NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Calibrage de caméra fisheye et estimation de la profondeur pour la navigation autonome

This thesis focuses on the problems of calibrating wide-angle cameras and estimating depth from a single camera, stationary or in motion. The work carried out is at the intersection between traditional 3D vision and new deep learning methods in the field of autonomous navigation. They are designed to allow the detection of obstacles by a moving drone equipped with a single camera with a very wide field of view. First, a new calibration method is proposed for fisheye cameras with very large field of view by planar calibration with dense correspondences obtained by structured light that can be modelled by a set of central virtual generic cameras. We demonstrate that this approach allows direct modeling of axial cameras, and validate it on synthetic and real data. Then, a method is proposed to estimate the depth from a single image, using only the strong depth cues, the T-junctions. We demonstrate that deep learning methods are likely to learn from the biases of their data sets and have weaknesses to invariance. Finally, we propose a method to estimate the depth from a camera in free 6 DoF motion. This involves calibrating the fisheye camera on the drone, visual odometry and depth resolution. The proposed methods allow the detection of obstacles for a drone.

Keyphrases: Fisheye, Computer Vision, Camera Calibration, Axial Camera, Depth Estimation, Autonomous Navigation
Le dispositif d'objets dans un nouveau type d'image au 16e siècle : les portraits de marchands

The concept of an object system, as found in Jan Gossart’s Portrait of a Merchant (ca. 1530) and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Georg Gisze (1532) aims to reevaluate works which are too often reduced to aesthetics and symbolism.  By means of a multidisciplinary approach, the study aims to promote the objects represented in the paintings as the dominant actors in the staging of the social identity of the sixteenth-century merchant.  The association between art history and anthropology of techniques allows the validation of a scenography of the material merchant culture, as well as the emergence of a social commentary inherent to Gossart’s and Holbein’s artistic work. Attention to an object-oriented study also allows for new insights into how to understand the occupational portrait independently of an anagogical value, which is generally attributed to the Renaissance period.  The Portrait of a Merchant and portrait of Georg Gisze attest to a specific moment in the production of merchant portraits in northern Europe during the sixteenth century. The apparently disparate works are united by the object system represented in the paintings.

Keyphrases: Jan Gossart, Art history, Anthropology of techniques, 16th century, North Europe, Hans Holbein the Younger, Merchant portrait, Objects system, Merchant identity
La performance artistique à l’ère de l’ubiquité photographique : le cas de Vanessa Beecroft

Digital photography has transformed our social behaviour and has become an important part of our daily lives. The contemporary art scene also followed this trend. The late 1960s were marked by the emergence of ephemeral art practices, including performance. These twentieth-century artistic trends prompted an intensified usage of photographic documenting in art. The photographic medium has gradually become a major support for ephemeral artistic creation. The ephemeral dimension of photography has thus become more material, which has in turn allowed possessing these works of art. Vanessa Beecroft, an Italian American artist, is a perfect example of this phenomenon, as her art brings together these tendencies and paradoxes. She has been both criticized for her exploitative approach toward women who participate in her performances and glorified as a feminist artist. Her artistic production erases the boundaries between the real world and the imaginary, as well as between the world of legitimate art and that of popular culture, the art market, and commerce. In my thesis, I study the photographs taken during Beecroft’s performances as independent works of art. This allows me to push the sociological analysis further and to trace a series of mediations that are at the heart of her work and that create the value of these artworks. Lastly, this analysis places Beecroft’s work in the global context of the current art market.

Keyphrases: Vanessa Beecroft, performance, photography, mediations, feminism, art market, visual culture
Le documentaire collaboratif : enjeux et pratiques artistiques sous l’angle des dynamiques autochtones-allochtones

This research-creation master’s thesis proposes a theoretical and artistic study of collaborative approaches in documentary film. Contemporary issues of the representation of the Other push documentary artists to develop innovative methodologies where power relations between filmmaker—filming equipment—filmed are reconceptualized. The theoretical and creative components of this thesis consider these issues from the perspective of indigenous—non-indigenous dynamics in Mexico and Canada.  The first chapter examines the colonial relationships of powers rooted in our contemporary societies and perpetuated in the documentary exercise. The collaborative approach is presented as an option borrowed by several artists, including Roberto Olivares Ruiz and Iphigénie Marcoux-Fortier. Chapter two is devoted to analyzing their work. The ethical and practical considerations studied served the development of the short film Segunda Piel; therefore, chapter three outlines the characteristics of the collaboration and the creative process that have been carried out. Finally, the thesis concludes by measuring the limits and successes of the collaborative documentary approach in regard to the creative process and inherent power relations.

