Dealing with forces is part of the basic inventory of artistic processes. In giving shape and movement to material, such forces are manifested in a specific form; as push and pull, for example, as heaviness and lightness, but also as attachment and dissolution. The articles in the book examine notions of formative and motive forces using examples from art, music, dance, theater, photography and literature. The questions posed not only cover how historical notions of force (such as energeia and vis from ancient rhetoric) are adopted, taken further, and correlated with mechanically, metaphysically and organologically based concepts of force, but also how, in the examination of form and movement, the inherent concepts of force are manifested or presented in a new light.

The fifteenth volume of lectures from the Warburg House brings together contributions whose spectrum of content ranges from the dispute over the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in the mid-18th century to Aby Warburg's scientific and popular educational commitment to the Hamburg Planetarium and the aesthetic treatment of machine and technology. With contributions by Pascal Dubourg Glatigny, Emmanuel Alloa, Alexander Honold, Birgit Recki, and Gertrud Koch.