Nostalgia and Technology: Embracing the New through Art and Design

Nostalgia and Technology: Embracing the New through Art and Design
Marian Adelaide Morris Cannon Gallery, BYU Museum of Art December 2, 2005 - May 13, 2006

At first glance, the terms "nostalgia" and "technology" make an unlikely, even incompatible combination. Technology invites change. Nostalgia resists. Technology looks to the future. Nostalgia clings to the past. But for centuries, these adversarial ideas have been harmoniously fused together, facilitating the acceptance of change and innovation by appealing to the past.

"Nostalgia and Technology: Embracing the New through Art and Design," at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art from Dec. 2, 2005 through May 13, 2006, explores the role of art as a mediator in society's acceptance and use of new technologies through objects, art, and ephemera representing a selection of domestic technologies. From the scientific instruments that shared shelf space with art objects and taxidermy in the collections of 17th-century nobility to the cabinet radio disguised as period furniture, technology often enters the home with familiar company.

"'Nostalgia & Technology' is not devoted to the cult of the designer or to good design versus bad design, but rather to how design and artistry help us embrace the new," says Marc Olivier, BYU professor and guest curator of the exhibition. "Neither is the purpose of the exhibition to pay homage to the genius inventor or to present a chronology of technological history, but rather to meditate on the faces given to inventions as they are integrated into our homes."

The practice of using the familiar to contextualize the new dates back to the Renaissance, when an increase in travel and exploration exposed people to a variety of new technologies and ideas. Noble travelers housed the objects they collected from abroad in cabinets of curiosities. These cabinets consisted of a room or rooms filled with natural history specimens, art objects, scientific instruments and curiosities from around the world. Cabinets of curiosities gave the noble collector a sense of mastery over the foreign, the alien and the new. They also allowed viewers to make connections between unrelated objects, uniting nature and art, antiquity and modernity in an overwhelming visual display. The unsettling unknown placed alongside the familiar in the homes of the elite made possible the idea of discovery without disruption to the status quo. Visitors will experience a recreation of a 17th-century cabinet of curiosities at the beginning of this exhibition.

Building on the themes illustrated by the cabinet of curiosities, "Nostalgia and Technology" highlights key moments in the development of new technologies, specifically those of the 19th and 20th centuries. The exhibition explores how nostalgic ornamentation and design have been used to facilitate society's acceptance of innovations such as, electricity, sewing machines, typewriters, point-and-shoot photography, radios, televisions, automobiles, space exploration, atomic energy and wearable technology.

"Nostalgia and Technology" also presents a 20th-century mirror image of the cabinet of curiosities that visitors encounter at the beginning of the exhibition, where 17th -century objects have been replaced by their modern counterparts. A collection of decorative cell phone faceplates mirrors an arrangement of shells. A Palm Pilot resembles a cuneiform clay tablet. A Magellan Roadmate GPS device looks back at a universal equatorial sundial. By juxtaposing contemporary curiosities with objects which seemed so foreign 300 years ago, visitors will begin to question their relationship with "the new" and how art facilitates interest in and acceptance of technological progress.

"Nostalgia and Technology: Embracing the New through Art and Design" is sponsored by the George S. and Dolores Eccles Foundation, Bruce and Barbara Christensen, and the Robert and Amy Barker Foundation. Admission is free.

Nostalgia & Technology Highlights

“Nostalgia and Technology: Embracing the New through Art and Design,” at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art from Dec. 2, 2005 through May 13, 2006, explores the role of art as a mediator in society’s acceptance and use of new technologies through objects, art, and ephemera representing a selection of domestic technologies. The hundreds of objects in the exhibition are divided into the following sections:

Curious Connections
The re-creation of the 17th-century cabinet of curiosities in this exhibition will contain a variety of exotic and curious objects. Scientific instruments, such as terrestrial globes, astrolabes, and equatorial sundials, will be surrounded by taxidermy animals and insects, minerals, fossils, books, art, and ethnographic objects. The cabinet of curiosities (also known as Wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonder) was a product of the Renaissance and could be found throughout Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. These cabinets presented visitors with an opportunity to view the era’s flood of artifacts within the comfortable psychological framework created by their owners. The structured design and arrangement of the cabinets helped to locate the strange and the new within the social sphere of the viewer. The cabinets also served to reconcile the works of humankind with the works of nature — a relationship that would later be mediated through the artful use of design and ornamentation.

Media Cabinet
The media cabinet, a modern reflection of the 17th-century cabinet of curiosities, considers how technology imagines itself in relation to nature, history, and art. In the media cabinet, a collection of decorative cell phone faceplates mirrors an arrangement of sea shells. The hood ornament — talisman for the car — faces an African Yaka fetish. Russian iconography meets Tetris video game art. DVD storage mimics antique books. A Palm pilot resembles a cuneiform clay tablet. A Pende chief’s staff and shield face a staff of remote controls and a satellite dish. A Magellan Roadmate GPS device looks back at a universal equatorial sundial. Terrestrial and celestial globes are replaced by “World Wide Web Searching for Dummies” and “Collecting in Cyberspace.”

