Perspective As Symbolic Form

Erwin Panofsky’s Perspective as Symbolic Form is one of the great works of modern intellectual history, the legendary text that has dominated all art-historical and philosophical discussions on the topic of perspective in this century. Finally available in English, this unrivaled example of Panofsky’s early method places him within broader developments in theories of knowledge and cultural change. Here, drawing on a massive body of learning that ranges over ancient philosophy, theology, science, and optics as well as the history of art, Panofsky produces a type of “archaeology” of Western representation that far surpasses the usual scope of art historical studies. Perspective in Panofsky’s hands becomes a central component of a Western “will to form,” the expression of a schema linking the social, cognitive, psychological, and especially technical practices of a given culture into harmonious and integrated wholes. He demonstrates how the perceptual schema of each historical culture or epoch is unique and how each gives rise to a different but equally full vision of the world. Panofsky articulates these distinct spatial systems, explicating their particular coherence and compatibility with the modes of knowledge, belief, and exchange that characterized the cultures in which they arose. Our own modernity, Panofsky shows, is inseparable from its peculiarly mathematical expression of the concept of the infinite, within a space that is both continuous and homogenous.

Videomapping with its use of digital images is an audiovisual format that has gained traction with the creative industries. It consists of projecting images onto diverse surfaces, according to their geometric characteristics. It is also synonymous with spatial augmented reality, projection mapping and spatial correspondence. Image Beyond the Screen lays the foundations for a field of interdisciplinary study, encompassing the audiovisual, humanities, and digital creation and technologies. It brings together contributions from researchers, and testimonials from some of the creators, technicians and organizers who now make up the many-faceted community of videomapping. Live entertainment, museum, urban or event planning, cultural heritage, marketing, industry and the medical field are just a few examples of the applications of this media.

The Symbolic Forms has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer's works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science--the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. "These three volumes alone (apart from Cassirer's other papers and books) make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if 'The Golden Bough' had been written in philosophical rather than in historical terms."--F.I.G. Rawlins, Nature

This is a collection of articles dealing with the point of view of symbolic interactionism and with the topic of methodology in the discipline of sociology. It is written by the leading figure in the school of symbolic interactionism, and presents what might be regarded as the most authoritative statement of its point of view, outlining its fundamental premises and sketching their implications for sociological study. Blumer states that symbolic interactionism rests on three premises: that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings of things have for them; that the meaning of such things derives from the social interaction one has with one's fellows; and that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process.