The Technical Image

The Technical Image PDF Author: Horst Bredekamp
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022625898X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
In science and technology, the images used to depict ideas, data, and reactions can be as striking and explosive as the concepts and processes they embody—both works of art and generative forces in their own right. Drawing on a close dialogue between the histories of art, science, and technology, The Technical Image explores these images not as mere illustrations or examples, but as productive agents and distinctive, multilayered elements of the process of generating knowledge. Using beautifully reproduced visuals, this book not only reveals how scientific images play a constructive role in shaping the findings and insights they illustrate, but also—however mechanical or detached from individual researchers’ choices their appearances may be—how they come to embody the styles of a period, a mindset, a research collective, or a device. Opening with a set of key questions about artistic representation in science, technology, and medicine, The Technical Image then investigates historical case studies focusing on specific images, such as James Watson’s models of genes, drawings of Darwin’s finches, and images of early modern musical automata. These case studies in turn are used to illustrate broad themes ranging from “Digital Images” to “Objectivity and Evidence” and to define and elaborate upon fundamental terms in the field. Taken as a whole, this collection will provide analytical tools for the interpretation and application of scientific and technological imagery.

The Technical Image

The Technical Image PDF Author: Horst Bredekamp
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022625898X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
In science and technology, the images used to depict ideas, data, and reactions can be as striking and explosive as the concepts and processes they embody—both works of art and generative forces in their own right. Drawing on a close dialogue between the histories of art, science, and technology, The Technical Image explores these images not as mere illustrations or examples, but as productive agents and distinctive, multilayered elements of the process of generating knowledge. Using beautifully reproduced visuals, this book not only reveals how scientific images play a constructive role in shaping the findings and insights they illustrate, but also—however mechanical or detached from individual researchers’ choices their appearances may be—how they come to embody the styles of a period, a mindset, a research collective, or a device. Opening with a set of key questions about artistic representation in science, technology, and medicine, The Technical Image then investigates historical case studies focusing on specific images, such as James Watson’s models of genes, drawings of Darwin’s finches, and images of early modern musical automata. These case studies in turn are used to illustrate broad themes ranging from “Digital Images” to “Objectivity and Evidence” and to define and elaborate upon fundamental terms in the field. Taken as a whole, this collection will provide analytical tools for the interpretation and application of scientific and technological imagery.

The Technical Image

The Technical Image PDF Author: Horst Bredekamp
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022625884X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
In science and technology, the images used to depict ideas, data, and reactions can be as striking and explosive as the concepts and processes they embody—both works of art and generative forces in their own right. Drawing on a close dialogue between the histories of art, science, and technology, The Technical Image explores these images not as mere illustrations or examples, but as productive agents and distinctive, multilayered elements of the process of generating knowledge. Using beautifully reproduced visuals, this book not only reveals how scientific images play a constructive role in shaping the findings and insights they illustrate, but also—however mechanical or detached from individual researchers’ choices their appearances may be—how they come to embody the styles of a period, a mindset, a research collective, or a device. Opening with a set of key questions about artistic representation in science, technology, and medicine, The Technical Image then investigates historical case studies focusing on specific images, such as James Watson’s models of genes, drawings of Darwin’s finches, and images of early modern musical automata. These case studies in turn are used to illustrate broad themes ranging from “Digital Images” to “Objectivity and Evidence” and to define and elaborate upon fundamental terms in the field. Taken as a whole, this collection will provide analytical tools for the interpretation and application of scientific and technological imagery.

Into the Universe of Technical Images

Into the Universe of Technical Images PDF Author: Vilém Flusser
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 081667020X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
An examination of the promise and peril of digital communication technologies.

Practical Handbook on Image Processing for Scientific and Technical Applications

Practical Handbook on Image Processing for Scientific and Technical Applications PDF Author: Bernd Jahne
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 0849390303
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
Image processing is fast becoming a valuable tool for analyzing multidimensional data in all areas of natural science. Since the publication of the best-selling first edition of this handbook, the field of image processing has matured in many of its aspects from ad hoc, empirical approaches to a sound science based on established mathematical and p

