Entries Tagged 'TECHNOLOGY, DESIGN' ↓

Harold Lightburn was an visionary who got his timing wrong. In the sixties his plastic runabout with its tiny two-stroke motor was an idea ahead of its time. Or behind its time, if indeed it was inspired by one of those weird post-war British austerity vehicles with a motorbike engine (the Anzani Astra) that went broke in the fifties. When he decided to launch himself into manufacturing automobiles, Lightburn was already successfully making washing machines, cement mixers and fiberglass boats in his factory in Adelaide.

Your exmodernist discovered these two 1963 Zetas in a hayshed near Wedderburn in central Victoria. Modernity, you ask? Well they do have vestigial fins, along the top edge… And, being true to modernity, they had no reverse gear! You had to switch off, and restart the engine going the other way, in order to access the (four) reverse gears! Theoretically, it was as fast (60mph) in reverse as going foward! Read the links to discover some of their other (hilarious and death-defying) “features“.

The 1963 Lightburn Zeta was launched in the same year as the Morris Mini, but was only 80 pounds cheaper… So which would you prefer? You could race the Mini! Remarkably, the Zeta got an award for just finishing the Ampol rally… Approximately 400 were produced in two models. The mechanically unrelated Zeta “Sport” was even cuter than the Goggomobile Dart, but only sold 28 units…

Why does this WW2 Luftwaffe wind-up motor drive RoBoT II have such a suspiciously cheery logo, if it was made for the German Air Force? Answer: Once you’re safely back on terra firma its right-angle viewfinder (which allows you to shoot (sic) downwards while up in the sky) also means you can photograph the girl/boy/thing beside you without being spotted. In action. As it were. It’s all about body language. See? You hold it sideways, and peek through that little round knurled thingo on the side. Clever, eh? And pretty, as far as  Functionalism allows us…

“Don’t worry mein liebchen. See? That Überkanonen Hans is photographing all those other nice people.”

Etymology? The word “robot” (from robota, Czech for “forced labor”) made its public debut in 1921, when it premiered on stage in Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). The play told of a world in which humans relaxed and enjoyed life while robots – imitation humans – happily did whatever labor needed to be done. Not unexpectedly, the robots eventually rebelled and took over the world. The term “robot” achieved its own world domination in 1923, when the play was translated into English; it quickly overran its competition, its  precursors being “android” and “automaton.” It “quickly overran its competition” eh? Its human minders, presumably…

Want to buy this RoBoT? Go here.

The war art of Afghanistan provides the most direct link between ancient and modern in the history of art. Now there’s a claim… The precursors of digital art to photoshop in one step? Read on…

One aspect of the work I’m doing at the moment is to look at the way the process of the reproduction of Afghan “war” carpets creates a culturally specific mode of abstraction. Imagine our surprise when the progressively degraded image of the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre re-appeared as a Triple Tower image! Such mini-carpets are produced for what remains of the tourist trade – the kind of artefact which is offered at the front gate of ISAF installations to NGO employees or soldiers (like Prince Harry). Works such as these are mostly copied from the back of an earlier example, or made from memory. This hand made quality (constructed from tens of thousands of knots, built on a loom from the bottom up, file by file) results in a process of abstraction. By this I mean that what were originally very specific pictorial representations – often derived from photographs – become a less and less meaningful array of pixels through the process of copying. Making copies from copies from copies means the once finite pictorial and textual data becomes progressively scrambled – or reverts to pattern, of a kind. This is a classic instance. See how the missile below becomes the flowers above, or the “S” of USA is tipped sideways and patterned, a very familiar motif found in “traditional” and pre-war carpets…

Each knot in an Afghan carpet is a furry pixel – the earliest form of digital art – and clearly this most menial process of manual reproduction proceeds independent of the communicative intent of its original source image or cartoon. The example above has appeared recently on the internet (wouldn’t we like to track one down!) and the example below is how they first appeared in 2002. Now maybe a hundred generations apart  (including Max Allen’s observation that variation happens coevally, a kind of lateral evolution), from this evidence the iconic significance of the original has clearly become lost to those who make them.

In this multi-layered montage the map of Afghanistan is inserted behind the all-too-familiar image of the aircraft smashing into the World Trade Center. In the middle foreground of this image is a motif derived from a US PsyOps (Psychological Operations) propaganda leaflet, showing the flags of the United States and Afghanistan linked by a white dove. In the lower foreground is the deck of an aircraft carrier, launching cruise missiles toward Tora Bora, plus other elements which relate to the subsequent intervention by US-led forces. In many such contemporary carpets, the visual structure is entirely consistent with the way in which contemporary propaganda posters are now being produced in Afghanistan – a dvd with a six-month Photoshop on it costs $12 on Chicken Street – so you see plenty of sophisticated Photoshop-layered images like this on the streets of Kabul…

Apparently souvenir mats such as these are still being mass-reproduced, purportedly by Hazara people in the northern provinces. Over just less than a decade it is likely tens of thousands of these contemporary war carpets have been reproduced by hand in who knows what degraded and exploitative circumstances. As such they are prime examples of what is understood in the outside world as ‘tourist art’: the lowest common denominator of hand-crafted artefacts. Their economy makes no sense to anyone. You could buy them on eBay for 99 cents. In the absence of tourists Chicken Street in 2007 was a rather bleak remnant of a once vibrant marketplace. However these examples do provide some vital clues as to the nature of innovation in other examples of the war carpet tradition.

would you vote for this on planet green? And would it pass the moose test?

