Visualizations: The Nature Book of Art and Science

Book Description

Martin Kemp's provocative essays on the interplay between art and science have been entertaining readers of Nature, the world's leading journal for the announcement of scientific discoveries, since 1997. These short, illustrated, highly regarded essays generally focus on one visual image from art or science and provide an evocative and erudite investigation into shared motifs in the two disciplines. Gathered together here with a delightfully rich introduction by the author, the essays take our understanding to an exciting new level as they transgress the traditional boundaries between art and science.
The images under consideration cover Western art from the Renaissance to the present day, and the science ranges from abstract mathematics to the illustrative modes of natural history and medicine. Kemp skillfully discusses the Mona Lisa as well as horror films, Galileo's moon drawings and diagrams in modern physics, Renaissance pottery and logos on trucks, the invention of perspective, and contemporary masterpieces.
Rather than charting the mutual influence of art and science upon each other, these essays look to the deeper structures that find expression in art and science; they reveal the "structural intuitions" shared by artists and scientists when confronting the world. This volume contains all the pieces published in Nature under the banners of "Art and Science" and "Science and Image," together with some from Kemp's recent "Science and Culture" series. The essays are presented thematically rather than chronologically, arranged to stimulate critical ideas about the nature of the image at the intersection of art and science, now and in the past.

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From/to: Fareed Armaly

Manufacturer: Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art,Netherlands
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9073362423

Amazon.com

What began as a fortuitous discovery, when BBC researcher Adam Jacot de Boinod noticed that an Albanian dictionary contained 27 different words each for eyebrows and mustache, has become, after his obsessive 18-month journey through hundreds of foreign dictionaries, a very funny and genuinely informative guide to the world's strangest--and most useful--words. There are many books out there that invent, Sniglets-style, the words that the English language doesn't have but needs. What The Meaning of Tingo shows is that, like natural cures waiting to be found in the plants of the rainforest, many of the words already exist, in the languages of the world's other cultures. Who couldn't find a use for "neko-neko," an Indonesian word for "one who has a creative idea which only makes things worse," or "skeinkjari," a term from the Faroe Islands for "the man who goes among wedding guests offering them alcohol"? Some words that Jacot de Boinod has found are bizarre--"koro," the "hysterical belief that one's penis is shrinking into one's body" in Japanese--while others are surprisingly affecting, like the Inuit word "iktsuarpok," which means "to go outside often to see if someone is coming." And then there's "tingo" itself, from the Pascuense language of Easter Island: "to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by borrowing them."

Nearly any page you open to in The Meaning of Tingo pays hilarious tribute to the inventive genius of the world's peoples. Like Eat, Shoots & Leaves and Schott's Miscellany, with which it shares a quirky British charm and a gift-friendly look and size, The Meaning of Tingo is a UK bestseller that by all rights should become equally popular in the States. --Tom Nissley

The Man Who Swallowed 200 Dictionaries

There is no word (that we know of) to describe someone who spends a year and half of their life poring through a library's worth of dictionaries in hundreds of languages, but that's exactly what Adam Jacot de Boinod did after a chance encounter with a heavy Albanian dictionary. Listen to our interview with the author to hear just how he got started on this strange but fruitful journey, and what he hopes might be the usefulness of his light-hearted book in making us aware of the cultural riches in danger of being lost as the world's living languages become extinct nearly as quickly as its species.

The Meaning of Tingo Language Learning Lab

Adam Jacot de Boinod has chosen a handful of his own favorite words from The Meaning of Tingo Click here to hear him pronounce and define the words, and start slipping them into conversation today!

nakhur, Persian a camel that won't give milk until her nostrils are tickled

areodjarekput, Inuit to exchange wives for a few days only

marilopotes, ancient Greek a gulper of coaldust

ilunga, Tshiluba, Congo someone who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time

cigerci, Turkish a seller of liver and lungs

seigneur-terrasse, French a person who spends much time but little money in a cafe (literally: a terrace lord)

Torschlusspanik, German the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older (literally: gate-closing panic; often applied to women worried about being too old to have children.)

pana po'o, Hawaiian to scratch your head in order to remember something

waterponie, Afrikaans jet ski

Book Description

A divine gift for the word-obsessed—a deliciously eccentric world tour of words that have no English equivalent

The countless language freaks who've worn out their copies of Eats, Shoots and Leaves will find inexhaustible distraction in The Meaning of Tingo. Where else will they discover that Bolivians have a word that means “I was rather too drunk last night and it's all their fault”? As for tingo, on Easter Island it means “to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by borrowing them.” Organized by themes such as food, the human body, and sex and love, this irresistible book combs through more than 254 languages in search of those gorgeous oddities that have no direct English counterpart—words so strange and apt that if they didn't exist, they would have to be invented.

