Signs of Change
Post-Industrialisation
(Please note that I have used quite a few excerpts from Mary's presentation for these notes. I don't normally do this, but she did an excellent job of conveying the important points of this weeks subject and as we will be revisiting it in the coming weeks I didn't want to miss anything. I have added my own notes as necessary.)
Industrialisation
"The process in which a society or country transforms itself from a primarily agricultural society into one based on the manufacturing of goods and services."
Craftsmen and manual labour are replace by mechanized mass production and assembly lines.
This change did not happen overnight but was the beginning of an energetic, on-going process that continues to this day.
New ways of manufacturing.
A new transportation revolution, new kinds of ships, paved roads, railroads.
In the second half of the 20th century a new phase of industrialisation began with an information revolution, underpinned by computer technology and robotics.
Post-Industrialisation
"If a nation becomes "post-industrial" it passes through, or dodges, a phase of society predominated by a manufacturing-based economy and moves on to a structure of society based on the provision of information, innovation, finance, and services.
An information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. Information society is seen as the successor to industrial society.
The knowledge economy is its economic counterpart whereby wealth is created through the economic exploitation of understanding. People that have the means to partake in this form of society are sometimes called digital citizens - Daniel Bell."
excerpt from Mary's presentation
Think about university students paying for education or accessing their learning materials online, even participating in online lessons.
The Great Exhibition
In 1851, the original Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park, in order to celebrate Britain's first "Great Exhibition". A huge range of British (British was best?!) products were put on display for visitors and foreign dignitaries inside the monumental, architectural structure.
This was the first international exhibition of manufactured products and was enormously influential on the development of many aspects of society.
Art and design, education, international trade and relations, even tourism.
Over the next hundred years the exhibition was copied and re-produced by many other countries wishing to demonstrate their industry. The original exhibition has been recognised as the precursor to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Ornamental Art.
Fordism
"Fordism is "the eponymous manufacturing system designed to spew out standardized, low-cost goods and afford its workers decent enough wages to buy them".
De Grazia 2005
Ford was the creative force behind the growth to prominence of the automobile industry, still the world's largest manufacturing activity.
“...the auto industry has changed our most fundamental ideas about how we make things. And how we make things dictates not only how we work but what we buy, how we think, and the way we live.”
Womack, Jones, and Roos 1990
The hallmark of his system was standardization -standardized components, standardized manufacturing processes, and a simple, easy to manufacture (and repair) standard product. To achieve interchangeability, Ford exploited advances in machine tools and gauging systems. These innovations made possible the moving, or continuous, assembly line, in which each assembler performed a single, repetitive task."
excerpt from Mary's presentation
Working in factories and on production lines was unpleasant work, with a high turnover of staff. To keep his workforce, Ford doubled their pay, he justified this by the higher levels of productivity that it produced. He essentially convinced people that their self development wasn't as important as being paid more wages.
His well paid workers could now buy the products that he was producing creating a new class and a market for his own goods.
The Rise of Slavery and the Law of Unintended Consequences
As a result of Whitney's invention, cotton became the American South's leading cash crop, supplying Great Britain with most of its cotton. Where the South had once produced little more than sixty tons of cotton a year, by 1840 the South was generating a million tons of cotton a year. Indirectly, the cotton gin meant that more slaves would be needed to pick cotton. Within thirty years of Whitney's invention, the number of American slaves had tripled.
The spinning jenny was an eighteenth century modification of the familiar spinning wheel. One day in the 1750s, English carpenter James Hargreaves (1720–1778) inadvertently knocked over his spinning wheel in his Lancashire, England, home and was startled to see it, on its side, still spinning. He instantly envisioned a series of spinning wheels similarly aligned; such a device, he realized, could approximate the rhythm of human fingers. Following a decade of fits and starts Hargreaves completed his spinning jenny in 1768."
Extract from Mary's lecture
Existing spinners saw Hargreaves's new invention as a direct threat to their livelihood, because one jenny could do the work of several men.
Anyone who rioted, caused trouble or spoke out at this time would be transported to Australia, in a similar way to how we have moved our factories abroad so that we don't have to see the appalling conditions.
The first synthetic, or man-made, dye was created in 1856 when an 18 year old British chemist named William Henry Perkin attempted to synthesize quinine (a type of medecine) when he mixed aniline together with a solution of alcohol and potassium dichromate. The unexpected result was mauveine, a purple dye that became unbelievably popular in Britain.
Queen Victoria wore mauve to her daughter's wedding, and British postage stamps were dyed with mauveine.
As the demand for chemical dyes expanded the agricultural aspects of the same industry began to die (I could have said dye) out.
Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin wrote an essay entitled “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in 1936.
