Design, Gestaltung, Formatività


Book Description

What do the work processes of a neurosurgeon and a painter have in common? Applying the notions of Design, Gestaltung, and Formatività, this book sheds new light on processes of formation and transformation in the material world we live in. Scholars from the fields of history, philosophy, psychology, media, and cultural studies question established processes of giving form, while artists, designers, engineers, and scientists describe their creative processes. This book provides its readers with an overview of the spectrum of "philosophies of making" and invites them to refl ect on their own creative process, its possibilities and associated responsibilities to the environment, and ultimately to express these in action. There has never been a more urgent need to develop a new relationship between matter and form. Discussing and expanding the definitions of Design, Gestaltung und Formatività Leading international theorists write about the relationship between matter and form A collection of new texts and first English translation of key texts




Umberto Eco, The Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular Culture


Book Description

This book provides a philosophical overview of Umberto Eco's historical and cultural development as a unique, internationally recognized public intellectual who communicates his ideas to both an academic and a popular audience. It describes Eco’s intellectual development from his childhood during World War II and student involvement as a Catholic youth activist and scholar of the Middle Ages, to his early writings on the "openness" of modern works such as Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Merrell also explores Eco’s pioneering role in semiotics and his later career as a novelist.




Reading Eco


Book Description

Examines some of Eco's writings together with secondary sources in order to arrive at a more comprehensive critique of his literary theories and his notions of general semiotics as a cognitive social/cultural practice. Articles on literary semiotics, which comprise the second section, focus primarily on Eco, Peirce, Bakhtin, Greimas, Borges, and Derrida. Part three examines aspects of Eco's fiction. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




The Open Work


Book Description

This book is significant for its concept of "openness"--the artist's decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or to chance--and for its anticipation of two themes of literary theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the insistence on literary response as an interaction between reader and text.




Handbook of Research on Emerging Technologies for Architectural and Archaeological Heritage


Book Description

Cultural heritage is a vital, multifaceted component of modern society. To better protect and promote the integrity of a culture, certain technologies have become essential tools. The Handbook of Research on Emerging Technologies for Architectural and Archaeological Heritage is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on the use of technological assistance for the preservation of architecture and archaeology in a global context. Focusing on various surveying technologies for the study, analysis, and protection of historical buildings, this book is ideally designed for professionals, researchers, upper-level students, and practitioners.







Life Interpretation and the Sense of Illness within the Human Condition


Book Description

In medicine the understanding and interpretation of the complex reality of illness currently refers either to an organismic approach that focuses on the physical or to a 'holistic' approach that takes into account the patient's human sociocultural involvement. Yet as the papers of this collection show, the suffering human person refers ultimately to his/her existential sphere. Hence, praxis is supplemented by still other perspectives for valuation and interpretation: ethical, spiritual, and religious. Can medicine ignore these considerations or push them to the side as being subjective and arbitrary? Phenomenology/philosophy-of-life recognizes all of the above approaches to be essential facets of the Human Condition (Tymieniecka). This approach holds that all the facets of the Human Condition have equal objectivity and legitimacy. It completes the accepted medical outlook and points the way toward a new `medical humanism'.




Art as Capital


Book Description

In global terms, creative industries are on the rise, as are new media investigations in art and initiatives that encourage innovation in the arts, for end-use in the economy. However, there is a significant lack of critical reflection on this form of creative production. This important book points out the dangers and downfalls that accompany such a boom of the creative industries and the subordination of art to the economy and politics. Specifically, it shows that art, as a mode of social and aesthetic practice, is losing the very thing which it has striven for so desperately in the course of modernity: its independence from other spheres of human activity.







Orensanz


Book Description