There are few truths about the modern world that are more self-evident than this: it is flat. We write on flat paper laid atop flat desks. We look at flat images on flat screens mounted on flat walls, or we press flat icons on flat phones while we navigate flat streets. Everywhere we go it seems the structures around us at one time or another had a level placed upon them to ensure they were perfectly flat. Yet such engineered planar surfaces have become so pervasive and fundamental to our lives that we barely notice their existence. In this highly original study, B. W. Higman employs a wide variety of approaches to better understand flatness, that level platform upon which the dramas of modern life have played out. Higman looks at the ways that humans have perceived the natural world around them, moving from Flat Earth theories to abstract geometric concepts to the flatness problem of modern cosmology. Along the way he shows that we have simultaneously sought flatness in our everyday lives and also disparaged it as a featureless, empty, and monotonous quality. He discusses the ways flatness figures as a metaphor for those things or people who are boring, dull, or lacking energy or inspiration, and he shows how the construction of flat surfaces has contributed to a degradation of visual diversity. At the same time, he also shows how we have pursued flatness as an engineering ideal and how we have used it conceptually in art, music, and literature. Written with wit and wisdom, and splendidly illustrated throughout, this book will appeal to all those who are interested in the topography of the modern world, to anyone who has ever marveled at the feel of its smooth surfaces or felt oppressed by the tyranny of its featurelessness.

Selected, peer reviewed papers from the International Conference on Chemical, Material and Metallurgical Engineering (ICCMME 2011), December 23-25, 2011, Beihai, China

In recent architecture theory and practise there has been a tendency to refer to exteriors as a skin concealing an interior, as opposed to the traditional and more physical concepts of surface, flatness, and depth. The computer now enables the architect to call his design into life, free from the rigid material form, and view it as a flexible and interactive creation. In this book, the concepts of flatness and surface tension are examined in the light of virtual design and built reality. A selection of projects are presented to show how the architects regard space and surfaces in modern architectural practice in a digital age.

The ICICA 2010 conference provided a forum for engineers and scientists in academia, industry, and government to address the most innovative research and development including technical challenges and social, legal, political, and economic issues, and to present and discuss their ideas, results, work in progress and experience on all aspects of information computing and applications.

This book features papers focusing on the implementation of new and future technologies, which were presented at the International Conference on New Technologies, Development and Application, held at the Academy of Science and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo on 27th–29th June 2019. It covers a wide range of future technologies and technical disciplines, including complex systems such as Industry 4.0; robotics; mechatronics systems; automation; manufacturing; cyber-physical and autonomous systems; sensors; networks; control, energy, automotive and biological systems; vehicular networking and connected vehicles; effectiveness and logistics systems, smart grids, as well as nonlinear, power, social and economic systems. We are currently experiencing the Fourth Industrial Revolution “Industry 4.0”, and its implementation will improve many aspects of human life in all segments, and lead to changes in business paradigms and production models. Further, new business methods are emerging, transforming production systems, transport, delivery, and consumption, which need to be monitored and implemented by every company involved in the global market.

Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, Intermedialities: Philosophy, Arts, Politics is a comprehensive collection devoted to the new field of research called 'intermedialities.' The concept of intermedialities stresses the necessity of situating philosophical and political debates on social relations in the divergent contexts of media theories, avant-garde artistic practices, continental philosophy, feminism, and political theory. The 'intermedial' approach to social relations does not focus on the shared identity but instead on the epistemological, ethical, and political status of inter (being-in-between). At stake here are the political analyses of new modes of being in common that transcend national boundaries, the critique of the new forms of domination that accompany them, and the search for new emancipatory possibilities. Opening a new approach to social relations, intermedialities investigates not only engagements between already constituted positions but even more the interval, antagonism, and differences that form and decenter these positions. Consequently, in opposition to the resurgence of cultural and ethnic particularisms and to the leveling of difference produced by globalization, the political and ethical analysis of the 'in-between' enables a conception of community based on difference, exposure, and interaction with others rather than on an identification with a shared identity. Investigations of 'in-betweenness,' both as medium specific and between heterogeneous 'sites' of inquiry, range here from philosophical conceptuality to artistic practices, from the political circulation of money and power to the operation of new technologies. They inevitably invoke the crucial role of embodiment in creative thought and collective acting. As a mediating instance between the psyche and society, matter and spirit, nature and culture, and biology and technology, the body is another interval forming and informed by socio-linguistic relations. As these complex intersections between media, materiality, art, and the philosophy and politics of the in-between suggest, the project of intermedialities provides new ways of rethinking relations among arts, politics, and science.