Book of Abstracts: July 2013 Paliwanagan sa UP Diliman July 2013 | Page 35

designs and works are always neat, with meticulous attention to details. She is
skilled in conceptualizing designs, developing products, and presenting her ideas.
Proficiency in 3D drawing and modeling allows her to translate designs into
realistic images or prototypes.

LUNTIAN: EDUCATIONAL TOY FOR INTRODUCING
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Leanza Garcia
The Earth is currently facing many environmental issues. With the growing global
environmental concern, it is necessary to introduce environmental education during
early childhood when a person’s brain development is at its peak. In teaching
children, teachers and parents often use toys and other fun methods, as these
are effective in getting children’s attention, resulting in better information absorption
and understanding. With this in mind, the concept of an educational toy for
introducing environmental topics among children at the preschool level was
developed.
The doll house – a familiar toy and an apt representation of the home – was
chosen for the final design. Named LUNTIAN, the doll house shows how proper
waste disposal, water conservation and energy conservation can, and should,
be practiced in our daily activities and routines. The aesthetics of the doll house
were kept simple but colorful and playful to appeal to both boys and girls. The
wood texture, together with the use of green as the main color, give an eco feel,
aesthetically representing the main purpose of the product.
Simple actions can make big differences, and it is important for children to learn
that their everyday actions can affect the environment. Along with proper
supervision and guidance from teachers, LUNTIAN would be a good way to
introduce environmental education to preschoolers as well as instill behavior that
will be helpful to the environment. This behavior, if practiced by enough people,
could make a big impact on the environment – for the better.
About the Designer
Leanza Garcia graduated in 2013 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Industrial
Design. She intends to focus on the lines of package design, graphic design,
illustration and digital art.

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ART BEYOND APPEARANCES –
PHYSICS LOOKS INTO PAINTINGS
Maricor N. Soriano
In 2006, the Jorge Vargas Museum, the Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Institute, and the National Institute of Physics collaborated in a 3-year project titled
“Art Beyond Appearances – Physics Looks into Paintings” to create non-invasive,
scientific tools for monitoring museum microclimate and scientifically inspecting
paintings and other heritage objects. Major outputs of this project include the
following:
•

Digital Cleaning and “Dirt” Layer Visualization – In 2011, Cherry May Palomero
(MS Physics) and her adviser Dr. Maricor Soriano published a technique for
non-invasive, virtual restoration of paintings. Instead of deriving a mathematical
transformation from dirty to clean pixels, a neural network was used to learn
the transformation. A neural network is a mathematical model of how the brain
learns. In this work the neural network was shown over a thousand examples
of dirty pixels and their corresponding clean version, and the network learned
the transformation by itself. The digital cleaning technique of Palomero and
Soriano was applied on Fernando Amorsolo’s 1948 oil on canvas painting
Malacañang by the River. The technique is unique not only because it was
able to clean the whole painting but also because it was able to estimate the
dirt layer that was removed.

•

3D-Imaging of the Ticao Stone – In 2011, the Project Team took 3D imagery of
two limestone slabs etched with Baybayin scripts that were found in the
grounds of Rizal Elementary School in Monreal, Ticao, Masbate in 2000. The
3D imagery, done on site, was undertaken to create permanent visual records
of and disambiguate some of the symbols on the stones. Using a technique
called “Structured Light Illumination” Dr. Soriano was able to capture the 3D
profile of the etched scripts with a DSLR camera, a standard LCD projector
and software.

•

High-resolution Scanning of 2D Heritage Objects – In 2012, the University of
the Philippines and the Advanced Imaging Technology Laboratory of Prof. Ali
Ide-Ektessabi in Kyoto University signed a Memorandum of Understanding,
which involved the loan of a high-resolution digital scanner to the laboratory of
Dr. Soriano. The Niji-S is a modular, portable and extendable scanner designed
for extremely accurate color capture of 2D heritage objects. The scanner and
its variants have been used in the recording of over 3,000 important cultural
treasures from around the world including objects from UNESCO World Heritage

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