4 [pi] R² | Collections | The Huntington

4 [pi] R² | Collections | The Huntington

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Collections 92-06
Rare Books
"For many years, Camille Solyagua has been fascinated by the connection between art and science. For both of these disciplines, the natural world is one of the preeminent sources of exploration and discovery. Though wildly divergent in terms of methodology and approach, artists and scientists often share a mutual passion to understand and reveal the secrets of nature"--From introductory essay.
653270
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Benevolent pleasures of sight
Rare Books
"Technically, not all of Camille Solyagua's photographs are still lifes; nor do her subjects always sit still for her to gaze or gape meaningfully at their arrangement. Yet in her delicate and precise treatment of natural stuff--of tiny birds and jellyfish, of plants and wings, of feathers and vines, of avian illustrations and nocturnal skies--she accomplishes two fundamental requirements of still lifes: she prolongs the glance, thanks to photography itself, and allows it to optically savor her stilled objects; and she 'epitomizes' by creating edited and concentrated displays of natural forms and shapes, much as certain natural histories do"--From introduction.
653134
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A cookbook of invisible writing
Rare Books
A cookbook of invisible writing, by Dutch artist, designer and teacher Amy Wu, is an introduction to analog steganography--a type of secret writing that is hidden in plain sight. This book serves as a starter pack to run workshops with groups who are interested in alternative forms of communication. It contains invisible ink recipes and other invisible communication techniques that may be used to subvert surveillance and bypass censorship, but also inspire your community to develop poetic and playful forms of communication to nurture social bonds. In the tradition of esoteric manuals published on secret writing, this cookbook also channels the spirit of everyday access and the easy distribution and sharing of practical knowledge. Following Giambattista della Porta's 1558 popular science book Natural Magic--one of the first major publications that detailed simple but diverse recipes of invisible inks for public consumption--this cookbook aims to bring this obscure field to a wider audience. The publication includes a critical essay about the history of surveillance through a feminist and postcolonial lens. The last chapter presents Wu's own body of work that aims to revive analog techniques as a counter to today's digitally surveilled mediascape.
647700
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Op tics
Rare Books
"The first monograph of 1998 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography Roger Newton, Op Tics is compiled from 10 years of experimental work in the (un)nature of photographic experience. Three parts natural philosophy and two parts photography, Newton's work proposes a photographic document based on a fluid definition of the lens. Newton makes material and geometric transformations of the photographic system by designing and constructing lenses of oil, water and corn syrup. Suggesting our world seen from the outside and from shifting or unstable reference systems, the images from Newton's refracting liquid lenses explores the transformative effect complicit in the interaction of the human and mechanical visual apparatuses with the physical world. Part Nightmarish and part Wonderland, Newton takes us on a detour from the traditional photographic narrative directly to the unconscious and the limits of the physical world"--Publisher's description.
653257
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Fine three-colour process printing inks
Rare Books
"We have pleasure in submitting in this new specimen book a range of some our latest Three-Colour Process Inks. ... Preceding each series is a brief preface furnishing special information as to certain qualities of the inks--their light resistance, their varnishability, their alkali resistance or otherwise--as well as giving certain hints in regard to the series taken as a whole. The question of light resistance is one which has become in the past few years increasingly important, and we have available information and suggestions which are at all times at our customers' disposal. On the following page are set forth our definitions of the terms which throughout this book are applied to the different inks, and we define exactly what we mean by permanent, fast, etc."--From foreword.
656888
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Lucas Samaras
Rare Books
"With this volume, the first major monograph on Lucas Samaras, one of the most enigmatic, deceptive, and confounding artists of our time emerges as a force to be reckoned with. During the 1960s, when his work stood defiantly apart from the Formalist mainstream, he introduced perverse eroticism and shameless self-exposure along with the materials and procedures of craftswork, illusionistic space, and visceral geometry, offering alternatives that have pointed the way to recent artistic attitudes. Out of the most common materials and objects - pins, jewels, mirror, yarn, knives and forks, goblets and chairs - he created magically alluring and repelling artworks that both conceal and reveal psychological secrets and universal truths. His extraordinary boxes, rooms, dinners, paintings, parelts, and Autopolaroids force on us a new awareness of the psychology of creation - and a realization that it is the artist's self that is constant and inescapable"--Dust jacket flap.
637010