MITPressLog

Monday Eye Candy: Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art

2012-01-23T10:08:38-05:00

Happy Chinese New Year! To celebrate the year of the dragon, today's eye candy comes from Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art by Gao Minglu, which contains 150 color illustrations and 173 black-and-white illustrations. Click on each image to enlarge.

Figure 8.9

Wang Guangyi, Great Castigation Series: Coca-Cola, 1991.

Figure 7.33

Song Ling, Meaningless Choice No. 1, 1987.

Figure 7.24

Pool Society, The Travelers in a Green Space No. 2, 1986.

Figure 5.7

Geng Jianyi, Two People under the Lamplight, 1985.

Figure 5.4

Li Guijun, Studio, 1985.

Figure 4.2

Gao Minglu, the principal curator, reading his declaration, "Protest," in front of the public in the plaza of the National Agricultural Exhibition Center, February 5, 2009. Photograph provided by Yang Zhilin.

Monday Eye Candy: Design Meets Disability

2012-01-09T10:08:54-05:00

In our last Monday Eye Candy post of 2011, we featured photographs from Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht's Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space. For the first Monday Eye Candy of 2012, we present images from Design Meets Disability by Graham Pullin. Design Meets Disability contains 114 color illustrations to show us how design and disability can inspire each other. Why, Pullin asks, shouldn’t hearing aids be as fashionable as eyewear? Here are a few illustrations from the book (click on each image to enlarge):

a memorable Cutler and Gross advertisement from the early 1990s
Photo: Platon, courtesy of Cutler and Gross

Aimee Mullins’s carved wooden legs
Photo: Aimee Mullins

chairs designed by a diversity of international designers for the nextmaruni collection
Photo: Yoneo Kawabe © nextmaruni

Tissot Silen-T tactile watch
Photo: courtesy of Tissot

Mebox storage with perforated dots that can be punched out to create letters or icons, designed and manufactured by GTF
Photo: courtesy of GTF

message wall for O2 by Durrell Bishop and Tom Hulbert at IDEO
Photo: Thomas Stewart, courtesy of IDEO

Thirty Percent-Off Friday: January

2012-01-06T11:31:44-05:00

Happy Friday! Like last month, we are excited to offer a discount on an MIT Press title to our blog readers (when purchased through the MIT Press website). Unlike last month, we are doubling the discount to 30% off!

Many of us could use a little more Zen in our lives, so to kick off the New Year, the January discount pick is Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen, by James H. Austin. Dr. Austin is a clinical neurologist and researcher and has been a Zen practitioner for more than three decades. Follow this link, which will automatically apply the discount, to get your copy of Meditating Seflessly. *In the (unlikely) event that the discount doesn't appear when you click the link, have no fear--simply manually enter the discount code "AUFRI11" in the shopping cart to get the discount.*

As an added bonus, here's a Q&A with Dr. Austin about Meditating Selflessly. Check back on the first Friday of February (2/3) for our next "Thirty Percent-Off Friday" pick.

As both a clinical neurologist and Zen practitioner, do you experience tension between both of these very different worlds?

You might think that such a person would experience tension. In actual fact, I’ve found that these two seemingly different worlds are mutually illuminating and inspiring. Maybe this is because I’m just an inquisitive academic neurologist who happened to grow up as Unitarian. In any event, my curiosity about Zen has stimulated me to study the latest neuroscience research, and vice versa.

How long have you practiced Zen Buddhism, and what first led you to it?

I went to Japan 37 years ago on a sabbatical to do neuropharmacological research at Kyoto University Medical School. I just happened to meet an English-speaking Zen Master --- Kobori-Roshi --- at a Rinzai Zen Monastery. That formative experience started me on this Path.

What is the significance of bowing before meditation?

Bowing expresses respect for one’s surroundings and profound gratitude for the gift of life. When you bow, you’re also lowering the flag of your sovereign egocentric Self.