Highlights from The Meaning of Tingo:
• mencomet (Indonesian): stealing things of small value such as food or drinks, partly for fun
• scheissbedauern (German): the disappointment one feels when something turns out not nearly as badly as one had hoped
• mono-no-aware (Japanese): appreciating the sadness of existence
• mahj (Persian): looking beautiful after disease
• plimpplamppletteren (Dutch): the skimming of a flat stone as many times as possible across the surface of the water
• koshatnik (Russian): a dealer in stolen cats
• ava (Tahitian): wife (but also means whisky)

Customer Reviews:

Double Dutch? .......2007-08-06

In other reviews of this book it's already mentioned that, amongst others, the Chinese, Russian and German examples in this book are for a large part dodgy or just plainly wrong. This is also the case for the examples from the Dutch language the author cites from. The blurb states that he read '140 websites' in order to compile this book, as well as some '280 dictionaries'. (Does Mr Jacot de Boinod know how many languages there are in the world?) He should have spoken to some international linguists, and have somebody else get the notes down instead. On the jacket of the book, this example is highlighted: 'The Dutch word for skimming stones is plimplampetteren.' No, it isn't - there is no such word in the Dutch dictionary. Or on the web, for that matter. There is however, a word called pimpampetten, which is a card game for children based on trivia. (examples can be seen at www.anderspel.nl/pimpampet.html).

On the back cover, Stephen Fry is raving about how delighted he is now that he knows how the Dutch render the word of Rice Krispies - according to the book, this should be: 'Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!'. I don't know which language the author got this from in order to give false information to Stephen Fry or any other member of his reading audience. I would estimate that about 70-80% of the examples from the Dutch language are mistaken. It's like Python's old Hungarian Prasebook, but much less funny. All in all, it's quite a disaster and I am somewhat concerned that a prestigious house like Penguin has published this with no further editing or checking done.

Amusing and interesting.......2007-02-04

This book has a lot of amusing linguistic information in it. However a number of reviewers have pointed out that it has inaccuracies.
It also has a strange stress on a limited number of languages. I can appreciate for instance the author's passion for Yiddish, and the little paragrah he writes on ways of cursing and insulting in Yiddish- but I wonder at the total absence of Hebrew and Aramaic in this work.
There are little essays which are informative including one on languages which are threatened with extinction. Another discourses on the number of languages in the world. I was surprised to learn at how many different languages there are in Papua New Guinea.
I found the little section on especially long- words, compounds of various kinds also interesting.
This book has a lot of amusing information in, and should be treated as a work of entertainment not serious scholarship.

nice conversation starter.......2007-01-19

I keep the book out for anyone to read. People pick it up, read the cover, thumb through the book and grow a smile every time. Everyone finds a word that they were somehow living without. It's pretty fantastic to watch someone get attached to a word and use it. One comment was, "I had a buddy that tingoed my entire CD collection during my freshman year!"

My favorite today, Wabi, a flawed detail that enhances the elegance of the whole work of art.

This is a unique, eye-opening and charming book.......2007-01-08

This is an amazing written piece of poetry and comedy at the same time. The
different chapers are very imaginative, and the translations are beyond
belief!!!! It just shows how crazy the world is, when you look at it close
up!! Diffinetly worth a read - this is an awesome planet, and this book is
an awesome book

