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Technology and Art: Hubris, Habitus and the Hybrid Imagination Andrew Jamison 2. Modern Times
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Long Waves of Industrialization mechanization capitalism imperialism globalization romanticism cooperation socialism populism anticolonialism fascism environmentalism feminism 1800 185019502000 1900 Cultural and Social Movements
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The First Wave ”the industrial revolution” (ca 1780-1830) Iron, textile machines, and steam engines Technologies of mechanization The factory as an organizational innovation Social and cultural movements: ”machine-storming” and cooperation romantic art and literature, e.g. Frankenstein
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The market-oriented romantic: Samuel Morse (1791-1872) the scientist-artist who invented the telegraph (1832) devised a new language, Morse code (1838)
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...versus the romantic artist escaping to nature Casper David Friedrich
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William Blake, Newton, 1795...and criticizing the ”single vision” of modern science...
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...and fostering a new kind of literature Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)
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The Hybrid Imagination: Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) a ”romantic” scientist, author of Walden one of the founders of environmentalism...and science...
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Thoreau’s idea of science ”The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel better than other men. His will be a deeper and finer experience. We do not learn by inference and deduction, and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. It is with science as with ethics – we cannot know truth by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom.”
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...and art J.M.W. Turner, 1844
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The Second Wave ”the age of capital” (ca 1830-1880) Railroads, telegraph, and steel Technologies of socialization and communication The rise of the corporation (Carnegie, Krupp) Social and cultural movements: populism, communism and social-democracy science fiction and arts and crafts
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The market-oriented approach: Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) inventor, businessman
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Edison’s ”Kinetoscope” I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion...." --Thomas A. Edison, 1888
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The Artisan Approach experimenting with light and color representing ”impressions” of reality using machines as metaphors trying to visualize motion and abstraction making ordinary things beautiful
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Claude Monet and impressionism
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Giacomo Balla and futurism
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Fernand Leger: Machinery as Art
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The Hybrid Imagination: William Morris (1834-1896) romantic poet turned designer combined artistry and business mixed tradition and innovation a utopian who was also practical
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From ”Useful Work versus Useless Toil”: ”Our epoch has invented machines which would have appeared wild dreams to the men of past ages, and of those machines we have as yet made no use. They are called ”labor-saving” machines – a commonly used phrase which implies what we expect of them; but we do not get what we expect. What they really do is to reduce the skilled labourer to the ranks of the unskilled.” ”
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Sources of inspiration John Ruskin and ”Gothic revival” medieval arts and crafts romantic art and cultural criticism the socialist movement of the time Iceland and the Nordic myths
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”Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?” The Earthly Paradise, 1868-70 ”nothing can be a work of art that is not useful” The Lesser Arts, 1878 ”the chief source of art is man’s pleasure in his daily necessary work” article in Commonweal, 1885 ”apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization” How I Became a Socialist, 1894 Some Words of Wisdom
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Some examples of his wallpapers
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Stained Glass
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A major influence on… Arts and crafts movements Architecture: Wright, Gehry Nordic design and furniture Art Nouveau and functionalism Tolkien and modern myth-makers
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The Third Wave ”the age of empire” (ca 1880-1930) Automobiles, airplanes, radio and television Technologies of modernization Art become industrialized (General Electric, RCA) Social and cultural movements: anticolonialism and fascism modernism and human ecology
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Art becomes big business: Walt Disney (1901-66)
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and a new cultural form
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and a new world: Disneyland
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The artist protests...
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But also adapts... Alvar Aalto Arne Jacobsen
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and develops new hybrid identities: The Bauhaus (1919-1933) "art and technology - a new unity”
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Paul Klee Joan Miro Mixing the human and the nonhuman
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Salvador Dali: mixing subject and object
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Marc Chagall Mixing the old and the new
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Pablo Picasso: mixing the real and the imagined :
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...and mixing art and politics in his famous painting, Guernica
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The Fourth Wave the coming of technoscience (ca 1930-1980) Atomic energy, computers and space travel Technologies of scientification The rise of transnational corporations (IBM, Sony) Social and cultural movements: civil rights and ”ban the bomb” environmentalism, feminism and postmodernism
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A new kind of market-oriented art...
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...and a new kind of hubris Santiago Calatrava’s Turning Torso in Malmö
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A new habitus: the museum as a work of art Frank Llyod Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York
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Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
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...a new kind of critical art Carl Reuterswärd’s anti-war sculpture at the United Nations
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...as well as new hybrids Alexander Calder (1898-1976)
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Mamoru Oshii: meaningful animation
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...and not to forget a bit of philosophy mixed into popular art
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M.C. Escher
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