Presentation at seminar Software and the Digital Humanities at Institut d'études avancées, Paris. November 4, 2015. Organized by Warren Sack and Nachum Dershowitz

1. Motion Structures:
opacity and translation
Everardo Reyes
Université Paris 8 / Lab. Paragraphe

2. Motion Structure of Bill Viola’s Intimate Work (2008)
1.2 K images

3. PNG
Image sequence ImageJ
IJM
motionStructure.ijm
PNG
MOV
OBJ

4. Google home page, from 1998 to 2015
200+ images

5. Google home page, from 1998 to 2015
Orthoslice view and Surface View

6. // motionStructure-v2
// this version replaces and extends the latest imageToObject 0.1
// Script written in ImageJ Macro Language (IJM)
// Description:
// This macro makes a digital 3D object out of an image sequence
// It asks for a directory path, then impots all images, converts them to 8-bit, substracts background, applies a smooth filter
and runs the 3D viewer with some predefined parameters
// To run the macro: open ImageJ, from the top menu Plugin, select Macros then Run… choose the file from your local disk.
// For information on how to use imageJ, see
// http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/
// Last modification: November 3, 2015, in Paris.
// By: Everardo Reyes Garcia
// http://ereyes.net
dir = getDirectory("Choose image sequence");
list = getFileList(dir);
print("directory contains " + list.length + " files");
run("Image Sequence...", dir);
name = getTitle;
print(name);
run("8-bit");
run("Subtract Background...", "rolling=50 stack");
run("Smooth", "stack");
// Display as Volume (last parameter in 0). Goes faster if no immediate need to export as OBJ
run("3D Viewer");
call("ij3d.ImageJ3DViewer.add", name, "None", name, "0", "true", "true", "true", "2", "0");
selectWindow(name);
Source code of motionStructure.ijm

7. Flowchart of motionStructure.ijm

8. Under the hood of 3D Viewer

9. Under the hood of Marching cubes algorithm,
W. Lorensen & H. Cline, 1987

10. Can we translate from
one domain to another ?
scientific images digital humanities

11. L. Manovich
Art and
Electronic Media
Software Takes
Command
E. Shanken
El Software
Toma el Mando (2013)
Inventar el
Futuro (2012)
3K readers
300+ readers
My own translation experiences

12. Translator
Percept
Alter-culture Ego-cultureSame Ego-culture
as receiver
Percept
adaptations
to target to source
adaptations
to target to source
A double act of communication
Translator
Transforms the artefact into an object of his/her own experience
Can be a member of the same culture as the sender or as the receiver
[ Schema adapted from: Sonesson, 2011 ]

13. Translation != encoding, transference, transportation, transposition
Translation == communication
• Receiver and sender are active
• Different cultures of sender and receiver
• They have to retrieve resources from of each other
Communication
• Presenting an artefact to another subject
• Assigning him/her the task of transforming it by means of
concretization into a percept
• Creating the artifact is a social act: it is determined by a set of
norms (aesthetic, social political, psychological or of any kind)

14. Intra-linguistic: changing one word/phrase of the same language for another
Inter-linguistic: from one verbal language to another
Intra-pictorial: exchanging one drawing for another
Inter-pictorial: substituting a photograph for a drawing
Intra-interfacial: substituting a “bouton” for another of a different kind
Inter-interfacial: exchanging a “bouton” for a slider
Inter-semiotic translation: transference of the content from one kind of
semiotic medium to another (e.g. novel ➜ film)
We are dealing with inter-semiotic translation

15. It is a transposition of elements from the whole culture
Sometimes happen implicit intersemiosis
Challenge of deformations
• Receiving culture has to create its own version of foreign elements
• Are there domains more oriented towards Receiver than Sender?
From Digital ➜ Humanities

16. Thank you for your attention
Everardo REYES
Université Paris 8 / Lab. Paragraphe