cracking the brain's code

Tracking how our eyes communicate with our brain, and then how our brain sends signals to itself, is the result of 15 years' work by Prof Schyns and his colleagues. It has been funded by backers including the Wellcome Trust.
And there's a lot more.

A compelling analogy is with Bletchley Park. The wartime allies were able to monitor Nazi radio traffic, but it took the work of Alan Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley to crack the code and find out what the signals actually meant.

The 21st Century Glasgow researchers have similarly cracked the brain's code, revealing the algorithms the brain uses to send and process information.

We were able to track where, when and how information is processed
Prof Philippe Schyns, University of Glasgow

So is Glasgow University the Bletchley Park for the brain? It's an analogy with which Prof Schyns is comfortable.
"Prior to this research people would know that two brain regions communicate - as the allies knew the Germans were doing in World War Two.
"But prior to the enigma of Turing people did not know what they were communicating about."

Now with the brain, as with the Enigma codes, we are able to track with precision where, when and how information is processed.

Prof Schyns says there are many possible applications: in fundamental brain research, in dealing with conditions like stroke in which brain processes are disrupted, and perhaps in helping new generations of robots see the world in the same way we do.

Inevitably, though, more research is required.

We may have cracked the code and tracked the images to the area where they are processed.

But how do our brains then decide whether that is Voltaire - or two nuns? We don't yet know.

Indeed some people think one of the nuns has a beard, so maybe they're two Dutch merchants.

Whatever you think, it's your decision. But science is getting closer than ever to working out how you made it.

Source: BBC

Computer paints 'new Rembrandt' after old works analysis

The portrait was created after existing works by the artist were analysed by a computer.

A new work was then designed to look as much like a Rembrandt as possible - while remaining an original portrait.

It was then 3D-printed to give it the same texture as an oil painting.
"We really wanted to understand what makes a face look like a Rembrandt," Emmanuel Flores, director of technology for the project, told the BBC.

After they had been digitally tagged by humans, data on Rembrandt's paintings was gathered by computers which discovered patterns in how the Dutch master would, for example, characteristically shape a subject's eyes in his portraits.

Then, machine-learning algorithms were developed which could output a new portrait mirroring Rembrandt's style.

To limit the many possible results to a specific type of individual, the computer was asked to produce a portrait of a Caucasian male between the ages of 30 and 40, with facial hair, wearing black clothes with a white collar and a hat, facing to the right.

Algorithm artist

"We found that with certain variations in the algorithm, for example, the hair might be distributed in different ways," explained Mr Flores.

But humans didn't decide the final look and feel of the final portrait - they simply chose algorithms based on their efficiency and let the computer come up with the finished result.

Finally, a 3D texture for the painting was applied based on the height and depth of paint applied to Rembrandt's works.

As this was 3D-printed, artists's brushstrokes themselves could be mimicked in the final product.
"Our goal was to make a machine that works like Rembrandt," said Mr Flores. "We will understand better what makes a masterpiece a masterpiece."

However, he added, "I don't think we can substitute Rembrandt - Rembrandt is unique."

The two-year project, entitled "The Next Rembrandt", was a collaboration between Microsoft, financial firm ING, Delft University of Technology and two Dutch art museums - Mauritshuis and Rembrandthuis.

A public exhibition of the portrait is planned and details of the display will be released at a later date.

Source: BBC

Islamic art inspires stretchy, switchable materials

Metamaterials are engineered to have properties that don't occur naturally, such as getting wider when stretched instead of just longer and thinner.

These perforated rubber sheets made by a Canadian team do just that - and then remain stable in their expanded
state until they are squeezed back again.

Such designs could help make expandable stents or spacecraft components.

"In conventional materials, when you pull in one direction it will contract in other directions," said Dr Ahmad Rafsanjani, from McGill University in Montreal.

"But with 'auxetic' materials, due to their internal architecture, when you pull in one direction they expand in the lateral direction."

He was speaking to journalists at the American Physical Society's March Meeting, where the research will be presented on Wednesday.

Dr Rafsanjani's search for new designs to create such "auxeticity" found inspiration in the stonework of two 1,000-year-old tomb towers in Iran.

"When you look at Islamic motifs, there is a huge library of geometries," he said.

"On the walls of these two towers, you can find about 70 different architectures: tessellations and curlicue patterns."

Two of those patterns in particular yielded an unusual combination of properties, when Dr Rafsanjani recreated them in a simplified form using a laser cutter and rubber sheets. Not only were these sheets auxetic - expanding in all directions when stretched - but they could snap easily back and forth between stretched and unstretched states.

Rotating units

Such "bistability" is unusual in these materials, Dr Rafsanjani explained. Only a few other examples have been described, and they mostly use origami-like folding techniques.

"These designs are easier to fabricate; all you need is a laser cutter. Depending on the resolution of the laser you could downscale your samples, probably to the micro scale.

"Or you could upscale it for larger components like satellites or solar panels."

He and his colleagues also found they could tweak the properties of the sheets by, for example, changing the basis of the patterns from straight lines to curved ones.

At the heart of the materials' reversible change are small sections of the sheet that rotate as the rubber is stretched.

Rotating units like this - highlighted with colours in the images and video above - have formed the basis of many previous auxetic materials. But Dr Rafsanjani's sheets are unique in the way they snap between configurations.

"We wanted to find structures for these rotating auxetic materials, [such] that when we deform it and it expands, it keeps its deformed shape," he said.

Source: BBC