Video Course Manual : Digital Signal Processing

ALAN V. OPPENHEIM

Prisms, essays in cultural criticism and society, is the work of a critic and scholar who has had a marked influence on contemporary American and German thought. It displays the unusual combination of intellectual depth, scope, and philosophical rigor that Adorno was able to bring to his subjects, whether he was writing about astrology columns in Los Angeles newspapers, the special problems of German academics immigrating to the United States during the Nazi years, or Hegel's influence on Marx.  In these essays, Adorno explores a variety of topics, ranging from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Kafka's The Castle to Jazz, Bach, Schoenberg, Proust, Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption, museums, Spengler, and more. His writing throughout is knowledgeable, witty, and at times archly opinionated, but revealing a sensitivity to the political, cultural, economic, and aesthetic connections that lie beneath the surfaces of everyday life.  Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was a student of philosophy, musicology, psychology, and sociology at Frankfurt where he later became Professor of Philosophy and Sociology and Co-Director of the Frankfurt School. During the war years he lived in Oxford, in New York, and in Los Angeles, continuing to produce numerous books on music, literature, and culture.  Prisms is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Prisms

Politics & Social Sciences

Adorno, Theodor

Samuel Weber (Introduction)

Philosophy

Science in History: Volume 2 the Scientific and industrial Revolutions

Science & Math

J. D. Bernal

History & Philosophy

pp. 229, SIGNED and dedicated by the author on the title page.

Writings on Wright: Selected comment on Frank Lloyd Wright

Arts & Photography

frank-lloyd-wright

Architecture

Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) has long been considered the finest of English wood engravers. No one has ever better expressed the feeling of the English landscape and its homely incident than Bewick in his meticulously rendered scenes of countryside and wildlife. His innovations transformed the medium of engraving for a hundred years, and first distinguished the technique as an art. John James Audubon pronounced him the greatest delineator of nature of his time. This natural focus on Bewick the engraver has overshadowed his accomplishments as a watercolourist and draftsman of major rank. Over a thousand of his drawings and watercolours survive, but until the publication of these volumes only a handful have ever appeared in print before, and none in modern times. They are reproduced here in accordance with the most exacting standards. The first volume presents an illustrated biographical account of Bewick and explains his working methods in metal engraving and in the transfer of drawings to the wood block. It also discusses the organization of his workshop and ascribes to the hands of apprentices through stylistic exegesis a number of works previously believed to be Bewick's own. A catalog of 200 monochrome subjects drawn from the Quadrupeds, British Birds, Fables of Aesop and the unpublished Fishes is followed by appendices recording collections now holding Bewick's drawings. The second volume contains the watercolours and drawings alongside the engravings for which they were prepared, in addition to major watercolours for which there are no extant engravings. Over 200 color subjects are presented in this volume, together with a further 192 drawings and engravings. A production note: the slipcases containing the two volumes were handmade, and the paper, Bewick Cartridge, was especially made for these books. They were designed by Peter Guy and printed by the Westerham Press in England. The MIT Press is offering a limited edition of 500 sets to American readers and collectors. Iain Bain is publisher at the Tate Gallery, London, and an authority on the history of book production and hand presses as well as on the work of Thomas Bewick. He personally oversaw the production of these volumes.

Watercolours and Drawings of Thomas Bewick and His Workshop Apprentices (2 Volumes)

BAIN, Iain ed.

Graphic Design

Karl Gerstner is one of Switzerland's—and therefore the world's—best and best-known graphic and typographic designers. His high ambition in this book, first published in German in 1972, is to provide a complete and systematic taxonomy of writing, a programmed investigation into the underlying structure of script and type; Gerstner writes that his book is meant to "encompass the aspects and possibilities of the alphabet in their totality." It is this systematic and programmatic approach that sets the book apart. Most studies of typography and its larger graphic setting and context are concerned with the history of the development of writing and printing, or are collections of typographic models or typical examples, or are textbooks on layout and design. This one is organized into five sections that take up, in turn, Script and Speech—the relation between writing and language, different alphabets, reading directions (the eye follows directions and moves in a direction), style; Manual Graphics or craft—materials, tools, methods, procedures, reproductive techniques; Images—letter pictures, word pictures, sentence pictures, handwriting, size, proportion, type weight, form, harmony, texture, brightness, color; Function—as effected through dimensioning, spacing, grouping, layout, integration; and Expression—as achieved through coordination, articulation, emphasis, diversion, and the spirit of play. As a physical object, the book is more than a passive repository of examples of typographic display. It makes a dynamic and integrated typographic statement of its own and as a whole as it progresses and develops in accordance with its internal program. The book is nearly square and opens vertically rather than horizontally. Type is printed on only one side of the sheets, which are folded back on themselves along the outer edge to form double leaves, so that there is no distracting show-through "noise." There are words printed in blind embossing and stencil cutouts. And color is used with an elegant restraint, appearing only at the book's mid-section climax—its very sparseness amid the prevailing sharp black and white contributes a luxurious effect.

