13553 research outputs found
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360-degree Video Content Tracking and Editing
No full textNowadays, 360-degree visual tracking has become increasingly important in 360-degree video image processing technology. Although visual tracking technology in 2D videos has gradually matured, there is no universal method for visual tracking in 360-degree videos that can effectively address image stretching and object deformation caused by the equirectangular representation of 360-degree images. In this thesis, we propose two novel methods for single-object visual tracking in 360-degree videos.The first method provides a general approach that enables the application of any 2D visual tracking algorithm to 360-degree videos. This method first converts the original equirectangular image of the 360-degree video into a 2D gnomonic image. A 2D tracking algorithm is then applied to the converted image, and the tracking results are remapped back to the 360-degree video's current frame. This approach ensures compatibility with existing 2D algorithms while addressing image distortion caused by the 360-degree image representation.The second method builds upon the UPDT algorithm, combining it with our first method to create a robust 360-degree visual tracking algorithm. This improved approach introduces specific enhancements tailored to the unique challenges of 360-degree visual tracking and proposes solutions to these issues, improving robustness and efficiency.In our experiments, we utilize two datasets to evaluate our proposed methods. For the first time, we conduct a quantitative analysis of 360-degree visual tracking algorithms using the OTB-format equirectangular 360-degree dataset, which consists of 21 video sequences. Additionally, we apply the 360VOT dataset to our algorithms for experimentation. The results demonstrate that our proposed methods significantly enhance the success rate and accuracy of 360-degree visual tracking while ensuring their effectiveness and reliability.Additionally, we explore the application of 360-degree visual tracking methods in editing, enabling the automatic manipulation of moving objects in 360-degree videos.</p
VR (virtual reality) Talatala mai Nateaho Sharing ancient Stories "as sea level rise!"
No full textTuvalu, including Nanumea, faces the existential threat of rising sea levels, endangering both physical landscapes and cultural heritage. Key sites such as the Aahiga (Island hall) and Lotolelei (church) are at risk, along with the traditions they represent.This research investigates advanced scanning technologies to digitally capture two culturally significant sites in Nanumea and create a virtual reality (VR) experience enriched with sound and video footage of cultural events. Beyond technical preservation, The data collection consists of two key components. First, photogrammetry, laser scanning, and LiDAR will be used to create high-resolution 3D models, ensuring detailed preservation of architectural and environmental elements. Second, interviews with Nanumean elders will provide insights into the cultural significance of these sites. Their narratives and insights will be integrated into the VR experience. The immersive environment will be developed using a game engine and specialized software for modeling and scene creation.By combining high-tech preservation with cultural storytelling, this project aims to safeguard both the tangible and intangible heritage of Nanumea, offering a new approach to cultural resilience in the face of climate change.</p
Features and Transport Properties of 2D Topological-Insulator Polygonal Flakes
No full textConventional topological insulators in d-dimensions are characterised by gapless states localised at their boundaries with topologically trivial insulators, such as the vacuum. These gapless states exist in (d−1)-dimensions. Higher-order topological insulators host gapless boundary states in fewer dimensions, along hinges (d= 3) or at the corners (d= 3, 2) of a system. This thesis focuses on two-dimensional second- order topological insulators with localised states at their corners. Two models are considered, where the topological character is protected by i) a combined fourfold rotation and time-reversal symmetry or ii) inversion symmetry. In both cases a low-energy theory along an edge is used to derive conditions on the features, locations and total number of these states in polygonal flakes.Multi-terminal transport through a rectangular flake is studied, where the leads are first-order topological insulators supporting helical edge states. It is demonstrated that these setups function as topological switches, where the transmission between neighbouring contacts is controlled by an in-plane magnetic field. This functionality is shown to be remarkably robust to the presence of strong disorder due to the topological nature of the states contributing to transport. Introducing a proximity-induced s-wave pairing in the leads of a two-terminal setup provides a new perspective to Fu and Kane’s study of a superconductor/quantum-spin-Hall/superconductor junction: the edge states in the leads resemble Kitaev’s one-dimensional p-wave superconducting wire, in which Majorana zero-modes are predicted to localise at the ends (near the flake). The current phase relation has 4π rather than 2π periodicity due to the hybridisation of these modes. This is a well known Majorana signature, and many proposals have been made to realise it in other systems. The connection between the work in this thesis and the literature is discussed.</p
The Wise Ones Are All Mad: Cultural Dimensions of Mental Illness in India
