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Documentary Making for Digital Humanists: (pdf) (Open Field Guides Series #2)
by Darren R. Reid Brett SandersThis fluent and comprehensive field guide responds to increased interest, across the humanities, in the ways in which digital technologies can disrupt and open up new research and pedagogical avenues. It is designed to help scholars and students engage with their subjects using an audio-visual grammar, and to allow readers to efficiently gain the technical and theoretical skills necessary to create and disseminate their own trans-media projects. Documentary Making for Digital Humanists sets out the fundamentals of filmmaking, explores academic discourse on digital documentaries and online distribution, and considers the place of this discourse in the evolving academic landscape. The book walks its readers through the intellectual and practical processes of creating digital media and documentary projects. It is further equipped with video elements, supplementing specific chapters and providing brief and accessible introductions to the key components of the filmmaking process. This will be a valuable resource to humanist scholars and students seeking to embrace new media production and the digital landscape, and to those researchers interested in using means beyond the written word to disseminate their work. It constitutes a welcome contribution to the burgeoning field of digital humanities, as the first practical guide of its kind designed to facilitate humanist interactions with digital filmmaking, and to empower scholars and students alike to create and distribute new media audio-visual artefacts.
The Classical Parthenon: Recovering the Strangeness of the Ancient World
by William St ClairComplementing Who Saved the Parthenon? this companion volume sets aside more recent narratives surrounding the Athenian Acropolis, supposedly ‘the very symbol of democracy itself’, instead asking if we can truly access an ancient past imputed with modern meaning. And, if so, how? In this book William St Clair presents a reconstructed understanding of the Parthenon from within the classical Athenian worldview. He explores its role and meaning by weaving together a range of textual and visual sources into two innovative oratorical experiments – a speech in the style of Thucydides and a first-century CE rhetorical exercise – which are used to develop a narrative analysis of the temple structure, revealing a strange story of indigeneity, origins, and empire. The Classical Parthenon offers new answers to old questions, such as the riddle of the Parthenon frieze, and provides a framing device for the wider relationship between visual artefacts, built heritage, and layers of accumulated cultural rhetoric. This groundbreaking and pertinent work will appeal across the disciplines to readers interested in the classics, art history, and the nature of history, while also speaking to a general audience that is interrogating the role of monuments in contemporary society.
Second Chance: My Life in Things
by Ruth RosengartenIn this intimate memoir, Ruth Rosengarten explores the subject of evocative objects through a series of interconnected essays. Evocative objects reflect our attitudes to our own lives and how we seek to display ourselves to ourselves. They are therefore, closely linked to our memories, and how we filter, process and reconstruct them. Rosengarten explores the themes and associations invoked by her own evocative objects, which are frequently shabby things of no material value. They are, importantly, often objects that, in their materiality, bear traces of actions, of something-having-been. Through the associative pathways that these objects have paved, she discusses her experiences with the losses she has undergone, her family’s migrations, and what it means to be a childless woman. This leads her to address the question of what will become of her storied objects and the memories attached to them when she is no longer in existence. This memoir offers an interdisciplinary approach to collecting and compiling fragments of one’s life, paying close attention to the evocative objects that embody us. In doing so, these essays explore loss, memory, childlessness, longing, family history, literature and art theory through material entities which reveal the immaterial ‘things’ at the heart of this study. This book is sure to be of interest to anyone stimulated by memory work and the relationship between humans and their possessions.
Performing Deception: Learning, Skill and the Art of Conjuring
by Brian RappertIn Performing Deception, Brian Rappert reconstructs the practice of entertainment magic by analysing it through the lens of perception, deception and learning, as he goes about studying conjuring himself. Through this novel meditation on reasoning and skill, Rappert elevates magic from the undertaking of mere trickery to an art that offers the basis for rethinking our possibilities for acting in the modern world. Performing Deception covers a wide range of theories in sociology, philosophy, psychology and elsewhere in order to offer a striking assessment of the way secrecy and deception are woven into social interactions, as well as the illusionary and paradoxical status of expertise.
Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance
by Liliane Campos and Pierre-Louis PatoineThis edited volume explores new engagements with the life sciences in contemporary fiction, poetry, comics and performance. The gathered case studies investigate how recent creative work reframes the human within microscopic or macroscopic scales, from cellular biology to systems ecology, and engages with the ethical, philosophical, and political issues raised by the twenty-first century’s shifting views of life. The collection thus examines literature and performance as spaces that shape our contemporary biological imagination. Comprised of thirteen chapters by an international group of academics, Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance engages with four main areas of biological study: ‘Invisible scales: cells, microbes and mycelium’, ‘Neuro-medical imaging and diagnosis’, ‘Pandemic imaginaries’, and ‘Ecological scales’. The authors examine these concepts in emerging forms such as plant theatre, climate change art, ecofiction and pandemic fiction, including the work of Jeff Vandermeer, Jon McGregor, Jeff Lemire, and Extinction Rebellion’s Red Rebel Brigade performances. This valuable resource moves beyond the biological paradigms that were central to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to outline the specificity of a contemporary imagination. Life, Re-Scaled is crucial reading for academics, scholars, and authors alike, as it proposes an unprecedented overview of the relationship between literature, performance and the life sciences in the twenty-first century.
William Rimmer: Champion of Imagination in American Art
by Dorinda EvansWilliam Rimmer (1816–1879) is arguably the first modernist American sculptor, although his inventive originality has not been fully acknowledged. Rimmer cultivated an art of ideas and personal expression whilst supporting himself as a physician and, later, as a teacher of art anatomy at the Cooper Union School of Design for Women in New York. Unlike his contemporaries, he advocated the creation of sculpture drawn entirely from the artist’s imagination, as opposed to antique archetypes or live models. In this way, he sought to reframe excellence in American art as something that must be found within, rather than derived from Europe. In this new monograph, the meaning of Rimmer’s works is for the first time considered from a combination of perspectives, such as close visual analysis (including X-ray and infrared), historical documentation, and social context. These are enriched with discussion of the artist’s own bipolar disorder, deeply-held spiritualism, and views on gender equality—considering women just as talented as men, he used naked male models in all-female classes long before his contemporaries, and produced an allegorical sculpture of fighting lions that criticized the tyranny of men over women. This book will be of great interest to academics, students, art museums, collectors, dealers, art historians, and members of the public with an affinity for Rimmer’s work. It will also appeal to those with a broader interest in American culture.
After the Miners’ Strike A39 and Cornish Political Theatre versus Thatcher’s Britain: (pdf)
by Paul FarmerIn this rich memoir, the first of two volumes, Paul Farmer traces the story of A39, the Cornish political theatre group he co-founded and ran from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Farmer offers a unique insight into A39’s creation, operation, and artistic practice during a period of convulsive political and social change. The reader is plunged into the national miners’ strike and the collapse of Cornish tin mining, the impact of Thatcherism and ‘Reaganomics’, and the experience of touring Germany on the brink of reunification, alongside the influence on A39 of writers Bertolt Brecht, John McGrath and Keith Johnstone. Farmer, a former bus driver turned artistic director, details the theatre group’s inception and development as it fought to break down social barriers, attract audiences, and survive with little more than a beaten-up Renault 12, a photocopier and two second-hand stage lights at its disposal: the book traces the progress from these raw materials to the development of an integrated community theatre practice for Cornwall. Farmer’s candour and humour enliven this unique insight into 1980s theatre and politics. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in theatre history, life in Cornwall, and the relationship between performance and society during a turbulent era.
Touching Parchment: Volume 1: Officials and Their Books
by Kathryn M. RudyThe Medieval book, both religious and secular, was regarded as a most precious item. The traces of its use through touching and handling during different rituals such as oath-taking, is the subject of Kathryn Rudy’s research in Touching Parchment. Rudy presents numerous and fascinating case studies that relate to the evidence of use and damage through touching and or kissing. She also puts each study within a category of different ways of handling books, mainly liturgical, legal or choral practice, and in turn connects each practice to the horizontal or vertical behavioural patterns of users within a public or private environment. With her keen eye for observation in being able to identify various characteristics of inadvertent and targeted wear, the author adds a new dimension to the Medieval book. She gives the reader the opportunity to reflect on the social, anthropological and historical value of the use of the book by sharpening our senses to the way users handled books in different situations. Rudy has amassed an incredible amount of material for this research and the way in which she presents each manuscript conveys an approach that scholars on Medieval history and book materiality should keep in mind when carrying out their own research. What perhaps is most striking in her articulate text, is how she expresses that the touching of books was not without emotion, and the accumulated effects of these emotions are worthy of preservation, study and further reflection.
