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In an age of globalization and connectivity, the idea of "mainstream culture" has become quaint. Websites, magazines, books, and television have all honed in on ever-diversifying subcultures, hoping to carve out niche audiences that grow savvier and more narrowly sliced by the day. Consequently, the discipline of graphic design has undergone a sea change. Where visual(...)
Design studies : theory and research in graphic design, a reader
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In an age of globalization and connectivity, the idea of "mainstream culture" has become quaint. Websites, magazines, books, and television have all honed in on ever-diversifying subcultures, hoping to carve out niche audiences that grow savvier and more narrowly sliced by the day. Consequently, the discipline of graphic design has undergone a sea change. Where visual communication was once informed by a designer's creative intuition, the proliferation of specialized audiences now calls for more research-based design processes. Designers who ignore research run the risk of becoming mere tools for communication rather than bold voices. "Design studies", a collection of 27 essays from international design researchers, sets out to mend this schism between research and practice. The texts presented here make an argument for performing rigorous experimentation and analysis. Each author outlines methods in which research has aided their design — whether by investigating how senior citizens react to design aesthetics, how hip hop culture can influence design, or how design for Third World nations is affected by cultural differences. Contributors also outline inspired ways in which design educators can teach research methods to their students. Finally, "Design Studies" is rounded out by five annotated bibliographies to further aid designers in their research.
Graphic Design and Typography
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In 1856, the English photographer Francis Frith set out on the first of three tours of Egypt and the Holy Lands. Traveling up the Nile and then on to the Sinai, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, Frith systematically crafted exquisite pictures of ruins, landscapes, and legendary sites. He then published his views in England and America in a variety of formats, becoming(...)
January 2004, Princeton
Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine : a Victorian photographer abroad
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In 1856, the English photographer Francis Frith set out on the first of three tours of Egypt and the Holy Lands. Traveling up the Nile and then on to the Sinai, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, Frith systematically crafted exquisite pictures of ruins, landscapes, and legendary sites. He then published his views in England and America in a variety of formats, becoming something of a celebrity in photographic circles. This book, the first to place Frith's Egyptian and Levantine images in cultural context, reveals the distinct meanings these ostensibly "topographic" pictures held for the photographer and his Victorian audience. A Quaker by birth and an entrepreneur by nature, Frith brought to his photographic projects a sense of mission: to revive and confirm the stories of the Bible, while offering the region to armchair travelers as a seamless Oriental milieu of Romantic reverie. Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine narrates the political, intellectual, and social concerns that make Frith representative of England's encounter with the East in the nineteenth century. Historian of photography Douglas R. Nickel brings a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach to bear on the subject in order to expose the complexity of Frith's image-making, setting the photographs against a Victorian backdrop of religious debate, imperialist thought, Romantic philosophy, and Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics.
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This volume examines the garden as an enduring and evolving cultural resource, in two hundred works by more than one hundred artists. Prints, drawings, photographs, and paintings illuminate the changing aesthetics and uses of gardens from sixteenth-century Italian villas and Louis XIV's Versailles to urban parks like New York City's Central Park and San Francisco's Crissy(...)
The changing garden : four centuries of European and American art
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This volume examines the garden as an enduring and evolving cultural resource, in two hundred works by more than one hundred artists. Prints, drawings, photographs, and paintings illuminate the changing aesthetics and uses of gardens from sixteenth-century Italian villas and Louis XIV's Versailles to urban parks like New York City's Central Park and San Francisco's Crissy Field, adapted from a former military base. Artists' representations of gardens have been organized first to highlight design concepts and individual features, then to focus on historic gardens and parks, and finally to survey the activities within those settings. Among the earliest works included is an engraving of a drawing made in 1570 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder of a garden being vigorously cultivated by many workers. Two centuries later, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Jean-Honore Fragonard represented the Villa d'Este at Tivoli in a state of neglected grandeur; Hubert Robert's painting of Mereville depicted a garden he helped design. By 1900 Eugene Atget's photographs of Versailles and Camille Pissarro's paintings of the Tuileries convey the enduring structure of French formal gardens. In contrast, American artists Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler depicted the pleasures of social activities in that setting. Photographs by Michael Kenna and Bruce Davidson offer contemporary perspectives on these issues.
Gardens
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From December 9, 2023 to April 21, 2024, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presents an exhibition created by the Indian architecture studio, Studio Mumbai, directed by Bijoy Jain. Inspired by the rhythm of breathing, this exhibition offers a space for reverie and contemplation in dialogue with Jean Nouvel’s building. Born in 1965 in Mumbai, Bijoy Jain created(...)