No full textThis dissertation explores the gap mental health experts perceive between official and popular discourses about mental illness in India, focusing on how historical and cultural factors contribute to differing understandings rooted in different frameworks. It argues that current literature and dominant discourses about mental illness in India, particularly regarding stigma, are limited and influenced by colonial legacies. These legacies are commonly perceived to have shaped contemporary challenges in mental healthcare by restricting public awareness and fostering mistrust towards mental health institutions. However, this research calls for a broader understanding of mental illness in official medical discourses that transcends these colonial influences and acknowledges India's diverse cultural perspectives.Drawing from Foucault’s concept of differing bodies of knowledge for a comparative analysis of popular media and official mental healthcare manuals, the dissertation demonstrates that popular portrayals offer a distinct discourse on mental illness. The portrayals depict mental illness through a cultural lens, integrating social and spiritual explanations. These explanations contrast with the medical explanations in official texts and highlight how the official dominant framework fails to encompass this cultural complexity. This suggests that the perceived knowledge gap between experts and the public is more about differing and incompatible knowledge frameworks rather than a lack of understanding. This incompatibility can be traced to the power relations introduced to India during the colonial period, which established the dominance of Western medical frameworks over precolonial frameworks. Further employing Foucault’s concept of epistemic shifts, a historical analysis of understandings of madness in medical and popular texts during the periods when Siddha, Ayurveda, and Unani were the dominant medical systems suggests that precolonial knowledge relations were characterised by a certain kind of pluralism. These relations were disrupted by the colonial processes of knowledge production which imposed a dominant standardised, biomedical approach that dismissed alternative understandings. These colonial power dynamics remain today, in the dominance of the official medical discourses, established by dismissing popular understandings. This limits the official framework by constraining its ability to integrate alternative understandings, which has implications in India where the social and cultural explanations in conceptualising mental illness reveal that contemporary popular discourses continue to draw from historical ways of understanding madness. The narrow focus of the current medical frameworks fails to acknowledge the complexities of mental illness in the Indian context, and extends to the experts' interpretation of stigma, where public responses categorised as stigma might actually reflect historically shaped alternative understandings of mental illness in popular understandings. By highlighting the power dynamics inherent in knowledge production, the dissertation emphasises the need for a more integrated approach that recognises both historical and popular understandings of mental illness as alternative discourses. It suggests learning from the pluralistic precolonial processes of knowledge production to create more culturally attuned medical discourses today. Ultimately, this work advocates for the recognition of non-Western knowledge frameworks within the dominant Western frameworks to effectively address mental illness in India.</p
Mending the Mind
No full textArchitecture plays a crucial role in the rehabilitation of patients recovering from brain surgery. The physical and mental repercussions of recovery are significantly influenced by the environments we inhabit, highlighting the relationship between the built environment and a patient’s well-being. This raises the question: how can architecture enhance the quality of life for recovering patients by humanizing the physical and mental aspects of space and design?Rehabilitation environments are essential to a patient’s medical treatment and recovery; however, the psychological effects of a demoralizing atmosphere can often lead to prolonged health issues, worsening the original condition. This research explores a range of design methods aimed at humanizing architecture through intimacy, belonging, and atmosphere, providing a balance between institutional treatment and domesticity through the lens of the patient, ultimately improving the quality of life for both patients and their families.</p
Revisiting Baroque Gesture in the Twenty-First Century
No full textIn my opera training in Australia in the 2000s, my acting coaches instilled in me the principle of finding the motivation for the stage movement for my character through studying the text (the words) and its subtext (underlying meanings). The aim as I understood it was to react “honestly”, so that a relevant movement would follow. Now, as an opera singer who for many years has performed in baroque operas with historically informed music and yet contemporary staging, I see recurring problems during the rehearsal period and in performance: what is seen must suit the director’s contemporary intentions and taste for realism, while what is heard must exhibit the conductor’s knowledge of historical performance and the singer’s world class singing ability, ideally showcasing virtuosic ability. As an opera singer my primary focus is to sing well, with ease and agility. To sing with ease, I must also focus on my stage craft (acting), planning movements which positively influence my breath flow and vocalisations. Throughout my career I have noticed that my training in stage craft has not completely given me all the tools I require to perform, in particular, eighteenth-century opera with contemporary staging.For me, the question remains of how to act convincingly while singing my best. How can singers find a better balance between the old and the new? Are there ways of successfully uniting the musical gestures of historical practice embraced within these performances with physical gestures advised in earlier periods for expressive acting? Could this unification be beneficial to me as a singer when expressing intensely dramatic moments in pre-romantic opera, or when the text of an aria is repeated due to musical convention and I feel the need to vary and develop the expression?In this research project I investigate the use of physical historical gestures as a way to address issues I have encountered, such as when I move in ways that respond passionately