Research On The Key Technology And System Architecture Of New Media Painting

The innovation on the art of painting depends much on the innovation on painting media and tools. In the past decades, researchers has been innovating painting media and tools by applying digital technology, proposing and developing digital paint systems, and thus boosting the innovation, diversification and practicability of the art of painting. But previous researches on digital paint system mostly focused on the simulation of traditional painting media and tools, failed to introduce new painting media, and thus most digital paintings didn’t differ much from traditional paintings from appearance. The potential of digital paint systems is still far from exploited.To innovate digital painting, this study proposed a general design method to design new media paint systems, which refer to paint systems using new painting media, and then designed and implemented several new media paint systems that enable one to paint with fractals, real-time video and video feedback as painting media, respectively. Using these paint systems, one can create paintings that present new features such as novel visual effects, evolvability and interactivity.The contributions of this study are described as follows:(1) The author proposed a general methodology to design paint systems. First, the author proposed three strategies to achieve satisfactory novelability, versatility and controllability. Secondly, the author summarized seven design patterns of paint systems, each documenting a solution to a design problem in the expertise of paint systems. The three strategies and seven design patterns are the basis of the following new media paint systems.(2)The author proposed fractal paint system, to make easy designing the general structures of fractal images, which is not an easy task when using most existing fractal generating software. First, the user can visually design the general structure of a fractal painting and specify its essential details using two tools-fractal brush and fractal collage. The fractal painting is a2D graph that consists of series of sampling meshes and fractal meshes, which are both quad meshes. Every fractal mesh is connected to a sampling mesh. Next, when the user initiates the dynamics of the fractal painting, every fractal mesh recursively samples the collage using the sampling mesh connected to it, then processes the sampled image and displays it. Afterwards, the user can experiment with different initial states and thus the fractal collage can generate different fractal images, which all conform to the designed general structure, but differ significantly in detail. Compared to previous fractal image generating software, fractal paint system enables an easy way to create aesthetically appealing fractal images of specific subject matters.(3) The author proposed real-time video paint system. The system consists of a camera, an image processing unit and a painting unit. Under the user’s operation, the camera acquires real-time video, the image processing unit processes the acquired video, and the painting unit changes the content on the virtual canvas using the processed video as paints. The user can configure the image processing unit to behave differently by arranging its sub-blocks that have different functions, and thus he/she can perform various painting techniques. The author created some paintings in two ways-virtual exposing and physical objects collage. Virtual exposing mimicks and extends the popular photography technique "light painting". Objects collage is the painting practice that making collage with any everyday objects.(4) The author proposed video feedback(VF) paint system. VF occurs when a camera points to its own display. VF is a typical case of fractals and chaos and is able to generate evolving fractal patterns. But it is difficult to control VF to create artworks satisfying specified subjects. To solve this difficulty, the author proposed video feedback paint system and several improved implementations. The system enables the user to draw shapes directly on a display engaged in VF. These shapes geometrically and chromatically confine the VF dynamics and compose a designed2D composition which can include specific subject matters. The author created interactive VF-based artworks, which have the performative feature:they generate evolving patterns with the viewer manipulating anything possible between the camera and the display, yet always conform to designed2D compositions. A user test validate that the system makes VF a novel, versatile and controllable painting medium.