The Aesthetics of Image and Cultural Form

The Aesthetics of Image and Cultural Form
Author: Yi Chen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2024-04-24
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1003815979

Offering an alternative mode of visual cultural analysis to the prevalent discursive model, this book proposes to situate analysis of Image within ‘formal’ analyses of culture experience. Specifically, the discussion draws on theories of affective aesthetics with the view of addressing the sensual form of culture (i.e. ‘cultural form’). Therefore, the volume puts forward a mode of formalist analysis in visual cultural research which takes purchase on the idea of ‘cultural form’. A continuum of formalist attention between Image analysis (visual media, industrial design) and probing of ‘cultural forms’ establishes the theoretical underpinning of the book. These concepts are expounded through a case study which looks at formal experimentations and debates arising from 1960s avant-garde artistic practices in London.

Culture, Aesthetics and Affect in Ubiquitous Media

Culture, Aesthetics and Affect in Ubiquitous Media
Author: Helen Grace
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2013-10-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134664958

This book argues that ubiquitous media and user-created content establish a new perception of the world that can be called ‘particulate vision’, involving a different relation to reality that better represents the atomization of contemporary experience especially apparent in social media. Drawing on extensive original research including detailed ethnographic investigation of camera phone practices in Hong Kong, as well as visual analysis identifying the patterns, regularities and genres of such work, it shows how new distributed forms of creativity and subjectivity now work to shift our perceptions of the everyday. The book analyses the specific features of these new developments – the components of what can be called a ‘general aesthesia’ – and it focuses on the originality and innovation of amateur practices, developing a model for making sense of the huge proliferation of images in contemporary culture, discovering rhythms and tempo in this work and showing why it matters.

Image Science

Image Science
Author: W. J. T. Mitchell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2018-01-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 022656584X

Almost thirty years ago, W.J.T. Mitchell's 'Iconology' helped launch the interdisciplinary study of visual media, now a central feature of the humanities. Mitchell's now-classic work introduced such ideas as the pictorial turn, the image/picture distinction, the metapicture, and the biopicture. These key concepts imply an approach to images as true objects of investigation-an 'image science.' Continuing with this influential line of thought, 'Image Science' gathers Mitchell's most recent essays on media aesthetics, visual culture, and artistic symbolism. The chapters delve into such topics as the physics and biology of images, digital photography and realism, architecture and new media, and the occupation of space in contemporary popular uprisings.

Philosophy in Cultural Theory

Philosophy in Cultural Theory
Author: Peter Osborne
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317834976

Philosophy in Cultural Theory boldly crosses disciplinary boundaries to offer a philosophical critique of cultural theory today. Drawing on the legacy of Walter Benjamin, Peter Osborne looks critically at central philosophical debates in cultural theory, such as: * the relationship between sign and image * the technological basis of cultural form * the conceptuality of art * the place of fantasy in human affairs. It will appeal to those in philosophy, cultural studies and art theory.

The Aesthetics of Image and Cultural Form

The Aesthetics of Image and Cultural Form
Author: Yi Chen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781032379241

Offering an alternative mode of visual cultural analysis to the prevalent discursive model, this book proposes to situate analysis of Image within 'formal' analyses of culture experience. Specifically, the discussion draws on theories of affective aesthetics with the view of addressing the sensual form of culture (i.e. 'cultural form'). Therefore, the volume puts forward a mode of formalist analysis in visual cultural research which takes purchase on the idea of 'cultural form'. A continuum of formalist attention between Image analysis (visual media, industrial design) and probing of 'cultural forms' establishes the theoretical underpinning of the book. These concepts are expounded through a case study which looks at formal experimentations and debates arising from 1960s avant-garde artistic practices in London.

The Virus Touch

The Virus Touch
Author: Bishnupriya Ghosh
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2023-03-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478023848

In The Virus Touch Bishnupriya Ghosh argues that media are central to understanding emergent relations between viruses, humans, and nonhuman life. Writing in the shadow of the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 global pandemics, Ghosh theorizes “epidemic media” to show how epidemics are mediated in images, numbers, and movements through the processes of reading test results and tracking infection and mortality rates. Scientific, artistic, and activist epidemic media that make multispecies relations sensible and manageable eschew anthropocentric survival strategies and instead recast global public health crises as biological, social, and ecological catastrophes, pushing us toward a multispecies politics of health. Ghosh trains her analytic gaze on these mediations as expressed in the collection and analysis of blood samples as a form of viral media; the geospatialization of data that track viral hosts like wild primates; and the use of multisensory images to trace fluctuations in viral mutations. Studying how epidemic media inscribe, store, and transmit multispecies relations attunes us to the anthropogenic drivers of pathogenicity like deforestation or illegal wildlife trading and the vulnerabilities accruing from diseases that arise from socioeconomic inequities and biopolitical neglect.

Aesthetic Formations

Aesthetic Formations
Author: Birgit Meyer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2009-07-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0230623247

This book examines the incorporation of newly accessible mass media into practices of religious mediation in a variety of settings including the Pentecostal Church and Islamic movements, as well as the use of religious forms and image in the sphere of radio and cinema.

Visual Digital Culture

Visual Digital Culture
Author: Andrew Darley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2002-01-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134708378

Digital entertainment, from video games to simulation rides, is now a central feature of popular culture. Computer-based or digital technologies are supplanting the traditional production methods of television, film and video, provoking intense speculation about their impact on the character of art. Examining the digital imaging techniques across a wide range of media, including film, music video, computer games, theme parks and simulation rides, Visual Digital Culture explores the relationship between evolving digital technologies and existing media and considers the effect of these new image forms on the experience of visual culture. Andrew Darley first traces the development of digital computing from the 1960s and its use in the production of visual digital entertainment. Through case studies of films such as Toy Story, key pop videos such as Michael Jackson's Black or White, and computer games like Quake and Blade Runner, Andrew Darley asks whether digital visual forms mark a break with traditional emphases on story, representation, meaning and reading towards a focus on style, image performance and sensation. He questions the implications of digital culture for theories of spectatorship, suggesting that these new visual forms create new forms of spectatorship within mass culture.