Vision and Verticality: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Social Visualities)

✍ Scribed by Gary Bratchford (editor), Dennis Zuev (editor)

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 221
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This rich and accessible volume maps current debates within the expanded field of image-based, vertical analysis. With contributions from astronauts, artists, architects, sociologists, urbanists, visual culture theorists, geographers, anthropologists and more the book signals new moves in inter and multidisciplinary research on visual-vertical thinking and related practices within the social sciences, humanities and across the arts.

Grounded in socio-visual thinking, Vision and Verticality addresses the emerging shift in the way social scientists move from a sociology of or through images towards a sociology with images. In doing so, this volume illustrates how the sky and atmosphere remain a surprisingly underexplored domain within visual sociology, beyond the framework of drone-related research. Finally, this volume asserts how vertical and atmospherically framed socio-visual analysis is beginning to shape and inform how we see and experience urban spaces, travel, leisure, politics, and environmental challenges through various prisms, including artistic practices, methodological processes, and user-generated content.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
1: Introduction: Vision & Verticality—A More Visual Sociology of the Sky
Droneviewing and Visual Environments
Tourist Droneviewing
Vertical Eyesores: The Case of Scaffolding and Aerial Cableways in Urban Environments
Towards a More Visual Sociology…
References
Part I: Experimental and Experiential Approaches to Volume and Atmospheres
2: Open-Weather Feminist Handbook: A Preamble
References
3: Of Carnal Gravity: A Three-Voice Conversation
4: Seeing in Verticality: From ‘Vertical Gaze’ to ‘Figuring Out’
Introduction: On the Arrogance of the Vertical Gaze
The Constitution of Urban Perception
The Promise of Seamlessness
The Cognitive Mapping of Urban Navigation
New Potentials for ‘Figuring Out’ the Environment
References
5: Vertical Visualities, Experiences and Inequalities: A Conversation with Stephen Graham
Vertical Viewing
Manufacturing Air and Urban Air Crisis
Final Thoughts
Part II: Sensing, Seeing, and Monitoring from Above
6: Repositioning Drone Sensing in Landscape Urbanism and Planning
Introduction
Twinning Reality
Aerial Mobility
Shaping Aerial Futures
Knowledges, Volumes, Futures: Discussion
Knowledges
Volumes
Futures
Conclusion
References
7: Vocabularies of Drone Sensing
Introduction
Seeing-Sensing Drone Volumes
Drone Sensing Nuclear Volumes
More than Human Agencies
Vocabularies of (Drone Sensing) Volume
Conclusions
References
8: Viewing from Where? Satellite Imaging and the Politics of Space Technology: Unpacking Depravity’s Rainbow
References
9: The Algorithmic Apparatus of Neocolonialism: Counter-Operational Practices and the Future of Aerial Surveillance
I
II
III
IV
V
Part III: Assembling and Representing: Artistic Perspectives on Volume, Vertigo, and Falling
10: Wassily Kandinsky and the Aerial Gaze: Questioning the Punctual, Linear and Planar Forces Inherent in the Politics of Visibility Conveyed by Police Drones
Introduction
Towards a Relational and Relativist Understanding of Points, Lines and Planes
Points, Lines and Planes in Existing Social-Scientific Literatures
Points, Lines and Planes in Abstract Painting
Punctual Linear and Planar Forces Inherent in the Drone Gaze
Punctual Logics of Vision
Linear Logics of Vision
Planar Logics of Vision
Flexible and Interacting Spatial Logics of Vision
Conclusion: Thinking Beyond Points, Lines and Planes
References
11: After Falling Away: Reflections on a Vertiginous Art Exhibition
References
12: Towards a Typology of Imaginary Skyscrapers
Post-Modern Falling Dreams
Devotion to Emptiness
The Humanization of Lost Individuality
The Ultimate Invasion of Urbanity by Nature
Fictional Reality
Visionary City
Conquering Individual Spaces to Outdated Futuristic Structures
13: Higher Returns
References
Part IV: Mapping Cultural Landscapes, Vertically
14: Epistemology of the ‘Laje’: Notes from Favela Rooftops
Opening the Closet, Climbing (on)to the Laje
The Laje and Its Forms of Mobility
The Laje as Non-expert Design
Not to Conclude
References
15: Rio’s “Natural Born Monument”: Visual Imaginaries of The Sugarloaf Mountain
Step 1: “Seeing the View”
Step 2: “Selling the View”
Step 3: “Virtualizing the View”
Final Step on Visual Culture: Beyond (Post-)photography?
References
16: Elemental Monsters: Aeolian Politics and the Protests Against Renewable Energy in Tinos, Greece
References
17: Revitalization and Touristification: The Vertical Cultural Landscape of Dacha Community in Siberia
Introduction
Dacha as Vernacular Heritage
Touristifying and Normalizing Dacha: Polden-Park Project
Disciplining Verticality
Summary
References
Index