A piece of advice that you offer in your book is, “Don’t cling to the notion that an episode of blissful absorption means you are enlightened.” You state that you experienced enlightenment many years ago on the platform of a London subway station. What effect did that have on you, and do you consider it a turning point in your studies as a Zen Buddhist?

When some of the earlier, superficial states of absorption become blissful, the person can be misled into believing that they must have become “enlightened”. However, authentic states of enlightenment don’t usually happen until one has engaged in regular meditative practice for seversal years. In Zen, these brief states are called kensho or satori. They are characterized by a dissolution of the psychic sense of Self, a distinctive loss of fear, a dropping out of the sense of time (achronia), and a sense of immanent perfection. I refer to that episode on the London train platform in 1982 as “a taste” of kensho. Its insights entered directly, deeply, wordlessly. They became transformative for a variety of reasons. Among them was the simple fact that they kept nudging this neurologist to come up with some scientific explanations for their mechanisms.

You stress the significance of returning to the natural world. What is your advice for city-dwellers hoping to connect to Nature but unable to hear bird songs over the traffic?

We city dwellers are easily swept up into an artificial life of hassled multitasking and electronic diversions. Unfortunately, this mindless indoors routine culminates in what has recently been called a “Nature-deficit disorder.” A simplified meditative practice reminds us of two things: First, of the need to pause. This enables us to still keep training our attention mindfully indoors: while preparing meals, while eating slowly and actually tasting our food, washing the dishes, etc; and Second: that when we finally do escape into the outdoors, we can still pause long enough to look up to enjoy the cloud formations in the sky, marvel at the flight of pigeons or English sparrows, bask in the warm sunshine, and contemplate our impermanence while gazing at the stars.

How would you explain to someone, in just a few sentences, the changes he or she can make in order to let go of the “Self,” as you define it?

I’ve found that this requires more than a few sentences. So, I’d say, check out some pages of Meditating Selflessly. There, you’ll discover explanations for seventy-seven ways to become less “selfish,” along with reasons for not doing nine things.

What is the significance of gratitude in meditation?

A whole chapter in the book is devoted to this everyday practice of gratitude. The Buddha viewed gratitude as a quality that would arise naturally along one’s Path of meditative training. Recent research confirms that “counting one’s blessings” is a practice associated with positive attitudes of mental health in general.

You make a very interesting connection between selflessness and the subcortical mechanisms of preattention. Could you expound on the deeper origins of selflessness?

Remarkable automatic mechanisms reside deep in our brain. They normally “turn down” the activity of the cortical regions involved in our Self-centeredness at the same time that they “turn up” our attentiveness. This inverse relationship is important. It suggests how the training of our “top-down” and “bottom-up” systems of attention could gradually enable us to let go of our maladaptive Self-centered conditioning, and could simultaneously allow our innate, more selfless, affirmative behaviors to develop.

What are the major differences between concentrative meditation and receptive meditation?

The major difference is that when we begin concentrative mediation we’re choosing --- voluntarily --- to “pay” top-down attention in an ongoing, focused manner. In contrast, receptive meditation is choiceless. It begins when we open up awareness to express involuntary modes of more reflexive, bottom-up global attentiveness. Because these two categories of meditation are complementary, it is an advantage to cultivate them in a flexible, balanced manner.

Can you please summarize for us the fascinating but perplexing koan practice?

The koan is an artificial concentration device. It poses a riddle you cannot solve by using your conventional intellectual powers. A koan tests your patience and tolerance. Its short summary phrase can help remind you, though at a very superficial level, to suspend your “monkey mind-wandering” tendencies and to get back into the present moment. The study of koans can also help you appreciate that many subtle psychological levels are involved in the ancient cultural history of Zen Buddhism. However, only during a state of insight-wisdom will a koan be resolved at deep subconscious levels.

Gift Books: Finale

2011-12-23T09:00:00-05:00

The MIT Press staff has been telling us which books they'd suggest as gifts all month--you can view their recommendations here and here. For those of you who are still seeking very last-minute gift ideas, below are a few final staff picks. Happy Holidays!