Keyphrases: Collaboration, Canada, Mexico, Documentary film, Power relation, Creative process, Indigenous, Non-Indigenous
La représentation des maladies mentales dans les œuvres cinématographiques et télévisuelles

This Master’s memoir focuses on the different impacts of the representation of mental disorders in cinematographic and television works on individuals suffering from various mental illnesses. What visions are conveyed in movies and tv shows featuring characters suffering from mental illness? This thesis aims to analyze a body of films and tv shows in order to identify how mental illness is constructed and staged on the screen. Our ambition is to analyze the role of the media in stigmatizing or not, mental disorders. The way in which people with mental illness are portrayed in works of the last twenty years will be questioned. This study seeks to analyze cinematographic and television works that are potentially harmful to society because of their way of representing mental illnesses. We will also analyze works which are, on the contrary, beneficial to people due to the message and the adequate and positive representations that they convey. The creation part of this memoir will consist of two short film scenarios.

Keyphrases: Suicide, Representation, Mental illness, Stereotype, Demystification, Script, Suicide
D’où l’hospitalité. Étude du privilège dans l’accueil en dialogue avec l’art participatif

The crisis of nation-states regarding migration and public responsiveness to issues concerning minority groups contribute to make hospitality a topic of the hour. However, the concept in of itself does not rise any polemic and appear to be rarely challenged. This paper therefore seeks to provide a critical look at what hospitality actually is and at how it is practiced. The phenomenon was studied from the perspective of the hosts and their privileges rather than the vulnerability of the people welcomed. In the first chapter, the meaning of hospitality as a virtue, as a principle and as a practice, which are common modes of defining the subject in the scholarly publications, was put into perspective. A new definition of hospitality was then proposed drawing on the three modalities of its practice (spatial, social and procedural). This definition respond to the ways in which hospitality is most frequently problematized in the literature (around the home, the figure of the stranger and the multiple actions supposed to provide hospitality such as invitation, accommodation, care, etc.). In the second chapter, each specific way of welcoming that implies the border, the threshold, the camp and the refuge is discussed. Thereon, Gustavo Artigas' Las reglas del juego / The Rules of the Game (2000 ‒ 2001) reveals that the limits of hospitality represent a matter of conditional admission and control (border) or of adaptation to others (threshold). Also, ATSA's État d'Urgence (1998 ‒ 2010) allows to examine hospitality under the paradigm of social inclusion. From this angle, welcoming becomes synonymous either with taking a population aside from an oppressive regime (camp), or with a refusal to collaborate with the regime from the inside (refuge). In short, the dialogue between scholarly literature and participatory art uncovers the power relations that define hospitality, its opportunistic goals and its ambiguous effects.

Keyphrases: hospitality, privilege, participatory art, art contemporain, contemporary art, Gustavo Artigas, ATSA, border, threshold, camp, refuge
Fragments d’Alep : images et mémoire d’une guerre naviguée.

Fragments of Aleppo draws a navigation through images of war. It begins in 2016, year of the intensification and conclusion of the civil war in Aleppo. It is an attempt from the author to find the key points of the building of the collective imagination as regards war and the Arab world. Embedded in a technical memory where the history of the representation of the Middle East seems determined by the transformations engendered by the digital age, this navigation becomes a site of digression that wants to interrogate images of war through the texture of the screens that broadcast them.

Keyphrases: navigation, glitch, Iraq, Media war, Arab world, Technical memory, Identity, Syria
Face au Portrait d’homme de Hans Memling : la valeur artistique et culturelle du paysage

The individual portrait, which is always marked by the authority and identity of the model, became an accessible genre for the rich bourgeoisie and occupied an important cultural place in the fifteenth century. The great portrait painters, especially in northern Europe, excelled at this kind of painting. While Flemish painters and Italian artists mainly used a similar scale for portraiture, Hans Memling (1433 – 1494) developed a distinct visual vocabulary for this genre. By using rich, green landscapes in the background of his individual portraits, painted mostly after 1470, Memling expanded the boundaries of an older European pictorial tradition, which was rooted in the Middle Ages.  This thesis presents a careful analysis of landscape imagery and its relation to social, cultural and artistic contexts in Memling's portraits, and attempts to shed light on conceptions of identity in the fifteenth century. Considering the structure of artistic production in Bruges, this study examines the role of artistic identity as well as that of the model represented, and how this reciprocal relationship was represented within the conceptual value of the landscape. Memling’s use of vast landscapes in the background of his individual portraits reveals a duality of meaning that contributed to the unique and extraordinary value of his work. The inclusion of landscapes in a portrait may not only signify the spiritual philosophy of Renaissance man, but may also enhance the social definition of nobility. Moreover, the use of landscape in the portraits refers to the experimental and empirical aspect of Memling's art.

