Speculative Everything

Speculative Everything
Author: Anthony Dunne
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2013-12-06
Genre: Design
ISBN: 0262019841

How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.

The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate
Author: Richard Condon
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2013-11-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0795335067

The classic thriller about a hostile foreign power infiltrating American politics: “Brilliant . . . wild and exhilarating.” —The New Yorker A war hero and the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Sgt. Raymond Shaw is keeping a deadly secret—even from himself. During his time as a prisoner of war in North Korea, he was brainwashed by his Communist captors and transformed into a deadly weapon—a sleeper assassin, programmed to kill without question or mercy at his captors’ signal. Now he’s been returned to the United States with a covert mission: to kill a candidate running for US president . . . This “shocking, tense” and sharply satirical novel has become a modern classic, and was the basis for two film adaptations (San Francisco Chronicle). “Crammed with suspense.” —Chicago Tribune “Condon is wickedly skillful.” —Time

The Dissertation

The Dissertation
Author: Iain Borden
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2006-08-14
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1136358390

The Dissertation is one of the most demanding yet potentially most stimulating components of an architectural course. Properly done, it can be a valuable contribution not only to the students own learning development but also to the field of architecture as a whole. This book provides a complete guide to what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and the major pitfalls involved. This is a comprehensive guide to all that an architecture student might need to know about undertaking the dissertation, including new material on CD-ROM and online sources, web based research techniques, digital images, alternative imaging strategies, key architecture links, referencing and new dissertation extracts. It clearly navigates the student through the whole process of writing, preparing and submitting a dissertation, as well as suggesting what to do after the dissertation has been completed. Subjects covered include how to write a proposal, which research methodologies and techniques to adopt, which libraries and archives to utilize (including special architectural resources on the net), as well as how to structure, reference and illustrate the final submission. The authors also take architecture students into new terrain, suggesting alternative methods of undertaking dissertations, whether as video, prose writing, multimedia or other forms of expression. Furthermore, this guide includes new examples of exemplary dissertations of all kinds, as completed by students in Europe and North America so that the reader can clearly see the kinds of work which they themselves might choose to pursue. Also in the Seriously Useful Guides Series: * The Crit * The The Portfolio * Practical Experience

Site-Specific Art

Site-Specific Art
Author: Nick Kaye
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134665954

Site-Specific Art charts the development of an experimental art form in an experimental way. Nick Kaye traces the fascinating historical antecedents of today's installation and performance art, while also assembling a unique documentation of contemporary practice around the world. The book is divided into individual analyses of the themes of space, materials, site, and frames. These are interspersed by specially commissioned documentary artwork from some of the world's foremost practitioners and artists working today. This interweaving of critique and creativity has never been achieved on this scale before. Site-Specific Art investigates the relationship of architectural theory to an understanding of contemporary site related art and performance, and rigorously questions how such works can be documented. The artistic processes involved are demonstrated through entirely new primary articles from: * Meredith Monk * Station House Opera * Brith Gof * Forced Entertainment. This volume is an astonishing contribution to debates around experimental cross-arts practice.