In Technocrats of the Imagination John Beck and Ryan Bishop explore the collaborations between the American avant-garde art world and the military-industrial complex during the 1960s, in which artists worked with scientists and engineers in universities, private labs, and museums. For artists, designers, and educators working with the likes of Bell Labs, the RAND Corporation, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, experiments in art and technology presaged not only a new aesthe...

This book uses large scale social and cultural trends and major world events to analyse the American comedy film. This is a historical and conceptual study discussing the comedy narrative, comic traditions, and role of visual culture. The important innovators of American film comedy and the role of visual technology within cultural politic are discussed, as well as theorists such as Freud, Baudrillard, and Derrida. Key features* Close analysis of two films to illustrate key points in each ...

The writings of Jean Baudrillard have dramatically altered the face of critical theory and promise to pose challenges well into the 21st century. His work on simulation, media, the status of the image, the system of objects, hyperreality, and information technology continues to influence intellectual work in a diverse set of fields. This volume uniquely provides overviews of Baudrillards career while also simultaneously including examples of current works on and with Baudrillard that engag...

This book addresses issues of space, historicity, architecture and textuality by focusing on Singapore's singular position in the region and as a global city. The articles consider how various experiences of Singapore, both from within and from outside, help to complicate existing assumptions about global urbanism, postcolonialism, and architectural theory while producing challenging new ideas from a variety of disciplines concerned with how space, historicity, architecture and textuality ...

Bringing together scholars from a diverse range of disciplines, The City as Target provides a sustained and critical response to the relationship between the concept of targeting (in its many forms) and notions of understanding, imagining and shaping the urban.Among the many spatial and graphic terms used to describe cities in urban studies, the word target is rarely encountered. Though equally spatial, it differs from these others by implying some motive force, and, more ...

A common assumption about cities throughout the world is tht they are essentially an elaboration of the Euro-American model. Postcolonial Urbanism demonstrates the narrowness of this vision. Cities in the postcolonial world, the book shows, are producing novel forms of urbanism not reducible to Western urbanism. Despite being heavily colonized in the past, Southeast Asia has been largely ignored in discussions about postcolonial theory and in general considerations of global urbanism. An i...

Historic sites, memorials, national parks, museums…we live in an age in which heritage is ever-present. But what does it mean to live amongst the spectral traces of the past, the heterogeneous piling up of historic materials in the present? How did heritage grow from the concern of a handful of enthusiasts and specialists in one part of the world to something which is considered to be universally cherished? And what concepts and approaches are necessary to understanding this global obsessi...

The form and future of cities is increasingly regarded as the product of inescapable processes: the strategic decisions of businesses, consumer preferences, deeply rooted cultural reflexes. Specifically, with the rise of a neoliberal and neo-conservative view of society, fundamental decisions about the everyday environment are increasingly determined by the laws of supply and demand or the clash of cultures. Is there still a place for democratic urban politics in such a climate? How can di...

This book considers the state of the city and contemporary urbanisation from a range of intellectual and international perspectives.The most interdisciplinary collection of its kindProvides a contemporary update on urban thinking that builds on well established debates in the fieldUses the city to explore economic, social, cultural, environmental and political issues more broadlyIncludes contributions from non Western perspectives and cities...

Drawing upon a variety of important philosophical traditions, this book develops an original perspective on the relations between ethical, economic and aesthetic values in a tourism context. It considers the ethical/political issues arising in many areas of tourism development, including:the profound cultural and environmental impacts on tourist destinationsthe reciprocity (or lack of) in host-guest relationsthe (un)fair distribution of benefits and revenu...

In a series of newly commissioned essays by both established and emerging scholars, Globalization and Contemporary Art probes the effects of internationalist culture and politics on art across a variety of media. Globalization and Contemporary Art is the first anthology to consider the role and impact of art and artist in an increasingly borderless world.First major anthology of essays concerned with the impact of globalization on contemporary artE...