Search Results

Framing the Margins: Geometries of Space and American Genre Painting

Ivy G. Wilson

in Specters of Democracy: Blackness and the Aesthetics of Politics in the Antebellum U.S.

This chapter illuminates how the compositional logic of American genre painting strategically organized zones in terms of centers and margins in various settings as different as parlors, fields, and ... More

This chapter illuminates how the compositional logic of American genre painting strategically organized zones in terms of centers and margins in various settings as different as parlors, fields, and post offices as a means to illustrate the forms of national belonging. In works by William Sidney Mount, Richard Caton Woodville, Eastman Johnson, and Winslow Homer, it analyzes the depiction of written notices, furniture, and attire as political devices that materialize space as a social domain. It pays particular attention to the ways that African American subjects are literalized as shadows in many of these paintings, tucked away into corners of parlors or hovering on the outskirts of scenes of entertainment, through an analytic of what it theorizes as “the social logic of spatial forms”.Less

Synthesis, Signal Processing, and Spatialization

Peter Manning

in Electronic and Computer Music

The development of synthesis and signal processing software since the late 1990s, facilitated by the exponential growth in the power and versatility of the associated hardware, has materially ... More

The development of synthesis and signal processing software since the late 1990s, facilitated by the exponential growth in the power and versatility of the associated hardware, has materially transformed the opportunities for exploring the medium of computer music during the early part of the 21st century. Although the foundations for these developments had been clearly established by the end of the last century, the true extent and significance of what was to follow could not have been fully anticipated, not least in terms of the resulting empowerment of the individual, working without the enhanced support of a research institution. This important shift in the locus of activity has opened up new perspectives for the future development of the medium, and these form an integral part of the critique that emerges from this chapter.Less

The Special Relationship and the British Hypothesis: The Black Laurel, The Third Man, Cold War Vienna and Berlin

Adam Piette

in The Literary Cold War, 1945 to Vietnam

This chapter looks at two novels set in Vienna and Berlin during the Cold War. It studies Storm Jameson's The Black Laurel, which presents a Gothic symbolic and historical spatialization of Berlin. ... More

This chapter looks at two novels set in Vienna and Berlin during the Cold War. It studies Storm Jameson's The Black Laurel, which presents a Gothic symbolic and historical spatialization of Berlin. The novel is considered a fiction about the special relationship regarded as European Gothic. The discussion then shifts to Graham Greene's The Third Man, which resulted from his contacts in the subtle world of intelligence.Less

Introduction: Space, Mobility, Borders, and Trading Frictions

Ann Marie Leshkowich and Kirsten W. Endres

in Traders in Motion: Identities and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace

This introduction provides a theoretical overview of the main mechanisms through which a market economy emerges. The chapters in this volume offer rich ethnographic exploration of daily interactions ... More

This introduction provides a theoretical overview of the main mechanisms through which a market economy emerges. The chapters in this volume offer rich ethnographic exploration of daily interactions among traders, suppliers, customers, family members, neighbors, and officials within Vietnam and across its borders. These quotidian encounters occur within contested spaces, through expanding and contracting circuits of mobility, and across physical and conceptual boundaries that are fixed, yet porous. Taken together, the diverse contributions to this collection demonstrate that markets form and transform through uneven interplay among global processes, state regulatory regimes, and local trajectories of economic and social development. Rather than impede market function, these trading frictions shape the necessary ground on which new forms of political economy emerge.Less

At Work in the Nomosphere: The Spatiolegal Production of Emotions at Work

David Delaney

in The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography

This chapter introduces to legal geography a rich conception of personhood and the social processes of subjectification. It asks how critical attention to emotions (and especially governing emotions ... More

This chapter introduces to legal geography a rich conception of personhood and the social processes of subjectification. It asks how critical attention to emotions (and especially governing emotions and governing through emotions), to psychodynamics, and to critical organizational studies might enhance our understanding of the spatio-legal. The primary foci of investigation are the spatio-legal (nomospheric) constitutions of work, the relation of working-for, and the contemporary American workplace. Using these to explore the production and maldistribution of social suffering, the chapter offers a provisional response to the question: what is legal geography good for?Less