Keyphrases: Bruges, Hans Memling, Northern Renaissance, Individual portrait, Landscape imagery
Le mouvement de conservation des ressources naturelles pendant l’ère progressiste : la stratégie et la vision de Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt's term in the White House (1901-1909) was marked by many efforts in the conservation of natural resources. This was a doubly important theme for Roosevelt, because not only did he see the negative effects of industrialization on the future of resources, but nature had been one of his passions since his childhood. Thus, he wanted to continue to father a conservationist movement that had existed since the 1870s. Ultimately, his objective was to consolidate all natural resources under the authority of the federal government, through numerous policies for the development of forests, agricultural lands, rivers, pastures, ranges and mineral lands. This thesis presents the many perspectives from which conservation developed under Roosevelt, as well as the role of important individuals in the conservation community during the Roosevelt era.  Although conservation is generally associated with the economic benefits of natural resources and their actual uses, we explore what other issues conservation could address. Theodore Roosevelt was very attached to his idea of a typically American nation and to what he saw as the essential values of the United States. Thus, we examine the link that might have existed between this ideal of the nation and the efforts to protect natural resources. Our study shows that, by putting his conservation project into practice, Roosevelt was able to remain true to some of the ideals he believed were essential to the proper functioning of American society.

Keyphrases: Theodore Roosevelt, conservation, nation, Unites States, values, natural resources, progressive era
Représentations françaises du rôle des femmes dans l’univers cérémoniel Wendat à l’époque de la Nouvelle-France (1615-1744)

This thesis proposes to analyze the French representations of the role of women in the Wendat cerermonial universe at the time of New France. Divided into two parts, it first explores the representations of women in France’s Ancien Régime period, focusing on symbolic represen-tations on the one hand and, on the other hand, on the social perceptions of Ancien Régime women. To do this, we consult a vast repertoire of works of socioreligious history which makes it possible to penetrate the French episteme of Ancien Régime regarding the representation of women. The second part is devoted to the ethno-historical analysis of French representations of the role of women in the Wendat ceremonial universe during the New France era. All the French writings constituting Franco-Native contact literature are used to study these representations of rituals re-lated to “fertility”, “healing” and finally “funeral”. In the end, the analysis reveals that, while French observers attest to the “complementary” and “egalitarian” aspect of the gendered interac-tional dynamics governing the Wendat ceremonial universe, they were unable to capture the full extent and value of integration because they assessed the value of ceremonial wendat behaviors according to their degree of adequacy or inadequacy to the project of French colonization and Christian evangelization.

Keyphrases: Genre, Wendat, Representation, Gender, Women, Ceremonial role, New France, Fertility, Healing, Funerals rites, 17th-18th century
« La force, la grâce, la souplesse » : 
l’éducation physique des jeunes filles canadiennes-françaises à Montréal (1860-1920)

This study examines the history of the physical education of Montreal’s young French Canadian girls from 1860 to 1920; from the first manifestations of corporal education in the private education network to the so-called « golden age » of women’s sports in Canada. Firstly, the discourses of French Canadian scientists are analyzed in such a way as to capture their theoretical reflections on the female body in movement and the prescriptions they formulated. Subsequently, this study presents the evolution of sport and gymnastic practices in the Catholic female boarding schools of Montreal held by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame and the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Proponents of women’s physical education faced certain challenges: how to promote exercise for young women without exposing them to the public space? How to reconcile physical training with the aesthetic ideal of femininity? Finally, how to promote more movement for the juvenile female body without risking its reproductive capacity? Doctors and educators, faced with this dilemma, defined the contours of an acceptable female physical and sports education. However, although the norms disseminated by the predominantly male prescriptive literature were restrictive, innovative practices that met specific objectives started to appear in Montreal’s boarding schools in the 1860s. These practices diversified in the first decades of the twentieth century under the impetus of historical actresses – teaching sisters, gymnastic professors and students.

Keyphrases: XIXe – XXe siècles, Sport, Genre, 19th-20th centuries, Quebec, Montreal, Gymnastic, Sport, Body, Gender, Catholic boarding schools, Female physical education, Young girls
Une nation en quête de virilité : le dessinateur Hermann-Paul et la société française de l'entre-deux-guerres

The inter-war period began at the end of the First World War and was part of a desire for change, lasting peace and a new international order. However, the reality of a return to peace is complicated by the scale of the conflict. The public space is transformed: monuments to the dead, destruction, widows and orphans. There is also a reflection on the sustainability of Western civilization: its limits, its models and its dangers. This paper examines the vision of an artist, Hermann-Paul, in order to know contemporary representations of inter-war France and the models of Western civilization. The study focuses here on Hermann-Paul’s work in the press, particularly in the weekly magazine Je suis partout, which offers the advantage of being able to follow the artist every week over a decade from December 1930 to February 1940. Several questions guide this research. What is Hermann-Paul's France? Why does it seem to be in crisis and what are the models and counter-models? Peace activists, who defend the idea of a lasting peace, are major actors of the period. Through their desire for change, they also participate in this civilizational anguish. How does the caricaturist integrate them into his French vision? The paper also focuses on the instrumentalization of gender, and subset that is masculinity. There is still a lack of Francophone studies in this area. The objective of this study is to participate in the historical analysis of the field of virility, with the case of Hermann-Paul. The caricature is an opportunity since this format instrumentalizes the codes of drawing and virility in order to construct, justify and divert representations.

