We entrust readers with thirty fragments of reflections, meditations, recollections, and images — one for each year that has passed since the explosion that rocked and destroyed a part of the Chernobyl nuclear power station in April 1986. The aesthetic visions, thoughts, and experiences that have made their way into this book hover in a grey region between the singular and self-enclosed, on t…
Scientists have identified southern China as a likely epicenter for viral pandemics, a place where new viruses emerge out of intensively farmed landscapes and human--animal interactions. In Virulent Zones, Lyle Fearnley documents the global plans to stop the next influenza pandemic at its source, accompanying virologists and veterinarians as they track lethal viruses to China's largest freshwat…
Beyond musical works: new perspectives on music ontology and performance What are musical works? How are they constructed in our minds? Which material things allow us to speak about them in the first place? Does a specific way of conceiving musical works limit their performative potentials? Which alternative, more productive images of musical work can be devised? Virtual Works – Actual Things…
Research leads to new insights rupturing the existent fabric of knowledge. Situated in the still evolving field of artistic research, this book investigates a fundamental quality of this process. Building on the lessons of deconstruction, artistic research invents new modes of epistemic relationships that include aesthetic dimensions. Under the heading transposition, seventeen artists, music…
What does it mean to produce resemblance in the performance of written music? Starting from how this question is commonly answered by the practice of interpretation in Western notated art music, this book proposes a move beyond commonly accepted codes, conventions and territories of music performance. Appropriating reflections from post-structural philosophy, visual arts and semiotics, and cruc…
Beyond interpretation: a proposal for experimental performance practices Logic of Experimentation offers several innovative and ground-breaking perspectives on music performance, music ontology, research methodologies and ethics of performance. It proposes new modes of thinking and exposing past musical works to contemporary audiences, arguing for a new kind of performer, emancipated from autho…
Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media have yielded a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. New Media Studies crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, and this begs the question: where do we stand now? Which new questions are emerging now that new media are being taken for granted, …
Rivers, landscapes, whole territories: these are the latest entities environmental activists have fought hard to include in the relentless expansion of rights in our world. But what does it mean for a landscape to have rights? Why would anyone want to create such rights, and to what end? Is it a good idea, and does it come with risks? This book presents the logic behind giving nature rights and…
The notion of »the problematic« has changed its meaning within the history of power and knowledge since the early 20th century, leading up to today's performative, neocybernetic fascination with generalized management ideas and technocratic models of science. This book explores central scenes, conceptual elaborations, and practical affiliations of what historically has been called »the probl…
Why should mindfulness and meditation be taught at universities? What impact could the establishment of such programs have on students and on the education system itself? Andreas de Bruin showcases the remarkable results of the first ten years of the Munich Model »Mindfulness and Meditation in a University Context« - a program started in the year 2010 in which 2000 students have already parti…