to the drama, but find it is compromising my vocal ability, or when multiple repeats of the words do not seem to follow natural patterns of thought and are therefore difficult to align with a director’s request for “realistic” communication and “realistic” staging. In this exegesis and in my recital, I explore the possibilities for incorporating the principles of baroque gesture and acting styles within contemporary stagings of pre-romantic operas. I examine the limitations and specific benefits of these gestural styles to the singer as a physical performer, using as my guide the published works of Dene Barnett, The Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of 18th Century Acting (Barnett 1987), John Bulwer, Chirologia, or the Natural Language of the Hand (Bulwer 1644), and Johannes Jelgerhuis, Theoretische Lessen over de Gesticulatie en Mimiek (Jelgerhuis 1827). I chose to focus on these sources after discussing the topic and my study materials with baroque specialist performers in Australia and New Zealand who recommended the Barnett and Jelgerhuis texts. In addition to these works I included John Bulwer’s treatise from the seventeenth century, because I found his many images of gestures, particularly hand gestures, particularly compelling.My research approach is one of critical self-observation and self-reflection, with case studies discussing my process and reflections as I attempted to apply physical gestures selected from the sources expressively while singing the arias. I demonstrate this practically through the recital and discuss the findings in this written exegesis, providing a seasoned performer’s perspective on the effects, benefits and limitations of the use of such gestures. I argue that certain gestures are universally-understood and enhance the performance by not only conserving the singer’s voice and improving breath control, but by increasing communication with the audience, no matter how close or distant they are, through the combination of persuasive sonic and visual gesture.</p
Queer Activism in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1961 - 2013
No full textThis thesis traces the trajectory of queer activism in Aotearoa New Zealand from 1961 to 2013. It expands on prior historical studies that focus on gay men and lesbians by bringing the activism of transgender, bisexual, takatāpui, intersex, and more communities into focus. Working in a transfeminist framework, the word “queer” is used to foreground how the myriad communities of people with diverse genders, sexualities, and sex characteristics were materially entwined. Ten interviews were conducted for this thesis, and these are examined alongside intensive archival research to unveil activist motivations, strategies, theories, actions, fierce debates and moments of profound solidarity. Beginning in 1961, this thesis historicises the infrapolitical practices of resistance that characterised 1960s kamp communities. With the emergence of gay liberation, lesbian-feminism and trans liberation in the early 1970s, queer radicals gained a new language of liberation and explored playful and confrontational methods of protest. Queer people became politicised in ever-larger numbers. Activist groups were created in small towns, and a strong lesbian indigenous movement influenced by broader demands for Māori sovereignty emerged. Troubling linear and progressive accounts of queer history, this thesis demonstrates the contested politics and contradictory outcomes of law reforms targeting queer people throughout this period. The decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1986 encouraged an expansion of queer life, but only some communities found greater mainstream acceptance. Other marginalised queer communities became more vocal in their demands for rights, or in their opposition to assimilation. In the 2000s the legal recognition of same-sex coupledom was prioritised by some activists, while others maintained a critical view of reform and pursued queer liberation as part of a broader anti-colonial, anti-capitalist movement. This thesis ends in 2013, with the legalisation of same-sex marriage, and a queer movement that explored how to confront queer oppression in an era of legal equality. Over the five decades under review, queer activism was highly dynamic, characterised by a tension between liberalism and radicalism. While liberal approaches sought incorporation primarily through achieving legal rights, radical approaches targeted the structures of heterosexist domination as part of an anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist struggle. This study demonstrates that radicalism has been a core part of Aotearoa’s queer political histories, sometimes in conflict with liberalism, at other times in solidarity. Ultimately, this thesis argues that only through understanding the complex and fluid relationships between diverse queer communities can their activism and hopes for liberation be understood.</p
Re-imagining Informal Environments: Quarry Road West informal settlement in Durban, South Africa
No full textThis research explores the architectural dynamics within Durban’s QRW informal settlement, inspired by a personal connection. It challenges architects to engage creatively with marginalised communities, examining community-built approaches, resilience, and sustainable urbanism.Community-built methods promote participatory construction that empowers residents and enables quick implementation. Resilience theory focuses on community recovery from disruptions, while sustainable urbanism seeks long-term viability across environmental, social, and economic dimensions.The central question is: “How can comprehensive redevelopment of informal settlements improve residents’ safety, quality of life, and social engagement, serving as a model for upgrades in hazardous environments?” It views these settlements as sources of innovation and resilience.Using a Design-Led Research methodology, the study combines site analysis, literature review, secondary data, and GIS mapping to build a nuanced understanding of QRW and generate insights for architectural practice and policy.This research uncovers adaptive spatial relationships shaped by socio-cultural norms, environmental challenges, and urbanisation, highlighting informal settlements’ potential to inspire sustainable, inclusive, and culturally relevant urban solutions.In conclusion, it calls for holistic engagement with informal settlement realities, urging architects and planners to recognise the value of these communities in creating resilient, sustainable, and equitable urban spaces.</p
