Author : Ralph Rugoff
Publisher : Hayward Gallery Publishing
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 10,56 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Architecture and science
ISBN : 9781853323164
This text surveys work that creates unexpected possibilities in art, science and architecture, possibilities so profound that they suggest an alternate reality. Many of the featured practitioners investigate larger systems of knowledge in their work, while others develop particular disciplines and art forms in unexpected and idiosyncratic directions.
Author : Douglas Walla
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 26,92 MB
Release : 2016-05-09
Category : Art
ISBN : 022631541X
Paul Laffoley is a Visionary artist who lives and works in a tiny space in Boston he calls "the Boston Visionary Cell." A trained architect, Laffoley produces brilliantly colored mandala paintings filled with symbols and texts. Each painting is accompanied by a tex called a "thought-form," which serves as commentary on the painting's content. The paintings--many of them large (73 x 73 inches)--have titles that range from the paranormal and arcane ("The Ectoplasmic Man," "The Sexuality of Robots") to the erudite: "De Rerum Natura," referring to the poet Lucretius. Laffoley is interested in "the mechanics of mysticism," time and space, dreams, magic, and consciousness. In addition to painting, he has also designed a time machine and a prayer gun. This book collects what Laffoley and his gallerist, Douglas Walla, see as "the essential works"--94 color plates w/91 attendant thought-forms. It also includes an introduction by Walla, a biography of Laffoley by artist Steven Moskowitz, and essays by two scholars. Linda Dalrymple Henderson (University of Texas at Austin, Art History) is a renowned expert on Henri Bergson, Duchamp, the art/science juncture, and "the fourth dimension." Arielle Saiber (associate professor of Italian, Bowdoin College) analyzes one Laffoley's major works: Dante's 'Divine Comedy' Triptych.
Author : John Scalzi
Publisher : Rough Guides
Page : 440 pages
File Size : 40,58 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781858289397
Whether you're a novice or an experienced amateur astronomer, The Rough Guide to the Universe is an indispensable book. Giving both a guide to the universe and an accessible overview of the science of astronomy, the Rough Guide features: bull; Concise information on every planet in the solar system, as well as the sun, moon, asteroids and comets. bull; Practical advice on observing the planets and stars, with binoculars, telescopes and the naked eye. bull; Incisive explanations of the latest theories about how the universe began and how it might end, the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters, and weird concepts such as dark matter, worm holes and superstrings. bull; Dozens of photographs, plus star charts of every constellation, showing the night sky in the Northern and the Southern hemispheres. bull; Detailed listings of star clubs, planetariums, "deep sky " sites and Internet resources. John Scalzi is a writer and backyard astronomer who views the universe from the dark skies of Ohio's Amish Country.
Author : Mauro Javier Cárdenas
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 147 pages
File Size : 18,40 MB
Release : 2020-11-03
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0374719098
Mauro Javier Cárdenas, the critically-acclaimed author of The Revolutionaries Try Again—“an original, insubordinate novel” (New York Times)—pens a profound story of literature about a man coming to terms with his dysfunctional Colombian family, as well as his own behavior, as an immigrant in America. Antonio wants to avoid thinking about his sister—even though he knows he won’t be able to avoid thinking about his sister—because his sister is on the run after allegedly threatening to shoot her neighbors, and has been claiming that Antonio, Obama, the Pentagon, and their mother are all conspiring against her. Nevertheless, Antonio is going to try his best to be as avoidant as possible, because he worries that what’s been happening to his sister might somehow infect his relatively contented, ordered American life, and destabilize the precarious arrangement with his ex-wife that’s allowed him to stay close to his two daughters. In fact, he’s busy doing everything except facing his problems head-on: transcribing recordings of his mother speaking about their troubled life in Colombia, transcribing recordings of his ex-wife speaking about her idyllic life in the Czech Republic; writing about former girlfriends whose words and deeds still recur in his mind; rereading stories by American writers that allow him to skirt the subject of his sister’s state of mind without completely destroying his own. Written in long, unravelling sentences that accommodate all the detritus of thought—scenes real and imagined, headphones and heartache, Toblerones and Thomas Bernhard—Aphasia captures the immensity of the present moment as well as the pain of the past. It cements Mauro Javier Cárdenas’s place as one of the most innovative and extraordinary novelists working today.
Author : Mark Thompson
Publisher : Random House
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 14,55 MB
Release : 2013-01-17
Category : Nature
ISBN : 1448126916
To the beginner, the star-filled night sky can seem mysterious and unfathomable. But with this book as a guide the awesome nature of the Cosmos is brought down to Earth. Over the course of twelve chapters Mark Thompson, one of the presenters on BBC One’s Stargazing Live and the resident astronomer on ITV’s The Alan Titchmarsh Show, will take you on a journey through space, tackling the key concepts of astronomy and unlocking the secrets of the sky. From the origins of our Universe to the ever evolving techniques used to explore deep space, A Down to Earth Guide to the Cosmos traces the journey of galactic discovery that has obsessed mankind for thousands of years. Accompanying the narrative, a series of monthly sky guides focus on the astronomical highlights visible at each given time of year, with handy charts to show you exactly what to look for and how to navigate around the sky at night. As fascinating as it is accessible, A Down to Earth Guide to the Cosmos is a must for anyone who gazes up and wishes they knew more about the final frontier...
