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Digital Materiality in Architecture
Robots build! At their Program in Architecture and Digital Production at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich), the architects Gramazio & Kohler have installed a research facility that is unique in the world. It is based on a computer-controlled industrial robot that produces construction elements directly from design data. The robot works flexibly with a tremendous range of tools and materials. In this way Gramazio & Kohler probe the exciting potential of digital design, construction, and manufacturing techniques for architecture. Gramazio & Kohler attracted widespread attention with the sWISH Pavilion at the Swiss National Exposition Expo 02 and the new Christmas lighting display on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse. In their projects they incorporate insights and discoveries from the field of computer-aided production into the architectonic design process, using computers to develop innovative construction techniques and architecture. First structures using robots have already been built. Thus, the much noted Gantenbein vineyard in Fläsch employs facades with individually laid bricks for the first time. This publication places explosive insights, theses, and conclusions from the dialectic between physically experienceable architecture and digital processes up for debate. .
Price: $28.19
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Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality
Standing in contrast to these aesthetically and socially regulated spaces are the neglected sites of industrial ruins, places on the margin which accommodate transgressive and playful activities. Providing a different aesthetic to the over-designed spaces of the city, ruins evoke an aesthetics of disorder, surprise and sensuality, offering ghostly glimpses into the past and a tactile encounter with space and materiality. Tim Edensor highlights the danger of destroying such evocative sites in order to build new developments. It is precisely their fragmentary nature and lack of fixed meaning that render ruins deeply meaningful. They blur boundaries between rural and urban, past and present and are intimately tied to memory, desire and a sense of place. Stunningly illustrated throughout, this book celebrates industrial ruins and reveals what they can tell us about ourselves and our past. .
Price: $30.78
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Materiality (Politics, History, and Culture)
Throughout history and across social and cultural contexts, most systems of belief—whether religious or secular—have ascribed wisdom to those who see reality as that which transcends the merely material. Yet, as the studies collected here show, the immaterial is not easily separated from the material. Humans are defined, to an extraordinary degree, by their expressions of immaterial ideals through material forms. The essays in Materiality explore varied manifestations of materiality from ancient times to the present. In assessing the fundamental role of materiality in shaping humanity, they signal the need to decenter the social within social anthropology in order to make room for the material. Considering topics as diverse as theology, technology, finance, and art, the contributors—most of whom are anthropologists—examine the many different ways in which materiality has been understood and the consequences of these differences. Their case studies show that the latest forms of financial trading instruments can be compared with the oldest ideals of ancient Egypt, that the promise of software can be compared with an age-old desire for an unmediated relationship to divinity. Whether focusing on the theology of Islamic banking, Australian Aboriginal art, derivatives trading in Japan, or textiles that respond directly to their environment, each essay adds depth and nuance to the project that Materiality advances: a profound acknowledgment and rethinking of one of the basic properties of being human. Contributors. Matthew Engelke, Webb Keane, Susanne Küchler, Bill Maurer, Lynn Meskell, Daniel Miller, Hirokazu Miyazaki, Fred Myers, Christopher Pinney, Michael Rowlands, Nigel Thrift.
Price: $21.15
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The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology
This book investigates the sensuous material qualities of stone--from golden honeycombed limestone, to frozen waves of Cambrian sandstone. Tactile sensations, sonorous qualities, color, and visual impressions are all shown to play a previously unrecognized yet vital part in understanding the power of prehistoric monuments, from Neolithic temples to Bronze Age rock carvings, in relation to their landscapes. Tilley breaks new ground in interpreting human experience in a sensuous way, rather than through an abstract analytical gaze. He leaves no stone unturned as he also considers how spaces and settings are interpreted in relation to artifacts and places that were deeply meaningful to the people who inhabited them and remain no less evocative today. In its innovative approach to understanding human experience, The Materiality of Stone is a major contribution to the field of material culture studies and the study of prehistory. .
Price: $30.17
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Basics Materials (Basics)
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Trench Art: Materialities and Memories of War
Trench art is the evocative name given to a dazzling array of objects made from the waste of industrialized war. Each object, whether an engraved shell case, cigarette lighter or a pen made from shrapnel, tells a unique and moving story about its maker. For the first time, this book explores in-depth the history and cultural importance behind these ambiguous art forms. Not only do they symbolize human responses to the atrocities of war, but they also act as mediators between soldiers and civilians, individuals and industrial society, and, most importantly, between the living and the dead. Trench art resonates most obviously with the terror of endless bombardment, night raids, gas attacks and the bestial nature of trench life. It grew in popularity between 1919 and 1939 when the bereaved embarked on battlefield pilgrimages and returned with objects intended to keep alive the memory of loved ones. The term trench art is, however, misleading, as it does not simply refer to materials found in the trenches. It describes a diverse range of objects that have in some way emerged from the experience of war all over the world. Many distinctive objects, for example, were made during conflicts in Bosnia, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and Korea.Surprisingly, trench art predates World War I and it can be made in a number of earlier wars such as the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the Boer War. Saunders looks at the broader issues of what is meant by trench art, what it was before the trenches and how it fits in with other art movements, as well as the specific materials used in making it. He suggests that it can be seen as a bridge between the nineteenth century certainties and the fragmented industrialized values and ideals of the modern world. This long overdue study offers an original and informative look at one of the most arresting forms of art. Spanning from 1800 to the present day, its analysis of art, human experience, and warfare will pave the way for new research and will be of great interest to cultural and military historians, anthropologists, art historians and collectors. .
Price: $9.86
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Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images (Material Cultures)
This innovative volume explores the idea that while photographs are images, they are also objects, and this materiality is integral to their meaning and use. The case studies presented focus on photographs active in different institutional, political, religious, and domestic spheres, where physical properties, the nature of their use, and the cultural formations in which they function make their "objectness" central to how we should understand them..
Price: $41.24
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Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism (Asian Religions and Cultures)
Throughout its history, Buddhism has developed a sophisticated philosophy of materiality, addressing the status of material objects and their role in the quest for salvation This is an innovative book that addresses the ways in which Buddhism has conceived of, and dealt with, material objects ranging from the environment to everyday tools, ritual implements, icons, and sacred texts. Contrary to received assumptions, careful reading of original sources and study of ritual practices show that in Buddhism the realm of materiality is not simply an obstacle for spiritual pursuits but also a space for interplay in which human beings can give shape and expression to their deepest religious and spiritual ideas. .
Price: $52.00
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