Decolonial Ecologies The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art: (pdf)
by Joanna PageIn Decolonial Ecologies: The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art, Joanna Page illuminates the ways in which contemporary artists in Latin America are reinventing historical methods of collecting, organizing, and displaying nature in order to develop new aesthetic and political perspectives on the past and the present. Page brings together an entirely new corpus of artistic projects from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru that engage critically and creatively with forms as diverse as the medieval bestiary, baroque cabinets of curiosities, atlases created by European travellers to the New World, the floras and herbaria composed by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century naturalists, and the dioramas designed for natural history museums. She explores how artists develop decolonial and post-anthropocentric perspectives on the collections and expeditions that were central to the evolution of European natural history. Their works forge a critique of the rationalizing approach to nature taken by modern Western science, reconnecting it with forms of popular, indigenous and spiritual knowledge and experience that it has systematically excluded since the Enlightenment. Drawing on photography, video, illustration, sculpture, and installation, this vividly illustrated and lucidly written book (also available in premium quality in hardback edition) explores how these artworks might also deconstruct the apocalyptic visions of environmental change that often dominate Western thought, developing a renewed understanding of alternative ways in which humans might co-inhabit the natural world.
Gardening for Kids: 35 Nature Activities To Sow, Grow, And Make
by Dawn IsaacPass on a love of gardening and nature to children with these 35 fun and rewarding outdoor and indoor projects.Gardening for Kids is full of inspirational ideas to get your kids excited about nature. Dawn Isaac shows you how to sow a wheelbarrow vegetable garden, make cress caterpillars, build an insect hotel, or plant a sunflower alley in your own backyard, using everyday objects and recycled junk. There are chapters on creative containers, from teapots to rainboots, windowsill gardening of foods such as cress and beans, and beautiful nature crafts that can be made indoors. Whether your outdoor space is big or small, or just a balcony or even a window ledge, these fun and creative ideas will keep your kids entertained—and learning about gardening—all year round.
Sewing Stashbusters
by Kate HaxellIt's a perennial problem for crafters: you have a little fabric left over from a major project, too much to throw it away and not enough for another big make. Sewing Stashbusters has the eco-friendly answer, 25 projects specially chosen to use up the odd metre or less of fabric, so you'll have a clear stash drawer and a clear conscience. To keep you organised while you craft, there are pincushions, knitting bags, and a knitting needle roll. For when you are out and about, you might want to make yourself some garden bunting, or a patchwork coat for your dog. For your wardrobe, make a pretty tie-on collar with buttons from your store, or sew-on patches for your denim. And at home you can make a cat-shaped doorstop or a Dachshund draft excluder. Pockets, pouches and purses can be made in contrasting pieces of fabric, while puffs and rosettes will use up even the smallest pieces in your stash.
Wild Creations
by Hilton CarterNamechecked as the "LeBron James of plant styling..." by "Good Morning America", Hilton Carter now shows how you can make, style, decorate and care for your own stunning plant-inspired interior with his 25 step-by-step DIY projects and plant hacks.Carter, the Instagram star of the plant world and creator of green interiors has given us glimpses into many stunning plant-filled homes where ivy and creeping figs hang miraculously from ceilings, moss and ferns grow effortlessly to create living walls, fiddle leaf ferns and cheese plants thrive, whilst air plants beautify artworks and succulents flourish whether in pots on windowsills or planted in terrariums... Now in his third book, Wild Creations, Hilton actually shows you how you can create these amazing fixtures that enable plants to become such an integral part of an interior. Divided into four sections, Wild Ideas, Wild Hacks, Wild Rants and Wild Plants, Wild Creations shows you step by step how you can create air plant wreaths, moss walls, leather hanging plant stands, terrariums and many more stunning projects that will give you the green interior you crave. And just so your plants feel at home in your interior there is even a painting by numbers jungle mural, plus plant-scented candles to make sure your interior not only stays wild but that you and all its inhabitants thrive from the health giving benefits of greenery.
My First Sewing Machine Book
by Emma HardyWith 35 projects that you’ll love to make and a helpful techniques section, this book will teach you all about sewing machines. Start out with Clothes and Accessories, where you can make a felt collar and cosy scarf, as well as a pretty skirt.