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai: Breath of an architect
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From December 9, 2023 to April 21, 2024, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presents an exhibition created by the Indian architecture studio, Studio Mumbai, directed by Bijoy Jain. Inspired by the rhythm of breathing, this exhibition offers a space for reverie and contemplation in dialogue with Jean Nouvel’s building. Born in 1965 in Mumbai, Bijoy Jain created Studio Mumbai in 2005. Exploring the links between art, architecture and materials, this human-scale organization is composed of craftsmen and architects who design and build each project themselves, using local resources. Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai participated in many exhibitions around the world, including the Venice (2010, 2016) and Chicago (2017) architecture biennals. For the Fondation Cartier, Bijoy Jain unites man and nature, light and shadow, bamboo, brick and stone to form a meditative landscape taking us into the heart of creation. Sculptures, objects and furniture interact with artworks by Chinese painter Hu Liu and Turkish ceramist Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye, invited by the architect, revealing a shared sensibility and ethos between these artists. The catalog published in conjunction with the exhibition invites readers to discover Bijoy Jain’s aesthetics and philosophy. Conceived as a work-in-progress of the exhibition, this book focuses on the artist’s drawings, photographs of his studio and works in the making.
Architecture Monographs
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Contributors to this volume strive to uncover architectural alternatives to simplistic models based on concepts of aesthetics, technology, or sociology. Seventeen essays explore historical topics ranging from antiquity, with a study of the Roman Colosseum; through early Renaissance subjects, such as the treatises of Luca Pacioli on architecture; through to the modern era(...)
Architectural Theory
May 2003, Montreal
Chora 4 : intervals in the philosophy of architecture
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Contributors to this volume strive to uncover architectural alternatives to simplistic models based on concepts of aesthetics, technology, or sociology. Seventeen essays explore historical topics ranging from antiquity, with a study of the Roman Colosseum; through early Renaissance subjects, such as the treatises of Luca Pacioli on architecture; through to the modern era and explorations on topics ranging from seventeenth-century Amsterdam to architectural insights that can be found in the works of the poet and mathematician Lewis Carroll. Authors examining contemporary issues seek to explicate the spatial poetics of architecture by invoking other artistic disciplines. Essays in this group include a discussion of the accomplishments of Gordon Matta-Clark, a reading of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, and an analysis of the implications of ethical/formal questions in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein for architecture. Contributors include Caroline Dionne (Université de Québec à Montréal), Mark Dorrian (University of Edinburgh), Michael Emerson (University of New South Wales), Marc Glaudemans (University of Technology), George Hersey (emeritus, Yale University), Robert Kirkbride (design director, Studiolo), Joanna Merwood (doctoral dissertation, Princeton University), Michel Moussette (Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal), Juhani Pallasmaa (architect, Finland, emeritus Washington University in St. Louis), Alberto Pérez-Gómez (McGill University), David Theodore (McGill University), and Dorian Yurchuk (architect, New York City).
Architectural Theory
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Contemporary engagements with documentary are multifaceted and complex, reaching across disciplines to explore the intersections of politics and aesthetics, representation and reality, truth and illusion. Discarding the old notions of “fly on the wall” immediacy or quasi-scientific aspirations to objectivity, critics now understand documentary not as the neutral picturing(...)
Documentary Across Disciplines
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Contemporary engagements with documentary are multifaceted and complex, reaching across disciplines to explore the intersections of politics and aesthetics, representation and reality, truth and illusion. Discarding the old notions of “fly on the wall” immediacy or quasi-scientific aspirations to objectivity, critics now understand documentary not as the neutral picturing of reality but as a way of coming to terms with reality through images and narrative. This book collects writings by artists, filmmakers, art historians, poets, literary critics, anthropologists, theorists, and others, to investigate one of the most vital areas of cultural practice: documentary. Their investigations take many forms—essays, personal memoirs, interviews, poetry. Contemporary art turned away from the medium and toward the world, using photography and the moving image to take up global perspectives. Documentary filmmakers, meanwhile, began to work in the gallery context. The contributors consider the hybridization of art and film, and the “documentary turn” of contemporary art. They discuss digital technology and the “crisis of faith” caused by manipulation and generation of images, and the fading of the progressive social mandate that has historically characterized documentary. They consider invisible data and visible evidence; problems of archiving; and surveillance and biometric control, forms of documentation that call for “informatic opacity” as a means of evasion.
