of human figures Persuasive human figures Performing human figures

The architectural image: space, movement and myth

Oil on Canvas

Echo and Narcissus

Sound and silence

Van Gogh, Vincent

The Big Combo

Part 1 Vision and Knowledge Critics of Ocularcentrism The Narcissistic and Nihilistic Eye Oral versus Visual Space Retinal Architecture and the Loss of Plasticity An Architecture of Visual Images Materiality and Time The Rejection of Alberti's Window A New Vision and Sensory Balance Part 2 The Body in the Centre Multi-Sensory Experience The Significance of the Shadow Acoustic Intimacy Silence, Time and Solitude Spaces of Scent The Shape of Touch The Taste of Stone Images of Muscle and Bone Images of Action Bodily Identification Mimesis of the Body Spaces of Memory and Imagination An Architecture of the Senses The Task of Architecture

The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Electronic games have established a huge international market, significantly outselling non-digital games; people spend more money on The Sims than on "Monopoly" or even on "Magic: the Gathering." Yet it is widely believed that the market for electronic literature -- predicted by some to be the future of the written word -- languishes. Even bestselling author Stephen King achieved disappointing results with his online publication of "Riding the Bullet" and "The Plant." Isn't it possible, though, that many hugely successful computer games -- those that depend on or at least utilize storytelling conventions of narrative, character, and theme -- can be seen as examples of electronic literature? And isn't it likely that the truly significant new forms of electronic literature will prove to be (like games) so deeply interactive and procedural that it would be impossible to present them as paper-like "e-books"? The editors of First Person have gathered a remarkably diverse group of new media theorists and practitioners to consider the relationship between "story" and "game," as well as the new kinds of artistic creation (literary, performative, playful) that have become possible in the digital environment. This landmark collection is organized as a series of discussions among creators and theorists; each section includes three presentations, with each presentation followed by two responses. Topics considered range from "Cyberdrama" to "Ludology" (the study of games), to "The Pixel/The Line" to "Beyond Chat." The conversational structure inspired contributors to revise, update, and expand their presentations as they prepared them for the book, and the panel discussions have overflowed into a First Person web site (created in conjunction with the online journal Electronic Book Review).

First Person: New Media As Story, Performance, and Game

Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today's new participatory Web 20 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns, our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies, are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry Worse, Keen claims, our cut-and-paste online culture - in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated - threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labours In today's self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented The very anonymity that the Web 20 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive, and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free While no Luddite - Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself - he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions Offering concrete solutions on how we can rein in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, The Cult of the Amateur is a wake-up call to each and every one of us

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture

The Architectural Uncanny presents an engaging and original series of meditations on issues and figures that are at the heart of the most pressing debates surrounding architecture today. Anthony Vidler interprets contemporary buildings and projects in light of the resurgent interest in the uncanny as a metaphor for a fundamentally "unhomely" modern condition. The essays are at once historical -- serving to situate contemporary discourse in its own intellectual tradition and theoretical -- opening up the complex and difficult relationships between politics, social thought, and architectural design in an era when the reality of homelessness and the idealism of the neo-avant-garde have never seemed so far apart. Vidler, one of the deftest and surest critics of the contemporary scene, explores aspects of architecture through notions of the uncanny as they have been developed in literature, philosophy, and psychology from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. He interprets the unsettling qualities of today's architecture -- its fragmented neo-constructivist forms reminiscent of dismembered bodies, its "seeing walls" replicating the passive gaze of domestic cyborgs, its historical monuments indistinguishable from glossy reproductions - in the light of modern reflection on questions of social and individual estrangement, alienation, exile, and homelessness. Focusing on the work of architects such as Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Coop Himmelblau, John Hejduk, Elizabeth Diller, and Ricardo Scofidio, as well as theorists of the urban condition, Vidler delineates the problems and paradoxes associated with the subject of domesticity.

The architectural image: space, movement and myth

Citations

Oil on Canvas

Echo and Narcissus

Sound and silence

Van Gogh, Vincent

The Big Combo

References

The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

First Person: New Media As Story, Performance, and Game

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture

The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely

Related Papers (4)

The Architecture of Excess: Image Fabrication between Spectacle and Anaesthesia

Social Ritual and Architectural Space

(Un)canny Spaces: The Unbecoming of Everyday Architecture

Architecture, Patterns, and Mathematics