Molly, Design

My holiday book recommendation is Spacesuit by Nicholas de Monchaux. It is the perfect gift for a wide range of recipients; anyone interested in the space program, fashion design, technology, engineering, history, or politics would love it. De Monchaux’s account of the spacesuit’s design is detailed and fascinating, and his selection of images are as informative as they are whimsical.

The icing on the cake is the book’s cover, which is printed on an unusual rubbery black paper, and silkscreened with white ink. It feels as futuristic now as the spacesuit must have looked in 1969. Spacesuit makes for a truly special gift.

Pam, Permissions

For Stocking Stuffers:

Semiotext(e)
Boston Review Books
Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds by John Bevis
101 Things to Learn in Art School by Kit White
101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick

Or any other small format book.

Marc, Acquisitions

Gilles Deleuze from A to Z by Gilles Deleuze, Claire Parnet, and Pierre-Andre Boutang

This is an amazing 3-disc labor of love DVD set from Semiotext[e]: an 8-hour discussion between Deleuze and one of his former students filmed over several days at the end of the 1980s on a wide range of topics, with his thoughts and feelings on everything from animals, drinking, and illness to the importance of philosophy, to memories of childhood and May 68 (striking for being almost the sole instances of anything resembling autobiography for him), to more whimsical commentary on such topics as tennis and Benny Hill. As someone who continues to struggle with the concepts and books of Deleuze (and his frequent cohort Félix Guattari), I wish I had had access to this film years ago, before my first attempt at diving into tomes like Anti-Oedipus. The humor and humility on display in this film has introduced me to the human behind the concepts, and the fact that Deleuze is speaking here, before us, knowing his illness is going to eventually overtake him (“I speak after my death,” he begins, insisting on the film being posthumous), also makes the whole thing very moving. How can one not be stirred, knowing that he will eventually take his own life, when he speaks of Primo Levi and Parnet beings up Levi’s suicide: “Ah yes, ah yes,” Deleuze acknowledges, “he could no longer hold on, so he committed suicide to his personal life. But there are four pages or twelve pages or a hundred pages of Primo Levi that will remain, that will remain eternal resistances...”

Monday Eye Candy: Sidewalks

2011-12-19T11:04:41-05:00

Last week, we featured photographs from Paul Shaw's Helvetica and the New York City Subway System. Today's eye candy is Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht. Sidewalks contains 35 black and white photos to illustrate the authors' examination of the evolution of the American urban sidewalk and conflicts that have arisen over its competing uses. Here are a few photographs from the book (click on each image to enlarge):

(A hotdog stand, at times considered sidewalk clutter, Los Angeles Fashion District, December 2005)

(City Walk, Universal City, California, 2002)

(Masked riders throwing beads, Mardi Gras, New Orleans, Lousiana, 2006)

(Police in front of the boarded buildings at the World Trade Organization meetings, Seattle, Washington, 1999)

(Canopied street, Coral Gables, Miami, Florida, 2006)

Happy Holidays! We will resume the Monday Eye Candy feature in the New Year (1/9/12).

How to Read the Landscape

2011-12-16T10:40:02-05:00

Last week, MIT Press staff told us which titles they'd suggest as gifts.This week, Daniel Bouchard, a member of the MIT Press Journals Division, recommends A Landscape History of New England, edited by Blake Harrison and Richard W. Judd:

A Landscape History of New England is an ideal primer for answering (and providing) a lot of questions about the common and uncommon landscapes all around as you travel through New England. It’s a resource, serving as a decoder of landscapes. Drawing on a long and scholarly tradition, it teaches you how to read the landscape. As an interested reader of many of the books cited throughout these 21 articles (by 23 authors), and a fan of many of those earlier authors (John Brinckerhoff Jackson, William Cronon, John Stilgoe, D.W. Meinig, and others, not least of whom, Thoreau), I found this collection a significant addition and worthy contribution to the literature. Now, as a pleasantly burdensome bonus, I have two handfuls of new (to me) authors on whom to keep an eye.