Author : Paul Clements
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 22,57 MB
Release : 2016-09-13
Category : Art
ISBN : 1317501292
Paul Clements champions the creative underground and expressions of difference through visionary avant-garde and resistant ideas. This is represented by an admixture of utopian literature, manifestos and lifestyles which challenge normality and attempt to reinvent society, as practiced for example, by radicals in bohemian enclaves or youth subcultures. He showcases a range of 'art' and participatory cultural practices that are examined sociopolitically and historically, employing key theoretical ideas which highlight their contribution to aesthetic thinking, political ideology, and public discourse. A reevaluation of the arts and progressive modernism can reinvigorate culture through active leisure and post-work possibilities beyond materialism and its constraints, thereby presenting alternatives to established understandings and everyday cultural processes. The book teases out the difficult relationship between the individual, culture and society especially in relation to autonomy and marginality, while arguing that the creative underground is crucial for a better world, as it offers enchantment, vitality and hope.
Author : Paul Clements
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 26,92 MB
Release : 2020-05-07
Category : Art
ISBN : 1000057704
This cross-disciplinary book, situated on the periphery of culture, employs humour to better comprehend the arts, the outsider and exclusion, illuminating the ever-changing social landscape, the vagaries of taste and limits of political correctness. Each chapter deals with specific themes and approaches – from the construct of outsider and complexity of humour, to Outsider Art and spaces – using various theoretical and analytical methods. Paul Clements draws on humour, especially from visual arts and culture (and to a lesser extent literature, film, music and performance), as a tool of ridicule, amongst other discourses, employed by the powerful but also as a weapon to satirize them. These ambiguous representations vary depending on context, often assimilated then reinterpreted in a game of authenticity that is poignant in a world of facsimile and 'fake news'. The humour styles of a range of artists are highlighted to reveal the fluidity and diversity of meaning which challenges expectations and at its best offers resistance and, crucially, a voice for the marginal. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in art history, cultural studies, fine art, humour studies and visual culture.
Author : Mark Crinson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 47,49 MB
Release : 2017-06-30
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 1786732033
Much of modernist architecture was inspired by the emergence of internationalism: the ethics and politics of world peace, justice and unity through global collaboration. Mark Crinson here shows how the ideals represented by the Tower of Babel - built, so the story goes, by people united by one language - were effectively adapted by internationalist architecture, its styles and practices, in the modern period. Focusing particularly on the points of convergence between modernist and internationalist trends in the 1920s, and again in the immediate post-war years, he underlines how such architecture utilised the themes of a cooperative community of builders and a common language of forms.The 'International Style' was one manifestation of this new way of thinking, but Crinson shows how the aims of modernist architecture frequently engaged with the substance of an internationalist mindset in addition to sharing surface similarities. Bringing together the visionaries of internationalist projects - including Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut, Berthold Lubetkin, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe - Crinson interweaves ideas of evolution, ecology, utopia, regionalism, socialism, free trade, and anti-colonialism to reveal the possibilities heralded by modernist architecture. Furthermore, he re-connects pivotal figures in architecture with a cast of polymath internationalists such as Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, Julian Huxley, Rabindranath Tagore and H. G. Wells, to provide a richly detailed socio-cultural framework. This is a book crafted for students and scholars of architecture and art theory, as well as for those interested in the history of twentieth-century optimism about the world and its architecture.
Author : Alice Wexler
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 18,38 MB
Release : 2016-01-29
Category : Education
ISBN : 1317594339
Autistic people are empirically and scientifically generalized as living in a fragmented, alternate reality, without a coherent continuous self. In Part I, this book presents recent neuropsychological research and its implications for existing theories of autism, selfhood, and identity, challenging common assumptions about the formation and structure of the autistic self and autism’s relationship to neurotypicality. Through several case studies in Part II, the book explores the ways in which artists diagnosed with autism have constructed their identities through participation within art communities and cultures, and how the concept of self as ‘story’ can be utilized to better understand the neurological differences between autism and typical cognition. This book will be of particular interest to researchers and scholars within the fields of Disability Studies, Art Education, and Art Therapy.
Author : Rough Guides
Publisher : Rough Guides UK
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 33,68 MB
Release : 2012-08-16
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 1409360067
The Rough Guide to Surviving the End of the World is a light-hearted yet well-informed look at threats to the very existence of life on Earth, how we might be able to deal with them and-if things go truly, horribly wrong-how we might just be able to survive. Written by scientist and sci fan Paul Parsons, this gripping book examines scenarios ranging from megafloods to space radiation, supervolcanoes to bioengineering and what you should do when the sh*t hits the fan. Along the way, we meet some of the lesser-trodden paths to oblivion, including the possibility that the human race will be gripped by mass stupidity and the outrageous idea that life on Earth could all be one giant Matrix-style computer simulation that its creators might one day decide to switch off. All are placed under the scientific spotlight and presented with clarity and humor. To survive Armageddon you need the best advice and information available, which is here presented in ample detail and capturing every plausible catastrophic scenario. Now available in ePub format.