Scandi Christmas
by Christiane Bellstedt MyersCreate special Christmas memories by making these cards, decorations, garlands and cosy gifts with a Scandinavian flavour.
A Woman’s Shed
by Gill HerizBecause sheds aren't just for men – this selection of sheds from the UK, North America and Europe shows how women everywhere can claim and use their own personal space.
Christmas Ornaments
by CICO Books27 charming decorations to make, from wreaths and garlands to baubles and table centerpieces
The Annie Sloan Collection
by Annie SloanAnnie Sloan's complete guide shows you how to use paint to decorate any of the surfaces in your home. Learn the basic skills for using paint on walls and furniture, alongside masterful techniques for painting floors, fabrics, lighting and more. Her 75 step-by-step projects will guide you through using paint to makeover your home, with clear pictorial instructions alongside helpful tips and tricks. With each project learn the essential skills of stencilling, printing, waxing, gilding and dyeing fabric, as well as how to best use Annie’s own Chalk Paint® range. Get inspired with Annie's top tips on choosing colours and perfect palettes to work with. The Annie Sloan Collection contains all you need to know to begin your paint journey, for beginners all the way up to paint aficionados. So get ready to unleash your own creativity with paint!
Smart Phone Smart Photo Editing
by Jo BradfordLearn how to edit photographs on your phone with this step-by-step guide from professional photographer Jo Bradford. Do you know how to make the best of the photos you’ve taken with your phone? We all have hundreds of images on our phones that could do with a little improvement, but transferring them to a hard drive and working in an out-of-date editing program on your Mac or PC can seem like too much hassle. Award-winning professional photographer Jo Bradford, author of the bestselling Smart Phone Smart Photography, can show you how to edit your photos easily and conveniently on your iPhone or Android, using the free Snapseed app. Smart Phone Smart Photo Editing shows you how to use the app to do everything from raw developing and saving a copy, to compositional improvements, global enhancements to colour and other elements, and smaller adjustments to specific details. With clear step-by-step text and illustrations for each process, you will soon learn how to get the best from the app and from your images. Case studies and beautiful images taken by Jo will also help to inspire you in your photography.
Rag Rug Techniques for Beginners
by Elspeth JacksonLearn ten different rag-rugging methods and use them to create 30 stylish and practical items for yourself and your home. In Rag Rug Techniques for Beginners, Elspeth Jackson details ten methods that will help you learn the art of rag rugs, and inspire your craft creativity. Each chapter focuses on a different technique, from Shaggy to Locker Hooking, Loopy to Two-String Loom and more. Elspeth will show you the skills, tools and equipment you'll need for each one, as well as providing advice on choices of fabrics and design. She will help you to identify common mistakes that you might run into, building for you a strong foundation in the craft. Each chapter includes step-by-step instructions for a traditional rug plus two other projects for yourself or your home, such as placemats, bowls, wall hangings and more, so that you can show off the new skills you've learned. Using upcycled fabrics, only a few basic tools and simple techniques, you'll master rag-rugging in no time!
Shades of White
by Fifi O'NeillShades of White is a pure celebration of all the brilliant white hues, and how they work in harmony with different textures inside the home. White is magical. It can illuminate a space, or it can be a blank slate, allowing other décor in the room to shine. Whether your style is rustic, modern, romantic, vintage or classic, Fifi O'Neill will show you that there is a perfect shade of white for you. With beautiful commissioned photography, Fifi showcases twelve dazzling homes that have mastered using shades of white throughout. From fresh to cosy, sophisticated to shabby chic, white is classy, adaptable and timeless. Shades of White showcases interior inspiration for using white in any setting, pairing the infinite shades with different textures such as wood and metal, or even with other colours, to create stylish and stunning interiors.
How to Sew Sustainably
by Wendy WardWendy Ward teaches you all the skills you need to refashion garments and reuse fabric from existing pieces you already own, plus ways to use leftover scraps to make household items and to customise your clothes. Each chapter focuses on a different technique, for instance novel ways to join small fabric pieces, using larger pieces to make pieced household items and clothing, and easy ways to refashion existing clothing. Her ‘minimal waste' mentality will help you to make garments based on your body measurements, and there's a useful section on mending techniques. Wendy also covers the ethical issues involved in buying new, from shopping locally to choosing your fibres carefully and supporting small businesses and other crafters. There is a comprehensive chapter covering all the sewing techniques used, from seam and hem basics through to tips on unpicking recycled garments. Each section includes projects using the techniques covered – a total of 20 makes that can be adapted to the materials you have to hand.
