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The Urban Spectator is a lively and utterly fascinating exploration of the ways in which technologies have influenced our collective conception of the American city, as well as our relationship with urban space and architecture. Eric Gordon argues that the city, developing late and in conjunction with a range of modern media, produced a particular way of seeing--what he(...)
The urban spectator: American concept-cities from Kodak to Google
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The Urban Spectator is a lively and utterly fascinating exploration of the ways in which technologies have influenced our collective conception of the American city, as well as our relationship with urban space and architecture. Eric Gordon argues that the city, developing late and in conjunction with a range of modern media, produced a particular way of seeing--what he labels "possessive spectatorship." Lacking the historical rootedness of European cities, the American city was open to individual interpretation, definition, and ownership. Beginning with the White City of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the efforts to commodify the concept city through photography, Gordon shows how the American city has always been a product of the collision between the dominant conceptualization, shaped by contemporary media, and the spectator. From the viewfinder of the Kodak camera, to the public display of early cinema, to the speculative desire of network radio, all the way to machine-age utopianism, nostalgia, and America's "rerun" culture, the city is an amalgam of practice and concept. All of this comes to a head in the "database city" where urban spectatorship takes on the characteristics of a Google search. In new urban developments, the spectator searches, retrieves, and combines urban references to construct each experience of the city.
Urban Theory
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“I have been shooting New York for over 60 years now. And though I have achieved age, I can safely say I have never made my way to maturity so I have never been jaded or bored. I think all this is due to the grittiness and hectic quality of the city, you never capture it, it captures you.” After studying painting and graphic design at Cooper Union and Yale, Jay Maisel(...)
Jay Maisel: New York in the 50s
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“I have been shooting New York for over 60 years now. And though I have achieved age, I can safely say I have never made my way to maturity so I have never been jaded or bored. I think all this is due to the grittiness and hectic quality of the city, you never capture it, it captures you.” After studying painting and graphic design at Cooper Union and Yale, Jay Maisel began his career in photography in 1954. While his portfolio includes the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Miles Davis, he is perhaps best known for capturing the light, color, and gesture found in every day life. This unique vision kept him busy for over 40 years shooting annual reports, magazine covers, jazz albums, advertising and more for an array of clients worldwide. Recently, Maisel has gone back to his archive of early work, and put together a collection of black-and-white images he made as a young man in the 1950s, evidence of a lifetime’s pursuit of a craft and a special talent, one of the best-kept secrets in photographic history. “New York in the ‘50s” is a beautifully-produced monograph that will be equally appreciated by Jay Maisel’s followers, and anyone who has stepped inside his muse, New York City.
Photography monographs
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
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A social history of AI that finally reveals its roots in the spatial computation of industrial factories and the surveillance of collective behaviour. What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest ''to solve intelligence,'' a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural(...)
The eye of the master: A social history of artificial intelligence
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A social history of AI that finally reveals its roots in the spatial computation of industrial factories and the surveillance of collective behaviour. What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest ''to solve intelligence,'' a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. ''The eye of the master'' argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Babbage's ''calculating engines'' of the industrial age as well as in the recent algorithms for image recognition and surveillance. The idea that AI may one day become autonomous (or ''sentient'', as someone thought of Google's LaMDA) is pure fantasy. Computer algorithms have always imitated the form of social relations and the organisation of labour in their own inner structure and their purpose remains blind automation. ''The eye of the master'' urges a new literacy on AI for scientists, journalists and new generations of activists, who should recognise that the ''mystery'' of AI is just the automation of labour at the highest degree, not intelligence per se.
Archive, library and the digital
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This book brings the history of the geosciences and world cosmologies together, exploring many traditions, including Chinese, Pacific, Islamic, South and Southeast Asian conceptions of the earth’s origin and makeup. Together the chapters ask: How have different ideas about the sacred, animate, and earthly changed modern environmental sciences? How have different world(...)