Politics of Aesthetics

Mustafa Dikeç

in Space, Politics and Aesthetics

Arendt, Nancy and Rancière all find something politically appealing in Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgement, but appropriate different elements of it. Arendt focuses on ‘common sense’, Nancy on ... More

Arendt, Nancy and Rancière all find something politically appealing in Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgement, but appropriate different elements of it. Arendt focuses on ‘common sense’, Nancy on ‘presentation’, and Rancière on ‘equality’. Thus, political aesthetic is central to both the connections and differences between them. This chapter argues that despite their differences, what unites these thinkers is that their political aesthetic requires space and spatialisation. The ‘common’, its constitution, disclosure and disruption are central to their politics, and this is why space, as a form and mode of apprehending the common, is central to their thinking. Their conceptualisation of politics relies on the apprehension of the world through aesthetic forms and the construction of a shared and relational domain of experience.Less

Politics for Beginners

Mustafa Dikeç

in Space, Politics and Aesthetics

This chapter explores Arendt’s understanding of action and her spatial premises. Political action, for Arendt, inaugurates space – what she calls ‘space of appearance’ – where individuals are at once ... More

This chapter explores Arendt’s understanding of action and her spatial premises. Political action, for Arendt, inaugurates space – what she calls ‘space of appearance’ – where individuals are at once related and separated. This spatialisation, this chapter argues, is a sensible manifestation of the freedom of the acting subject. It is also a medium, creating an order of relations between and a shared domain of experience for individuals in their distinctiveness and plurality. For Arendt, politics needs a ‘stage’ for both actors and spectators, for public appearance is an integral part of it. Spatialisation provides this space of encounter as a domain for mutual exposure and relationality, and thus enables a political relation to the world and others. It also allows Arendt to account for the specificity of politics by evoking a distinctive – yet not necessarily absolute – domain that enables actors to be exposed to one another and experience their world as common.Less

Simplex Space

Alain Berthoz

in Simplexity: Simplifying Principles for a Complex World

This chapter reviews the neural basis of spatial processing in the brain. The goal is to show how the spatialization of perception, action, memory, and decision making reduces complexity, sometimes ... More

This chapter reviews the neural basis of spatial processing in the brain. The goal is to show how the spatialization of perception, action, memory, and decision making reduces complexity, sometimes by way of detours that, in turn, engender simplexity.Less

Changing Developmentalisms: Spatializing the Artisan

in Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India

This chapter discusses developmentalism during the twentieth-century, which is viewed as one kind of space-making project. It shows that this developmentalism had an important influence on fisher ... More

This chapter discusses developmentalism during the twentieth-century, which is viewed as one kind of space-making project. It shows that this developmentalism had an important influence on fisher artisanship, specifically its spatialization. The chapter provides an historical record of administrative rationality (i.e. ways spatial imaginaries updated developmental strategies). It then contrasts three different perspectives of colonial fishery administrators, namely Sundara Raj, Hornell, and Nicholson, on the question of trawling. By contrasting these perspectives, this chapter presents three spatial imaginaries of the coast and shows how these images informed certain developmental interventions along the southern coast of India in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. The chapter also addresses postcolonial developmentalism and the similarities between the postcolonial fisher artisan and the colonial imagining of coastal artisanship.Less

‘Time Turning Into Space’: Innocence of Memories’ Prismatic Istanbul

Tim O’Farrell

in World Cinema and the Essay Film: Transnational Perspectives on a Global Practice

This chapter argues for a complex spatialisation of time and memory in Grant Gee’s essay film Innocence of Memories (2019). Focusing on issues of narrative, the indexical and memory, the author sees ... More