Compendium for Literates

History

GERSTNER, Karl

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Perceptrons -- the first systematic study of parallelism in computation -- has remained a classical work on threshold automata networks for nearly two decades. It marked a historical turn in artificial intelligence, and it is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the connectionist counterrevolution that is going on today.Artificial-intelligence research, which for a time concentrated on the programming of Von Neumann computers, is swinging back to the idea that intelligence might emerge from the activity of networks of neuronlike entities. Minsky and Papert's book was the first example of a mathematical analysis carried far enough to show the exact limitations of a class of computing machines that could seriously be considered as models of the brain. Now the new developments in mathematical tools, the recent interest of physicists in the theory of disordered matter, the new insights into and psychological models of how the brain works, and the evolution of fast computers that can simulate networks of automata have given Perceptrons new importance.Witnessing the swing of the intellectual pendulum, Minsky and Papert have added a new chapter in which they discuss the current state of parallel computers, review developments since the appearance of the 1972 edition, and identify new research directions related to connectionism. They note a central theoretical challenge facing connectionism: the challenge to reach a deeper understanding of how "objects" or "agents" with individuality can emerge in a network. Progress in this area would link connectionism with what the authors have called "society theories of mind."

Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry

Computers & Technology

Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert

Computer Science

A guide to Venetian architecture that covers all the major architects of the period 1460-1525, with special attention to the work of Pietro Lombardo and Mauro Codussi.

Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance

McAndrew, John

The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era

An explanation of a new digital technology that is revolutionizing the art of photography describes how computers can synthesize or alter images and explains how this capability may present dangerous questions of veracity for photojournalism.

THE RECONFIGURED EYE. VISUAL TRUTH IN THE POST-PHOTOGRAPHIC ERA.

Mitchell, William

Photography & Video

Edward Brooke, who served as the ranking minority member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, writes that "Kenneth Rosen has in this volume provided a unique set of analyses concerning the causes and costs of the seasonal cycle in new home production.  "Rosen begins his work by carefully examining the pattern of seasonal fluctuations in housing markets. He finds that seasonal fluctuations are still a pervasive characteristic of housing markets in nearly all parts of the country. This seasonal decline in activity leads to substantial unemployment and underutilization of capital resources in winter periods. In turn this reduces the efficiency of housing construction and so adds to cost pressures in the housing market.  "Rosen then goes on to challenge the conventional wisdom that bad weather is the prime cause of seasonality. He argues that a seasonal peak in the demand for housing, as reflected in the summer surge in household moves and marriages, is the primary cause of the seasonal pattern observed in the housing market. This careful insight into the demand and supply elements of seasonality should provide policymakers with the knowledge needed to moderate at least some of the cost pressures facing the housing market.  "The policy portion of this work focuses on several ways in which the costs of seasonality can be moderated. The author first suggests modifications of the state unemployment insurance and the workmen's compensation systems which would improve the efficiency of the industries' decision-making process with respect to the seasonal problem. Second, he suggests ways in which the seasonal pattern of demand could be shifted and winter home building encouraged. His analysis of the Canadian and Norwegian Winter Incentive Programs indicates that a small economic incentive can alter the seasonal pattern of production and lead to a reduction in the winter unemployment problem....  "This book follows on several other important policy proposals authored by Rosen which have received national attention, thus contributing to his growing reputation as one of our leading housing and urban policy analysts. His talent for translating economic research into practical housing policy proposals has prompted members of Congress and cabinet officers to seek his counsel, though he is not yet thirty years of age. The impact of his thinking on our nation's housing policies in yeras to come is likely to be profound."  Almost sixty years ago, Herbert Hoover, then a member of the Commission on Seasonal Operation of the Construction Industries, noted that "bad weather is not the principal cause of seasonal idleness in construction." It is rather "a matter of custom and habit not climatic necessity." Given the advances in building technology that have been made since then, this is even more true today. Rosen urges the nation to break the "habit."

Seasonal Cycles in the Housing Market: Patterns, Costs, and Policies (Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies Series)

Rosen, Kenneth

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