The Visual Language of Technique: Volume 2 - Heritage and Expectations in Research

178 Pages·2015·9.248 MB·

by  Luigi Cocchiarella (eds.)

Luigi Cocchiarella Editor
The Visual
Language
of Technique
Volume 2
Heritage and Expectations
in Research
The Visual Language of Technique
Luigi Cocchiarella
Editor
The Visual Language
of Technique
–
Volume 2 Heritage and Expectations
in Research
123
Editor
LuigiCocchiarella
Department of Architectureand
Urban Studies
Politecnico diMilano
Milan
Italy
ISBN 978-3-319-05340-0 ISBN 978-3-319-05341-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-05341-7
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Forewords
TheVisualLanguage:aPowerfulToolandaGreatResponsibilityforScience,
Art and Technology
Agreatopportunityisofferedbytheinternationalseminar“TheVisualLanguageof
TechniquebetweenScienceand”,sincewehavethechancetolearnfromlecturers
fromJapan,theUnitedStates,AustriaandItaly,offeringusdifferentperceptionson
the real, deep meaning and importance of the visual language of technique, the
science, the technology and the arts in the research as well as in the teaching.
There are three main reasons for this initiative to be commended. First of all,
becausethisisoneoftheinternationaleventshostedtocelebratethePolitecnicodi
Milano 150th anniversary, a very important date for our university.
The second reason is the topic of the conference: it is related to the motto of
Politecnico di Milano, which our Rector conceived 3 years ago—Technology,
CreativityandCulture.Thesethreesimplewordswelldepicttheimportanceandthe
trajectory of the theme of the conference, i.e. images, visualization and visual
language. We all understand how important are the visual language, the visuali-
zationtechniquesandtheimagesinthedevelopmentofscienceandtechnologyand
somelectureswilltestifythat.Butvisualizationisnotonlyimportanttounderstand,
todiscoverortogenerateknowledge.Itrepresentsafundamentaltoolandthevital
foodforcreativity.Oftenapictureisbetterthanathousandwords,asLeonardoda
Vincistated.Thatsentencecouldberephrasedsayingthatwhenwestudy,explore
and when we really understand an image, that understanding is able to generate a
thousand words, to generate reasoning by means of which we create knowledge,
new solutions, innovation. And we translate them into another thousand pictures,
imagesormaybeevenjustintoonesinglepicture,abletovisualizeandtranslatethe
novelty,theessence,possiblythetruththatwearelookingfor.Andthatisculture.
Thethirdandthelastreasonthisinitiativedeservestobecommended,isthatthe
leading actors of the discussion will be the students with their poster session,
devotedtodemonstratehowimagesfromtheirresearchcansupportthetopicofthe
conference.TheworkofPh.D.studentsfromseveraldepartmentsofPolitecnicodi
v
vi Forewords
Milanowillbeshownaswell.Asortofmosaicor“symphony”ofvisuallanguages
having technology, science and art as a common background.
Lastbutnotleast,manythankstotheCoordinator,Prof.LuigiCocchiarella,and
to the attendees of the seminar. From the Proceedings of the conference you will
recogniseafruitfulmeetingaswellasaninterestingopportunityforknowledgeand
collaboration.
Milan, June 2013 Marco Ricotti
Research’s delegate
Politecnico di Milano
Research Through Visual Reasoning: an Introduction
In Plato’s “Meno” Socrates, by drawing geometric figures in the ground, gets a
slave to recognize the truth of a simple geometrical demonstration. Plato wants to
show that, using an inborn knowledge, also a slave that does not know anything
about mathematics can understand a demonstration and can learn a logical
argument.
But,asMichelSerreshaswritteninhisbookOriginsofgeometry,Plato’slesson
isbasedonadiagram,i.e.onvisuallanguage.ItisthroughimagesthatSocratescan
showhypothesesandconsequences;itisthroughempiricalsignsthatmathematical
reasoning works.
AttheoriginsofWesternthought,theroleofvisualthinkingseemstobecrucial
for the construction of our scientific tradition.
Visuallanguageisnotonlyatoolforcommunicatingresearchresults:itisaway
ofreasoning.AsC.S.PeircewritesinhisCollectedpapersdiagrammaticreasoning
basedontheconstructionofadiagram,accordingtoaperceptexpressedingeneral
terms,andontheperformanceofexperimentsuponthisdiagram.AsPeircewrites:
“It has long been a puzzle how it could be that, on the one hand, mathematics is
purelydeductiveinitsnature,anddrawsitsconclusionsapodictically,whileonthe
other hand, it presents as rich and apparently unending a series of surprising dis-
coveries as any observational science. Various have been the attempts to solve the
paradox by breaking down one or other of these assertions, but without success.
The truth, however, appears to be that all deductive reasoning, even simple syllo-
gism, involves an element of observation; namely, deduction consists in con-
structing an icon or diagram the relations of whose parts shall present a complete
analogy with those of the parts of the object of reasoning, of experimenting upon
this image in the imagination, and of observing the result so as to discover unno-
ticedandhiddenrelationsamongtheparts.”(TheEssentialPhilosophicalWritings,
Indiana Univ. Press, Indianapolis, 1:227, 188.)
This kind of reasoning, often connected to the abduction, is crucial not only in
mathematics, but also in many different research fields. Reasoning through dia-
