#world fairs

[stone-cold-groove]

Sky Ride: Sensational Rocket Ride Suspended in Mid-air. Vintage Chicago World’s Fair poster - 1933.

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

On this day, October 17 in 1965, the 1964–65 New York World's Fair closed after two years and more than 51 million attendees. In commemoration, we offer a few pages from our copy of the Official Guide to the Fair. Seeing this guide is very nostalgic for me. As a child, my family lived only 30 minutes from the fairgrounds, so we were among the 51 million and visited the fair several times. I was most excited to see the life-sized dinosaur models. Before the fair opened, the fiberglass models were transported by open-air barge down the Hudson and up the East River and finally to Flushing Meadows on October 15, 1963. That was four days after my 7th birthday, so as a present my uncle Manny took me to Astoria Park in Queens to watch the barge and its mighty dinosaurs float by. It was quite literally an awesome experience!

Besides the dinosaurs, my favorite attractions were the Pepsi-Cola “It’s a Small World” Disney ride, the space park, the underground house, Michelangelo’s La Pietà at the Vatican Pavilion (although I was only 8, I found it oddly fascinating), and of course the Unisphere, which still gives me thrills when I see it today. The fair’s closing was bittersweet for me, as its ending came six days after my 9th birthday, but as a present my parents took me to the fair one last time and I got to say goodbye to all my favorite attractions. It was a little sad, but mainly it was still magical.

View other Milestone Monday posts.

-- MAX, Head, Special Collectons

[crapfutures]

Post-petroleum futures

Several months ago Crap Futures gave a talk at the Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT) at the University of Chicago. The theme provided some good inspiration for new thinking on the state of design. Now, at the dawn of the new decade, we’ve finally got around to sharing some of these thoughts in blog form, many cups of coffee and plates of toast later.

For obvious reasons, there are many discussions at the moment asking: ‘What comes after petroleum?’ Before getting into this, it might be helpful to better understand the promise of petrol – what were the origins of petroleum utopias? Who was responsible for them? And what agendas were hidden behind the progressivist imaginaries?

So, starting with petroleum (and related materials): this naturally occurring liquid is essentially a battery, which stores a fragment of the solar energy that reached the earth during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods (typically via algae and woody plants). While the first recorded use of petroleum can be found 4,000 years ago when natural asphalt was used in the walls and towers of Babylon, it wasn’t until the early 20th Century that its potential, as a useful form of energy, began to exert its influence on so many and diverse aspects of human life.

This diagram (which appeared in a previous post) describes the fairly typical journey a technology makes, starting from its genesis as an emerging technology in the laboratory. Next is the technological dream phase in which the potential of the emerging technology is translated into techno-utopian imaginaries – intended by both corporations and politicians to sell particular agendas to the public audience. Designers love this phase, as the constraints that apply to the design of normal products do not yet exist. The last phase is the transition of aspects of the dream into real products in everyday life – and this of course means the implementation of all the infrastructure necessary to allow them to function. Finally the product descends into obsolescence, as it is replaced by more advanced iterations. Or else the dream gets recycled or regurgitated; updated with the latest technology.

Applying this journey to petroleum – the new machines of the late 19th and early 20th Century, such as the internal combustion engine or the coal-powered steam generator – revealed for the first time the true potential of petroleum. In a split-second its energy, captured during the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, could be magically transformed into heat, noise and more importantly movement! Lots and lots of movement – think of the Italian Futurists in 1909, championing ‘a new beauty: the beauty of speed’ – ‘a roaring car … more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace’ – a new perspective on time and space that comes to symbolise modernity in all its thrilling, dynamic and destructive power.

The aeroplanes, automobiles and ships that were built around these engines also became the symbols of the new machine age, as extrapolations of the potential of the internal combustion engine fed the utopian imaginaries of the near future.

For a country emerging out of the despair of the Great Depression, Streamline Moderne (as it became known) represented the American dream of freedom and escape – both in the physical sense, through the action of the engine, and in the metaphorical sense, through the sleek teardrop styling that gave the impression that the object was moving – even when standing still. Designers, meanwhile, were for the first time beginning to play an instrumental role in linking technological progress to the notion of a better future – all in the service of American corporate capitalism …

… and in turn inspiring the design of the new wave of domestic products – toasters! radios! televisions! washing machines! – that would give consumers a sense of buying into, and thus belonging in, that utopian American dream.

Nothing exemplifies this period of techno-optimism better than Futurama, General Motors’ exhibit at the 1939 New York World Fair. This described a further extrapolation of the potential of petroleum - outwards across time and space. Designed by Norman Bel Geddes, the 35,000-square foot interactive exhibition presented a version of the United States set 20 years in the future, with sprawling superhighways connecting the major cities and facilitating the growth of suburbia as commuters escaped from the claustrophobia of urban life.

