This edited volume considers the ways in which multiple stages, phases, or periods in an artistic or design process have served to arrive at the final artifact, with a focus on the meaning and use of the iteration. To contextualize iteration within artistic and architectural production, this collection of essays presents a range of close studies in art, architectural and design history, using archival and historiographical research, media theory, photography, material studies, and critical theory. It examines objects as unique yet mutable works by examining their antecedents, successive exemplars, and their afterlives-and thus their role as organizers or repositories of meaning. Key are the roles of writing, the use of media, and relationships between object, image, and reproduction. This volume asks how a closer look at iteration reveals new perspectives into the production of objects and the production of thought alike.

Written by an international team of contributors, offering a range of perspectives, it looks broadly at meaning and insight offered by the iteration-for processes of design, for historical research, and for the reception of creative works.

About the Author

Robin Schuldenfrei is Katja and Nicolai Tangen Senior Lecturer in 20th Century Modernism at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. She has written widely on modernism as it intersects with theories of the object, architecture and interiors. Her publications include Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900-1933 (Princeton University Press, 2018) as well as numerous articles, essays and the two edited volumes: Atomic Dwelling: Anxiety, Domesticity, and Postwar Architecture (2012) and, co-edited with Jeffrey Saletnik, Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse, and Modernism (2009).

Reviews

"The book posits iteration as a motor for artistic creativity and imagination. Essays covering various media make us see works of art in constant motion, repeating, and reproducing existing forms and re-envisioning new ones in their wake. An essential book for designers, design educators, and design historians - one that inspires to envision art as part of trans-medial flows and larger historical processes. Inspiring!"

Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Yale University

"The book posits iteration as a motor for artistic creativity and imagination. Essays covering various media make us see works of art in constant motion, repeating, and reproducing existing forms and re-envisioning new ones in their wake. An essential book for designers, design educators, and design historians - one that inspires to envision art as part of trans-medial flows and larger historical processes. Inspiring!"

Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Yale University, USA

"Provides several well written and transmutable models for locating the distinction between authorship in art, authorship in architecture, and authorship in design." Excerpt from https://www.jaeonline.org/articles/review/iteration#/page1/

Peter Christensen, University of Rochester, USA

"Schuldenfrei, whose editorial prowess shines throughout the episodes, correspondingly points to her volume's intention to further debates and initiate critical engagements. The disciplinary range of contributions and their respective contact zones with media, science and technology thereby proffer the propagation of examinations beyond the design field."

Clemens Finkelstein, Princeton University, USA

Book Information
ISBN 9781138392489
Author Robin Schuldenfrei
Format Paperback
Page Count 198
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 494g