A Theory of Craft

Author: Howard Risatti
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458762009
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 586

Book Description
What is craft? How is it different from fine art or design? In A Theory of Craft, Howard Risatti examines these issues by comparing handmade ceramics, glass, metalwork, weaving, and furniture to painting, sculpture, photography, and machine-made design from Bauhaus to the Memphis Group. He describes craft's unique qualities as functionality combined with an ability to express human values that transcend temporal, spatial, and social boundaries. Modern design today has taken over from craft the making of functional objects of daily use by employing machines to do work once done by hand. Understanding the aesthetic and social implications of this transformation forces us to see craft as well as design and fine art in a new perspective, Risatti argues. Without a way of understanding and valuing craft on its own terms, the field languishes aesthetically, being judged by fine art criteria that automatically deny art status to craft objects. Craft must articulate a role for itself in contemporary society, says Risatti; otherwise it will be absorbed by fine art or design and its singular approach to understanding the world will be lost. A Theory of Craft is a signal contribution to establishing a craft theory that recognizes, defines, and celebrates the unique blend of function and human aesthetic values embodied in the craft object.

The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation

Author: Trevor Owens
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421426986
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
A guide to managing data in the digital age. Winner of the ALCTS Outstanding Publication Award by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, Winner of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award by the Society of American Archivists Many people believe that what is on the Internet will be around forever. At the same time, warnings of an impending "digital dark age"—where records of the recent past become completely lost or inaccessible—appear with regular frequency in the popular press. It's as if we need a system to safeguard our digital records for future scholars and researchers. Digital preservation experts, however, suggest that this is an illusory dream not worth chasing. Ensuring long-term access to digital information is not that straightforward; it is a complex issue with a significant ethical dimension. It is a vocation. In The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation, librarian Trevor Owens establishes a baseline for practice in this field. In the first section of the book, Owens synthesizes work on the history of preservation in a range of areas (archives, manuscripts, recorded sound, etc.) and sets that history in dialogue with work in new media studies, platform studies, and media archeology. In later chapters, Owens builds from this theoretical framework and maps out a more deliberate and intentional approach to digital preservation. A basic introduction to the issues and practices of digital preservation, the book is anchored in an understanding of the traditions of preservation and the nature of digital objects and media. Based on extensive reading, research, and writing on digital preservation, Owens's work will prove an invaluable reference for archivists, librarians, and museum professionals, as well as scholars and researchers in the digital humanities.

Craft and Contemporary Theory

Author: Sue Rowley
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781864483130
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
An innovative interdisiplinary collection which explores cultural perceptions of craft and their impact on contemporary practice.

Theory and Design of Air Cushion Craft

Author: Liang Yun
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080519067
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 647

Book Description
This definitive text describes the theory and design both of Air Cushion Vehicles (ACV) and Surface Effect Ships (SES). It begins by introducing hovercraft types and their development and application throughout the world in the last three decades, before going on to discuss the theoretical aspects of ACV and SES craft covering their hovering performance, dynamic trim over calm water, resistance, stability, manoeuvrability, skirt configuration and analysis of forces acting on the skirts, ACV and SES seakeeping, and the methodology of scaling aerodynamic and hydrodynamic forces acting on the ACV/SES from model test data. The latter chapters describe a design methodology, including design criteria and standard methods for estimating craft performance, lift system design, skirt design, hull structure, propulsion systems and power unit selection. Much technical information, data, and references to further work on hovercraft and SES design is provided. The book will be a useful reference to engineers, technicians, teachers, students (both undergraduate and postgraduate), operators etc. who are involved in ACV/SES research, design, construction and operation. - Guides the reader on how to perform machinery and systems selection within ACV and SES overall design - For teachers, students (both at under- and post-graduate level), engineers and technicians involved in ACV/SES

The Theory and Craft of American Law

Author: Soia Mentschikoff
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
ISBN: 9780256147346
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 917

