Kooijman, Pisters, Strauven (eds.): Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser (2009)

“Mind the Screen pays tribute to Thomas Elsaesser, a pioneering and leading scholar in the field of film and media studies. The contributions present a close-up of media concepts developed by Elsaesser, providing a mirror for all types of audiovisual screens, from archaeological pre-cinematic screens to the silver screen, from the TV set to the video installation and the digital e-screen, and from the city screen to the mobile phone display. The book is divided into three ‘Acts’: Melodrama, Memory, Mind Game; Europe-Hollywood-Europe; and Archaeology, Avant-Garde, Archive.”

Edited by Jaap Kooijman, Patricia Pisters, and Wanda Strauven
Publisher Amsterdam University Press, 2009
ISBN 9089640258, 9789089640253
374 pages

Publisher
OAPEN

PDF (8 MB, updated on 2011-1-2)

Robert Donald Romanyshyn: Technology as Symptom and Dream (1989)

“The development of linear perspective in the 15th century represented a radical transformation in the European’s sense of the world, the body and the self. Robert Romanyshyn’s book examines the claim that the development of linear perspective vision was and is indispensable to the emergence of our technological world. It does so by telling the story of how an artistic technique has become a cultural habit of mind.”

Publisher Routledge, 1989
ISBN 0415007879, 9780415007870
254 pages

Publisher

PDF (17 MB, updated 2020-2-18)

Wolfgang Lefèvre (ed.): Picturing Machines 1400-1700 (2004)

“Technical drawings by the architects and engineers of the Renaissance made use of a range of new methods of graphic representation. These drawings—among them Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawings of mechanical devices—have long been studied for their aesthetic qualities and technological ingenuity, but their significance for the architects and engineers themselves is seldom considered. The essays in Picturing Machines 1400-1700 take this alternate perspective and look at how drawing shaped the practice of early modern engineering. They do so through detailed investigations of specific images, looking at over 100 that range from sketches to perspective views to thoroughly constructed projections.

In early modern engineering practice, drawings were not merely visualizations of ideas but acted as models that shaped ideas. Picturing Machines establishes basic categories for the origins, purposes, functions, and contexts of early modern engineering illustrations, then treats a series of topics that not only focus on the way drawings became an indispensable means of engineering but also reflect the main stages in their historical development. The authors examine the social interaction conveyed by early machine images and their function as communication between practitioners; the knowledge either conveyed or presupposed by technical drawings, as seen in those of Giorgio Martini and Leonardo; drawings that required familiarity with geometry or geometric optics, including the development of architectural plans; and technical illustrations that bridged the gap between practical and theoretical mechanics.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262122693, 9780262122696
347 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-12-2)