The Topkapi Scroll
The Topkapi Scroll

Author: Gülru Necipoğlu

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 1996-03-01

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0892363355

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Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.

One Place after Another
One Place after Another

Author: Miwon Kwon

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2004-02-27

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780262612029

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A critical history of site-specific art since the late 1960s. Site-specific art emerged in the late 1960s in reaction to the growing commodification of art and the prevailing ideals of art's autonomy and universality. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as site-specific art intersected with land art, process art, performance art, conceptual art, installation art, institutional critique, community-based art, and public art, its creators insisted on the inseparability of the work and its context. In recent years, however, the presumption of unrepeatability and immobility encapsulated in Richard Serra's famous dictum "to remove the work is to destroy the work" is being challenged by new models of site specificity and changes in institutional and market forces. One Place after Another offers a critical history of site-specific art since the late 1960s and a theoretical framework for examining the rhetoric of aesthetic vanguardism and political progressivism associated with its many permutations. Informed by urban theory, postmodernist criticism in art and architecture, and debates concerning identity politics and the public sphere, the book addresses the siting of art as more than an artistic problem. It examines site specificity as a complex cipher of the unstable relationship between location and identity in the era of late capitalism. The book addresses the work of, among others, John Ahearn, Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser, Donald Judd, Renee Green, Suzanne Lacy, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Richard Serra, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and Fred Wilson.

Haunting Experiences
Haunting Experiences

Author: Diane Goldstein

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2007-09-15

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0874216818

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Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.

Making Mathematics Come to Life
Making Mathematics Come to Life

Author: Oleg A. Ivanov

Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0821848089

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``It is difficult to define the genre of the book. It is not a problem book, nor a textbook, nor a `book for reading about mathematics'. It is most of all reminiscent of a good lecture course, from which a thoughtful student comes away with more than was actually spoken about in the lectures.'' --from the Preface by A. S. Merkurjev If you are acquainted with mathematics at least to the extent of a standard high school curriculum and like it enough to want to learn more, and if, in addition, you are prepared to do some serious work, then you should start studying this book. An understanding of the material of the book requires neither a developed ability to reason abstractly nor skill in using the refined techniques of mathematical analysis. In each chapter elementary problems are considered, accompanied by theoretical material directly related to them. There are over 300 problems in the book, most of which are intended to be solved by the reader. In those places in the book where it is natural to introduce concepts outside the high school syllabus, the corresponding definitions are given with examples. And in order to bring out the meaning of such concepts clearly, appropriate (but not too many) theorems are proved concerning them. Unfortunately, what is sometimes studied at school under the name ``mathematics'' resembles real mathematics not any closer than a plucked flower gathering dust in a herbarium or pressed between the pages of a book resembles that same flower in the meadow besprinkled with dewdrops sparkling in the light of the rising sun.

Hyperbolic Geometry from a Local Viewpoint
Hyperbolic Geometry from a Local Viewpoint

Author: Linda Keen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-03-08

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780521863605

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Written for graduate students, this book presents topics in 2-dimensional hyperbolic geometry. The authors begin with rigid motions in the plane which are used as motivation for a full development of hyperbolic geometry in the unit disk. The approach is to define metrics from an infinitesimal point of view; first the density is defined and then the metric via integration. The study of hyperbolic geometry in arbitrary domains requires the concepts of surfaces and covering spaces as well as uniformization and Fuchsian groups. These ideas are developed in the context of what is used later. The authors then provide a detailed discussion of hyperbolic geometry for arbitrary plane domains. New material on hyperbolic and hyperbolic-like metrics is presented. These are generalizations of the Kobayashi and Caratheodory metrics for plane domains. The book concludes with applications to holomorphic dynamics including new results and accessible open problems.

You Are Not So Smart
You Are Not So Smart

Author: David McRaney

Publisher: Avery

Published: 2012-11-06

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1592407366

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Explains how self-delusion is part of a person's psychological defense system, identifying common misconceptions people have on topics such as caffeine withdrawal, hindsight, and brand loyalty.

Mathematical Conversations
Mathematical Conversations

Author: Robin Wilson

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 1461301955

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Approximately fifty articles that were published in The Mathematical Intelligencer during its first eighteen years. The selection demonstrates the wide variety of attractive articles that have appeared over the years, ranging from general interest articles of a historical nature to lucid expositions of important current discoveries. Each article is introduced by the editors. "...The Mathematical Intelligencer publishes stylish, well-illustrated articles, rich in ideas and usually short on proofs. ...Many, but not all articles fall within the reach of the advanced undergraduate mathematics major. ... This book makes a nice addition to any undergraduate mathematics collection that does not already sport back issues of The Mathematical Intelligencer." D.V. Feldman, University of New Hamphire, CHOICE Reviews, June 2001.

Staying with the Trouble
Staying with the Trouble

Author: Donna J. Haraway

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2016-08-25

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0822373785

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In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway's reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time.

Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals
Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals

Author: John Krumm

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2018-10-08

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1420093614

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"...a must-read text that provides a historical lens to see how ubicomp has matured into a multidisciplinary endeavor. It will be an essential reference to researchers and those who want to learn more about this evolving field." -From the Foreword, Professor Gregory D. Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology First introduced two decades ago, the term ubiquitous computing is now part of the common vernacular. Ubicomp, as it is commonly called, has grown not just quickly but broadly so as to encompass a wealth of concepts and technology that serves any number of purposes across all of human endeavor. While such growth is positive, the newest generation of ubicomp practitioners and researchers, isolated to specific tasks, are in danger of losing their sense of history and the broader perspective that has been so essential to the field’s creativity and brilliance. Under the guidance of John Krumm, an original ubicomp pioneer, Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals brings together eleven ubiquitous computing trailblazers who each report on his or her area of expertise. Starting with a historical introduction, the book moves on to summarize a number of self-contained topics. Taking a decidedly human perspective, the book includes discussion on how to observe people in their natural environments and evaluate the critical points where ubiquitous computing technologies can improve their lives. Among a range of topics this book examines: How to build an infrastructure that supports ubiquitous computing applications Privacy protection in systems that connect personal devices and personal information Moving from the graphical to the ubiquitous computing user interface Techniques that are revolutionizing the way we determine a person’s location and understand other sensor measurements While we needn’t become expert in every sub-discipline of ubicomp, it is necessary that we appreciate all the perspectives that make up the field and understand how our work can influence and be influenced by those perspectives. This is important, if we are to encourage future generations to be as successfully innovative as the field’s originators.

History and Neorealism
History and Neorealism

Author: Ernest R. May

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-09-09

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1139490923

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Neorealists argue that all states aim to acquire power and that state cooperation can therefore only be temporary, based on a common opposition to a third country. This view condemns the world to endless conflict for the indefinite future. Based upon careful attention to actual historical outcomes, this book contends that, while some countries and leaders have demonstrated excessive power drives, others have essentially underplayed their power and sought less position and influence than their comparative strength might have justified. Featuring case studies from across the globe, History and Neorealism examines how states have actually acted. The authors conclude that leadership, domestic politics, and the domain (of gain or loss) in which they reside play an important role along with international factors in raising the possibility of a world in which conflict does not remain constant and, though not eliminated, can be progressively reduced.