This paper presents a formal means of classifying physical processes for virtual and physical kinetic art. From such a taxonomy may be derived a language for artistic expression. Additionally, the classification of physical processes facilitates the analysis of existing kinetic works based on their dynamic properties. This is to be preferred over a classification based on a kinetic work’s stati...

To analyse the evolutionary emergence of structural complexity in physical processes, we introduce a general, but tractable, model of objects that interact to produce new objects. Since the objects--epsilon-machines--have well-defined structural properties, we demonstrate that complexity in the resulting population dynamical system emerges on several distinct organizational scales during evolut...

In sound field synthesis a given arrangement of elementary sound sources is employed in order to synthesize a sound field with given desired physical properties over an extended region. The calculation of the driving signals of these secondary sources typically assumes free-field propagation conditions. The present paper investigates the scattering of such synthetic sound fields from unavoidabl...

Remote sensing is the observation and measurement of objects from a distance, i.e. instruments or recorders are not in direct contact with objects under investigation. Remote sensing depends upon measuring some kind of energy that is emitted, transmitted, or reflected from an object in order to determine certain physical properties of the object. One of the most common types of remote sensing i...

The controversial term ”nondiffracting beam” was introduced into optics by Durnin in 1987. Discussions related to that term revived interest in problems of the light diffraction and resulted in an appearance of the new research direction of the classical optics dealing with the localized transfer of electromagnetic energy. In the paper, the physical concept of the nondiffracting propagation is ...

Demonstrating that neural activity 'represents' physical properties of the world such as the orientation of a line in the receptive field of a nerve cell is a standard procedure in neuroscience. However, not all such neural activity will be associated with the mental representations that form the contents of consciousness. In some cases, such as when patients with blindsight correctly 'guess' t...

When different perceptual signals of the same physical property are integrated, for example, an objects' size, which can be seen and felt, they form a more reliable sensory estimate (e.g., M. O. Ernst & M. S. Banks, 2002). This, however, implies that the sensory system already knows which signals belong together and how they relate. In other words, the system has to know the mapping between the...

The perception of objects does not rely only on visual brain areas, but also involves cortical motor regions. In particular, different parietal and premotor areas host neurons discharging during both object observation and grasping. Most of these cells often show similar visual and motor selectivity for a specific object (or set of objects), suggesting that they might play a crucial role in rep...

Art historians and critics have defined the style as common features appeared in a class of objects. Abstract common features from a set of objects have been used as a bench mark for date and location of original works. Common features in shapes are identified by relationships as well as physical properties from shape descriptions. This paper will focus on how the computer recognises common sha...

Gloss is a relatively little studied visual property of objects' surfaces. The earliest recorded scientific reference to gloss appears to have been by Ingersoll in 1921: studies at this time were based on the assumption that gloss could be understood as an inherent physical property of a surface, and the priority was to devise a satisfactory method and scale to measure it reliably. As awareness...