E. L. Doctorow’s 1985 novel World’s Fair is revealing in its dramatisation of events, as it connects the key players who, behind the scenes, write the scripts for such techno-utopian futures. In this excerpt a family are leaving Futurama when the child asks his father for his opinion. The father replies:

Of course the roads were built and many cars were sold, but with the benefit of hindsight it is obvious that the Futurama was no utopia. For consumers, however, the dream kept evolving.

In the 1950s the jet engine allowed for super-sonic flight, expanding the horizons and moving the utopian visions upwards and into the ‘final frontier’ (note the colonising terminology) of space.

Another famous world’s fair took place 25 years later using the very same venue – Flushing Meadows in Queens, in 1964. It represents the final extrapolation of petroleum utopias – within a few years they were exhausted. As the novelist J. G. Ballard observed in a 1979 interview with Penthouse magazine:

‘The world of "Outer Space", which had hitherto been assumed to be limitless, was being revealed as essentially limited, a vast concourse of essentially similar stars and planets whose exploration was likely to be not only extremely difficult, but also perhaps intrinsically disappointing. … The number of astronauts who have gone into orbit after the expenditure of this great ocean of rocket fuel is small to the point of being ludicrous. And that sums it all up. You can't have a real space age from which 99.999 per cent of the human race is excluded.’

Elsewhere at the same expo, however, a new genesis was being revealed - introducing a refreshingly new direction for technological futures.

The IBM Pavilion, with exhibition design and a film presentation by Charles and Ray Eames and architecture by Eero Saarinen, introduced visitors to the computer and its place in mainstream contemporary life. Again quoting Ballard:

‘The ability to pass information around from one point in the globe to another in vast quantities and at stupendous speeds, the ability to process information by fantastically powerful computers, the intrusion of electronic data processing in whatever form into all our lives is far, far more significant than all the rocket launches, all the planetary probes, every footprint or tyre mark on the lunar surface.’

Jumping forward to the present and the corporate dreams of today – very well encapsulated by Google’s self-driving car – it becomes apparent that little has changed in terms of strategy: government and corporations in collusion, shaping the technological future on our behalf, with largely the same agendas. At the forefront are a few leading designers whose role hasn’t for the most part evolved much since the days of Norman Bel Geddes.

Here are a few key observations on why visions of the future have stagnated or are simply not appropriate for the world of the 21st Century:

1. Those responsible for the creation of future visions are guilty of being overly optimistic – never acknowledging the possible negative implications.

2. Those responsible for the creation of these visions are guilty of being overly simplistic – perfect worlds, perfect people, interacting perfectly, thus negating the complex and messy reality of human lives.

3. The reduction of future visions into objects of desire has resulted in the dislocation of means and ends – the systems that facilitate the function of products have become largely invisible and intangible.

4. The reduction of visions into objects of desire leads to an increased instrumentalisation of operation and banal iterative development.

5. The emergent technologies that are extrapolated into today’s utopian visions (IoT, AI, nanotech, etc.) tend to act in the background, at intangible scales, or in complex languages – meaning that the resultant futures are difficult to convey (and sell).

6. Corporate imagination that informs future visions is frequently underwhelming – merely updating, through the application of emergent technologies, the pursuit of ancient human obsessions (artificial life, immortality, flight, automation).

7. Finally, many of the metrics through which we evaluate future imaginaries remain the same as those from the machine age – faster, more efficient, more automated – and as such are wholly inadequate for addressing the complex problems we face today.

[artspaceglobalcity-blog]

Walter Benjamin | Paris - Capital of the Nineteenth Century

Walter Benjamin’s “Paris – Capital of the Nineteenth Century” begins by discussing the Paris arcades, which included establishments which kept a large amount of goods for sale in the shop. The arcades were where people could obtain mass quantities of luxury items. Iron became prominent in buildings in the 19th Century in Paris due to the availability of the material. Engineers of buildings were viewed both as builders and decorators, turning the concept of a building into its own art form. Iron was only being used in commercial buildings, however, and was not being used to build homes. This means that the arcades and exhibition halls of Paris would have their own distinctive and artful look because they were distinctive made from iron, which was different than any other building being made at the time. This is noteworthy because it means that the people of Paris will have developed a psychological association between iron buildings and these buildings being considered public places. The public might therefore expect more from the artistic design of these buildings than they would from a building made from other materials because it would be something created by an engineer rather than by a home builder. Benjamin’s work explored both the concepts of buildings and the concepts of fashion in his work, explaining the swiftness at which fashion would become out of style and would be replaced by newer fashions. This caused fashion to become its own art form which people would wear based on the latest trends.

[stone-cold-groove]

Vintage Eastern Air Lines travel poster promoting flights to the New York World’s Fair - 1939.

[stone-cold-groove]

A Century of Progress. Vintage Chicago World’s Fair poster - 1933.

[stone-cold-groove]

Vintage New York Central Railroad travel poster promoting the New York World’s Fair - 1939.

[stone-cold-groove]

Illustration detail of the Sky Ride attraction rocket cars from A Century of Progress Exposition Official Book of Views souvenir booklet. Chicago World’s Fair - 1933.