good idea, but..........2006-08-09

Several other reviewers have uttered the point I was going to make... the idea is nice, but the examples are, at least for a part, inaccurate... I can only speak for the languages I know and haven't read the whole book from cover to cover yet. But when I already found several undeniable errors, my willingness to read it cover to cover dwindled a bit. Someone already mentioned "Scheissenbedauern" which I have never heard although my mother tongue is German, also "agobilles" isn't German at all, but what really make me shake my head in big doubt was the word "allahaismarladik" (in the chapter "fare well") which according to the author is Wagiman (Australian aborigine language) - "to clear off without telling anyone wher eyou are going". Either this guy does not have any idea, or mislayed his dictionaries, or he is incorporating practical jokes on the less informed reader. Any Turkish speakers here? This word simply means "good bye" (literally "we send you away with God" - notice the word "Allah"?, and the usual answer to this is "güle güle" meaning "laugh, laugh").
If for the next edition the author or editor could eradicate mistakes like that and have a closer look at the correct spelling of words that have "Umlaute" like in German or Turkish (there is no such thing as the supposedly German Grubelsucht because it's Grübelsucht, and the Turkish soyle boyle is correctly spelled söyle böyle - actually an s with a comma below, but my pc does not have this symbol). There are some othe nice languages or dialects from which one could draw examples, Swiss German being one of them :-) Oh, and the Dutch word "aardappel" for potato does not come from "hard apple" but from "apple of the earth" - like in German (Erdapfel) or Swiss German (Härdöpfel). As for Polterabend it's not just any young person's party but the specific party given the night before the marriage. Okay, that's all petty stuff and a lot of details, but I feel that if the languages I understand are already half-translated, I can't really trust the rest.

The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World

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The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World
Adam Jacot De Boindod
Manufacturer: Penguin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000S6ZB4Q

Book Description

In Touch, Laura U. Marks develops a critical approach more tactile than visual, an intensely physical and sensuous engagement with works of media art that enriches our understanding and experience of these works and of art itself.

These critical, theoretical, and personal essays serve as a guide to developments in nonmainstream media art during the past ten years-sexual representation debates, documentary ethics, the shift from analog to digital media, a new social obsession with smell. Marks takes up well-known artists like experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and mysterious animators the Brothers Quay, and introduces groundbreaking, lesser-known film, video, and digital artists.

From this emerges a materialist theory-an embodied, erotic relationship to art and to the world. Marks's approach leads to an appreciation of the works' mortal bodies: film's volatile emulsion, video's fragile magnetic base, crash-prone Net art; it also offers a productive alternative to the popular understanding of digital media as "virtual" and immaterial. Weaving a continuous fabric from philosophy, fiction, science, dreams, and intimate experience, Touch opens a new world of art media to readers.

Laura U. Marks, associate professor of film studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, is a critic and curator of artists' independent media. She is the author of The Skin of the Film (2000).

Book Description

This compact and convenient guide to music in London features the sites where music has flourished and where leading musicians have lived or performed in the city—from Handel’s house to Berlioz’s rooms, from cathedrals and churches to recording studios and concert halls. It provides historical information on auditoriums and opera houses, theatres, conservatories, museums, libraries, galleries, graves, memorials and statues, orchestras, music publishers, auction houses, and places of musical interest in the greater London area. The book includes biographical accounts of some 125 composers and musicians who inhabited or visited London.

The book offers interesting musical walks, a historical overview, and the most thorough account yet published of musical compositions evoking London. Boxes within the text present information on such topics as the music Wagner conducted in London in 1855, the organists and choirmasters of the cathedrals, and Gershwin’s recording sessions. With maps, bibliography, web addresses, information on transport and access, and an extensive index, this unique compilation is enhanced with many striking illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

An Anglophile Music Lover's Treasure.......2005-10-08

Inspired by Nigel Simeone's 'A Paris Musical Gazetteer', Lewis Foreman, a distinguished writer on British music with more than twenty books to his credit (among them volumes on Havergal Brian, Edmund Rubbra, Arthur Bliss, and Edward Elgar) and Susan Foreman (I don't know if she is his wife or daughter or no relation) have written a compelling gazetteer of sites associated with classical music in London. It details the history of sites around London where various musical events, composers, performers, even music publishers have flourished. There are chapters on theaters, concert halls and watering places, on choral music and organs, on conservatories, museums, libraries, musical paintings, on graves and memorials to musicians, on the BBC, on orchestras, and on recording locations (including Abbey Road, which of course has had a distinguished history aside from that famous Beatles recording). There is a long section on composers and musicians in London, including really quite detailed information about where various musicians lived, going all the way back to Purcell and beyond.

