Unnatural Wonders

Unnatural Wonders

Author: Arthur Coleman Danto

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780231141154

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The famous theorist locates contemporary art's most exhilarating achievements.


Herrick's Lie

Herrick's Lie

Author: T. M. Blanchet

Publisher: Tiny Fox Press

Published: 2023-03-28

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13:

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Underground. Underwater. Out of time. Ollie had only wanted to make things better at Herrick's End. And he thought he had, until he sees the stark truth spelled out in black-and-white: His friends are in danger, and it's all his fault. The good news? There might be a solution. The less-good news? It's hidden at the bottom of a deep, dangerous lake. Leaping into that water, he knows, is a monstrously bad idea. It's also the only idea he's got. One thing is certain: Ollie's quest to right past wrongs is about to open up a whole new can of wormwalkers in the extraordinary underground world he now calls home.


The Madonna of the Future

The Madonna of the Future

Author: Arthur C. Danto

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2001-09-04

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780520230026

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Danto writes about the contemporary art to be seen in museums and galleries, placing it in the context of the history of modern art and of current debates about essential ideas in our society.


The Unnatural History Museum

The Unnatural History Museum

Author: Viktor Wynd

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 3791385194

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Viktor Wynd, master of the contemporary Wunderkabinett, is back with a collection of artifacts and curiosities that are more bizarre and wonderful than ever. For over a decade, from a tiny storefront in east London, the artist Viktor Wynd has been reinventing the cabinet of curiosities for the 21st century. The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History is now one of the city's most tantalizing tourist destinations. Wynd first introduced his worldview in the book Viktor Wynd's Cabinet of Wonders, which John Waters called "an insanely delightful how-to guide...told with lunatic humor and absolute joy." In this new volume, he takes readers on a tour inside his mildly-twisted mind, delving deeper into his philosophy of collecting, and describing personal connections to the objects he treasures. Written in his trademark charismatic style, which blends whimsical stories with odd facts and obscure references, this book is filled with lavish and theatrical photographs and drawings. Loosely organized into thematic chapters, it ponders the beauty of skulls and masks; explores beasts, freaks, monsters, fairies, and mermaids; covers magical plants, hallucinogens, erotica, and dandies; and dips into the world of the occult. This might not be a book for everyone. However, it is a book everyone interested in cabinets of curiosities should have on their shelf.


Signs and Wonders

Signs and Wonders

Author: Delia Falconer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-09-29

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1760857831

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Winner of the 2022 Nib Literary Awards. Chosen as a 2021 ‘Book of the Year’ in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Book Review. The celebrated, Walkley Award-winning author on how global warming is changing not only our climate but our culture. Beautifully observed, brilliantly argued and deeply felt, these essays show that our emotions, our art, our relationships with the generations around us – all the delicate networks that make us who we are – have already been transformed. In Signs and Wonders, Falconer explores how it feels to live as a reader, a writer, a lover of nature and a mother of small children in an era of profound ecological change. Building on Falconer’s two acclaimed essays, ‘Signs and Wonders’ and the Walkley Award-winning ‘The Opposite of Glamour’, Signs and Wonders is a pioneering examination of how we are changing our culture, language and imaginations along with our climate. Is a mammoth emerging from the permafrost beautiful or terrifying? How is our imagination affected when something that used to be ordinary – like a car windscreen smeared with insects – becomes unimaginable? What can the disappearance of the paragraph from much contemporary writing tell us about what’s happening in the modern mind? Scientists write about a 'great acceleration' in human impact on the natural world. Signs and Wonders shows that we are also in a period of profound cultural acceleration, which is just as dynamic, strange, extreme and, sometimes, beautiful. Ranging from an ‘unnatural’ history of coal to the effect of a large fur seal turning up in the park below her apartment, this book is a searching and poetic examination of the ways we are thinking about how, and why, to live now. ‘Only the finest of writers can hope to convey the mercurial nature of the times we are living though: the sense of slippage; of terror and beauty. Falconer is such a writer. Signs and Wonders is an essential collection.’ Sophie Cunningham, author of City of Trees ‘Delia Falconer is one of the best writers working today, and in Signs and Wonders she demonstrates everything that makes her writing so necessary. Brave, beautiful, and breathtaking in its elegance and intelligence, it is, quite simply, a marvel.’ James Bradley ‘Scintillating. Delia Falconer is at the peak of her powers as a critic, and as an observer of the natural world. Signs and Wonders looks outward from Sydney, and from literature, to trace the contours of our environmental moment.’ Rebecca Giggs, author of Fathoms ‘Exquisite … From reflections on feeding birds, analyses of literary trends, to Falconer’s Covid and fire diaries, the essays are complex, ambitious, rewarding … Delia Falconer’s mesmerising Signs and Wonders helps us to process the disorienting complexity of living in this time of great beauty and loss.’ Jonica Newby, Australian Book Review


