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Selene's Two Faces
If any scientific object has over the course of human history aroused the fascination of both scientists and artists worldwide, it is beyond doubt the moon. The moon is also by far the most interesting celestial body when it comes to reflecting on the dualistic nature of photography as applied to the study of the universe. Against this background, Selene’s Two Faces sets out to look at the scientific purpose, aesthetic expression, and influence of early lunar drawings, maps and photographs, including spacecraft imaging. In its approach, Selene’s Two Faces is intermedial, intercultural and interdisciplinary. It brings together not only various media (photography, maps, engravings, lithographs, globes, texts), and cultures (from Europe, America and Asia), but also theoretical perspectives. See inside the book.
Photography and Its Origins
Recent decades have seen a flourishing interest in and speculation about the origins of photography. Spurred by rediscoveries of ‘first’ photographs and proclamations of photography’s death in the digital age, scholars have been rethinking who and what invented the medium. Photography and Its Origins reflects on this interest in photography’s beginnings by reframing it in critical and specifically historiographical terms. How and why do we write about the origins of the medium? Whom or what do we rely on to construct those narratives? What’s at stake in choosing to tell stories of photography’s genesis in one way or another? And what kind of work can those stories do? Edited by Tanya Sheehan and Andrés Mario Zervigón, this collection of 16 original essays, illustrated with 32 colour images, showcases prominent and emerging voices in the field of photography studies. Their research cuts across disciplines and methodologies, shedding new light on old questions about histories and their writing. Photography and Its Origins will serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars in art history, visual and media studies, and the history of science and technology.
Maritime Poetics
In the past fifty years, port cities around the world have experienced considerable changes to their morphologies and their identities. The increasing intensification of global networks and logistics, and the resulting pressure on human societies and earthly environments have been characteristic of the rise of a »planetary age«. This volume engages with contemporary artistic practices and critical poetics that trace an alternate construction of the imaginaries and aspirations of our present societies at the crossroads of sea and land – taking into account complex pasts and interconnected histories, transnational flux, as well as material and immaterial borders.
Hubble, Humason and the Big Bang
The story of Hubble and Humason is one for the ages—and in particular, the Cosmic Age. In this compelling book, science writer Ron Voller digs deep into how and why the two scientists continued to investigate their theory of universal expansion in the face of persistent doubt, contrary theories, and calamitous world events. The evolution of this dynamic duo’s tenuous friendship and professional partnership is in many ways as intriguing as their groundbreaking work on the evolution of the universe. The book therefore traces their lives from their childhoods into their burgeoning careers, revealing how a World War and their own personal differences stood in the way of initial cooperation. ...
Science Sketches
This book is the second collection of over 50 articles and essays authored by Sidney Perkowitz. Appearing in diverse outlets such as Discover, Washington Post, Aeon, Los Angeles Review of Books, Nautilus, Museum of the Moving Image, and Physics World, they represent the best of his writing about science and technology, and their links to culture and society, the arts and the media, and the humanities. Written for general readers, the pieces explore the outer and inner universes from cosmic space to the human mind, from the artistic use of science to the impact of technology and AI in the justice system, in medicine, and in dealing with COVID-19.
Scientific Journeys
This collection of essays traces a scientific journey bookmarked by remarkable mentors and milestones of science. It provides fascinating reading for everyone interested in the history, public appreciation, and value of science, as well as giving first-hand accounts of many key events and prominent figures. The author was one of the “sputnik kids” growing up in the US at the start of the space age. He built a working laser just two years after they were first invented, an experience that convinced him to become a physicist. During his 50-year career in physics, many personalities and notable events in science and technology helped to form his view of how science contributes to the modern...
The Early American Daguerreotype
The American daguerreotype as something completely new: a mechanical invention that produced an image, a hybrid of fine art and science and technology. The daguerreotype, invented in France, came to America in 1839. By 1851, this early photographic method had been improved by American daguerreotypists to such a degree that it was often referred to as “the American process.” The daguerreotype—now perhaps mostly associated with stiffly posed portraits of serious-visaged nineteenth-century personages—was an extremely detailed photographic image, produced though a complicated process involving a copper plate, light-sensitive chemicals, and mercury fumes. It was, as Sarah Kate Gillespie s...
Unrefined
A surprising look at how modern capitalism changed sugar from a natural food to a scientific commodity. Sugar is everywhere in the western diet, blamed for epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other modern maladies. Our addiction to sweetness has a long and unsavory history. Over the past five hundred years, sugar has shaped empires, made fortunes for a few, and brought misery for millions of workers both enslaved and free. How did sugar become a defining modern food and an essential global commodity? In Unrefined, David Singerman recasts our thinking about this crucial substance in the history of capitalism. Before the nineteenth century, sugar’s value depended on natural qualities: its co...
Elixir
A story of alchemy in Bohemian Paris, where two scientific outcasts discovered a fundamental distinction between natural and synthetic chemicals that inaugurated an enduring scientific mystery. For centuries, scientists believed that living matter possessed a special quality—a spirit or essence—that differentiated it from nonliving matter. But by the nineteenth century, the scientific consensus was that the building blocks of one were identical to the building blocks of the other. Elixir tells the story of two young chemists who were not convinced, and how their work rewrote the boundary between life and nonlife. In the 1830s, Édouard Laugier and Auguste Laurent were working in Laugier ...
The Heavens on Earth
A collection exploring the place of the observatory in nineteenth-century science, culture.