Environment and environmental theory
November 2023
New earth histories: Geo-cosmologies and the making of the modern world
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This book brings the history of the geosciences and world cosmologies together, exploring many traditions, including Chinese, Pacific, Islamic, South and Southeast Asian conceptions of the earth’s origin and makeup. Together the chapters ask: How have different ideas about the sacred, animate, and earthly changed modern environmental sciences? How have different world traditions understood human and geological origins? How does the inclusion of multiple cosmologies change the meaning of the Anthropocene and the global climate crisis? By carefully examining these questions, ''New earth histories'' sets an ambitious agenda for how we think about the earth. The chapters consider debates about the age and structure of the earth, how humans and earth systems interact, and how empire has been conceived in multiple traditions. The methods the authors deploy are diverse—from cultural history and visual and material studies to ethnography, geography, and Indigenous studies—and the effect is to highlight how earth knowledge emerged from historically specific situations. ''New earth histories'' provides both a framework for studying science at a global scale and fascinating examples to educate as well as inspire future work. Essential reading for students and scholars of earth science history, environmental humanities, history of science and religion, and science and empire.
Environment and environmental theory
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Dans la mythologie grecque, Héphaïstos forgeait le fer de son souffle divin pour fabriquer les armes des dieux et des héros les plus valeureux. Plus tard, au Moyen Age, les arts roman et gothique ont produit de véritables chef-d'œuvre. Plus récemment, l'Art Nouveau a, lui aussi, exalté les multiples possibilités d'expression de ce matériau présent tant dans le mobilier(...)
Fer forgé : un voyage à travers les époques et les styles
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Dans la mythologie grecque, Héphaïstos forgeait le fer de son souffle divin pour fabriquer les armes des dieux et des héros les plus valeureux. Plus tard, au Moyen Age, les arts roman et gothique ont produit de véritables chef-d'œuvre. Plus récemment, l'Art Nouveau a, lui aussi, exalté les multiples possibilités d'expression de ce matériau présent tant dans le mobilier intérieur que pur des éléments décoratifs architecturaux. Aujourd'hui, la tradition artisanale se conjugue avec l'innovation technologique pour permettre au fer forgé de figurer en bonne place dans le design du troisième millénaire. Vous trouverez dans cet ouvrage, illustré de nombreux dessins et photographies didactiques des idées et des projets (des grilles, des balcons, des gloriettes et des bancs...); des modèles à copier ou à modifier pour les adapter à son intérieur (des chaises, des tables, des lits, des lustres décoratifs...); des conseils pratiques pour apprendre à évaluer l'état des vieux objets de récupération, les nettoyer, les restaurer, les décaper, les peindre et leur donner une nouvelle jeunesse); une initiation progressive aux différentes techniques de traitement et de décoration du fer forgé (oxydation, sablage, brunissage, zincage, jusqu'à la délicate application de feuilles d'or et d'argent qui confère au métal un aspect noble et brillant.
Ornementation
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The arts of China after 1620
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The Arts of China after 1620 concludes a major three-volume survey that examines China's huge wealth of art, architecture and artefacts from prehistoric times to the present. Beginning with discussions of 'fine' art and painting and progressing to analysis of carving and sculpture, ceramics, glassware and textiles, the authors demonstrate how, in the age of the Emperors(...)
History until 1900, Asia
September 2006, New Haven / London
The arts of China after 1620
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The Arts of China after 1620 concludes a major three-volume survey that examines China's huge wealth of art, architecture and artefacts from prehistoric times to the present. Beginning with discussions of 'fine' art and painting and progressing to analysis of carving and sculpture, ceramics, glassware and textiles, the authors demonstrate how, in the age of the Emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, the 'decorative' arts rose to a prominence quite unlike the western experience. Avoiding misrepresentative categorization, they single out period styles, as well as identifying repeated phases of archaism and Buddhist art, and discuss characteristic groups of jade, ivory, ceramics, glassware and textiles. They consider the importance of the imperial workshops and their role in developing craftsmen's skills and encouraging the cross-over of techniques from different disciplines and they present the compelling influence of Emperor Qianlong's aesthetic innovations. In architecture the vast plan and overwhelming authority of the imperial buildings contrasts with the restrained subtlety of domestic architecture and garden design where magnificent rocks were the principal feature, just as in landscape painting. The survey concludes by examining the development of East/West trade and the effects of commercialization on Chinese arts and crafts. This handsome, well-illustrated book provides a scholarly and illuminating resource for all students of the arts of China.
