Download or read book Boredom and Art written by Julian Jason Haladyn and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boredom and Art examines the use of boredom as a strategy in modern and contemporary art to resist or frustrate the effects of consumerism and capitalism. This book traces the emergence of what Haladyn terms the will to boredom in which artists, writers and philosophers actively attempt to use the lack of interest inherent in the state of being 'bored' to challenge people. Instead of accepting the prescribed meanings of life given to us by consumer or mass culture, boredom represents the possibility of creating meaning: ‘a threshold of great deeds’ in Walter Benjamin’s memorable wording. It is this conception of boredom as a positive experience of modern subjectivity that is the main critical position of Haladyn's study, in which he proposes that boredom is used by artists as a form of aesthetic resistance that, at its most positive, is the will to boredom.
Download or read book On Boredom written by Rye Dag Holmboe and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we mean when we say that we are bored? Or when we find a subject boring? Contributors to On Boredom: Essays in art and writing, which include artists, art historians, psychoanalysts and a novelist, examine boredom in its manifold and uncertain reality. Each part of the book takes up a crucial moment in the history of boredom and presents it in a new light, taking the reader from the trials of the consulting room to the experience of hysteria in the nineteenth century. The book pays particular attention to boredom’s relationship with the sudden and rapid advances in technology that have occurred in recent decades, specifically technologies of communication, surveillance and automation. On Boredom is idiosyncratic for its combination of image and text, and the artworks included in its pages – by Mathew Hale, Martin Creed and Susan Morris – help turn this volume into a material expression of boredom itself. With other contributions from Josh Cohen, Briony Fer, Anouchka Grose, Rye Dag Holmboe, Margaret Iversen, Tom McCarthy and Michael Newman, the book will appeal to readers in the fields of art history, literature, cultural studies and visual culture, from undergraduate students to professional artists working in new media.
Download or read book Boredom written by Tom McDonough and published by Documents of Contemporary Art. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of the acclaimed series of anthologies which document major themes and ideas in contemporary art.
Download or read book If You Are Bored With WATERCOLOR Read This Book written by Veronica Ballart Lilja and published by Ilex Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you bored of painting tasteful landscapes, light seascapes and delicate still-lifes? Or are you laboring under the misconception that that is simply all watercolor is good for? Maybe you're so bored of looking at watercolor paintings that you've never even tried it! Whether you're at the beginning of your artistic journey, stuck in a rut and in desperate need of some inspiration or simply looking to improve your skills with watercolor, this book is sure to awaken your creativity. Stimulate your artistic minds and open your paint boxes to a whole new realm of possibility, using things like bleach, salt and combs - yes, the thing you'd ordinarily use to brush your hair with - to create exciting results. Professional fashion illustrator Veronica Ballart Lilja shares a wealth of new techniques based on her years of working with the medium that will open up watercolor for beginners, and encourage experts to stray from their more traditional methods. Jam packed with fresh ideas, adventurous tips and techniques, detailed theory and engaging exercises, this book allows you to develop and practise your skills in a free and expressive way.
Download or read book Out of My Skull written by James Danckert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of the Year A Guardian “Best Book about Ideas” of the Year No one likes to be bored. Two leading psychologists explain what causes boredom and how to listen to what it is telling you, so you can live a more engaged life. We avoid boredom at all costs. It makes us feel restless and agitated. Desperate for something to do, we play games on our phones, retie our shoes, or even count ceiling tiles. And if we escape it this time, eventually it will strike again. But what if we listened to boredom instead of banishing it? Psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood contend that boredom isn’t bad for us. It’s just that we do a bad job of heeding its guidance. When we’re bored, our minds are telling us that whatever we are doing isn’t working—we’re failing to satisfy our basic psychological need to be engaged and effective. Too many of us respond poorly. We become prone to accidents, risky activities, loneliness, and ennui, and we waste ever more time on technological distractions. But, Danckert and Eastwood argue, we can let boredom have the opposite effect, motivating the change we need. The latest research suggests that an adaptive approach to boredom will help us avoid its troubling effects and, through its reminder to become aware and involved, might lead us to live fuller lives. Out of My Skull combines scientific findings with everyday observations to explain an experience we’d like to ignore, but from which we have a lot to learn. Boredom evolved to help us. It’s time we gave it a chance.
Download or read book Boredom written by Peter Toohey and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom--what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers--spans more than 3,000 years of history and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Durer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. "Boredom: A Lively History "is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens.
