The rapid changes currently taking place in our urban, political and institutional environments have shifted spatial practice to centre stage both in civic life and academic research. Social networking, political projects, cross-border movements, artistic interventions, urban and environmental initiatives, self-organized educational practices - all articulate the challenges involved in organizing the spaces we share. In this volume, visual culture scholars from around the world discuss the "practical turn" in different fields of critical engagement, proposing fresh ways to assert an...

The terms "mind" and "matter" appear to signify two concepts irreplaceable and permanent in nature. The increasing challenges and modes of reflection of digital life and cultural creation have contributed to a productive doubting of said dichotomy. Net culture has exposed the causality of the two only superficially contradictory systems and translated these into new technological realities. This publication, using an interdisciplinary approach, strives to investigate the entanglement of cultural, artistic and technical praxis, to document the developments, to clarify the status quo of the...

(Dis)Orientation appears to be a phenomenon that is connected to media in numerous respects: Today, finding your way in the world often means finding your way with the help of as well as within media, which in turn creates new virtual realms of (dis)orientation. This book deals with recent media technologies and structures (navigation devices, databases, transmediality) and unconventional narrative patterns (narrative complexity, plot twists, non-linearity), using the ambivalent concept of (dis)orientation as a shared focus to analyze various phenomena of contemporary media, thereby raising...

In addition to products and services, multinational corporations sell myths, values, and immaterial goods. These "meta-goods," which include prestige, beauty, and strength, are major components of successful marketing and advertising. Fashion ads mine deeply rooted human values, ideals, and desires, channeled through social recognition, beautification, and rejuvenation. Although referencing meta-goods is obvious to some consumers, their connection to philosophical theories of human nature is less apparent, even among the marketers and advertisers who use them. This book will appeal to...

Reverse engineering breaks down an existing object or system according to its construction and then rebuilds it based on new demands. The process encourages creative appropriation while democratizing knowledge. Contributors apply reverse engineering to art, science, and politics and highlight the importance of access, knowledge, and skills to reshaping our present and the future.

Beginning with an analysis of participation practices in contemporary print and other media, this volume expands historical perspectives by exploring the potential of participatory cultures to illuminate past forms of collaboration between individual and collective actors (i.e. authors, editors, publishers, fans, critics, etc.). In doing so, the volume sheds new light on the historically, culturally, and medially specific forms and functions, as well as on the economic, political, and institutional parameters, contributing to the emergence and transformation of what turn out to be precarious...

Michael D. Fowler presents an interdisciplinary approach to investigating the sound world of traditional Japanese gardens by drawing from the diverse fields of semiotics, acoustic ecology, philosophy, mathematical modelling, architecture, music, landscape theory and acoustic analysis. Using projects--ranging from data-visualisations, immersive sound installations, algorithmically generated meta-gardens and proto-architectural form finding missions--as creative paradigms, the book offers a new framework for artistic inquiry in which the sole objective is the generation of new knowledge through...

This book compellingly argues how and why art and marketing often look alike today. Combining the history and theory of art with theories of contemporary culture and marketing, Maria A. Slowinska chooses three angles (space, object, persona) to bridge present and past, aesthetic appearance and theoretical discourse, and traditional divisions between art and commerce. Beyond both pessimistic and celebratory rhetorics, Art/Commerce explains contemporary phenomena in which the aestheticization of commerce and the commercialization of aesthetics converge.

This volume unravels the debates on the Participation Age Instead of perpetuating visions of social all-inclusion or the digital divide, the collection reclaims collectivity as an effect of technological and historical conditions. Thinking of participation both as promise and duty, the contributions analyse the attractions and impositions connected to the socio-technical formation of collectivities. The constraints of participation are addressed by focusing on the mutual shaping of user practices and technological environments. It is hence a relational thinking that allows specifying the...

How did games rise to become the central audiovisual form of expression and storytelling in digital culture? How did the practices of their artistic production come into being? How did the academic analysis of the new medium's social effects and cultural meaning develop? Addressing these fundamental questions and aspects of digital game culture in a holistic way for the first time, Gundolf S. Freyermuths introduction outlines the media-historical development phases of analog and digital games, the history and artistic practices of game design, as well as the history, academic approaches, and...