Roots and Roofs; The Spaces Between
No full textRepresentation and belonging have always been interwoven with one’s sense of place. But for most immigrants whose nationality and ethnicity do not align in a traditional sense, this feeling of home is often shaped by a process of assimilation, where belonging to a new environment becomes integral to a sense of self-identity. This built environment, reflective of sociocultural norms, draws on collective cultural conventions and understandings, often mirroring the dominant culture(s) of the host country’s demographic majority. However, this traditional methodology becomes, more complex as communities become increasingly multicultural. Often struggling to represent the nuanced and layered nature of identity within diasporic communities.Thus, this thesis explores how placemaking, in the form of architecture, can better embody these nuances inherent to diasporic experiences within the context of first-generation immigrants – the children of immigrants who were the first to settle in a new country. Through design experiments and critical analysis, this research is a journey of discovery into how to conceptualise this unique perspective through architectural responses to diaspora and cultural duality. The findings reveal strategies that architecture can adopt to honour both the rootedness and the dynamic nature of identifying with a diaspora. This research proposes a framework for creating more inclusive and culturally responsive spaces that reflect the oscillating identities and experiences of diasporic communities. With the hope of creating a shared feeling of belonging across cultural differences, this thesis argues that reimagining architectural practice to consider a more dynamic understanding of identity can foster more inclusive spaces. Ultimately redefining the relationship between architecture and cultural identity within an increasingly globalised world.</p
The Detection of Online Textual Hate Speech
No full textHate speech is a pervasive societal problem with real-life consequences, especially when spread on social media platforms. Its detection has been attempted by both manual and automated methods. Manual methods involve cyber-security personnel filtering through large quantities of text to detect and flag or delete the aberrant ones. This method is not scalable due to the pervasiveness of the internet. On the other hand, automated methods involve using hand-crafted rules rooted in language syntax or machine learning techniques. The hand-crafted rules are incapable of accounting for the nuances of hate speech and thus are not feasible. Machine learning techniques have propelled the detection task by providing speed and some increase in accuracy.Albeit this advancement from machine learning techniques, most of which have framed the detection task as a text classification task, there exists a need for an improvement in the data and the features used to build these models. Also, there is a need to rethink and reframe what the models detect in each sentence; the presence of hate or its target.This thesis aims to improve the detection of hate speech on social media platforms by addressing the challenges with the data, constructing new informative features and providing better explainability by detecting which protected category a hateful instance is attacking. This thesis develops a novel token replacement-based data augmentation method by proposing new sources of synonyms to provide better substitute word options and novel methods of selecting the best-substituted words in a sentence to maintain the original meaning. It also investigates the effectof homogeneity and heterogeneity in the replacement and classification embedding setting. The results show that the new sources of synonyms and the use of a heuristic to select best-substituted words advanced the performance. Further advancement is achieved when the replacement and classification embedding are kept homogeneous.This thesis constructs new syntactic features that preserve the sentence’s contextual information, thereby improving the detection of closely related offensive language and hate speech. The proposed methods show improvement in the detection task and strongly convey the importance of discerning the context surrounding a sentence. This context can change a sentence from hateful to merely offensive.This thesis, continuing to include ethical and platform-independent contextual information into the features, explores the construction of semantic features by harnessing word embeddings and emotional information. The results show the ability of the proposed methods to construct enriching features that improve the detection of hate speech. It also demonstrates the influence of negative emotions on hate speech.This thesis also focused on detecting the target a hateful sentence is attacking instead of a mere hate speech/non-hate speech detection. This reduction in granularity promises to include more explainability in the detection paradigm. This method also presents the detection problem as semi-supervised, allowing the use of both labelled and unlabelled data.The results show the ability of the proposed methods to effectively detect which protected category the hateful sentence is targeting.To sum up, the thesis develops multiple approaches that improve the effectiveness of detecting hate speech. The proposed methods are evaluated on publicly available English language hate speech datasets. When incorporated into hate speech detection systems deployed on social media platforms, these methods can help safely curb the proliferation of hateful and harmful messages.</p
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