This chapter argues for a complex spatialisation of time and memory in Grant Gee’s essay film Innocence of Memories (2019). Focusing on issues of narrative, the indexical and memory, the author sees Gee’s film functioning in multiple registers, principally as a kind of palimpsest, referring to and writing over Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Museum of Innocence (2009) and also referencing in multi-layered and intricate ways the real museum of the same name, located prominently in the centre of Istanbul. Both film and novel, as Tim O’ Farrell shows in an extended reading of the works, straddle a deep love of the past, a desire to preserve and understand it, and a fascination with the inexorability of time, transformation and notions of progress. Fact and fiction are thereby multiply entangled, produced by and supporting the disjunctive practice and interstitiality of the essay film, as the author points out with reference to Laura Rascaroli’s theoretical work How the Essay Film Thinks (2017).Less

Placing Bến Thành Market: The Naturalization of Space and Commerce

Ann Marie Leshkowich

in Essential Trade: Vietnamese Women in a Changing Marketplace

In the early twentieth century, French colonial planners designed Bến Thành market as a modern, hygienic structure that would have a civilizing effect on Vietnamese commerce. Not long after the “new ... More

In the early twentieth century, French colonial planners designed Bến Thành market as a modern, hygienic structure that would have a civilizing effect on Vietnamese commerce. Not long after the “new Saigon market” opened in 1914, newspaper articles bemoaned that it had been overtaken by unruly, unrepentant nativeness. How did a symbol of modernity so quickly become iconic of the traditional Vietnamese chợ (marketplace) and hence essentialized as the natural home for a form of petty trade that is typically dismissed as backward? Tracing the processes of placemaking surrounding the market’s early history reveals how colonial planners’ state spatializing ambitions succumbed to the daily dynamics of the market as taskscape (Ingold 1993) in which place and people interacted to naturalize Bến Thành as a traditional chợ.Less

Ethics and History: Authentic vs. Effective History

in Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason: A Poststructuralist Mapping of History

This chapter considers the consequences of Foucault's claim that reason itself is not one or even dual, as Sartre allowed, but multiple and subject to the vicissitudes of history. In other words, if ... More

This chapter considers the consequences of Foucault's claim that reason itself is not one or even dual, as Sartre allowed, but multiple and subject to the vicissitudes of history. In other words, if there is reason to history, reason itself has a history, which Foucault has undertaken to graph. The chapter graphs Sartrean existentialism across the Foucauldian quadrilateral and triangle to determine how closely Sartre fits into the modern episteme—that is, to ascertain how deeply Sartre is lodged in the thought of the nineteenth century, as Foucault has charged. The chapter compares the work of the two authors on three specific issues: experience and the lived, violence and power, and parrhesia and authenticity. The chapter concludes this comparative phase by considering how these coordinates, spatializations, axes, and contrasting concepts issue in two distinct approaches to the intelligibility of history.Less

Making Radio Music: Creating the Radio Sound

Shawn VanCour

in Making Radio: Early Radio Production and the Rise of Modern Sound Culture

This chapter focuses on miking methods, mixing strategies, and performance styles developed by studio workers and on-air talent for making radio music. These strategies were governed by five ... More

This chapter focuses on miking methods, mixing strategies, and performance styles developed by studio workers and on-air talent for making radio music. These strategies were governed by five principles: (1) acoustic plasticity (manipulating reverberation to simulate different acoustic environments); (2) sonic restraint (eschewing forceful concert-hall projections in favor of more subdued, microphone-appropriate performance styles); (3) flattening of curves (compression of dynamic range, yielding a uniformly close-up sound); (4) sonic parsimony (reduction of sonic inputs to maintain clarity of reproduction); and (5) intelligibility (rejecting fidelity to real-world spatial relationships in favor of a clear and evenly balanced sound). Embraced for broadcasting during the early and middle years of the 1920s, these principles helped to professionalize and legitimize radio’s emerging forms of soundwork and would also inform parallel strategies pursued in recording studios and Hollywood soundstages, facilitating broader shifts in period sound culture.Less

Statues in their Places

John Ma

in Statues and Cities: Honorific Portraits and Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World

This chapter examines how space works for honorific statues in the Hellenistic period. More specifically, it considers how statues were organised (isolation, collocation, in series) and assesses the ... More