.. obviously designed by a graduate of the John Cleese School of Funny Exhaust Pipes. Or sent by some deity specifically to upset The Iconophile. Follow the thread here and here.

This boomerang was once owned by Daisy Bates, and was acquired by her at Ooldea, south-east of the Spinifex Peoples‘ lands, some time in the years prior to 1935.

What makes this example distinctive is not so much its connection to Daisy Bates, but how it carries signs of a provenance of another kind. Each side has been carved in distinctively different styles, suggesting that it was owned, traded, and used by more than one desert-dwelling family long before it fell into Daisy Bates’ hands at Ooldea.

In a trade of a different kind, in 1938 Bates gave it to the Carr family in Adelaide, in return for favours rendered.

By contrast, this plastic boomerang was designed and manufactured by Frank Donnellan (“Champion Thrower”) and (apparently) marketed by Stephen Silady (“Champion”) in the 1960s.

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Eeek! The quiet and leafy suburbs of Adelaide are easily shocked: in this instance by this chunky 1958 Ford Edsel Citation convertible. The Edsel was produced between 1957 and 1960, and was by all accounts a bit of a flop. Its styling was judged to deliver less than it promised – and the entirely new production line intended to replace the Lincoln in the race against GM misjudged the market entirely. The addition of a dramatic vertical grill to an otherwise conventional lumpy body shape was insufficient to sustain production numbers, and the brand died. Now they’re rare. And especially in original unrestored condition like this example.

Why are collectors attracted to the last of the breed, to lemons, or to examples of 20th century design which disprove the ideology of modernity’s inexorable progress? It’s not just a matter of rarity, but also some sense of being just outside the norm, of (at last) making fun of another generation’s questionable taste and judgement. Thus this great shiny lump of steel, wide enough to seat three abreast, with huge V8 motor, which handles like the Queen Mary, even with enough gadgets to aspire to technological progress, inspires a special appreciation of conspicuous consumption and an aesthetic of excess among baby boomers.

The Ford Edsel is often cited by design historians as the archetypal instance of designers marketeers stylists getting it wrong. The timing was terrible, when the launch coincided with the onset of the 1957 recesssion. Established brands were being closed down in every direction. By the time it hit the market, there was no niche for the Edsel to fill, and so it died, at a reputed cost of $40m. Wiki claims the name itself may have contributed to its demise: “…in honor of Edsel Ford, former company president and son of Henry Ford. Marketing surveys later found the name was thought to sound like the name of a tractor (Edson) and therefore was unpopular with the public. Moreover, several consumer studies showed that people associated the name “Edsel” with “weasel” and “dead cell” (dead battery), drawing further unattractive comparisons.”

But of course we should treasure the remaining examples – especially those which have not been ruined by restoration! They teach us where we’ve been, and show us where not to go. Iconophilia thanks Tony and Olive for the photo-essay.

…is not even a question for Cubans! In that other universe, for the last fifty years, the stock of pre-revolutionary gas guzzlers was (almost) all Cuba had as private transport. If they could afford the petrol. Just keeping them going and refurbished is their automotive industry.

Iconophilia thanks Jan Luedert for these recent photographs of a 1953 Buick being reconstructed in downtown Havana. Jan writes: “the pictures where taken near Trinidad the UN World Heritage City. The shop was set up by two Cubans as a private enterprise. The interesting thing about these vehicles is the way that it represents “true sustainability” as these cars are rebuilt, recycled and always find their way back to the road. What they also do at the shop is install a more modern diesel engine so the while the chassis is old style 50s the engines are usually new and often diesel. It is incredible to watch how without a fair degree of ingenuity and with how few resources a car that would rust away in our world finds its way back to the road. Cars are mostly communal in Cuba and one hardly ever finds a car with less than five people in them.”

More paint than metal, methinks. For more background, read this piece by Tom Miller from the NYT.

But who among you doesn’t feel just a little bit guilty that we in the outside world take such perverse pleasure in observing the fact that Fidel’s Revolution has subjected his country to this technological time-warp? How pictureque is it (still) that Cuban citizens are forced to live out the historical antipathy to the U.S.A. by driving around in these decaying icons of the excesses of the decade of the 1950s? Contradictions abound in such circumstances. For example, what are we to make of this 1948 Cadillac Fleetwood snapped by The Iconophile in the back streets of Tehran in 2007? If it looks somewhat abandoned, consider (a) how difficult it would be to get spare parts these days, and (b) how much more politically incorrect it would be on the streets of Tehran than Havana?

You’ll think I’ve got a thing about automotive orifices. But, post Edsel, it’s still happening! There’s a very bad case of overdesign in The Iconophile’s own carpark… Or does this little Civic produce triangular CO2?

…in this case from the dreaded process of “restoration”: this 1925 Bugatti Brescia Type 22, which sold recently at Bonhams, had sat on the bottom of Lake Maggiore in Switzerland for 73 years.  As the story goes:

The car was built in 1925 and registered originally to an owner in Nancy, France, then later sold to and registered by a Parisian owner. Eventually, Bonhams speculates, it wound up in the hands of a Swiss architect of Polish descent who reportedly never paid the import duties on the car. The local authorities in Ascona, where the car was stored in 1936, demanded either that the overdue monies be paid or the car destroyed — and so it was dumped in the lake, where it was eventually discovered by a diver in 1967. In 2009 that the vintage Bugatti — or what was left of it — was recovered by members of the local diving club.

The American underbidder had intended to restore it… Luckily the winner wanted to keep it as it is and paid €260,500 for the privilege. Meanwhile, in better shape, and for a better price ($30m plus), there’s always the Atlantic.