Technology and Art: Hubris, Habitus and the Hybrid Imagination

Andrew Jamison

2. Modern Times

Long Waves of Industrialization

mechanization

capitalism imperialism globalization

romanticismcooperation

socialismpopulism

anticolonialis

m fascism

environmentalismfeminism

1800 1850 1950 20001900

Cultural and Social Movements

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

The market-oriented romantic:Samuel Morse (1791-1872)

the scientist-artist who invented the telegraph (1832)

devised a new language, Morse code (1838)

...versus the romantic artist escaping to nature

Casper David Friedrich

William Blake, Newton, 1795

...and criticizing the ”single vision” of modern science...

...and fostering a new kind of literatureMary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)

The Hybrid Imagination: Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)

• a ”romantic” scientist, author of Walden

• one of the founders of environmentalism

...and science...

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.”

...and art

J.M.W. Turner, 1844

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

The market-oriented approach:Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

inventor, businessman

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

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

Claude Monet and impressionism

Giacomo Balla and futurism

Fernand Leger:Machinery as Art

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

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.”

”

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

”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

Some examples of his wallpapers

Stained Glass

A major influence on…

Arts and crafts movements

Architecture: Wright, Gehry

Nordic design and furniture

Art Nouveau and functionalism

Tolkien and modern myth-makers

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

Art becomes big business:Walt Disney (1901-66)

and a new cultural form

and a new world:Disneyland

The artist protests...

But also adapts...

Alvar AaltoArne Jacobsen

and develops new hybrid identities:The Bauhaus (1919-1933)

"art and technology - a new unity”

Paul KleeJoan Miro

Mixing the human and the nonhuman

Salvador Dali: mixing subject and object

MarcChagall

Mixing the old and the new

Pablo Picasso: mixing the real and the imagined:

...and mixing art and politics in his famous painting, Guernica

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

A new kind of market-oriented art...

...and a new kind of hubris

Santiago Calatrava’s Turning Torso in Malmö

A new habitus: the museum as a work of art

Frank Llyod Wright’s Guggenheim Museum

in New York

Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

...a new kind of critical art

Carl Reuterswärd’s anti-war sculpture at the United Nations

...as well as new hybrids

Alexander Calder (1898-1976)

Mamoru Oshii: meaningful animation

...and not to forget

a bit of philosophy mixed into popular

art

M.C. Escher