Jeffrey L. Kosky
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226451060
- eISBN:
- 9780226451084
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226451084.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by “the disenchantment of the world.” Max Weber’s statement remains a dominant interpretation of the ...
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The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by “the disenchantment of the world.” Max Weber’s statement remains a dominant interpretation of the modern condition: the increasing capabilities of knowledge and science have banished mysteries, leaving a world that can be mastered technically and intellectually. And though this idea seems empowering, many people have faced modern disenchantment. Using intimate encounters with works of art to explore disenchantment and the possibilities of re-enchantment, this book addresses questions about the nature of humanity, the world, and God in the wake of Weber’s diagnosis of modernity. It focuses on a handful of artists—Walter De Maria, Diller and Scofidio, James Turrell, and Andy Goldworthy—to show how they introduce spaces hospitable to mystery and wonder, redemption and revelation, and transcendence and creation. What might be thought of as religious longings, the book argues, are crucial aspects of enchanting secularity when developed through encounters with these works of art. Developing a model of religion that might be significant to secular culture, it shows how this model can be employed to deepen interpretation of the art we usually view as representing secular modernity.Less
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by “the disenchantment of the world.” Max Weber’s statement remains a dominant interpretation of the modern condition: the increasing capabilities of knowledge and science have banished mysteries, leaving a world that can be mastered technically and intellectually. And though this idea seems empowering, many people have faced modern disenchantment. Using intimate encounters with works of art to explore disenchantment and the possibilities of re-enchantment, this book addresses questions about the nature of humanity, the world, and God in the wake of Weber’s diagnosis of modernity. It focuses on a handful of artists—Walter De Maria, Diller and Scofidio, James Turrell, and Andy Goldworthy—to show how they introduce spaces hospitable to mystery and wonder, redemption and revelation, and transcendence and creation. What might be thought of as religious longings, the book argues, are crucial aspects of enchanting secularity when developed through encounters with these works of art. Developing a model of religion that might be significant to secular culture, it shows how this model can be employed to deepen interpretation of the art we usually view as representing secular modernity.
Amanda Boetzkes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665884
- eISBN:
- 9781452946450
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665884.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
This chapter examines artworks that place the spectator in an immersive situation. It explores the works of James Turrell, Chris Drury, and Olafur Eliasson, whose works are known for their earthen ...
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This chapter examines artworks that place the spectator in an immersive situation. It explores the works of James Turrell, Chris Drury, and Olafur Eliasson, whose works are known for their earthen enclosures or installations saturated by light and the use of colored filters and reflective mirrors. It investigates how their work offers unencumbered access to natural phenomena as they are structured to restrain the viewer at the threshold of elemental manifestations such as sky, light, atmosphere, water, and color. It also argues that the phenomenological positioning of the spectator, surrounded and separated at the same time from elementals, expresses a necessary withdrawal from earth that opens the senses to the dynamism and plenitude of earth.Less
This chapter examines artworks that place the spectator in an immersive situation. It explores the works of James Turrell, Chris Drury, and Olafur Eliasson, whose works are known for their earthen enclosures or installations saturated by light and the use of colored filters and reflective mirrors. It investigates how their work offers unencumbered access to natural phenomena as they are structured to restrain the viewer at the threshold of elemental manifestations such as sky, light, atmosphere, water, and color. It also argues that the phenomenological positioning of the spectator, surrounded and separated at the same time from elementals, expresses a necessary withdrawal from earth that opens the senses to the dynamism and plenitude of earth.
Douglas Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520257801
- eISBN:
- 9780520956834
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257801.003.0017
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Cinema is considered through electromagnetic propagation in projected and transmitted light in Alexander Graham Bell’s attempt to listen to storms on the sun using his photophone; through the ...
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Cinema is considered through electromagnetic propagation in projected and transmitted light in Alexander Graham Bell’s attempt to listen to storms on the sun using his photophone; through the “head-light child” of automobile headlights and related comet imagery by Marcel Duchamp, including his “tonsure”; and in Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone and James Turrell’s Roden Crater, in the context of his ideas about electromagnetism.Less
Cinema is considered through electromagnetic propagation in projected and transmitted light in Alexander Graham Bell’s attempt to listen to storms on the sun using his photophone; through the “head-light child” of automobile headlights and related comet imagery by Marcel Duchamp, including his “tonsure”; and in Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone and James Turrell’s Roden Crater, in the context of his ideas about electromagnetism.
Douglas Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520257801
- eISBN:
- 9780520956834
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257801.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Grounded ...
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Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Grounded in the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing in telegraph lines and in the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard in telephone lines, the book moves through the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s, when the composer Alvin Lucier worked with the “natural electromagnetic sounds” present from “brainwaves to outer space,” through the urban electromagnetism in the conceptual art of Robert Barry, to the energy-scavenging drawings and antennas by the artist Joyce Hinterding. From the sounds of auroras at high latitudes and atmospheric electricity in the mountains to the underground music of earthquakes and nuclear explosions and to music bounced off the moon and the sounds of the sun, Earth Sound Earth Signal rethinks energy at a global scale through detailed discussions of artists and scientists such as Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, James Turrell, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Paul DeMarinis, Semiconductor, Thomas Ashcraft, Katie Paterson, Edmond Dewan, Ludwik Liszka, and many others.Less
Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Grounded in the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing in telegraph lines and in the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard in telephone lines, the book moves through the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s, when the composer Alvin Lucier worked with the “natural electromagnetic sounds” present from “brainwaves to outer space,” through the urban electromagnetism in the conceptual art of Robert Barry, to the energy-scavenging drawings and antennas by the artist Joyce Hinterding. From the sounds of auroras at high latitudes and atmospheric electricity in the mountains to the underground music of earthquakes and nuclear explosions and to music bounced off the moon and the sounds of the sun, Earth Sound Earth Signal rethinks energy at a global scale through detailed discussions of artists and scientists such as Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, James Turrell, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Paul DeMarinis, Semiconductor, Thomas Ashcraft, Katie Paterson, Edmond Dewan, Ludwik Liszka, and many others.
Garrett Stewart
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226500874
- eISBN:
- 9780226501062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226501062.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Exploring such various light artists as James Turrell, Doug Wheeler, and especially Anthony McCall, this chapter concentrates on McCall’s work (in light of Hal Foster’s appreciation) in spanning the ...
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Exploring such various light artists as James Turrell, Doug Wheeler, and especially Anthony McCall, this chapter concentrates on McCall’s work (in light of Hal Foster’s appreciation) in spanning the transition from filmic to digital projection in his “solid light films,” with their manifestation first of film without cinema, then of projection without image: not the representation of occupied narrative space but a habitable and embodied space of light all their own.Less
Exploring such various light artists as James Turrell, Doug Wheeler, and especially Anthony McCall, this chapter concentrates on McCall’s work (in light of Hal Foster’s appreciation) in spanning the transition from filmic to digital projection in his “solid light films,” with their manifestation first of film without cinema, then of projection without image: not the representation of occupied narrative space but a habitable and embodied space of light all their own.
