Surface and Apparition: The Immateriality of Modern Surface
- Submitting institution
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De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32111
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- ISBN
- 9781350130449
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Surface and Apparition: The Immateriality of Modern Surface is the result of collaboration by scholars and artists from the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, which started with a conference at De Montfort University in March 2018. With a strong emphasis on practice and process, the book investigates material and immaterial surfaces in everyday and artistic surroundings. The twelve essays from interconnected disciplines (architecture, design, film, media, anthropology, fine art, fashion, textile, and archival practices) are brought together under the theme ‘surface’ which functions as a transdisciplinary ‘method’ for attending to critical issues concerning human creative endeavours. Surface is one of the most intensely debated topics in recent arts, humanities and social science scholarship. Although a fixation with surface gave birth to a plethora of modernist innovations in literature, art, architecture, science and psychoanalysis, contemporary concerns with surface seem preoccupied with its function of mediation or passage, rather than with that of separation or boundary. The publication of Giuliana Bruno’s book Surface (2014) amplified the debate, resulting in a number of projects and conferences dedicated to ‘surface studies.’ Bruno’s Surface and her prologue in this volume acted as a catalyser for the authors to bring human interaction with surfaces into the notion of affective social relations. Written by a practitioner, or a scholar sensitive to current practice in their fields, each chapter addresses particular technologies (human body and sensory organs, manually operated tools or machines, industrial machines, digital devices, robots), materials (cloth, glass, wood, paper, resin, silver and other metallic substances, light, air or sound), and modes of attention, movement and engagement. Challenging the traditional depth ontology and the negative notion of superficiality, the book calls for a more attentive engagement with surface and its modalities.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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