But what good is that to you? Well, imagine you and a friend are driving separate cars north out of New York City. You’ve got some time on your hands, opted for a road trip, and decided to “see” New England. It’s not the biggest territory in the States, but it’s still a lot of ground to cover. You pass over bridges, pause thru toll booths, and lean the wheel into the lanes under the big green highway signs boldly declaring “New England.”

Then you do something unique. Your car and the other car part ways to investigate different routes. You will meet up again somewhere way up north, let’s say at a diner in Brewer, Maine, in ten days. There, over lobster rolls and ale, you will discuss what you saw and compare notes. One car will “take a left” off Interstate 95 at New Haven and head north into Vermont. The other will continue along the coast up through Rhode Island, Boston and New Hampshire.

Is it a scavenger hunt for the eyes? What do we expect them to see? When they see the attractive old buildings in a town center painted white will they know those buildings are painted “a starker white paint than had been available to earlier generations”? (31) There is a lot to be gained by understanding such a thing. There’s a lot of history to consider beyond any plaques mounted nearby, and such plaques may indeed be more part of that history than they are a guide to it. Take the town Common: it may look postcard nice when our travelers pull up, but chances are good it was once held with the regard of any uncared for empty lot with junk on it, deep ruts from vehicles and stray animals. That condition wouldn’t be acceptable today, of course, and you can find out why it used to be.

Think about what you would see if you bought someone a coffee-table book “about” New England, one of those over-size picture books (which A Landscape History of New England definitely is not). No doubt, in that book there would be a lot of superb photographs of historic town centers with colonial and Federal style housing on streets radiating out from rising white steeples. In the rural section there would be old farmhouses and barns and piles of pumpkins gathered in the fall. On the coast there would be pictures of beaches and waterfronts, and fishermen on small boats coming in or out of the harbor. There may be pictures of quahogs, oysters or lobsters. There are few better pictorial representations of New England than a close up of a bivalve or crustacean in the hands of an old salt donning rubber overalls. For representations of the city you would see some nicely framed vantages of historic houses like those on Beacon Hill (Boston) or College Hill (Providence) and an aerial shot of Faneuil Hall and Fenway Park and so on. And in the mountains some photos of the colorful fall foliage with more farms and attractive town centers nearby. But what do any of the pictures tell us about New England? They only show us what we already know is there. And it is pretty.

In both cars the challenge for the groups (yes, I’ve populated the front and back seats of the two cars—it’s more fun) is the same as they speed across the highways. They have the option to take any exit and explore whatever towns they come into and also the back roads between the towns as well as the large and small cities. The car along the coast exits and heads toward the water. They want to see some little town where there are fishing boats and a decent seafood restaurant. They will get out and take some pictures before they eat. The other car off-ramps in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. They admire the farms and meadows they pass and soon they come to the white steeple of a church and an old town hall and then the car pulls over by a small bridge where a handsome brick factory sits next to the water. The travelers get out, stretch, take some pictures and then go find something to eat.

If we have been in New England we have an idea of what others may expect to see in it. Now the questions turn to what can we understand about what we see all around us on the trip. The roads everywhere are lined with old stone walls. Sometimes, from the highway, you see the same stone walls rising up off the roadside and heading up over a hill covered with trees. Who put them there? The harbor atmosphere in a seaside tourist destination tries hard to evoke an earlier time. Why? Is the past more authentic? It is common knowledge that New England is the place to view autumn foliage but were those beautiful autumn views always highly valued?

Anyone can give you a dozen good reasons to visit Cape Cod. With this book you begin to see it from the eyes of a geographer. People on the Cape work hard to make a living from the land and sea. They always have. But after the First World War the economy shifted from working the land’s natural resources to working the industries and services that comprise a tourist seasonal-resident destination. The Cumbler chapter traces those changes with a cautionary note on the Cape as a “fragile ecosystem.”