Keyphrases: Hermann-Paul, France, Je suis partout, Inter-war, Third republic, Pacifism, Virility, Gender
Dynamiques de pouvoir, genre et rituels autochtones dans les écrits des jésuites en Nouvelle-France, 1632-1724

This thesis presents representations of the traditional ritual practices of the Iroquoians and Algonquians that the French Jesuit missionaries have revealed in their writings. Sometimes in spite of themselves, the missionaries describe Indigenous people endowed with religious powers, descriptions which we will examine. The territory analyzed is therefore mainly that of the missions, namely the St. Lawrence Valley, the surrounding country and the Great Lakes region, a slice of America that remained largely Indigenous during the period of interest to us, namely from 1632, date of the first Relations with the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune, until 1724, the date of publication of the book Mœurs des Sauvages by Joseph-François Lafitau. This careful examination of the Jesuit works reveals, from a perspective of gender history, excerpts relating to rituals and spheres of activity of Aboriginal men and women. These results are confronted with numerous studies on First Nations or on the Jesuits and their North American missions. This multidisciplinary convergence then leads us to ask: what do missionaries see, or do not see, in the role of men, women, and to some extent, “men-women” and “women-men” within Aboriginal rituals, and in what circumstances?

Keyphrases: First Nations, Algonquians, Iroquoians, rituality, genders, Jesuit missions, representations, symbolic
Transmission transatlantique de savoirs en sciences naturelles d’Amérique française au XVIIIe siècle; Étude comparative des écrits de Kalm (Canada), de Barrère (Guyane française), de Le Page du Pratz (Louisiane) et de Dumont de Montigny (Louisiane)

Following their colonization of America in the 17th and 18th centuries, the French drew up inventories for the resources of the occupied or coveted territory. Being able to describe all this wealth, natural history thus became the ultimate colonial knowledge and one of the central cogs of the French Colonial Machine. Also, the textual legacy of this activity is considerable and various points of view are taken into account: an enterprising settler, for example, will not see Louisiana’s resources in the same way as a travelling metropolitan official or a botanist on assignment. However, the colonial perspective is widely spread and all these texts, or almost all of them, are evidence of the appropriation of American plants, minerals and animals. The position of indigenous people and slaves – whether of indigenous or African-American origin – as actors in the process of knowledge creation depends on the context and the author’s stance. This thesis focuses on a small number of compelling texts from the natural history corpus of the French mainland colonies in America. Four authors who worked in or visited Canada (Kalm), French Guiana (Barrère) and Louisiana (Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny) are studied in depth. We first examine the different contexts of knowledge acquisition. Subsequently, we analyze the colonial resources inventories available at that time and how the sources are managed. Lastly, we conclude by looking at how these naturalist writers transmit to their European readers their newly acquired knowledge and the impact that their work will have.

Keyphrases: Pehr Kalm (Canada), Transmission transatlantique, Natchez, Pierre Barrère (French Guiana), Natural science history, Transatlantic communication, Knowledge flow, Indigenous, Slaves, African-American, Naturalist
Histoire d’un système judiciaire à plusieurs vitesses : analyse intersectionnelle des procès pour meurtre dans la juridiction de Montréal entre 1700 et 1760

This thesis analyses the influence of intersectional power dynamics – inter and intra sex, ethnicity and social category, seen as articulated identity categories – within the eighteenth-century Montreal judiciary system. Murder trial archives serve as the basis for this analysis, the crime of murder in and of itself implying the exercise of total power by one person over another, by taking away his or her life. On one hand, the proposed analysis will focus on power dynamics between individuals, according a special attention to the agency of the principal actors. On the other hand, it will focus on power dynamics between the individuals and the State, in other words between subjects and their king, dispenser of justice. The crime of murder of course suggests an act of power, but also implies a disruption of social order, which justice must restore by punishing the guilty party. We then ask: do the identity categories of gender, race and social category influence the course of justice, and if so, how? Inversely, is justice applied differently according to the intersectionality of the suspect or the victim’s sex, ethnicity and social category? We will answer those questions by analyzing power dynamics in the murder trials of the jurisdiction of Montreal in the eighteenth century; first, from the angle of gender in chapter 1, from that of ethnic groups in the second chapter and finally, from that of social categories in the third chapter.

Keyphrases: Justice, Violence, Autochtones, Femmes, Intersectionality, Power, Murder, Slavery, Natives, Women, Eighteenth century, New France