Polymer Clay Jewelry: 35 Step-by-step Projects For Beautiful Beads And Jewellery
by Linda PetersonPolymer clay is the material of choice and you will learn how to use free-form techniques and bead-rolling tools to create several styles. Sculpted effects, simulations of semi-precious stones, photo-image transfers and use of glitter and organic material mean the beads you make will be unique. All the tools you will need are listed, and finishing techniques, such as sanding, buffing and sealing, are described. Detailed instructions on how to use your own work to create stylish and individual pieces of jewellery, including necklaces, bracelets and earrings are also included. Basic techniques, such as stringing and fixing clasps, lead on to assembling all the components in designs and styles ranging from contemporary and elegant to simple and plain fun. Beginners and more advanced practitioners alike will find both practical advice and plenty of inspiration.
Eco-Resin Crafts
by Hazel OliverResin craft is a great way to make beautiful items for your home and gifts for yourself or others. Hazel Oliver is the name behind Badger & Birch, whose eco-friendly practices include using solvent free and non-toxic resin, and incorporating natural waste such as mussel and oyster shells from her local restaurant, as well as natural minerals, gemstones and crystals. In this her first book, Hazel shows you the basics of resin craft, including mixing and pouring, making moulds, and finishing your pieces. The 30 projects include vases, planters, candle holders and other items for the home, as well as moulded decorations in leaf shapes and other natural forms. The soft colours, natural elements and beautiful finish of Hazel's work will inspire you to take up this flourishing new craft, or give you new ideas if you are already a keen resin crafter.
Faded Glamour by the Sea
by Pearl LoweFulfilling a lifetime dream of finding a house by the sea, Pearl Lowe now brings her laid-back decorating style to coastal living with Faded Glamour by the Sea.Pearl Lowe's gloriously decadent yet perfectly lived-in decorating style was featured in her bestselling interiors book Faded Glamour. Now Pearl is taking us to the coast, and in Faded Glamour by the Sea we get the first glimpse of her new home – a beautiful renovation project that she and her husband, musician Danny Goffey, have created in East Sussex. Built in the 1940s for an artist whose shell sculptures are still dotted round the garden, the house and adjacent cabins have been lovingly restored by Pearl. The house may have been a life-long dream for the couple, who have always loved the solace of water, but it has only been just over a year in the making, thanks to the inspiration Pearl has drawn from many friends who live in the area and also further afield. And so she takes us on a tour of their seaside homes. A pair of antique dealers whose love of all things French inspired them to set up their own brocante in Kent; an artist with a love of beach huts; an author who swapped London life for a clifftop house with his own writer’s hut. Add to this the Malibu beachfront home of stylist Rachel Ashwell, the hippy-chic style of supermodel Helena Christensen’s waterside retreat and the ‘punk noir Victorian’ vibe of the hotel created by friends from rock band The Libertines. In Faded Glamour by the Sea Pearl visits these properties, and as the owners tell their stories she explains how she found inspiration for this new chapter in her life.
Handmade Houses and Feeders for Birds, Bees, and Butterflies
by Michele McKee-OrsiniThese handmade birdhouses and feeders, bee hotels, and butterfly and ladybird homes will bring welcome visitors to your garden. Handmade Houses and Feeders for Birds, Bees, and Butterflies features 35 beautiful havens to build to attract more wildlife into your garden. Each house is beautifully designed, with colourful details, but is also perfectly adapted for its intended inhabitants. There are birdhouses you can hang up or place on stands, and a bee house you can 'plant' in your flowerbed. There are also feeders for birds, and homes for butterflies and ladybirds. With her trademark attention to detail, Michele McKee-Orsini has designed a gorgeous collection of miniature palaces for the wildlife that we should all be encouraging into our gardens. Michele takes you through the basic woodworking and decorating skills you will need, and the step-by-step project instructions, clear artwork, and stunning photography will all inspire you to build your own havens for our flying friends. Handmade Houses and Feeders for Birds, Bees, and Butterflies is a compilation of previously published favourites.