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Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Talk to Me thrives on an important late 20th-century cultural development in design: a shift from the centrality of function to that of meaning. From this new perspective, objects contain information that goes well beyond their immediate use or appearance, providing access to complex systems and networks and acting as gateways and interpreters. Whether openly and actively, or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us, and designers write the initial script that lets us develop and improvise the dialogue. Talk to Me focuses on objects that involve direct interaction, such as interfaces, information systems, communica...
This book discusses the mechanisms and patterns of staging in nineteenth-century France. Often associated with theatre and performance, staging also applies to visual arts. It is thoroughly embedded in a more general cultural development comprising the dissemination of knowledge, political awareness and consumerism. The notion of staging applies to a process of appearing, revealing and disappearing that puts forward new ways for the individual to be seen and to make the self (and the other) visible. Staging determines and questions the process of appearing and disappearing by generating connections and interactions between multiple layers of reality (i.e., artistic, theatrical, literary, and visual) – but according to what criteria, through what mechanisms and with what materials? What are the repercussions of staging, and, even more important, what does staging not show? This book argues that the notion of staging goes beyond interdisciplinarity. Looking at the different ways staging was used and conceived introduces new approaches to understanding visual culture in nineteenth-century France.
How digital technology is profoundly renewing our sense of what is real and how we perceive. Digital technologies are not just tools; they are structures of perception. They determine the way in which the world appears to us. For nearly half a century, technology has provided us with perceptions coming from an unknown world. The digital beings that emerge from our screens and our interfaces disrupt the notion of what we experience as real, thereby leading us to relearn how to perceive. In Being and the Screen, Stéphane Vial provides a philosophical analysis of technology in general, and of digital technologies in particular, that relies on the observation of experience (phenomenology) and t...
In wide-ranging essays and interviews, contributors from the fields of Buddhist practice and scholarship, philosophy, the arts, and literature examine the work of a modern genius—the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939–1987). A pioneer in introducing Buddhism to the West, Trungpa Rinpoche had a distinct knack for breaking down the cultural, historical, and ideological barriers that make any such transmission so difficult today. His skill at communicating in a living language to Western students, while remaining faithful to the traditional origins of Buddhism, was paired with an understanding of the modern world of unusual relevance. As a result, his activit...
How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the ki...
This concise, precise, and inclusive dictionary contributes to a growing, transforming, and living research culture within both humanities scholarship and professional practices within the creative sectors. Its format of succinct starting definitions, demonstrations of possible routes of further development, and references to new and revisited concepts as “conceptual invitations” allows readers to quickly uptake and orient themselves within this exciting methodological field for didactic, scholarly and creative use, and as a starting point for further investigation for future contributions to the new canon of critical concepts. Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities is the first book to outline and define the specific and evolving field of the creative humanities and provides the field’s nascent bibliography.
It can be considered the most systemic, deadly, and all-encompassing form of institutional violence that currently exists: speciesism, the oppression and exploitation of other animals. For most people on our planet, speciesism is something completely normalized, justified, and encouraged through many facets of dominant cultures. The field of critical/political animal studies, and other fields that challenge anthropocentrism, have already thoroughly problematized, questioned, and analyzed speciesist practices, but one topic receives little academic attention: what can a counter-concept to speciesism contain, without saying what it is not? This thesis is concerned with imagining ‘multispecie...
A counterhistory and new historiography of design. In Design by Accident, Alexandra Midal declares the autonomy of design, in and on its own terms. This meticulously researched work proposes not only a counterhistory but a new historiography of design, shedding light on overlooked historical landmarks and figures while reevaluating the legacies of design's established luminaries from the nineteenth century to the present. Midal rejects both linear narratives of progress and the long-held perception of design as a footnote to the histories of fine art and architecture. By weaving critical analysis of the canon of design history and theory together, with special attention to the writings of designers themselves, she draws out the nuances and radical potentials of the discipline—from William Morris's ambivalence toward industry, to Catharine Beecher's proto-feminist household appliances, to the Bauhaus's Expressionist origins, and the influence of Herbert Marcuse on Joe Colombo.
How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the ki...
Peter Sloterdijk sees our digitalized world in a "growing spatial crisis", accompanied by the danger of a "general virtuality of all relationships". Others view the digitalization of the world as opening up a grassroots democratic space that allows everyone access to culture. Against this backdrop, this anthology examines the spatial characteristics of the museum – between physical place and virtual space. The chapters collected here approach the museum space from various disciplinary perspectives, such as philosophy, history, art history, architecture, scenography, museum education and curatorial studies. At the same time, the contributions by international museum experts are assigned to different literary genres – fundamental considerations alternate with think pieces, case studies and interviews.