Six Stories from the End of Representation: Images in Painting, Photography, Astronomy, Microscopy, Particle Physics, and Quantum Mechanics, 1980–2000
10 Things:
They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but they didn't say sometimes a catchy title will earn your money. Last weekend I was searching on the Chapters-Indigo web site for any new books on astrophotography and astronomy when I found this one published last month. The title was very intriguing and I did some Googling about the author, found a lecture he gave that basically describes this book project he was developing and decided I need to buy it. Now. So it arrived in the mail today.
When I studied biology in university I always had one foot in the humanities. I took a number of courses in philosophy and even a survey course in Shakespearean literature. I submitted articles in the student newspaper and eventually became the editor of the science section. I was trying to bridge the two cultures of science and humanities before I had even heard of C.P. Snow!
So, anyway, this book looks interesting. It's about the end of representation, in the artistic sense, and how images created by the different branches of physics cannot be a representation of the real world, yet they somehow show us aspects of the real world that we cannot see, but are true of the real world nonetheless.
And besides, you can't not love an art history book that devotes a whole frakking chapter to the Hubble Deep Field! :)
Six Stories from the End of Representation: Images in Painting, Photography, Astronomy, Microscopy, Particle Physics, and Quantum Mechanics, 1980–2000
10 Things:
They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but they didn't say sometimes a catchy title will earn your money. Last weekend I was searching on the Chapters-Indigo web site for any new books on astrophotography and astronomy when I found this one published last month. The title was very intriguing and I did some Googling about the author, found a lecture he gave that basically describes this book project he was developing and decided I need to buy it. Now. So it arrived in the mail today.
When I studied biology in university I always had one foot in the humanities. I took a number of courses in philosophy and even a survey course in Shakespearean literature. I submitted articles in the student newspaper and eventually became the editor of the science section. I was trying to bridge the two cultures of science and humanities before I had even heard of C.P. Snow!
So, anyway, this book looks interesting. It's about the end of representation, in the artistic sense, and how images created by the different branches of physics cannot be a representation of the real world, yet they somehow show us aspects of the real world that we cannot see, but are true of the real world nonetheless.
And besides, you can't not love an art history book that devotes a whole frakking chapter to the Hubble Deep Field! :)