BE OPEN Picks

 

Pairing one of the world’s greatest sculptors with one of today’s greatest writers on art, Shaping the World tells the story of human culture from prehistory to the present through the medium of sculpture.

Practiced by every culture throughout the history of the world, sculpture is a universal art form that’s deeply rooted in the human psyche and may even predate the advent of language. In this wide-ranging book, internationally renowned sculptor Antony Gormley and distinguished art critic Martin Gayford consider sculpture as an art form related to humanity’s potential for thought and feeling, as well as to our urge to build, make pictures, practice religion, and develop philosophical thought. They take into account materials and techniques and consider overarching themes, such as space, light, and darkness.

Drawing on examples from around the globe―ranging from the standing stones at Stenness, Orkney, dating from around 3100 BCE, and the Terracotta Army in China to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Richard Serra’s steel structures―Shaping the World explores sculpture as a form of physical thought capable of altering the way people feel.

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Digital art has come a long way from its early days in the digital revolution to the era of social media and the post-digital world. This expanded edition of Christiane Paul’s book delves into the world of artificial intelligence, augmented and mixed realities, and NFTs. It also explores various themes in digital artworks such as activism, networks, telepresence, ecological art, and the Anthropocene.

The book examines the challenges of collecting, presenting, and preserving digital art, as well as its impact on traditional art forms like printing, painting, photography, and sculpture. It also explores how the internet, software art, digital installations, and virtual reality have become established artistic practices.

Digital Art is an accessible guide that explains how technology creates artworks with new aesthetic, thematic, and interactive qualities. This makes it a must-read for anyone interested in digital art.

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Ten years after its release, “The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti” remains the authoritative guide to the most influential artists and styles globally. This updated edition now covers six continents. Featuring over 700 full-color photographs of vibrant and eye-catching art, it’s a visually stunning and essential overview of contemporary urban art.

Organized by country and city, it profiles more than 100 leading street artists, including Espo in New York, Merlot in Seattle, Os Gêmeos in São Paulo, Michael Pederson in Sydney, Essu in Tokyo, Lady K in Paris, Milu Correch in Buenos Aires, and Nardstar in Cape Town. Each profile includes key examples of their work, providing a deep understanding of global street art.

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The African diaspora, born of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, has produced diverse art forms like blues, reggae, and Henry Ossawa Tanner’s paintings. This study examines how these works, often created during social upheaval, use Black culture as both subject and context. From late nineteenth-century reflections on the “souls of black folk” to twenty-first-century explorations of racial and cultural identity in performance, media, and digital arts, the book delves into the philosophical and social forces shaping Black presence in contemporary visual culture.

Renowned art historian Richard J. Powell presents a wide range of Black art from the Americas, Caribbean, and Europe, spanning film, photography, performance, conceptual art, advertising, and sculpture. This updated edition highlights the transformative impact of the past two decades on race and identity, using art as a critical lens to examine these issues.

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This book is designed to help students, whether they are in the studio or online, and whether they are art majors or not, from beginner to advanced drawing. It covers all aspects of drawing, from the basics of setting up the studio and choosing materials to self-critique and evaluating your drawings.

The book includes a wide range of full-color illustrations that will inspire you and showcase different art media and artists. You can use this book as a standalone resource or as part of a one- or two-semester course.

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Art and Climate Change explores artistic responses to the ecological crisis. Artists create works that call for collective action to address threats to biological survival. By blending decolonial reparation and ecological restoration, they rewrite history using contemporary art forms and scientific theories.

In five chapters, Maja and Reuben Fowkes analyze artworks responding to the Anthropocene’s impact. They examine devastated landscapes, environmental injustice, and art from affected communities. The book covers painting, photography, conceptual art, installations, and performances, highlighting eco-conscious practices and a new artistic community.

Authors emphasize caring for marginalized and indigenous voices while addressing climate uncertainty, deforestation, toxicity, and species extinction. By proposing sustainable futures, artists reshape our planet’s history, documented in this illustrated book.

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Authors: UNEP, Delft University of Technology, international D4S experts

Design for Sustainability: A Step-by-Step Approach is the latest in the D4S publication series. A global guide for designers and industry, it provides support to ecodesign novices and those looking to further their understanding of the field. The manual focuses on three different design approaches: redesign of existing products, radical sustainable product innovation and new product development. An additional section acts as a comprehensive ‘how-to’ guide for first time users.

Online materials – including case studies, additional design and management tools and worksheets – compliment the print version. The manual is the result of a long term partnership between UNEP, Delft University of Technology and international D4S experts from the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia, with support from UNIDO, the Swedish EPA, and in Went, Germany.

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Author: Frank Chimero

The Shape of Design is a short, accessible book about the creative process and the intersection of storytelling, craft and improvisation. The Shape of Design is a map of the road where we dance rather than a blueprint of it. It strives to investigate the opportunities of exploring the terrain, and it values stepping back from the everyday concerns of designing. … If you’ve read Frank Chimero’s essays or watched his talks online, you’ll recognise many of the ideas collected here. I’ve spent a year reading, re-reading, highlighting and annotating this book, and I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to it. If you work in design or a related field, and you think about what your work means and where it fits in the world, give this book a read.

The Shape of Design is a short, accessible book about the creative process and the intersection of storytelling, craft and improvisation. It strives to investigate the opportunities of exploring the terrain, and it values stepping back from the everyday concerns of designing. It attempts to impose a meaningful distance in order to patterns in the work and assess the practice as a whole. One can observe, from this distance, two very fundamental things about design that are easy to miss in the midst of all of this movement. First, design is imagining a future and working toward it with intelligence and cleverness. We use design to close the gap between the situation we have and the one we desire. Second, design is a practice built upon making things for other people. These two things dictate our relationship to the world and our bond to one another. They form the foundations of the design practice, so our work should revolve around these truths.

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Author: Jeremy Keith

The cardinal sin of many web design books is that they give you coding and tools, but no hands-on advice. That’s where the Resilient Web Design ebook is different. It’s not about the elements you use in this art; it’s about how you use them and the many different approaches that you may choose to take.

In short, Keith will take you through each of them one carefully crafted idea at a time. You also get treated to a historical overview of web design and how very rapidly it has changed in recent years. The notion is that you may use this in-depth knowledge to inform your own projects in the future.

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Making Videogames is an unprecedented snapshot of modern interactive entertainment, with insight from true pioneers about the most important games in the world. Illustrated with some of the most arresting in-game images ever seen in print, the book explores the unique alchemy of technical and artistic endeavour that constitutes the magic of videogames, striking a captivating balance between insight and accessibility. A book not only for die-hard videogame fanatics, but also for designer-creatives and the visually curious, Making Videogames is a thrilling showcase of the boundless creativity of this amazing industry.

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