In it he discusses the “aura” possessed by an original work of art. He suggests that reproduction of a work of art dilutes and removes some of the power from the original.
“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original.”
He was suggesting that things made by machine lack a certain something, an aura, a soul perhaps. See Marxism.
He goes on to say that the creation of “pure” art is steeped in ritual and says that “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.”
"Benjamin’s essay can be interpreted in many ways but he suggests that an original work of art has links to the place in which it is created and where it is viewed. It is special as there is only one place where it can be viewed and usually by the privileged. When it is reproduced it loses some of that aura as it is no longer possesses that ritual essence from its creation."
An excerpt from Mary's presentation
Although it is important to note that mechanical reproduction has made art more accessible to the masses. Deauchamp also worked against this with "fountain", taking something that had been mass produced signing it and displaying it as a new piece of art.
There is now the beginnings of a trend to move back to more traditional forms of production, with artists and movements like;
- The Slow Movement
Carl Honoré, “In Praise of Slow”
- Miguel Adrover
Hessnatur is respected around the world for its commitment to the environment and to social responsibility, pure, toxin-free linen, silk and organic cotton and virgin wools and alpaca fibres. He has focused his recycling ideas into a search for ecologically sound fabrics.
"It is really difficult to produce anything organic," says Adrover. "I tried to use natural fabrics. For me the experience is of learning every day. When I go to Première Vision (the French fabric fair) 99% of fabrics are not organic. Only the Japanese are a little bit ahead.“
- Gareth Neal
The work tries to engage with the viewer and create inter-sector debate, between art, design and craft, between history and the contemporary, between the material and the immaterial.
Most of Neal‘s designs use wood as their core material, sculpting it in a variety of ways. One such example is his CNC milled pieces which have a boxy outer form that is milled to reveal a baroque like interior. in these pieces, Neal uses the preciseness of milling to create the forms.
Post-industrial
"If a nation becomes "post-industrial" it passes through, or dodges, a phase of society predominated by a manufacturing-based economy and moves on to a structure of society based on the provision of information, innovation, finance, and services."
Excerpt from Mary's presentation
Post-Industrial Themes;
- The economy changes from the production of goods to the provision of services.
- Knowledge becomes a highly valued form of capital (you can sell knowledge, think tuition fees).
- Producing ideas is the main way to grow the economy (things made with your head have more value than those made with your hands).
- Side note; how much are ideas and non physical products worth? (is an album from iTunes worth less than an album on a physical CD)
- Professional workers (scientists, creative-industry professionals, and IT professionals) grow in value and prevalence.
- Behavioural and information sciences and technologies are developed and implemented (behavioural economics, information architecture, cybernetics, Game theory and Information theory).
A large group of creative people has sprung up, embodying, describing and defending the post-industrial ethos. Arguing that businesses who create intangibles (Facebook, iTunes, etc) have taken a more prominent role in the wake of manufacturing's decline. That in some countries, the production of creative intangibles produces more exports than manufacturing alone.
Paul Romer, a professor of economics at Stanford, revolutionized the appreciation of knowledge as a valuable asset. As he says it is not just the "ingredients (supply) that makes good food, it is the recipe (knowledge) that counts too. Better recipe, better food means better knowledge, more economic growth".
More recently, economists at Berkeley studied the value of knowledge as a form of capital. Speaking along the same lines of their argument, the addition of the production of knowledge, could become the basis of what would undoubtedly would be considered 'post-industrial' policies meant to deliver economic growth.
In 2010, the OECD (the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development) encouraged the governments of advanced economies to embrace policies to increase innovation and knowledge in products and services as an economical path to continued prosperity.
Particularly in the wake of the economic downturn, more and more people are interested in how much money "art" can bring to an economy.
See also;
http://www.newstatesman.com/theatre/2009/03/arts-culture-economic-cultural
So are we in an era of Post-industrialisation?
Or have we passed that?
Bell suggests what follows post-industrialisation is an "Information Society" with Digital Citizens.
Cyber communities like Facebook and Twitter are where we share our information.
Financial transactions and banking occur online, with cheques and postal orders becoming a thing of the past.
We shop online and sell on sites like Ebay, Etsy, Folksy.
We live more and more in an alternative world, creating new identities in Second Life and World of Warcraft.
Things To Think About
- As we are all artists who create “stuff” on a planet with finite resources, do we have a duty to consider the effect our products have upon the planet?
- Is the handcrafted item more treasured in today’s post industrial society?
- What do you feel are the effects of industrialisation on contemporary society?
- Has industrialisation impacted upon your area of art? If yes, how so?
- Is there a need to alter your means of production in the long term? If yes what are your reasons?
- Are we living in an information society? If so is there a place for the production of art there?