Download or read book A Philosophy of Boredom written by Lars Svendsen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2005-04-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Am account of boredom, something that we have all suffered from, yet actually know very little about.
Download or read book How to Be Bored written by Eva Hoffman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the latest installment of the acclaimed School of Life series, learn how to make peace with your down time—and even benefit from it. Lethargic inactivity can be debilitating and depressing, but in the modern world the pendulum has swung far in the other direction. We live in a hyperactive, over-stimulated age. Uninterrupted activity can seem exciting, but it can also leave us emotionally disorientated and mentally depleted. How can we recover a sense of balance and a richness in our lives? In How to Be Bored, Eva Hoffman argues for the need to cultivate curiosity and self-knowledge and to relish moments of unplugged idleness and non-virtual contact with others. Drawing on psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and a wide range of literature, she emphasizes the need to understand our own preferences and purposes and to replenish our inner resources. This book aims to make readers more vigorously engaged in their lives and to restore a sense of depth and meaning to their experiences.
Download or read book 100 Things We ve Lost to the Internet written by Pamela Paul and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed editor of The New York Times Book Review takes readers on a nostalgic tour of the pre-Internet age, offering powerful insights into both the profound and the seemingly trivial things we've lost. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS • “A deft blend of nostalgia, humor and devastating insights.”—People Remember all those ingrained habits, cherished ideas, beloved objects, and stubborn preferences from the pre-Internet age? They’re gone. To some of those things we can say good riddance. But many we miss terribly. Whatever our emotional response to this departed realm, we are faced with the fact that nearly every aspect of modern life now takes place in filtered, isolated corners of cyberspace—a space that has slowly subsumed our physical habitats, replacing or transforming the office, our local library, a favorite bar, the movie theater, and the coffee shop where people met one another’s gaze from across the room. Even as we’ve gained the ability to gather without leaving our house, many of the fundamentally human experiences that have sustained us have disappeared. In one hundred glimpses of that pre-Internet world, Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, presents a captivating record, enlivened with illustrations, of the world before cyberspace—from voicemails to blind dates to punctuation to civility. There are the small losses: postcards, the blessings of an adolescence largely spared of documentation, the Rolodex, and the genuine surprises at high school reunions. But there are larger repercussions, too: weaker memories, the inability to entertain oneself, and the utter demolition of privacy. 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet is at once an evocative swan song for a disappearing era and, perhaps, a guide to reclaiming just a little bit more of the world IRL.
Download or read book Create This Book written by Moriah Elizabeth and published by . This book was released on 2015-05-17 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Create This Book is the ultimate outlet for creativity. Includes 242 pages of unique and inspiring prompts to get you in the creative zone! Whether you are trying to get past an artist's block, wanting to become more creative, or just looking to have some fun, you will love this interactive journal! Want to learn more? Check out "Create This Book" on Youtube! You can watch Moriah Elizabeth's "Create This Book" Series! Great for inspiration and guidance on your creative journey! Go to MoriahElizabeth.com for more information.
Download or read book Boredom Studies Reader written by Michael E. Gardiner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boredom Studies is an increasingly rich and vital area of contemporary research that examines the experience of boredom as an importan – even quintessential – condition of modern life. This anthology of newly commissioned essays focuses on the historical and theoretical potential of this modern condition, connecting boredom studies with parallel discourses such as affect theory and highlighting possible avenues of future research. Spanning sociology, history, art, philosophy and cultural studies, the book considers boredom as a mass response to the atrophy of experience characteristic of a highly mechanised and urbanised social life.
