Bringing together cultural history, visual studies, and media archaeology, Bruno considers the interrelations of projection, atmosphere, and environment. Projection has long been transforming space, from shadow plays to camera obscuras and magic lantern shows. Our fascination with projection is alive on the walls of museums and galleries and woven into our daily lives. Giuliana Bruno explores the histories of projection and atmosphere in visual culture and their continued importance to contemporary artists who are reinventing the projective imagination with atmospheric thinking and the use of elemental media. To explain our fascination with projection and atmosphere, Bruno traverses psychoanalysis, environmental philosophy, architecture, the history of science, visual art, and moving image culture to see how projective mechanisms and their environments have developed over time. She reveals how atmosphere is formed and mediated, how it can change, and what projection can do to modify a site. In so doing, she gives new life to the alchemic possibilities of transformative projective atmospheres. Showing how their “environmentality” produces sites of exchange and relationality, this book binds art to the ecology of atmosphere.

"Following on the success of Surface, Bruno's previous book with us, in this new one she explores the act and art of "projection" in its manifold guises and what those can tell us about how we think and feel and create the world we inhabit. This is not just an exploration of the psychological operation of "projection"-the idea that we cast onto others the qualities we refuse to acknowledge in ourselves. It is a major work of cultural history and media archaeology. As a way to transform space and atmosphere, projection has a long history in the arts, dating back to shadow plays, camera obscuras, magic lantern shows, and phantasmagoria. But the atmosphere of projection is not a thing of the past alone. It is alive and well today. It continues to fascinate us as screens filled with moving figures pervade the spaces of the art gallery and the museum as well as the environments of our daily lives. What is the root of our fascination? How does it manifest in contemporary art? How do we define atmosphere? How is projection an atmosphere? Are these two modalities conceptually and historically related, and how so? Why are artists today so interested in environments and in elements of projection? To explain this continual fascination with projection and atmosphere, Bruno traverses psychoanalysis, architecture, the history of science, visual art, and moving image culture to see how projective mechanisms and their environments have developed over time"--

Do aesthetic appeals to senses and emotions in political debate necessarily marginalise political reason and reduce citizens to consumers – thus dangerously undermining democracy? Or is sensuous-emotional engagement, on the contrary, a basic fact of the political process and a crucial precondition for revitalising democracy? Aesthetics and Political Culture in Modern Society investigates the current interrelationship between aesthetic practice and political practice in Western democracies, focusing on its impact on democratic political culture. Henrik Kaare Nielsen argues that aesthetic interventions in the political process do not by definition undermine politics’ content of reason. Instead, a differentiation must be made between a multiplicity of aesthetic forms of intervention – some of which tend to weaken the political judgement of citizens while other forms tend to stimulate competent judgement. This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of political science, sociology, media studies, and cultural studies.