Vampyroteuthis Infernalis

Author: Vilém Flusser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816678228
Category : Vampire squid
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) was born in Prague. He emigrated to Brazil, where he taught philosophy and wrote a daily newspaper column in Sao Paulo, then later moved to France. He wrote several books in Portuguese and German. Writings (2004), Into the Universe of Technical Images (2011), and Does Writing Have a Future? (2011) have been published by the University of Minnesota Press, and the Shape of Things, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, and The Freedom of the Migrant have also been translated into English.

Cephalopods

Author: Peter Boyle
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405145439
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Book Description
Squid, cuttlefish and octopuses, which form the marine mollusc group the cephalopods, are of great and increasing interest to marine biologists, physiologists, ecologists, environmental biologists and fisheries scientists. Cephalopods: ecology and fisheries is a thorough review of this most important animal group. The first introductory section of the book provides coverage of cephalopod form and function, origin and evolution, Nautilus, and biodiversity and zoogeography. The following section covers life cycles, growth, physiological ecology, reproductive strategies and early life histories. There follows a section on ecology, which provides details of slope and shelf species, oceanic and deep sea species, population ecology, trophic ecology and cephalopods as prey. The final section of the book deals with fisheries and ecological interactions, with chapters on fishing methods and scientific sampling, fisheries resources, fisheries oceanography and assessment and management methods. This scientifically comprehensive and beautifully illustrated book is essential reading for marine biologists, zoologists, ecologists and fisheries managers. All libraries in universities and research establishments where biological sciences and fisheries are studied and taught should have multiple copies of this landmark publication on their shelves.

The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart's Vienna

Author: Mary Hunter
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822750
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
Mozart's comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote these now-popular operas has received little critical attention. In this richly detailed book, Mary Hunter offers a sweeping, synthetic view of opera buffa in the lively theatrical world of late-eighteenth-century Vienna. Opera buffa (Italian-language comic opera) persistently entertained audiences at a time when Joseph was striving for a German national theater. Hunter attributes opera buffa's success to its ability to provide "sheer" pleasure and hence explores how the genre functioned as entertainment. She argues that opera buffa, like mainstream film today, projects a social world both recognizable and distinct from reality. It raises important issues while containing them in the "merely entertaining" frame of the occasion, as well as presenting them as a series of easily identifiable dramatic and musical conventions. Exploring nearly eighty comic operas, Hunter shows how the arias and ensembles convey a multifaceted picture of the repertory's social values and habits. In a concluding chapter, she discusses Cos" fan tutte as a work profoundly concerned with the conventions of its repertory and with the larger idea of convention itself and reveals the ways Mozart and da Ponte pointedly converse with their immediate contemporaries.

Into the Universe of Technical Images

Author: Vilém Flusser
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 081667020X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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

The Brains and Lives of Cephalopods

Author: Marion Nixon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198527619
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Book Description
The book describes the brains and sense organs of 57 of the 139 genera of the class Cephalopoda, many in great detail, as well as a variety of morphological features. The text is well-illustrated with fully labelled line drawings and photomicrographs. Attention is drawn to the many gaps in our knowledge of these intriguing marine invertebrates with a view to stimulating future research.

Physiology of Cephalopod Molluscs

Author: Hans O. Pörtner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Vampyroteuthis Infernalis Chun

Author: Pickford
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004628398
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 42

Book Description

Gestures

Author: Giovanni Maddalena, Fabio Ferrucci, Michela Bella, Matteo Santarelli
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110785900
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description

What If?

Author: Vilém Flusser
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145296761X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
An imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures off-kilter “Probability is a chimera, its head is true, its tail a suggestion. Futurologists attempt to compel the head to eat the tail (ouroboros). Here, though, we will try to wag the tail.” —Vilém Flusser Two years after his Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, the philosopher Vilém Flusser engaged in another thought experiment: a collection of twenty-two “scenarios for the future” to be produced as computer-generated media, or technical images, that would break the imaginative logjam in conceiving the social, political, and economic future of the universe. What If? is not just an “impossible journey” to which Flusser invites us in the first scenario; it functions also as a distorting mirror held up to humanity. Flusser’s disarming scenarios of an Anthropocene fraught with nightmares offer new visions that range from the scientific to the fantastic to the playful and whimsical. Each essay reflects our present sense of understanding the world, considering the exploitation of nature and the dangers of global warming, overpopulation, and blind reliance on the promises of scientific knowledge and invention. What If? offers insight into the radical futures of a slipstream Anthropocene that have much to do with speculative fiction, with Flusser’s concept of design as “crafty” or slippery, and with art and the immense creative potential of failure versus reasonable, “good” computing or calculability. As such, the book is both a warning and a nudge to imagine what we may yet become and be.

Squid Empire

Author: Danna Staaf
Publisher: University Press of New England
ISBN: 1512601284
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Before there were mammals on land, there were dinosaurs. And before there were fish in the sea, there were cephalopods-the ancestors of modern squid and Earth's first truly substantial animals. Cephalopods became the first creatures to rise from the seafloor, essentially inventing the act of swimming. With dozens of tentacles and formidable shells, they presided over an undersea empire for millions of years. But when fish evolved jaws, the ocean's former top predator became its most delicious snack. Cephalopods had to step up their game. Many species streamlined their shells and added defensive spines, but these enhancements only provided a brief advantage. Some cephalopods then abandoned the shell entirely, which opened the gates to a flood of evolutionary innovations: masterful camouflage, fin-supplemented jet propulsion, perhaps even dolphin-like intelligence. Squid Empire is an epic adventure spanning hundreds of millions of years, from the marine life of the primordial ocean to the calamari on tonight's menu. Anyone who enjoys the undersea world-along with all those obsessed with things prehistoric-will be interested in the sometimes enormous, often bizarre creatures that ruled the seas long before the first dinosaurs.