So as our travelers compare notes they realize that they can now list dozens of towns all founded in the mid-18^th century, from each state. Some look like they are still in that time period with sprawling old farms and pastoral views—beautiful. Some simply look ravaged. Some look like revived mill towns, with humming, retro-fitted brick factories. And some mill towns look simply dilapidated with no help on the way. Some towns, after 250 years, appear to be just two highways crossing by a gas station and some, maybe a town or two away, are congested with upscale housing and fancy shops. Are the current economic winners also the past economic losers, thus preserving the things now highly valued as “New England”? Read the Wood chapter to find out.

This book informs like a startling tour guide. What it can’t answer directly it points you in the direction to find out for yourself. Did you know that three-quarters of New England was deforested by the mid-19^th century? Today it is three-quarters forested, and it reverted to its forested state “even more rapidly” than it was stripped (41). A Landscape History of New England offers everything our travelers need except restaurant recommendations. It offers everything they need to really see, the forest and the trees. After reading this book your trip on the Mass. Pike or the Merritt Parkway or the Spaulding Turnpike or through the Northeast Kingdom or the road to Mount Katahdin (after you finish your ice cream in the Bremen diner) or on what Jack Kerouac called “one long red line called Route 6” from the tip of Cape Cod to where it leaves Connecticut west of Danbury will never be the same.

Ai Weiwei: Person of the Year Runner-Up

2011-12-15T12:34:48-05:00

Ai Weiwei was named a runner-up for TIME Person of the Year! Visit TIME for a Q&A with Ai Weiwei that touches on everything from his 81-day Beijing detention to details on how he used his blog as a platform for political activism--and to read Ai's posts, check out Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009, culled from the blog that Chinese authorities shut down in 2009. Ai Weiwei's Blog offers a collection of Ai's online writings translated into English--the most complete, public documentation of the original Chinese blog available in any language.

Monday Eye Candy: Helvetica and the New York City Subway System

2011-12-12T10:26:00-05:00

Last week, we featured beautiful spreads from Kit White's 101 Things to Learn in Art School. Today's eye candy is Paul Shaw's Helvetica and the New York City Subway System. Helvetica and the New York City Subway System contains numerous previously unpublished documents as well as more than 200 photographs, most of them original or never seen before. Here are a few photographs from the book (click on each image to enlarge):

Porcelain enamel station sign. Rector Street (R/W), 1970s. This is the only remaining sign in Standard Medium among a group of stations on the BMT Broadway and Fourth Avenue lines that were renovated with large colored tiles in the 1970s. Regarding the disappearing mosaics, a TA spokesman said at the time, “We didn’t consider these things had any great artistic merit anyhow.” (2008)

Credit: Paul Shaw

Porcelain enamel station sign. 242nd Street—Van Cortlandt Park (1). (2007)

Credit: Paul Shaw

Illuminated sign. 42nd Street—Port Authority (A/C/E), 1980s? Handcut Helvetica Medium. (2009)

Credit: Paul Shaw

Porcelain enamel station sign. Beach 36 Street / Edgemere (A). 2010

Credit: Paul Shaw

Handwritten directional sign. Avenue N (F), 2010. (2010)

Credit: Paul Shaw

Gift Books

2011-12-09T09:59:19-05:00

We asked MIT Press staff to tell us which MIT Press titles they'd suggest as gifts. Here are a few of their picks (more to come next Friday, 12/16):

Kelley, Sales

"Urban Code (by Anne Mikoleit and Moritz Pürckhauer) would be a great gift for your urbanite friends. It is hip, smart, and easily back-pocketable. Plus you don’t even need a bookmark as it comes with its own! Can’t beat a two-for-one!"

