Searchlight: Consciousness at the Millennium

Lawrence Rinder (Editor)

ISBN 10: 050028136X / ISBN 13: 9780500281369

Published by Thames & Hudson, 2005

About this Item

Trade paperback, large format, stiff wraps, covers slightly rubbed, one or two pages with ink check marks, tight binding. 1st. 191 pages, illustrations (some color). Published in connection with the exhibition September 1999 at the California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco. Consciousness art: attending to the quality of experience, by Lawrence Rinder and George Lakoff. Includes these pieces: Bateson through the looking glass, by Steve Kolpan; Ascension: a poem, by by Franck Andre Jamme; Bill Viola, 'Pneuma', 1994, by D.L. Pughe; Proust/Douglas/Edison: " . something dark indeed .", by Mark Bartlett; On seeing 'Untitled #3': bands of white and graphite, by Yvonne Rand; Excerpt from 'The principles of psychology', chapter IX: the stream of thought, by William James; What is it like to be a bat?, by Thomas Nagel; The problem of consciousness, by Francis Crick and Christof Koch; The puzzle of conscious experience, by David J. Chalmers; Is the brain's mind a computer program?, by John R. Searle; Could a machine think?, by Paul M. Churchland and Patricia Smith Churchland; Perception and consciousness: a conversation, [from] 'Gentle bridges: conservations with the Dalai Lama on the sciences of mind', by edited by Jeremy W. Hayward and Francisco J. Varela.

Seller Inventory # 4700Q-Thames

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Searchlight: Consciousness at the Millennium
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 050028136X
• ISBN 13: 9780500281369
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

This book is an unprecedented exploration of the nature of consciousness and its embodiment in many forms of contemporary art including painting, sculpture, installation, video, film, and computer media. At what is possibly the most portentous moment in recent history--the turn of the millennium--Searchlight reveals the threads of a new aesthetic, reaching from the early nineteenth century through its extraordinary fulfillment in the art of the present. Consciousness is the bedrock of all experience, the foundation of all perception and interaction, the source of meaning. As such, it may be said to have been the primary subject of art for the past 125 years, ever since the Modernist revolution of the nineteenth century shifted artists' goals from the direct representation of the seen world to the expression of felt experience. As art increasingly focused on the perceiver rather than the perceived, the consciousness of the artist and the viewer moved to the foreground of the artistic event. The book features essays by writers in the fields of art history, philosophy, cognitive science, theology, and linguistics. Over one hundred illustrations show some of the most extraordinary works of art made over the past twenty years by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, Bill Viola, Yoko Ono, Stan Douglas, Gillian Wearing, Adrian Piper, and Gary Hill. The volume also includes classic reflections on consciousness by such renowned scholars as William James, Thomas Nagel, the Dalai Lama, Francisco J. Varela, John R. Scarle, and Nobel Laureate Francis Crick. Searchlight complements an ambitious, groundbreaking exhibition of the same title organized by the CCAC Institute of the California College of Arts and Crafts. It includes a comprehensive essay by Lawrence Rinder, director of the CCAC Institute, and George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and texts by Mark Bartlett, Franck Andre Jamme, Steve Kolpan, Alva Noe, D. J. Pughe, and Yvonne Rand.