1,721,001 research outputs found
The role of colour in Modern Movement Architecture. The case of Terragni’s Casa del Fascio in Como
No full textThe belief that 20th-Century architecture can be recognized by the use it made of the colour white has been widely rebutted over the last few years. One of the most interesting results of the research studies on the buildings of the Modern Movement is the rediscovery of colours. Many factors contributed to the idea that Modern Architecture was mainly characterized by white, but black and white photography is for sure the most influential one. All those black & white pictures were instrumental in paving the way for a precise iconography associated to Modern Architecture, thus leading to a serious misconception. It is as if Modern Architecture lived a parallel life in vintage photographs. Even if it is perceived in the collective imagination as that perfect artistic shot suspended in time and space, Modern Architecture did develop and change over time, in particular with respect to details and finishes, such as colours. This article aims at highlighting those tiny changes that – even though insignificant when taken singularly – substantially contribute to changing the way a building is perceived when considered as a whole. Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio is so well suited to the purpose. One of the masterpieces of the Italian Modern Movement, inaugurated in 1936, it has been used as Guardia di Finanza police headquarter since 1957. Colour variations represent a key element in the architectural language of Casa del Fascio. The plasters, the wood and iron windows and shutters, the doors, the grout joints of the concrete-framed glass blocks, the stairway railings changed in colour many times, thus altering the appearance of the building. Walls, for example, have many different coats of paint: originally the lower part had a special colour obtained by mixing blue and light green, while the upper part had a lighter colour. When looking at black & white vintage photos we can spot the different colour shades, as if these were supposed to enhance some surfaces in contrast to others. Today this effect has been eliminated through the white paint coat applied to all the surfaces. The stairway railing met a similar fate: originally embellished by a two-tone effect it is now all black. Together with the white walls it seems to inaccurately translate the vintage pictures. Although it is of utmost importance to understand which colours characterized the building at the time of its construction, no less important is to comprehend how its surfaces were transformed over time and why a specific colour was chosen and eventually altered. Terragni’s Casa del Fascio can now be returned to the inexorable passing of time, as it no more embodies the idea of an incorruptible monument
Non invasive techniques for identification and characterization of polymers in contemporary artworks.
No full textContemporary art collections include a huge variety of polymeric materials - briefly identified as “plastics” - that react differently to the same environmental conditions and can undergo dramatically diverse degradation processes. Hence, a fundamental starting point in any plan of preservation of plastics artworks is the identification of types of polymers constituting the objects and, when possible, the assessment of the degradation stage for each polymer identified. At present, tests available for plastics identification are borrowed from industrial field: in most cases they require sampling and are destructive or, at least, micro-destructive. This fact limits their applicability in the museums context, where the integrity of the artwork is a fundamental value to be taken into account. Nowadays, methodologies based on evaluation of visual appearance and odors remain the most practiced alternative for a simple, non destructive classification of materials in plastic artworks. Thus, non invasive methods for rapid identification of materials and diagnosis of degradation are highly required for preservation of contemporary art collections. The aim of this work is to study applicability and potentialities of two non-invasive spectroscopic techniques, namely FORS (Fiber Optic Reflectance Spectroscopy) and Dielectric Spectroscopy, as measurement principles of portable systems for the quick identification of plastics and characterization of most frequent degradation phenomena. FORS is an optical technique based on acquisition of the reflectance spectrum in the UV-Vis-NIR spectral region (300-2100nm). By means of a portable spectrophotometer equipped with optical fibers probe-head, the spectrum is recorded in-situ in a totally non-invasive way, and, thanks to the versatility of optical fiber accessories, any point of the object can be measured without constraints due to size or shape of the object. The spectral data on the extended UV-Vis-NIR are exploitable for different purposes: the NIR spectrum can provide indications about the occurrence of chemical species characteristics of a given polymeric class. Instead, the spectral reflectance in the visible region is used for colorimetric analysis and is a powerful tool for monitoring changes in appearance that are symptoms of several degradation phenomena. Dielectric Spectroscopy consists in the measurement of the dielectric permittivity of materials using sensors operating in a very broad frequency region of the electromagnetic spectrum (from a few Hz up to tens of GHz). Dielectric permittivity is a physical parameter that can be related to the capability of polarization of the material in presence of an applied electrical field, and hence its measurement provides information about the tendency of molecular dipoles to follow the orientation of the applied field. This is in turn related to chemical and physical properties of materials. In this context dielectric spectroscopy can be useful for distinguishing between given classes of polymers (e.g. nitrate and acetate of cellulose), as well as for assessing structural molecular alterations (chain length changes) and monitoring ageing phenomena. Both these techniques are already used in conservation field for non-invasive diagnostic on artworks. Nevertheless, so far they have been employed and optimized for characterization of antique artifacts and ‘traditional’ artistic materials: the idea is now to apply these approaches to contemporary artworks, and in particular to polymeric materials. To this purpose, the first unavoidable step is to build specific spectral references databases of polymers of interests in the museum context. Therefore, a set of certified standards (Resinkit®) of the most common polymers has been characterized using both FORS and dielectric spectroscopy, and preliminary results are discussed here. This work is carried out in the framework of the on-going EC Research Project “Popart” (Preservation Of Plastic ARTefacts in museum collections). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement n° 212218
Considerations on light and colour for TV broadcasting
No full textIn a recent teaching experience within the Master in Lighting Design & LED Technology of Politecnico di Milano, the students had the opportunity to visit the production studios of Mediaset and to attend a lesson on the use of light in television spaces. The subject is undoubtedly fascinating, having its roots in the art of illumination of classical theatre, up to new approaches and technologies, such as automated mobile lights and LED light sources.
The approach to lighting for the TV differs (albeit with some significant overlap) from the more traditional architectural lighting; the organization of the workgroup, the design processes and the tools used, the objectives to be expressed with the light and the strategies to achieve them, the available technologies and above all, the colour control of the lighting envelope.
Lighting for television spaces (but also for movie industry) is based on the assumption that the final observer is not the human being as for the architectural sector, but the camera. The digital eye of the camera does not have the internal dynamics of the human visual system; it does not have the same automatic adaptation and correction mechanisms, although technology allows numerous operations to control the parameters related to colour. Based on this assumption, the indices commonly used for the human observer such as the CRI or TM-30 are also not adequate for an evaluation of the sources (or lighting systems) for television and cinema applications.
The purpose of this contribution is not to cover all the techniques for the lighting of television studios (extensive topic) entirely, but to collect a right amount of information relating to the operations on light and its chromaticities, such as correction and indices used for the colour temperature or the limits and possibilities given by the new technologies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Open Studio sulle semilunette della Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II conservate alla Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Milano
No full textVariations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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