Download or read book Destruction written by Sven Spieker and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-08-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays explore contemporary artists' engagement with destruction, and how it has disrupted the perceived integrity of built structures and institutions. The effects and meanings of destruction are central to the work of many of our most influential artists. Since the early 1960s, artists have employed destruction to creative ends. Here destruction changes from a negative state or passive condition to a highly productive category. The destructive subversion of media imagery aims to release us from its controlling effects. The self-destructing artwork extinguishes art's fixity as arrested form and ushers in the ephemeral and contingent "open work." This anthology explores artworks that convey the threat of destruction an how they have disrupted the perceived integrity of built structures and institutions. Artistic acts of iconoclasm or risk to the self have raised consciousness of authoritarian oppression. More understated works explore the theme of destruction in armed conflict, media violence, and threats to the environment. These text make up the first collection to be focused systematically on destruction in modern and contemporary art. Artists surveyed include Ai Weiwei, John Baldessari, Monica Bonvicini, Alexander Brener, Stuart Brisley, Douglas Gordon, Huang Yong Ping, Enrique Jezik, Milan Knizak, Paul McCarthy, Piero Manzoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gustav Metzger, Otto Mühl, Yoko Ono, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Petr Pavlensky, William Pope.L, Walid Raad, Arnulf Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Carolee Schneemann, Song Dong, Jean Tinguely, Wolf Vostell Writers include Alain Badiou, Walter Benjamin, Horst Bredekamp, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Medina Cuauthémoc, Dario Gamboni, Richard Galpin, Caleb Kelly, Bruno Latour, Sven Lütticken, Antonio Negri, Sophie O'Brien, Kristine Stiles, Jennifer Walden
Download or read book The Culture of Boredom written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Culture of Boredom is a collection of essays by well-known specialists reflecting from philosophical, literary, and artistic perspectives, in which the reader will learn how different disciplines can throw light on such an appealing, challenging, yet still not fully understood, phenomenon. The goal is to clarify the background of boredom, and to explore its representation through forgotten cross-cutting narratives beyond the typical approaches, i.e. those of psychology or psychiatry. For the first time this experienced group of scholars gathers to promote a cross-border dialogue from a multidisciplinary perspective.
Download or read book Play Anything written by Ian Bogost and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How filling life with play-whether soccer or lawn mowing, counting sheep or tossing Angry Birds -- forges a new path for creativity and joy in our impatient age Life is boring: filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how we can overcome our daily anxiety; transforming the boring, ordinary world around us into one of endless, playful possibilities. The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games. Play Anything, reveals that games appeal to us not because they are fun, but because they set limitations. Soccer wouldn't be soccer if it wasn't composed of two teams of eleven players using only their feet, heads, and torsos to get a ball into a goal; Tetris wouldn't be Tetris without falling pieces in characteristic shapes. Such rules seem needless, arbitrary, and difficult. Yet it is the limitations that make games enjoyable, just like it's the hard things in life that give it meaning. Play is what happens when we accept these limitations, narrow our focus, and, consequently, have fun. Which is also how to live a good life. Manipulating a soccer ball into a goal is no different than treating ordinary circumstances- like grocery shopping, lawn mowing, and making PowerPoints-as sources for meaning and joy. We can "play anything" by filling our days with attention and discipline, devotion and love for the world as it really is, beyond our desires and fears. Ranging from Internet culture to moral philosophy, ancient poetry to modern consumerism, Bogost shows us how today's chaotic world can only be tamed-and enjoyed-when we first impose boundaries on ourselves.
Download or read book The Pale King written by David Foster Wallace and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time. "The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon
Download or read book I m Bored written by Michael Ian Black and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a bored girl meets a potato who finds children tedious, she tries to prove him wrong by demonstrating all of the things they can do, from turning cartwheels to using their imaginations. Full color.
Download or read book A Star Is Bored written by Byron Lane and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Star is Bored is an absolute knockout. Riotously funny and wickedly tender." — Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six "Wildly funny and irreverent... Lane’s writing lifts the novel far above its gossamer Hollywood setting, suffusing [the novel] with a complex sensitivity." - The New York Times Book Review A hilariously heartfelt novel influenced in part by the author’s time assisting Carrie Fisher. People Magazine Best Book of Summer 2020 - Named a Must-Read Summer book by Town & Country - Named One of the 14 Best Books of Summer 2020 by Harper's Bazaar - One of Library Journal's 2020 "Titles to Watch" - One of the 30 Best Beach Reads According to Parade Magazine She needs an assistant. He needs a hero. Charlie Besson is tense and sweating as he prepares for a wild job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s Worst Dressed list. She's an actress in need of assistance, and he's adrift and in need of a lifeline. Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and award-winning movie star, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in a blockbuster sci-fi film. She’s also known in another role: Outrageous Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Chaotically so, as Charlie quickly discovers. Charlie gets the job, and his three-year odyssey is filled with late-night shopping sprees, last-minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows Charlie must make a choice. Will he always be on the sidelines of life, assisting the great forces that be, or can he step into his own life's leading role? Laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly poignant, Byron Lane's A Star is Bored is a novel that, like the star at its center, is enchanting and joyous, heartbreaking and hopeful.