There is a delightful section called 'Five Musical Walks' which are doable rambles that take in such things as where Berlioz and Wagner stayed while in London, the Wigmore Hall, Harold Moores's music shop, and a great deal more. And a section on musical selections that evoke London and environs.

The authors do not claim this to be a scholarly work, but indeed the number of facts (they must have done assiduous research!) is astounding. Did you know that Sir Adrian Boult left his body to scientific research? Or that the celebrated contralto Dame Clara Butt was six foot two? Or that W. S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) died of a heart attack while trying to save a drowning young girl? There is a chatty tone and the authors even dish some dirt (see the section on Constant Lambert, or the anecdote about John Ireland's companion, Norah Kirby, attending an Ireland concert wearing gumboots and a pair of John's trousers).

There are many pictures - of musicians, of concerts, of musician's homes, et al. - that are printed in the side-columns of the extra-wide glossy pages. My only complaint about the book, in fact, is that it is rather unwieldy because of the wide pages. There are maps that are very helpful for non-Londoners, a bibliography, instructions about how to reach certain sites whether using public transport, driving or walking, and even web addresses of interest.

This is the sort of book one could read front to back or more likely to dip into as interest dictates. Either way, it's a marvelous addition to a musiclover's library.

Scott Morrison

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London: A Musical Gazetteer
Lewis; Foreman, Susan Foreman
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OS3BUE

Customer Reviews:

Excellent ideas!.......2007-06-01

Recently I was put in charge of the decorations for a close friend's baby shower. I went to the party supply stores, but couldn't find anything I really liked, so I bought this book. Wow! Each party theme includes ideas for invitations, food, decorations, games, thank you notes... everything! I'm not really going with a theme, but am taking different ideas from different themes and putting them all together.
I bought another book along with this one, but was very disappointed in it. This book is really all you'll need!

Dirty Diaper was a dandy!.......2004-04-20

I have had so much fun using the ideas in "Themed Baby Showers". The dirty diaper cake was a hit at the baby shower I threw for my son's 2nd grade teacher and I love the idea of sending the invitations in baby bottles. This book is sure to make your next shower special!

Great ideas.......2004-04-01

Was pleased when this book arrived. It has a lot of creative ideas - just what I was looking for. There are no color photos, but it includes simple illustrations. It's easy to follow, with ideas for invitations, decorations, activities, gifts, favors and food listed under each party theme.

Fabulous ideas here!.......2003-12-06

Thanks for the wonderfully original ideas in Themed Baby Showers. My mom and I did the "garden party" to celebrate my best friend's new baby. It was a hit! Our guests made the keepsake garden stone and loved it. We've all been to so many baby showers together and I knew everyone was bored with the paper and pencil games. If you're looking for something unique, this book is perfect.

Fabulous ideas here!.......2003-12-06

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Television Series Revivals: Sequels or Remakes of Cancelled Shows
Lee Goldberg
Manufacturer: Diane Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0788167561

Product Description

Includes summaries of new versions of TV series which featured continuing characters, & which were revivals of series that were canceled, with no new episodes produced for over one full year. Revivals are listed by the original series' title, followed by the network which aired them & the years they were broadcast. Each listing includes an overview on how the characters changed between the original show & the revival, a plot synopsis, & in some cases, details behind the making of the program. Finally, each listing concludes with production information on each revival, sequel, or remake. Photos.

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Recommended Books

	nakhur, Persian	a camel that won't give milk until her nostrils are tickled
	areodjarekput, Inuit	to exchange wives for a few days only
	marilopotes, ancient Greek	a gulper of coaldust
	ilunga, Tshiluba, Congo	someone who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time
	cigerci, Turkish	a seller of liver and lungs
	seigneur-terrasse, French	a person who spends much time but little money in a cafe (literally: a terrace lord)
	Torschlusspanik, German	the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older (literally: gate-closing panic; often applied to women worried about being too old to have children.)
	pana po'o, Hawaiian	to scratch your head in order to remember something
	waterponie, Afrikaans	jet ski