Film, Art, and the Third Culture

Film, Art, and the Third Culture

Author: Murray Smith

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-03-24

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0192507923

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In the mid-1950s C.P. Snow began his campaign against the 'two cultures' - the debilitating divide, as he saw it, between traditional 'literary intellectual' culture, and the culture of the sciences, urging in its place a 'third culture' which would draw upon and integrate the resources of disciplines spanning the natural and social sciences, the arts and the humanities. Murray Smith argues that, with the ever-increasing influence of evolutionary theory and neuroscience, and the pervasive presence of digital technologies, Snow's challenge is more relevant than ever. Working out how the 'scientific' and everyday images of the world 'hang' together is no simple matter. In Film, Art, and the Third Culture, Smith explores this question in relation to the art, technology, and science of film in particular, and to the world of the arts and aesthetic activity more generally. In the first part of his book, Smith explores the general strategies and principles necessary to build a 'third cultural' or naturalized approach to film and art - one that roots itself in an appreciation of scientific knowledge and method. Smith then goes on to focus on the role of emotion in film and the other arts, as an extended experiment in the 'third cultural' integration of ideas on emotion spanning the arts, humanities and sciences. While acknowledging that not all of the questions we ask are scientific in nature, Smith contends that we cannot disregard the insights wrought by taking a naturalized approach to the aesthetics of film and the other arts.


The Forgotten Creation

The Forgotten Creation

Author: Guy Bass

Publisher: Tiger Tales

Published: 2023-04-04

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1664340629

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Edward Scissorhands meets Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children in this action-packed and not-so-scary chapter book series! A mad professor with a penchant for perfection . . . . The professor’s monstrous creations, tossed aside and left to fend for themselves in the creepy castle . . . . And Stitch Head—the forgotten one with a heart of gold, who is determined to save them all. Join Stitch Head and an endearing cast of misfits in this humorous, gothic-inspired adventure of friendship, community, and discovering where you truly belong. Soon to be a major motion picture, coming fall 2025! Mad Professor Erasmus created Stitch Head when he was only 10 years old, and the two promised to be friends forever. But when Erasmus grew up, he just wanted to create more and more monsters, each one more grotesque than the last. And Stitch Head was forgotten. Fiercely loyal to his master, Stich Head took on the responsibility of caring for the mad professor’s creations. When an evil entertainer named Fulbert Freakfinder comes to town and promises to make Stitch Head famous, he is skeptical at first but gradually warms to the idea. Then he learns of Freakfinder’s true intentions—and is thrown into the adventure of an almost-lifetime! Features black-and-white gothic-inspired artwork. Soon to be a major motion picture, coming fall 2025! The Stitch Head series welcomes readers to Castle Grotteskew, where Mad Professor Erasmus makes creatures out of spare parts and then casts them aside, looking to make bigger and better. Stitch Head, his first creation, has a heart of gold and is always willing to show the other monsters the ropes—and bail them out of trouble! Join Stich Head and the other occupants of the castle in this gothic-inspired series, full of adventures of an almost-lifetime!


Pranksters

Pranksters

Author: Kembrew McLeod

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 0814764363

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From Benjamin Franklin's newspaper hoax that faked the death of his rival to Abbie HoffmanOCOs attempt to levitate the Pentagon, pranksters, hoaxers, and con artists have caused confusion, disorder, and laughter in Western society for centuries. Profiling the most notorious mischief makers from the 1600s to the present day, a Pranksters aexplores how OC pranksOCO are part of a long tradition of speaking truth to power and social critique. Invoking such historical and contemporary figures as P.T. Barnum, Jonathan Swift, WITCH, The Yes Men, and Stephen Colbert, Kembrew McLeod shows how staged spectacles that balance the serious and humorous can spark important public conversations. In some instances, tricksters have incited social change (and unfortunate prank blowback) by manipulating various forms of media, from newspapers to YouTube. For example, in the 1960s, self-proclaimed OC professional hoaxerOCO Alan Abel lampooned AmericaOCOs hypocritical sexual mores by using conservative rhetoric to fool the news media into covering a satirical organization that advocated clothing naked animals. In the 1990s, Sub Pop Records then-receptionist Megan Jasper satirized the commodification of alternative music culture by pranking thea New York Times ainto reporting on her fake lexicon of OC grunge speak.OCO Throughout this book, McLeod shows how pranks interrupt the daily flow of approved information and news, using humor to underscore larger, pointed truths. Written in an accessible, story-driven style, a Pranksters areveals how mischief makers have left their shocking, entertaining, and educational mark on modern political and social life."