Art has a unique way of informing the values and beliefs of culture. Exploring that idea, a group of friends and I visited the Timken Museum in San Diego recently. We spent time pursuing their small but impressive collection, then focused on their amazing Russian Iconography collection. We then had a conversation about some of what we saw, and how it relates both to the culture of the past and the present.
Art has a unique way of informing the values and beliefs of culture. Exploring that idea, a group of friends and I visited the Timken Museum in San Diego recently. We spent time pursuing their small but impressive collection, then focused on their amazing Russian Iconography collection. We then had a conversation about some of what we saw, and how it relates both to the culture of the past and the present.
The User at the Wheel of the Online Video Search Engineckofler
The recent increase in the volume and variety of video content available online presents growing challenges for video search. Users face increased difficulty in formulating effective queries and search engines must deploy highly effective algorithms to provide relevant results. This talk addresses these challenges by introducing two novel frameworks and approaches. First, we discuss a principled framework for multimedia retrieval that moves beyond 'what' users are searching for also to encompass 'why' they search. This 'why' is understood as the reason, purpose or immediate goal behind a user information need, which is identified as the underlying 'user intent'. We identify useful intent categories for online video search, present validation experiments showing that these categories display enough invariance to be successfully modeled by a video search engine and demonstrate the potential for these categories to improve video retrieval with a large crowdsourcing user study. Second, we present a novel approach able to predict for which queries results optimization is most useful, i.e., predicting which queries will fail in the search session of a user on a video search engine. Being able to predict when a video search query would fail is likely to make the video search result optimization more efficient and deploy optimization techniques more effectively. This approach uses a combination of features derived from the search log of a video search engine (capturing users' behavior) and features derived from the video search results list (capturing the visual variance of search results), with the objective to predict whether a particular query is likely to fail in the context of a particular search session.
1. Representation of People in my Magazine
High-key lighting promotes summer setting, and references ethnic
background of high-temperature countries.
Typography references the all black costume, and personality of the
artist as a ‘dark person’. The use of juxtaposition insinuates clever
wordplay, a feature used extensively by rappers in their lyrics.
The setting is urban and connotes masculinity and grittiness, features of
the artist on show.
The medium close-up focuses on body language and expression with
clarity. His mean, engaged facial expression connotes aggression (mouth
open and teeth shown) and retains masculine qualities in its animalistic
vibe.
Use of Ebonics in the puff: ‘Whip Bumping’, represents Hip-Hop culture
and terms used by artists in the genre.
2. Low angle shot connotes power and dominance, especially due to the
fact that the artist is being compared in height to the structure behind.
The vertical layout of the page also reinforces this.
Masculine colours (red, black and white) are utilised, while the white,
smart dress shirt connotes wealth, class and fashion
conscientiousness.Connotation of wealth is thus bolstered by the
appearance of the chain being held by the artist.
Headline of the contents page: ‘Big-League’ intended to be paired with
‘Little-League’ on the following page. This is to show the wittiness of the
artists in regard to wordplay, while also highlighting which features are
most important, with ‘Big-League’ being most.
The pull quote displays how self-glorifying the artist from the front cover
is, connoting confidence and his egotistical nature that mirages real Hip
Hop artists such as Kanye West.
College-esque typography connotes being young, free, educated and
focused.
3. Use of masculine, aggressive colours connoting male-orientated music.
The vivid red and gold colouring signifies danger and wealth.
Bold, college-styled font connotes knowledge, masculinity, and a young
age, belying the artist.
Black and red costume signifies intimidation, warning and danger.
Combined with the chain and hat, it infers an urban, street lifestyle that
rappers live.
Microphone references passion in regard to music and the dedication
the artist has to his genre.
The pull quotes retain connotations of ambition and self-glorification.
The off-white background is intended to be quite urban and gritty,
reflecting on the artist’s music itself.