Book Description

The Art and Craft of Political Theory

Author: Leslie Paul Thiele
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429867956
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Book Description
The Art and Craft of Political Theory provides a critical overview of the discipline’s core concepts and concerns and highlights its development of critical thinking and practical judgment. The field’s interdisciplinary strengths are deployed to grapple with emerging issues and engage afresh enduring ideals and quandaries. While conventional definitions of key concepts are provided, original and controversial perspectives are also explored, revealing continuity in a tradition of thought while emphasizing its diversity and innovations. The Art and Craft of Political Theory illustrates the analytic and interpretive skills, the moral and philosophic discernment, and the historical knowledge needed to appreciate a tradition of thought, to contest its claims, and to make good use of its insights. Topics include: science, ideology and normative theory biology, culture, human nature, power and violence ancient, modern and postmodern political thought liberty, equality, justice, reason and democracy racial, religious, gender and economic identities liberalism, socialism, capitalism, communism, anarchism, feminism and environmentalism social media, automation, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. This concise, lively and accessibly written book is essential reading for all students of political theory.

Bauhaus Weaving Theory

Author: T’ai Smith
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452943222
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
The Bauhaus school in Germany has long been understood through the writings of its founding director, Walter Gropius, and well-known artists who taught there such as Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy. Far less recognized are texts by women in the school’s weaving workshop. In Bauhaus Weaving Theory, T’ai Smith uncovers new significance in the work the Bauhaus weavers did as writers. From colorful, expressionist tapestries to the invention of soundproofing and light-reflective fabric, the workshop’s innovative creations influenced a modernist theory of weaving. In the first careful examination of the writings of Bauhaus weavers, including Anni Albers, Gunta Stözl, and Otti Berger, Smith details how these women challenged assumptions about the feminine nature of their craft. As they harnessed the vocabulary of other disciplines like painting, architecture, and photography, Smith argues, the weavers resisted modernist thinking about distinct media. In parsing texts about tapestries and functional textiles, the vital role these women played in debates about medium in the twentieth century and a nuanced history of the Bauhaus comes to light. Bauhaus Weaving Theory deftly reframes the Bauhaus weaving workshop as central to theoretical inquiry at the school. Putting questions of how value and legitimacy are established in the art world into dialogue with the limits of modernism, Smith confronts the belief that the crafts are manual and technical but never intellectual arts.

Extra/Ordinary

Author: Maria Elena Buszek
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822347628
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
Artists, critics, curators, and scholars develop theories of craft in relation to art, chronicle how fine art institutions understand and exhibit craft media, and offer accounts of activist crafting.

All About Process

Author: Kim Grant
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271079495
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
In recent years, many prominent and successful artists have claimed that their primary concern is not the artwork they produce but the artistic process itself. In this volume, Kim Grant analyzes this idea and traces its historical roots, showing how changing concepts of artistic process have played a dominant role in the development of modern and contemporary art. This astute account of the ways in which process has been understood and addressed examines canonical artists such as Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, and De Kooning, as well as philosophers and art theorists such as Henri Focillon, R. G. Collingwood, and John Dewey. Placing “process art” within a larger historical context, Grant looks at the changing relations of the artist’s labor to traditional craftsmanship and industrial production, the status of art as a commodity, the increasing importance of the body and materiality in art making, and the nature and significance of the artist’s role in modern society. In doing so, she shows how process is an intrinsic part of aesthetic theory that connects to important contemporary debates about work, craft, and labor. Comprehensive and insightful, this synthetic study of process in modern and contemporary art reveals how artists’ explicit engagement with the concept fits into a broader narrative of the significance of art in the industrial and postindustrial world.

Techne Theory

Author: Henry Staten
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472592913
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
Only since the Romantic period has art been understood in terms of an ineffable aesthetic quality of things like poems, paintings, and sculptures, and the art-maker as endowed with an inexplicable power of creation. From the Greeks to the 18th century, art was conceived as techne--the skill and know-how by which things and states of affairs are ordered. Techne Theory shows how to use this concept to cut through the Romantic notion of art as a kind of magic by returning to the original sense of art as techne, the standpoint of the person who actually knows how to make a work of art. Understood as techne, art-making, like all other cultural accomplishments, is a form of work performed by an artisan who has inherited the know-how of previous generations of artisans. Along the way, Techne Theory cuts through the humanist-structuralist impasse over the question of artistic agency and explains what 'form' really means.