The noise is here to stay! During the 2017 Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam for instance, different kinds of noises were produced throughout the Festival’s organized conferences, clubbing nights, and in the partner museums and cinemas. This purple/green book is simply the assemblage of a selection of these noises. The noise of technology, the noise of capitalism, the noise of communication when it breaks to pieces, the noise of distractions, of bots, of screens and screams, the noise of advertisers, of molecular engineering, bacteria and policy makers. Imbued with both thought provoking texts and images, the Noise of Being is a reminder and an invitation to continue the reflection about the dissonances of living. Buy

NICE Magazine turns the spotlight on areas of fashion which are not the most familiar to a European audience: stories about talents in contemporary urban Africa. Published by KLAYM which runs workshops across the African continent on photography, graphic and media design workshops, NICE is a rare title, that intends to support and introduce the rising generation of photographers, designers and writers. This issue is in French and English and it focuses on Abidjan, Ivory Coast. NICE also shows the eagerness of ordinary people in the Ivorian capital for selective wear, which is perhaps best captured in this quote “I am not much of a model, but I often pose for pictures just for the pleasure of it. I love jeans and sportswear. I really enjoyed this photoshoot.” Buy

Composed of pictures of animals clipped from magazines and newspapers, stamps and photos from advertising pamphlets, Lous Martens’ new photobook is a symbol of family devotion before anything else. Prior to finding their way to this book, Lous first started gathering these pictures seventeen years ago, with the intention of making a small book for her newly born grandson Jaap. She didn’t finish it though for that another baby was born, and she had to start another book for the new baby. But the collection of pictures grew interestingly big, and surprisingly beautiful it had to be shared. In total there were five unfinished books laying around until they were assembled in one volume: the Animal Books for Jaap Zeno anna Julian Luca. Buy

The future of sausage is at stake. The rise of vegetarianism and veganism signals the retreat of meat production, putting sausages in an existential crisis. The Sausage of the Future is perfectly aware of the environmental pressure caused by meat production and tries to think of alternative ways to preserve the craft of sausage making. Carolien Niebling, editor of this book asked the help of a chef of molecular gastronomy, a master butcher and a designer to examine the tradition of sausage production and came up with with new techniques using a range of unaccustomed ingredients, such as nuts, vegetables, and, insects. Highly accessible and beautifully designed, this book will certainly excite the sausage fanatic and the general food enthusiast in the same vein. Buy

Building Material 20 is the journal of the Architectural Association of Ireland, a unique peer-reviewed publication on the scholarship and practice of architecture in Ireland. Being the first edition to employ a process of double-blind peer reviewing for the submitted essays, the journal’s editorial board led by Michael K. Hayes, used this volume as an opportunity to reassess the publication’s overall intentions, its process and format of making and the possible directions it can lead in the future. From the physical matter used for building to the knowledge informing decision-making and the traditional means we rely upon to visualise architecture, this volume is centered around the ‘stuff’ of the architectural discipline. Buy

Machines and Robots studies how the subject of robotics have been approached in science and technology, in literature and art, and in cultural history, wondering whether machines are able to be creative. Several leading scholars looked into this, including Andreas Broeckmann who approaches the issue from the cultural scientist’s perspective, studying the impact that machines and robots have had on art during the 20th century. Whereas Philipp Theisohn, director of the research program “conditio extraterrestris” at Zurich University describes the rich history of robotics in science fiction, and Roland Wetzel, director of the Tinguely Museum in Basel, is an expert on the sculptor’s art and is familiar how much it influenced contemporary artists. Buy

What does this magnificent volume from Vitra Museum’s ongoing Night Fever exhibition has to offer? For one, a luminous flashback into the frenzies of the last fifty years’ nocturnal living with rare insights into how the nightlife culture evolved hand-in-hand with design ideas. It starts with the years leading to the rise of disco, in a time the dance floor turned into a magnetic field for all types of creatives. Hovering through the allure of nightly melodies, lights, design and architecture, Night Fever profiles a superb list of clubs from the Italian Radial Design clubs and Manchester"s Hacienda, to studio 54 of Andy Warhol and the Ministry of Sound in London, showing some of the period’s promotional leaflets, party invitations, floor plans, vintage photographs and records, and many great stories about the wicked creatures of the night. Buy

It was the moment ‘design wanted to change the world’. The Radical Design movement rose from the students’ utter rejection of the tediously conventional design and architectural activity of the time, and the blazing desire to influence politics and society. This book revives the legacy of its key players like Lapo Binazzi, Pietro Derossi, Gianni Pettena and Alessandro Poli, and reintroduces the works of its pioneering studios such as UFO, Gruppo Strum, Archizoom, Studio65 and Superstudio. It shows the impact the movement had on other groups like Alchimia and Memphis and on postmodernist design. Inasmuch as the movement’s passions were politically and socially motivated, little of the original design ideas were developed with the consumer in mind, instead, they meant to be more of a provocative statement to spark change of reality. Buy

Here's a meticulous compilation of some historically invaluable dialogues made between photographers, writer, critics, curators, editors, and artists from 1985 to the present day. Released by Aperture, the New York based photography quarterly journal, these dialogues are collected from previous publications of the journal, based on their originality and historical merit. This includes conversations between more than 50 emerging artists and more established ones who openly spoke about the state of affairs and future destiny of photography. Some of the discussed topics include: the relationship between Instagram and storytelling, the story behind why French humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson nearly had a posthumous exhibition while still alive, how did Stephen Shore ended up working with colour...and a lot of other fascinating stuff. Buy

How would the future possibly look like? Especially in a world where things seem to be heading somewhere where design is playing a very important role in shaping such future! Touching upon issues like DNA analysis, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and space exploration, The Future Starts Here explores cutting edge scientific research and innovative pursuits, taking them from the laboratories and the studios to the attention of the general public. This includes research which has an impact on the Self, the Public, the Planet and the Afterlife. In comparison to the first issue released by V&A (this book’s publisher) dating back to 1852 and which sought to make sense of the Industrial Revolution, the current issue presents technologies and products in order to make sense of the nascent digital revolution. Buy

Protest is a book reference to the aesthetically creative forces of resistance of the past fifty years or so. It looks into the different forms of political protest, from the more recent black lives matter to the 1950s and 60s civil rights and student movements. It shows how powerlessness and oppression generate all sorts of cynical, subversive, provocative and at times, violent modes of dissent against those with the power to set up the rules. Arranged according to the various ways of expressing protest including posters, sounds, and bodies, the book’s generous provision of imagery is complemented with analytical texts that dig into the origins and purpose of social discontent. Buy

In 1976 the Criminal Commissariat III, in the state protection department of the city police of Zurich started making a record of political street slogans, colour painting and spray paint art under a file called “Schmieren/ Kleben”. The documentation of what was then considered property damaging acts of vandalism was made by policemen who photographed and scribbled down notes about the the horrendous scenes in little index cards which described the location and type of the “violation”. Seven hundred photos and scanned copies of all the original police cards are gathered in this volume for public access, as a unique document about the political movements in Zurich in the 1970s and 1980s, and perhaps also, in honour of political freedom. Buy