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Renowned philosopher Susan Buck-Morss collaborates with Kevin McCaughey of Boot Boyz Biz and Adam Michaels of Inventory Press on this experimental image-text renewal of McLuhan, Berger and Benjamin. "Seeing <—> Making: Room for thought" both studies and presents the creative process of constructing ideas with images. By activating the techniques of montage and analogy,(...)
January 2024
Seeing <—> Making: Room for thought
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Renowned philosopher Susan Buck-Morss collaborates with Kevin McCaughey of Boot Boyz Biz and Adam Michaels of Inventory Press on this experimental image-text renewal of McLuhan, Berger and Benjamin. "Seeing <—> Making: Room for thought" both studies and presents the creative process of constructing ideas with images. By activating the techniques of montage and analogy, the book reveals a wide field of view and a space to engage new critical connections between a multiplicity of objects from the past and present. Realized through an intergenerational collaboration of three cultural producers committed to making theory visible, a transformative anthology of critical essays by Susan Buck-Morss anchors this kaleidoscopic project. Images and ideas sync with Buck-Morss’ perceptive texts on visual culture, history, politics and aesthetics, fusing criticism with visual play and linking collective imagination and social action. In both design and content, "Seeing <—> Making: Room for thought" builds upon the dynamic sensorium of Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's book "The medium is the massage", Walter Benjamin's "Arcades" Project and John Berger's "Ways of seeing". This innovative volume brings Buck-Morss’ more experimental, visually engaged work to the fore in a way that has not been available in the usual contexts within which her writing has appeared.
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Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives or come out of a community context; they emphasize participation, dialogue, and action, and appear in situations ranging from theater to activism to urban planning to visual art to health care. Engaged with the(...)
Living as form : socially engaged art from 1991-2011
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Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives or come out of a community context; they emphasize participation, dialogue, and action, and appear in situations ranging from theater to activism to urban planning to visual art to health care. Engaged with the texture of living, these art works often blur the line between art and life. This book offers the first global portrait of a complex and exciting mode of cultural production — one that has virtually redefined contemporary art practice. This publication grew out of a major exhibition at Creative Time in New York City. Like the exhibition, the book is a landmark survey of more than 100 projects selected by a thirty-person curatorial advisory team; each project is documented by a selection of color images. The artists include the Danish collective Superflex, who empower communities to challenge corporate interest; Turner Prize nominee Jeremy Deller, creator of socially and politically charged performance works; Women on Waves, who provide abortion services and information to women in regions where the procedure is illegal; and Santiágo Cirugeda, an architect who builds temporary structures to solve housing problems.
In praise of copying
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This book is devoted to a deceptively simple but original argument: that copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in. In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word(...)
In praise of copying
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This book is devoted to a deceptively simple but original argument: that copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in. In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word “copying” permeates contemporary culture, shaping discourse on issues from hip hop to digitization to gender reassignment, and is particularly crucial in legal debates concerning intellectual property and copyright. Yet as a philosophical concept, copying remains poorly understood. Working comparatively across cultures and times, Marcus Boon undertakes an examination of what this word means—historically, culturally, philosophically—and why it fills us with fear and fascination. He argues that the dominant legal-political structures that define copying today obscure much broader processes of imitation that have constituted human communities for ages and continue to shape various subcultures today. Drawing on contemporary art, music and film, the history of aesthetics, critical theory, and Buddhist philosophy and practice, In Praise of Copying seeks to show how and why copying works, what the sources of its power are, and the political stakes of renegotiating the way we value copying in the age of globalization.
Critical Theory
In praise of copying
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This book is devoted to a deceptively simple but original argument : that copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in. In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word(...)
In praise of copying
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This book is devoted to a deceptively simple but original argument : that copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in. In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word “copying” permeates contemporary culture, shaping discourse on issues from hip hop to digitization to gender reassignment, and is particularly crucial in legal debates concerning intellectual property and copyright. Yet as a philosophical concept, copying remains poorly understood. Working comparatively across cultures and times, Marcus Boon undertakes an examination of what this word means — historically, culturally, philosophically — and why it fills us with fear and fascination. He argues that the dominant legal-political structures that define copying today obscure much broader processes of imitation that have constituted human communities for ages and continue to shape various subcultures today. Drawing on contemporary art, music and film, the history of aesthetics, critical theory, and Buddhist philosophy and practice, In Praise of Copying seeks to show how and why copying works, what the sources of its power are, and the political stakes of renegotiating the way we value copying in the age of globalization.
Critical Theory