In the domain of visual images, those of fine art form a tiny minority. This original and brilliant book calls upon art historians to look beyond their traditional subjects--painting, drawing, photography, and printmaking--to the vast array of "nonart" images, including those from science, technology, commerce, medicine, music, and archaeology. Such images, James Elkins asserts, can be as rich and expressive as any canonical painting. Using scores of illustrations as examples, he proposes a radically new way of thinking about visual analysis, one that relies on an object's own internal sense of organization.Elkins begins by demonstrating the arbitrariness of current criteria used by art historians for selecting images for study. He urges scholars to adopt, instead, the far broader criteria of the young field of image studies. After analyzing the philosophic underpinnings of this interdisciplinary field, he surveys the entire range of images, from calligraphy to mathematical graphs and abstract painting. Throughout, Elkins blends philosophic analysis with historical detail to produce a startling new sense of such basic terms as pictures, writing, and notation.

An exploration of echoes and resonances across two millennia of visual culture, this book brings together weird, wondrous, and unforgettable imagery in one stunning volume. A remarkable collection of over five hundred images, Affinities is a carefully curated visual journey illuminating connections across more than two thousand years of image-making. Drawing on a decade of archival immersion at The Public Domain Review, an online journal and not-for- profit project dedicated to exploring curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas, this volume has been assembled from a vast array of sources: from manuscripts to museum catalogs, and ship logs to primers on Victorian magic. The images are arranged in a single captivating sequence that unfurls according to a dreamlike logic, through a play of visual echoes and evolving thematic threads—hatching eggs paired with early Burmese world maps, marbled endpapers meet tattooed stowaways, and fireworks explode beside deep sea coral. At once an art book, a sourcebook, and a kaleidoscopic visual poem, Affinities is a unique and enthralling publication that will offer something different on each visit. A compelling art object and visual experience in its own right, this collection provides a launchpad for further exploration and inventive engagement across all forms of visual culture and expression.

"Brings together historians, philosophers, critics, postcolonial theorists, and curators to ask how images, pictures, and paintings are conceptualized. Issues discussed include concepts such as "image" and "picture" in and outside the West; semiotics; whether images are products of discourse; religious meanings; and the ethics of viewing"--Provided by publisher.

Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Best Non Fiction 2019 National Indie Excellence Award Winner Nautilus Book Awards, Gold #1 Amazon Best Seller in Architecture History & Periods Amazon Best Seller in Art Subjects & Themes Seeing the World Through Shape How do humans make sense of the world? In answer to this timeless question, award winning documentary filmmaker, Lois Farfel Stark, takes the reader on a remarkable journey from tribal ceremonies in Liberia and the pyramids in Egypt, to the gravity-defying architecture of modern China. Drawing on her experience as a global explorer, Stark unveils a crucial, hidden key to understanding the universe: Shape itself. The Telling Image is a stunning synthesis of civilization’s changing mindsets, a brilliantly original perspective urging you to re-envision history not as a story of kings and wars but through the lens of shape. In this sweeping tour through time, Stark takes us from migratory humans, who imitated a web in round-thatched huts and stone circles, to the urban ladder of pyramids and skyscrapers, organized by hierarchy and measurements, to today’s world of interconnected networks. ​In The Telling Image Stark reveals how buildings, behaviors, and beliefs reflect humans’ search for pattern and meaning. We can read the past and glimpse the future by watching when shapes shift. Stark’s beautifully illustrated book asks of all its readers: See what you think.

Domain, one of the country's fastest growing furniture chains, presents the first interactive home-decorating book to marry the culture of home with the psychology of style. 200 color photos.

As more images and videos are becoming available in compressed formats, researchers have begun designing algorithms for different image operations directly in their domains of representation, leading to faster computation and lower buffer requirements. Image and Video Processing in the Compressed Domain presents the fundamentals, properties, and applications of a variety of image transforms used in image and video compression. It illustrates the development of algorithms for processing images and videos in the compressed domain. Developing concepts from first principles, the book introduces popular image and video compression algorithms, in particular JPEG, JPEG2000, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.264 standards. It also explores compressed domain analysis and performance metrics for comparing algorithms. The author then elucidates the definitions and properties of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), discrete cosine transform (DCT), integer cosine transform (ICT), and discrete wavelet transform (DWT). In the subsequent chapters, the author discusses core operations, such as image filtering, color enhancement, image resizing, and transcoding of images and videos, that are used in various image and video analysis approaches. He also focuses on other facets of compressed domain analysis, including video editing operations, video indexing, and image and video steganography and watermarking. With MATLAB® codes on an accompanying CD-ROM, this book takes you through the steps involved in processing and analyzing compressed videos and images. It covers the algorithms, standards, and techniques used for coding images and videos in compressed formats.

"Examines three projects in late nineteenth-century scientific photography: the endeavors of Alphonse Bertillon, Francis Galton, and Etienne-Jules Marey. Develops new theoretical perspectives on the history of photographic technology, as well as the history of scientific imaging more generally"--

Digital technology has made culture more accessible than ever before. Texts, audio, pictures and video can easily be produced, disseminated, used and remixed using devices that are increasingly user-friendly and affordable. However, along with this technological democratization comes a paradoxical flipside: the norms regulating culture's use - copyright and related rights - have become increasingly restrictive. This book brings together essays by academics, librarians, entrepreneurs, activists and policy makers, who were all part of the EU-funded Communia project. Together the authors argue that the Public Domain - that is, the informational works owned by all of us, be that literature, music, the output of scientific research, educational material or public sector information - is fundamental to a healthy society. The essays range from more theoretical papers on the history of copyright and the Public Domain, to practical examples and case studies of recent projects that have engaged with the principles of Open Access and Creative Commons licensing. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the current debate about copyright and the Internet. It opens up discussion and offers practical solutions to the difficult question of the regulation of culture at the digital age.

A study on how our eyes function with our brains examines the irrational elements of physical sight and concludes that human seeing transforms both the viewer and the object being viewed.

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.