Light touches : cultural practices of illumination, 1780-1900 / / Alice Barnaby

• Autore: Barnaby Alice
• Pubblicazione: New York : , : Routledge, , 2017
• Edizione: 1st ed.
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (158 pages) : illustrations, tables, photographs
• Disciplina: 392.3/6; 392.36
• Soggetto topico: Lighting - Social aspects - Great Britain; Visual perception - Social aspects - Great Britain; Art and society - Great Britain - History - 19th century
• Soggetto geografico: Great Britain Civilization 19th century
• Classificazione: HIS015000SOC052000
• Note generali: Outgrowth of the author's thesis (doctoral--University of Exeter, 2009) under the title: Light touches : cultural practises of illumination, London 1780-1840.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 1. 'From these three, light, shade and colour, we construct the visbile world' -- 2. Muslin : concealing and revealing -- 3. Mirrors : reflection, recognition, remediation -- 4. Mood lighting : public illuminations -- 5. Aesthetics and economics of daylight -- 6. 'Seeing with vision that feels, feeling with fingers that see'.
• Sommario/riassunto: Light Touches: Cultural Practices of Illumination, 1800-1900 explores how urban lives in the nineteenth century were increasingly touched by innovations in the technologies and aesthetics of illumination. Dramatic changes in qualities of light - and darkness - became acutely palpable to the human sensorium; using, seeing, feeling, and being in light were now matters of intense personal and cultural concern. Light gave meaningful vitality to the period's material culture, and light itself became something to be perceptually consumed. Over the course of six chapters Alice Barnaby traces how light was used in amateur artistic pastimes, interior design and clothing fashions, spectacular public amusements, volatile street demonstrations, and art gallery designs. From these previously unexplored examples a more complex history of light in the period emerges. Society's fascination with illumination, its desire to work with it and make meaning from it gave rise to a distinctly new set of cultural practices. Through these practices unexpected discoveries about the modern world were revealed. Light proved to be instrumental in everyday acts of experimentation and imaginative enquiry. Barnaby offers an intervention into the dominant scholarly narrative of the nineteenth century which traditionally reads modernity as synonymous with the formation of a spectacular, disembodied visuality. Light Touches, in contrast, returns vision to the body and foregrounds the actively felt - as well as seen - sensation of light. In coming to understand these cultural practices of illumination, the book reconsiders many assumptions about nineteenth-century modernity.
• Titolo autorizzato: Light touches
• ISBN: 1-315-40770-1; 1-315-40768-X
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910150220203321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II
• Serie: Directions in cultural history (London, England)