This chapter examines how space works for honorific statues in the Hellenistic period. More specifically, it considers how statues were organised (isolation, collocation, in series) and assesses the impact of these configurations. It thus shows that statues can be viewed in places, locales affected by human events, actors, and investment. The chapter highlights the importance of serialisation in controlling display, the role of competitiveness between the various actors involved in spatialisation, and the segmentation of public space into micro-places. It also stresses the necessity for the ‘public actor’ itself, the polis, to involve itself in competitive spatial processes.Less

Introduction

Ghazala Jamil

in Accumulation by Segregation: Muslim Localities in Delhi

The introduction begins with acknowledging rapid urbanization in India and moves on to a brief historical account of Delhi and its Muslim residents. It agrees with the historians that the fate of ... More

The introduction begins with acknowledging rapid urbanization in India and moves on to a brief historical account of Delhi and its Muslim residents. It agrees with the historians that the fate of Delhi’s Muslim residents is entangled with the history of the city. The narrative traces several historical instances like the sepoy mutiny, partition, emergency, among others, as a background to the description of neoliberal Delhi and the contemporary topography of the city. Continuing in this aim to prepare a background, the introduction briefly gestures towards various attempts at (i) theorizing the city as spatialization of capitalism, and (ii) theoretically mapping the geographies of discrimination. Rationale for use of critical theory to provide the book its philosophical and conceptual framework of the work is discussed briefly. Within this framework ‘Positionality’, ‘Spatiality’ and ‘Identity’ are used as sensitizing concepts. The chapter closes with a brief statement of the core arguments of the work and their organisation in chapters to follow.Less

The electronic medium

Curtis Roads

in Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic

The impact of electronic technology on music can be seen as an opening. Varèse called for the “liberation of sound,” and we see this manifest in the acceptance of any sound possible as a musical ... More

The impact of electronic technology on music can be seen as an opening. Varèse called for the “liberation of sound,” and we see this manifest in the acceptance of any sound possible as a musical resource. Chapter 1 compares traditional instrumental and vocal composition with that of electronic music, pointing out their similarities and differences. The chapter examines the specificities of the electronic medium and in particular the unique challenges and opportunities it presents to composers.Less

Articulating space

Curtis Roads

in Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic

Chapter 8 traces the history of sound spatialization, starting with instrumental/vocal music and continuing into the digital age. The rest of the chapter outlines the scope and dimensions of ... More

Chapter 8 traces the history of sound spatialization, starting with instrumental/vocal music and continuing into the digital age. The rest of the chapter outlines the scope and dimensions of spatialization as a compositional issue. The chapter especially discusses spatialization on multiple timescales and the virtual/physical space distinction. The next sections focus on important topics of relevance to composition, including the use of spatial depth, audio cinematics, pluriphonic sound projection, the vertical dimension, sound rotation, superdirectional sound beams, and the growing field of immersive sound technology. The final section, “Articulating space,” centers on a table of spatial oppositions: a basic set of possible spatial gestures.Less

Metaphysics and the Mathematical Diagram: Geometry between History and Philosophy

Duncan F. Kennedy

in Classics and Media Theory

Accounts of geometry are caught between the demands of history and philosophy, and are difficult to reduce to either. In a profoundly influential move, Plato used geometrical proof as one means of ... More

Accounts of geometry are caught between the demands of history and philosophy, and are difficult to reduce to either. In a profoundly influential move, Plato used geometrical proof as one means of bootstrapping his Theory of Forms and what came to be called metaphysics, and the emergence of ontological modes of thinking. This has led to a style of thinking still common today that gets called ‘mathematical Platonism’. By contrast, the sheer diversity of mathematical practices across cultures and time has been adduced to claim their historical contingency, which has recently prompted Ian Hacking to question why there is philosophy of mathematics at all. The different roles assigned to geometrical diagrams in these debates form the focus of this chapter, which analyses in detail the contrasting discussions of diagrams, and of the linearization and spatialization of thinking, by Plato (especially Meno and the Republic), by the cognitive historian Reviel Netz, the media theorist Sybille Krämer, and the anthropologist Tim Ingold.Less