Image Objects

Image Objects PDF Author: Jacob Gaboury
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262045036
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
How computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium, as seen through the histories of five technical objects. Most of us think of computer graphics as a relatively recent invention, enabling the spectacular visual effects and lifelike simulations we see in current films, television shows, and digital games. In fact, computer graphics have been around as long as the modern computer itself, and played a fundamental role in the development of our contemporary culture of computing. In Image Objects, Jacob Gaboury offers a prehistory of computer graphics through an examination of five technical objects--an algorithm, an interface, an object standard, a programming paradigm, and a hardware platform--arguing that computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium. Gaboury explores early efforts to produce an algorithmic solution for the calculation of object visibility; considers the history of the computer screen and the random-access memory that first made interactive images possible; examines the standardization of graphical objects through the Utah teapot, the most famous graphical model in the history of the field; reviews the graphical origins of the object-oriented programming paradigm; and, finally, considers the development of the graphics processing unit as the catalyst that enabled an explosion in graphical computing at the end of the twentieth century. The development of computer graphics, Gaboury argues, signals a change not only in the way we make images but also in the way we mediate our world through the computer--and how we have come to reimagine that world as computational.

Image and Logic

Image and Logic PDF Author: Peter Galison
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226279176
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1002

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Book Description
Engages with the impact of modern technology on experimental physicists. This study reveals how the increasing scale and complexity of apparatus has distanced physicists from the very science which drew them into experimenting, and has fragmented microphysics into different technical traditions.

The Image of the City

The Image of the City PDF Author: Kevin Lynch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262620017
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
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.

Technology

Technology PDF Author: Eric Schatzberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022658397X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
In modern life, technology is everywhere. Yet as a concept, technology is a mess. In popular discourse, technology is little more than the latest digital innovations. Scholars do little better, offering up competing definitions that include everything from steelmaking to singing. In Technology: Critical History of a Concept, Eric Schatzberg explains why technology is so difficult to define by examining its three thousand year history, one shaped by persistent tensions between scholars and technical practitioners. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, scholars have tended to hold technicians in low esteem, defining technical practices as mere means toward ends defined by others. Technicians, in contrast, have repeatedly pushed back against this characterization, insisting on the dignity, creativity, and cultural worth of their work. ​The tension between scholars and technicians continued from Aristotle through Francis Bacon and into the nineteenth century. It was only in the twentieth century that modern meanings of technology arose: technology as the industrial arts, technology as applied science, and technology as technique. Schatzberg traces these three meanings to the present day, when discourse about technology has become pervasive, but confusion among the three principal meanings of technology remains common. He shows that only through a humanistic concept of technology can we understand the complex human choices embedded in our modern world.

Image and Reality

Image and Reality PDF Author: Alan J. Rocke
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226723356
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Nineteenth-century chemists were faced with a particular problem: how to depict the atoms and molecules that are beyond the direct reach of our bodily senses. In visualizing this microworld, these scientists were the first to move beyond high-level philosophical speculations regarding the unseen. In Image and Reality, Alan Rocke focuses on the community of organic chemists in Germany to provide the basis for a fuller understanding of the nature of scientific creativity. Arguing that visual mental images regularly assisted many of these scientists in thinking through old problems and new possibilities, Rocke uses a variety of sources, including private correspondence, diagrams and illustrations, scientific papers, and public statements, to investigate their ability to not only imagine the invisibly tiny atoms and molecules upon which they operated daily, but to build detailed and empirically based pictures of how all of the atoms in complicated molecules were interconnected. These portrayals of “chemical structures,” both as mental images and as paper tools, gradually became an accepted part of science during these years and are now regarded as one of the central defining features of chemistry. In telling this fascinating story in a manner accessible to the lay reader, Rocke also suggests that imagistic thinking is often at the heart of creative thinking in all fields. Image and Reality is the first book in the Synthesis series, a series in the history of chemistry, broadly construed, edited by Angela N. H. Creager, John E. Lesch, Stuart W. Leslie, Lawrence M. Principe, Alan Rocke, E.C. Spary, and Audra J. Wolfe, in partnership with the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Platinum and Palladium Photographs

Platinum and Palladium Photographs PDF Author: Constance McCabe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780997867909
Category : Photographs
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
The volume presents the results of a four-year inter-institutional, interdisciplinary research initiative led and organized by the National Gallery of Art. Contributions by 47 leading photograph conservators, scientists, and historians provide detailed examinations of the chemical, material, and aesthetic qualities of this important class of rare, beautiful, and technically complex photographs. The volume will help those who care for photograph collections gain a thorough appreciation of the technical and aesthetic characteristics of platinum and palladium prints and scientific basis for their preservation.