Bruno, Giuliana. Surface : Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media, University of Chicago Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oculocad-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3038578.

- Covid 19 technology advancement and stagnation of people, economy, etc - Dynamical modernity - acceleration of social change, technology, and rhythm of life - Non-dynamic modernity - Peter Sloterdijk 'Eurotaoismus/Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik' - Modernity and its connnection to politics - Automatic system of the subject and the theoretical self-consciousness from total-mobilization - Moblization of the planet, revolution, political, military, etc. - Call for de-mobilization of modernity and calls for daoism - Contemplation on stillness and movement; silence and speech - Pondering aesthetics in east asian cultures - Paradox of blandness - Banality - 'Blandness at first glance appears to be the most banal, too ordinary, and too dull to be remarkable, yet this characteristic offers the richest and most varied variations. This makes it capable of the most far-reaching development: its meaning never ends and is closed; it stays open and available' (333) - Aesthetic cultivation of blandness - 'But traditional Chinese aesthetics has always been too quick to go to blandness. Although Su Shi himself also esteemed blandness, he did not deny the splendor that might be contained in blandness. This is actually a reflection of Su Shi’s own temperament, formed or was formed by his eventful life experience, as well as his own experience of pursuing blandness in the sense of inherent richness.' (334) - Four modes of blandness - Blandness as a taste without tastes -The without, the outside, the donut hole - 'To achieve blandness and enter into the experience of blandness, one must abandon all existing technical means and artistic styles. The aesthetics of blandness is not a denial of innovation; it is rather a mere maintenance of the usual state of being, and/but, of a daily state to cultivate freedom from habits, so that the calligraphic work is brought to an odd and foreign taste.' (335) - Blandness as a mysterious taste - 'What kind of splendor is this that has both incomparable gorgeousness and at the same time blandness? It is not just the superficial colorfulness and splendor, but the splendor with a core of blandness!' (337) - duality/dichotomy - ‘Xuan’ - Blandness as the ‘taste without taste’ - ‘without’ as ‘not having’ - 'That is to say, the only way to fully embody the void is to let the void or empty become the dominant part of the work of art, rather than to depict the real part, so that the void becomes the expression of the taste of tastelessness, permeating everything and allowing emptiness to grow.' (340) - Blandness as the taste of inaction - non-doing - Everything everywhere all at once bagel hole essentially - Marcel Duchamp reference / example - Ready-made’s / found art - 'The artistic pursuit of blandness has an extremely important aesthetic value for modernity because the aesthetics of modernity are confronted with the need of getting rid of all kinds of reproductive and programmed operations: the reproduction of technology, the capital interest brought by the repeating and reproducing one’s own style, and the general paradigm of the developed Capitalism. Furthermore, blandness requires the artist to be constantly alert, be an amateur—in Stigler’s terms, foreign to the professional production of artworks, to remain not only sensitive to art but also alert to art itself. To say it in another way, blandness presupposes intellectual emancipation, for it requires the artist to return to the most original nature, to a childish naiveté, curious about everything and working like an amateur, to confront the unknowable and keep it unknowable.' (343) - Kinda gross - children arent innocent or emancipated, they are often just ignorant of possability

Ji, Xihou, and Kejun Xia. “Dialectics of Blandness: The Contemporaneity of Su Shi’s Aesthetics.” Journal of Visual Art Practice, vol. 22, no. 4, Dec. 2023, pp. 331–45. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ocadu.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/14702029.2023.2274139.

- Imaginary, creative, and practical powers of design - 'A widespread phenomenon is taking place in contemporary art as the mediatic configurations of art and architecture come closer together, converging in surface tension as they partake of common material ground. Art is melting into spatial construction, and as a consequence, architecture has become one of the most influential forms of imaging.' (187) - Artistic practice of architecture and design - 'If we consider the history of urban space, we can see that it is inextricably connected to artistic forms of viewing.' (188) - Consider views, sightlines, styles, etc. - Art impacts perceiption/reality - 'This is because the city of images comprises in its space all of its past histories, with their intricate layers of stories. The urban imaginary is a palimpsest of mutable fictions floating in space and residing in time.' (189) - Archive themes - 'A special traversal occurs on the urban pavement, and this is not simply a physical act but an imaginary activity. Structures themselves become perceptually mobilized as people traverse them, changing into transitory forms of imaging and fleeting places of encounter where the flow of life itself becomes architected.' (191) - 'Boy and Dog in a Johnny Pump' - Michel Basqiuat - 'In this sense, an imaginary is a very real and material concept, which emerges out of substantial negotiations with the environment and built space. The abstract, imaginary power of architecture is an everyday reality, for architecture functions daily as the place where social relations and perspectives are modeled.' (191) - The city as alive, literally - Architecture as a state of mind - 'These properties of touch can also shape our relation to the art space. As we have learned from these modern theories, when tactility is emphasized, a more spatial understanding of art can be achieved. Alois Riegl showed us that art can extend beyond the optic into the haptic.16' (193) - 'In this view, one can empathize with the expressive, dynamic forms of art and architecture—even with colors and sounds, scenery and situations, surfaces and textures—and these 'projections' include such transmissions of affects as atmospheres and moods. This “feeling into” such matters as spatial forms, shapes, and shades engages a dynamic form of 'resonance.' A sympathetic vibration resonates outward and enables one to connect to the actual texture of space, and this expressivity, in turn, resonates within space and its atmospheric surfaces.' (194) - City as assemblage - Artist examples, etc.