James Gleick: Isaac Newton (2004)

“Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.

James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it can truly be said: We are all Newtonians.”

Publisher Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2004
Vintage Series
ISBN 1400032954, 9781400032952
288 pages

review (John Banville, The Guardian)

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Kenneth FitzGerald: Volume: Writings on Graphic Design, Music, Art, and Culture (2010)

Volume—a word that refers to sound, collections, and the measurement of space—is a crucial characteristic of both graphic design and popular music. While expressing different aspects of these two pervasive cultural mediums, the term also introduces a discussion on their many links. Volume: Writings on Graphic Design, Music, Art, and Culture is a collection of both new and classic writings by frequent Emigre contributor and educator Kenneth FitzGerald that survey the discipline of graphic design in context with the parallel creative fields of contemporary music and art. The topics of the writings are diverse: the roles of class in design, design education, Lester Bangs and Creem magazine, pornography, album cover art, independent record labels, anonymity and imaginary creative identities, and design as cultural chaos-maker.

With Linear Notes by Rudy VanderLans
Publisher Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2010
ISBN 1568989644, 9781568989648
256 pages

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Luciano Chessa: Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult (2012)

“Luigi Russolo (1885–1947)—painter, composer, builder of musical instruments, and first-hour member of the Italian Futurist movement—was a crucial figure in the evolution of twentieth-century aesthetics. As creator of the first systematic poetics of noise and inventor of what has been considered the first mechanical sound synthesizer, Russolo looms large in the development of twentieth-century music. In the first English language study of Russolo, Luciano Chessa emphasizes the futurist’s interest in the occult, showing it to be a leitmotif for his life and a foundation for his art of noises. Chessa shows that Russolo’s aesthetics of noise, and the machines he called the intonarumori, were intended to boost practitioners into higher states of spiritual consciousness. His analysis reveals a multifaceted man in whom the drive to keep up with the latest scientific trends coexisted with an embrace of the irrational, and a critique of materialism and positivism.”

Publisher University of California Press, 2012
An Ahmanson Foundation Book in the Humanities
ISBN 0520270630, 9780520270633
284 pages

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See also Luigi Russolo’s The Art of Noises (1987)