Ornament and Industry In The Home
New inventions often made use of technologies that were alien to the people of their day. Strange new instruments and appliances found acceptance in domestic environments only after they had been “cloaked” in ornamentation that was socially acceptable to their intended users. References to antiquity, art, and nature endowed strange new devices with mythic charm and the illusion of familiarity. The David Clark patent model sewing machine is an example of how elaborate ornamentation was used to overcome fear of the sewing machine, elevating the status of the new innovation to a work of art. Typewriters demonstrate the use of analogical design, mimicking the wrought-iron stand and foot treadle operation of the sewing machine. Another design analogy likens the keys of the typewriter to an object common in many parlors — the piano.

Mass-Produced Magic: Kodak’s Brownie Camera
Before the appearance of the Brownie camera, photography was largely a gentleman’s hobby, a pastime that required technical skill and costly equipment. In 1900, Eastman made photography accessible to the masses with the $1 Brownie, and by 1905, roughly one-third of the United States’ population had become amateur photographers. The name “Brownie” was central to redefining photography, especially in the lives of women and children. Originally a figure in Scottish folklore, the brownie character had been popularized by writer and illustrator Palmer Cox in women’s and children’s magazines, in books, and in advertisements during the late 1800s. Eastman’s melding of his camera and Cox’s characters helps sell the idea of photography as an enchanted activity.

Graceful Reception
This section highlights the way radios and televisions entered homes disguised as furniture or hiding in decorative cabinets. The “period” radio cabinet cloaked change in the signs of history and taste. Like the cabinet of curiosities, the radio cabinet suggested continuity between tradition and change and offered the illusion of mastery over the external world. Some companies integrated the radio into functional household furnishings such as lamps, desks, grandfather clocks, and even armchairs. The television, like the radio, was made to assimilate with other household furnishings rather than flaunt its futuristic qualities. But as the public grew more comfortable with these objects, the art of disguise became less necessary. Harold Van Doren and John Gordon Rideout designed the first plastic radio cabinet for Air-King Products Company in 1933. The Art Deco modernism of the piece merges futurism with an enthusiasm for the ancient. Nicknamed the “skyscraper,” the urban sophistication of the radio also references Mayan temple architecture, and in the model featured in the exhibition, includes Egyptian hieroglyphic motifs.

Figures of Electricity
Promoters of electric light for the home replaced the masculine gendered idea of electricity as raw power — a characterization better suited to industry — with a feminized vision of electricity. Incandescent bulbs of the time were encased in colored globes or surrounded by crystal taking on the qualities of exquisite floral arrangements. Additionally, certain recurring forms, such as the candlestick and the globe (or glass chimney) tied electricity to technologies that preceded gas. Advertising campaigns, such as the calendar series of Maxfield Parrish illustrations distributed by the Edison Mazda Division of General Electric emphasized analogies between electricity and the light of ancient times. Every year from 1918 to 1934, a new Parrish calendar appeared, each one prominently featuring an Edison Mazda bulb and a step in the evolution of lighting. The “Prometheus” calendar (1920) forms a nostalgic analogy between the mythological gift of divine fire and the Edison Mazda bulb by placing the glowing logo adjacent to the flame.


"Atomic" wall clock
George Nelson and Associates

Domesticating Infinity
With the dawn of the Atomic Age (ushered in by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945) and the Space Age (beginning with the launch of Sputnik in 1957), new technologies forced the world to come to grips with the infinitely small and the infinitely great. George Nelson’s “Ball” wall clock, designed in 1947 for the Howard Miller Clock Company, transforms a mundane household object into a visualization of atomic science. Representations of space exploration were also scaled to fit a domestic environment. The streamlined aesthetic, first popularized in the 1930s by Raymond Loewy, advanced into the space age in the form of rocket-shaped appliances. Vacuums resembling rockets, atomic bombs, or planets could be found stowed in the broom closet, while on the kitchen counter a blender might be poised ready for lift-off. Space helmets, planets, and futuristic bubble domes colonized the modern home as the U.S. space program ventured further into the unknown.

Wearable Technology
In the 21st century, technology has entered the area of personal adornment with inventions that have allowed clothing to become an extension of the body in ways never before imagined. Through the fusion of fashion and science, technology has become part of our most immediate environment.


TechnoGold
Alexandra Fede

Italy’s preeminent “technological stylist,” Alexandra Fede, is a pioneer in fashion whose style might be described as “Haute Tech,” for its merging of haute couture and cutting-edge technology. Her interest in garments that address concerns about individual protection and well-being as well as beauty have led to runway and prêt-à-porter collections that envision fashion as a vehicle for better living. Fede’s TecnoGold dresses unite Japanese technology and Italian artisanal culture to suggest a return to an age of mythological perfection. 999,9 carat gold plates 11 microns thin are sewn together with a gold wire five times thinner than human hair to create the gold components of the collection.


New Wearcomp Device, 2003
Steve Mann

Less fashion designer than cyborg guru, Steve Mann has been wearing a computer for more than 20 years. Since his high school days in the 1970s, Mann has been experimenting with inventions that create a synergy between human and computer. His WearComp (wearable computer) and WearCam (eyetap camera and reality mediator) devices bring the advantages of the home to the outside world. As prosthetics for the mind and guardians of personal space, the WearComp and WearCam empower those who adopt them to block out unwanted visual stimuli (such as public advertising), to identify people and places with superhuman efficiency, and to record, recall, and share experiences instantly with friends and family.

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