Emily, Acquisitions

"Something for Nothing (by Michael Klein) is a great gift for that grad student or young professor on your list. The novel chronicles David Fox’s first year as a visiting assistant professor of economics in small-town upstate New York. The central dilemma involves David’s decision to publish a paper with a right-wing think tank, but the rest of the story covers his attempts to find a tenure-track job while balancing teaching, research, and a social life. The details will ring true for anyone in academia and, best of all, this book is funny!"

Ellen, Director's office

"The Metamorphosis of Plants (by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; photographs and introduction by Gordon L. Miller). The illustrations that Goethe would have wanted! One gardener in the MIT community to whom I gave the book called it 'a treat for the eyes and the soul.'"

Patricia, Sales

"I like the little books-– A Hut of One’s Own (by Ann Cline); Le Corbusier’s Hands (by André Wogenscky); A Day with Picasso (by Billy Kluver); Eccentric Spaces (by Robert Harbison).

And always a fan of Henk Tennekes, The Simple Science of Flight.

The Metamorphosis of Plants is just lovely, it’s been a favorite on display at St. John’s College Bookstore in Santa Fe."

Pearl Harbor and Grace Hopper

2011-12-07T14:00:31-05:00

Today marks the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The events of December 7, 1941 not only triggered US involvement in World War II, but also created opportunity for women to join a workforce that was previously dominated by men. In Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, Kurt Beyer tells about the life of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992), who joined the Navy after Pearl Harbor, made herself "one of the boys" in Howard Aiken's wartime Computation Laboratory, and created the tools that would allow humans to communicate with computers in terms other than ones and zeroes. Grace's advance influenced all future programming and software design and laid the foundation for the development of user-friendly personal computers. Here's an excerpt from the book to commemorate both Pearl Harbor and Grace Hopper:

Anecdotes abound of the late Admiral Hopper, the majority highlighting her most lauded trait: irreverence bordering on insubordination. Nonetheless, the first 36 years of her life were marked by a certain amount of conventionality. In the 1920s it was not uncommon for privileged women from the Northeast to seek higher education. In fact, the percentage of women receiving doctorates in mathematics during the 1920s and the early 1930s was not achieved again until the 1980s. This reminds us that the history of women's emancipation in America has not been linear. Rather than steady progress, there have been waves of opportunity and retrenchment--for example, increasing opportunity in the 10 years after World War I, then retrenchment during the Depression. Hopper came of age during the 1920s, and both her public choices and her private ones coincided rather than conflicted with the desires of her family and her community.

The attack on Pearl Harbor and the ensuing mobilization created unprecedented career opportunities for women. The large-scale reorganization of labor opened a wide variety of occupations that before 7 December 1941 were reserved for men. The most iconic cultural image of this period, Rosie the Riveter, represented the millions of women who replaced men in the workforce as they deployed to Europe and the Pacific. Like millions of other women of her generation, Hopper benefited from this labor shift. And Pearl Harbor was a watershed in Grace Hopper's personal life as well as in her career. In the months following that fateful day, she divorced her husband, left a secure tenure-track position at Vassar College, and joined the Navy. She then became an officer in one of the most gendered organizations of its day. Her military rank endowed her with the external trappings of authority: uniform, title, privilege. Military rank, protocol, and tradition helped to neutralize societal prejudices agains women in positions of public responsibility.

The benefits of military rank were evident as newly minted Lieutenant (j.g.) Hopper was assigned to Commander Howard Aiken's Harvard Computation Laboratory during the war. Aiken, a difficult man who would be classified as a "male chauvinist" by today's standards, found a kinship with Hopper not because she was a rebel but because of her ability to ingratiate herself to Aiken and her fellow workers. Of course she was a talented mathematician and computer programmer, but more importantly she was loyal to her boss and helped to organize and control his laboratory. She actively erased gender differences through her clothing, her language, her drinking habits, and her humor, gaining the trust and respect of Aiken and her peers to the point that she became the most prominent person in the Harvard Computation Laboratory apart from the fiery Aiken.