28 Critical Reflections: random 1 t0 7
The singularity of specular reflections is demanded by the fact that if one tries to apply to them the schema of communicational process many puzzling questions arise: source and addressee coincide (at least in cases where a human looks at him or herself in the mirror); receiver and transmitter coincide; expression and content coincide since the content of the reflected image is just the image of a body, not the body itself; as a matter of fact the referent of a mirror image is pure visual matter.[3]
Carving is interrelated masses conveying an emotion; a perfect relationship between the mind and the colour, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels. It must be so essentially sculpture that it can exist in no other way, something completely the right size but which has growth, something still and yet having movement, so very quiet and yet with a real vitality.[7]
Oh yes, there were birds, but not like the birds you see today. Big as eagles and coloured like kingfishers. They roosted on the ledges of the towers, and under the ramps. Long curving ribbon ramps, with... Obviously these were too heavy to fly, so they had to go on the roads. Very fast. Automated, of course.[2]
Reflection can be used for observing and/or modifying program execution at runtime. A reflection-oriented program component can monitor the execution of an enclosure of code and can modify itself according to a desired goal related to that enclosure.[6]
This can be explained by the existence of microfacets. We assume that surfaces that are not perfectly smooth are composed of many very tiny facets, each of which is a perfect specular reflector. These microfacets have normals that are distributed about the normal of the approximating smooth surface. The degree to which microfacet normals differ from the smooth surface normal is determined by the roughness of the surface. At points on the object where the smooth normal is close to the half-angle direction, many of the microfacets point in the half-angle direction and so the specular highlight is bright. As one moves away from the center of the highlight, the smooth normal and the half-angle direction get farther apart; the number of microfacets oriented in the half-angle direction falls, and so the intensity of the highlight falls off to zero.[6]
The gallery is a lovely bright space, all white-painted wood and high ceilings, with a few stunning pieces, but the garden's the real show-stopper here. It's quite small, but full of amazing and very varied sculptures, placed far enough apart that you can enjoy each one individually, but close enough together that you can get really interesting perspectives of three or four at once.[8]
My left hand is my thinking hand. The right is only a motor hand. This holds the hammer. The left hand, the thinking hand, must be relaxed, sensitive. The rhythms of thought pass through the fingers and grip of this hand into the stone.[7]
28 Critical Reflections random 8 to 14
Back to Clive's home page
Sources
[1] http://www.neworleanspast.com/art/id62.html
[2] Ken MacLeod, Reflective Surfaces, New Scientist, 2009.
[3] Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University Press, 1979.
[4] Clive Fencott, Reflections on seeing River Form in Barbra Hepworth's garden in St. Ives.
[5] http://www.flickr.com/photos/nigelhomer/316548379/
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_highlight