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September 2006, New Haven / London
History until 1900, Asia
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In an age of social and environmental crises, we need to critically rethink the role of the built environment and how best to put it to work. ''Measures and Meanings of Spatial Capital'' presents a new theory of spatial capital, arguing that spatial form is essential for building resilience into highly complex urban systems. Lars Marcus argues that the built environment(...)
Measures and meanings of spatial capital
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In an age of social and environmental crises, we need to critically rethink the role of the built environment and how best to put it to work. ''Measures and Meanings of Spatial Capital'' presents a new theory of spatial capital, arguing that spatial form is essential for building resilience into highly complex urban systems. Lars Marcus argues that the built environment constitutes a form of capital that enhances other forms of capital in cities (such as social, economic, and ecological capital), if designed with those goals in mind. This represents an important and necessary shift in how we approach urban space in the numerous studies of cities that are conducted in a range of disciplines today, such as urban sociology, urban economics, and urban ecology. In contemporary urban studies, land has oddly lost its position alongside labor and capital as one of the three fundamental production factors in economic theory, but as Marcus shows, misconceptions of land are at the root of social and environmental crises worldwide. By defining the challenges and modeling our use of spatial form to enhance/improve land, and then synthesizing data into a unified theory of spatial capital, Marcus provides a crucial reframing of how we can best plan and design our cities for the global challenges we are facing.
Urban Theory
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Fin-de-siècle Vienna was a hive of creative activity, and at its centre was one of the most versatile artists of the age, Koloman Moser (1868–1918). As a teacher, artist and craftsman, Moser had an immense influence on the tastes of his time, with talents that ranged from illustration and graphics to stained glass and the design of stage sets and postage stamps. In(...)
Koloman Moser : master of Viennese modernism
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Fin-de-siècle Vienna was a hive of creative activity, and at its centre was one of the most versatile artists of the age, Koloman Moser (1868–1918). As a teacher, artist and craftsman, Moser had an immense influence on the tastes of his time, with talents that ranged from illustration and graphics to stained glass and the design of stage sets and postage stamps. In 1897 Moser co-founded the Vienna Secession, and in 1903, together with his friend and colleague Josef Hoffmann, he founded the Wiener Werkstätte, whose workshops were to set trends that spread far beyond the boundaries of Vienna. He devoted the last years of his life to painting, and in recent times his reputation in this field too has steadily grown. Despite the wealth of information that has survived down the years, Moser’s personality remains largely hidden behind his work. Here, Maria Rennhofer joins the many fragments of Moser’s personal life, his artistic influences and his multifaceted creativity into a coherent portrait of this fascinating man. This is not only the first comprehensive account of Moser’s life and work, but it is also an in-depth look at the flourishing artistic environment which he did so much to create and shape.
Design Monographs
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Forced to find beauty in mediocrity, poetry in pragmatism, history in the absence of monuments and the future in the past, Crimson has been shaped by the experience of living and working in Rotterdam, the city that never thinks. Over the past seven years they have produced research projects, plans and initiatives that range from purely historical studies, book reviews and(...)
Architecture since 1900, Europe
January 1900, Rotterdam
Too blessed to be depressed : Crimson architectural historians 1994-2002
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Forced to find beauty in mediocrity, poetry in pragmatism, history in the absence of monuments and the future in the past, Crimson has been shaped by the experience of living and working in Rotterdam, the city that never thinks. Over the past seven years they have produced research projects, plans and initiatives that range from purely historical studies, book reviews and critiques of contemporary architecture to exhibitions, panoramas and urban planning schemes. For them, history is not a clear-cut period in the past but a total panoramic experience in which mythology, truth, writing, building and demolition intermingle. The Crimson historians don’t keep their distance, they dive right in. Too Blessed To Be Depressed is a coming-of-age book, one that shows the development of a practice and an attitude towards the outside world based not on analysis and simplification but on an endless quest for all the narratives, contradi ctions, and obsessions that make the city what it is. It presents an initial selection of work by Crimson divided among three themes: History (what to make of it, how to deal with it), Obsession (theirs along with those of others) and Top Down (the impact of large-scale infrastructural and other interventions on the city).
Architecture since 1900, Europe