grams means using visual language for very different reasons: experimenting new
hypotheses through visual models; probing new research directions; define new
forms of representation.
Forewords vii
Architects, for example, usevisuallanguageasan experimentaltool,producing
researchbydesignandvisualizingdifferentopportunitiesandpossibilitiesgivenby
the context, the materials, the techniques.
As the Director of a multidisciplinary department in Architecture and Urban
Studies I can see how visual languages are a crucial part of the research efforts in
the fields of architectural and urban design, urban planning and analysis, but also
restoration techniques and projects; historical inquiry; geography.
In the urban field the use of visual language is rapidly changing, with the
introductionofnewandpowerfulvisualtechniques.Thenewformsofrepresenting
urban phenomena empower the research activities and are open to radical inno-
vation in many research directions.
For all these reasons this seminar organized by Luigi Cocchiarella about the
visual language of techniques, and especially this discussion about heritage and
expectations in the research field, can be a very fruitful occasion for developing a
reflection on the old and new forms of visual thinking, enriching the dialogue
between engineers, architects and other scholars in a Polytechnic perspective.
Milan, June 2013 Gabriele Pasqui
Head of the Department of Architecture
and Urban Studies
Politecnico di Milano
Preface
This volume is the second in the series inspired by the cycle of three seminars
connectedtothecelebrationof the150th anniversary ofthePolitecnico diMilano,
titled The Visual Language of Technique Between Science and Art: Heritage and
ExpectationsinResearchandTeachingandfocusingonHistoryandEpistemology
(May 2013), Research (June 2013), Education (July 2013), then it includes the
contributions of the second meeting on the use of the image in technical research.
Reflecting the structure of the seminar, this volume starts with two Forewords,
written by the Research’s Delegate and by the Head of the Department of Archi-
tectureandUrbanStudiesofthePolitecnicodiMilano,thatpointouttheroleofthe
visual representation in relation to the research activities in the fields of Engi-
neering, Architecture and Design. A short introduction, the interview with the
Editorial Staff of the Science Magazine “Focus”, and an introductory essay, form
the Part I and help the reader to frame the topic. Essays by invited international
lecturers form Part II, where some of the most advanced researches in the field of
Digital Graphics and Applied Geometry are discussed in detail together with the
displayofasignificantseriesofcasestudies.PartIIIincludesthetalksoftheposter
session Images in Research, where Ph.D. students of the Politecnico illustrate the
levelofprogressintheirresearch,whichliesbetweenthePastandtheFuture.The
last part, the Tentative Afterword, is a final synthetic report about the discussion
related to the Round Table.
Accordingtothetargetofthethreevolumes,thisbookcanbereadbyscholars,
teachers, students and by all those readers who are interested in the way technical
research in Engineering, Architecture and Design use visual representations now-
adays.Moreaboutthecycleofseminarscanbefoundat:http://www.150.polimi.it.
My grateful thanks go to the authors, namely the invited colleagues and the
Ph.D. students, for their advanced contributions and for the preparation of the
here published essays, and to all those students, colleagues and friends who have
attended the seminar and participated in the discussion. My thorough thanks go to
Prof.FedericoBrunettiforthephotographicrecordsoftheeventandtomystudents
Mihai Dragos Potra, Violeta Popova, Pavlina Malinova, Caterina Scalzo, who
helped me with the transcription, translation and formatting of the published
ix
x Preface
materials.Thankstomywife,FrancescaScherillo,forherpresenceandhersupport,
and also for her hints about the seminar logo.
Concerning the organization of the seminar I address my acknowledgments to
theStaffinchargeatthePolitecnicoforthe150thCelebrations.Mygratitudegoes
to the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies for the financial support.
Milan, March 2014 Luigi Cocchiarella
Theofficiallogoofthesesquicentennial SeminarLogo1
1 (DesignedbytheAuthor.AssembledbytheCommunicationStaffofthePolitecnicodiMilano)
Contents
Part I Setting the Matter
Working with the Image: Description Processing Prediction . . . . . . . . 3
Luigi Cocchiarella
Colloquium with the Editorial Staff of the Science
Magazine FOCUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Luigi Cocchiarella
Cognitive Power of Visual Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Giuseppe Caglioti
Part II Visual Language in Research: Between Theory
and Applications
Interactive Sketch Interpreter for Geometric Modeling. . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Kunio Kondo and Taichi Watanabe
New Visualization Techniques in AEC-BIM More than Modeling . . . . 49
Clark A. Cory
Image Synthesis in Consideration of a Human Visual System . . . . . . . 65
Yasushi Yamaguchi
Walking in Virtual Reality: Flexible Spaces and Other Techniques . . . 81
Khrystyna Vasylevska, Iana Podkosova and Hannes Kaufmann
xi