The transformation of material culture and individuality during the Industrial Revolution

¶ … Industrial Revolution and Beyond

It is difficult for anyone now alive to appreciate the radical changes that the Industrial Revolution brought to humanity. We imagine that we know what it was like before this shift in economics, in culture, in society: We think of farmers tilling fields and of their children piling hay into stacks for winter forage, or of trappers setting their snares for the soft-pelted animals of the forests, or of fishers casting their hand-woven and hand-knotted nets into the seas from the hand-sewn decks of ships. We imagine the hard physical work that nearly every person in society once had to do in the era before machines substituted their labor for ours -- and this exchange of human (and animal) labor for machine-driven labor is indeed one of the key elements of the Industrial Revolution. But it is only one of the key elements. For with the shift to machines came important shifts not only in the amount of work that each person had to do but in other aspects of society as well. Living as we all do in a world in which nearly everything is mass produced and so nearly everything that we come into contact with on any given day -- from the clothes that we wear to the plates that we eat off to the prints on the walls of doctors' offices -- is a copy of something else.

This was not always the case: Two hundred years ago very few things were copies of each other. Certainly there were printing and reproductive technologies that allowed lithographs and books to be reproduced by the scores and even hundreds and thousands (in the case of books and newspapers), but nearly everything else was unique. The aesthetic qualities of each object in a person's world were individual: They applied only to the object and to nothing else. People were surrounded by objects that differed from each other and these differences -- these degrees of better and worse -- marked each dress, each pair of shows, each bowl, each candle, each painting as being the work of an individual who was skilled in some things and not in others. The metaphorical fingerprints of the person who created each object were "written" on that object.

But when machines began to make objects all such variations were diminished if not absolutely eliminated. One place-setting of Fiesta ware -- now newly popular again -- is almost precisely like the next -- or like the same place-settings produced three generations ago. Many people were drawn to this precision afforded by machine-turned parts and machine-produced goods: It was pleasing to set a table at which all of the plates matched. It was convenient to be able to buy a dress in a particular size and to know that it would fit. It was gratifying to be able to purchase a chair and know that the artisanship in it would meet a certain standard. And not only were there aesthetic attractions in each one of the newly standardized and suddenly uniform objects but there was on top of this the relief of not having had to slave over these objects to make them. Beauty without the accompanying toil.

And yet, this was in fact not quite the case, of course, for while machines, when guided by skilled human hands, are in fact capable of creating many fine things, much of what is produced by machines is in fact of far less fine quality than that which humans working with hand-tools can create. And even when it is of fine quality, there is still that problem of uniformity. Even within the first decades after the Industrial Revolution, many people began already to weary of objects that were all the same and began to long for the time when an artisan's specific skills were imprinted on each work.

This rebellion against the uniformity of machine-crafted items (and so perforce to some extent against the labor-saving elements of machine work) was seen in such aesthetic, philosophical and cultural movements as the Arts & Crafts Movement. However, as the following citation suggests, once people had entered the machine age there was no real possibility of going back.

William Morris, one of the most inventive geniuses in modern history, soon became the driving force behind the Arts & Crafts movement. A Socialist in his politics, he sincerely believed that society needed to return to pre-Industrial Revolution times and that handcrafted objects for daily living could not only restore beauty to functional items, but be affordable to the masses. ... His efforts and those of his circle encompassed everything from bookbinding to wallpaper. Their influence spread to architecture, fabric, furniture and pottery. Their results were stunning, and captivated both European and American buyers ....Unfortunately, making these things by hand caused them to be far too expensive for the lower classes to purchase. The market consisted of the wealthy - and, of course, machinery became necessary to keep up with the demand.

As the Movement spread to the United States, fewer artists and designers disdained machinery, but seemed rather to embrace the best qualities of manufacturing. Thus true democratization of the product returned to the Movement. By utilizing mass production, for example, almost everyone could afford Stickley furniture. Arts & Crafts-style bungalows could be ordered from the Sears catalog.

While the artisans and philosophers of the Arts and Crafts Movement created many spectacularly beautiful things, they neglected to consider sufficiently the fact that while the most beautiful things that have been created by people have been made through handwork, the labor involved when machines are eschewed (or before they were invented) ensures that such hand-crafted items simply cannot be afforded by most people.

By the end of World War I the Arts and Crafts Movement was in decline, supplanted by both the aesthetics of Modernism and by the growing desire of the middle classes and even the working classes for affordable consumer goods. The end of the Arts and Crafts Movement can be seen in many ways as one of the final volleys of the Industrial Revolution: It was the last sustained and coordinated effort made against the ascendancy of the machine age and the aesthetics that came with it. When the quarter-sewn oak and locally quarried rock of Arts and Crafts houses were replaced by the painted and lacquered aesthetic of Art Deco -- and as Frank Lloyd Wright helped to transform the structural and design elements of Arts and Crafts structures into their sleek and slick mid-century versions, Modernism would become the signature of the Machine Age aesthetic in the 20th century.

Modernism Arises from the Machine

Modernism is a complex amalgam of ideas and aesthetics, and while the term is applied across the spectrum of creative products -- including literature, painting, music, architecture and sculpture -- it came to mean different things for these different media. Overall there were links among these various forms of Modernism: Whether on the written page or on the potter's wheel, the Modernist creator celebrated the new as well as the abstract, seeking to create a type of work as well as a relationship with the audience that was entirely distinct from traditional aesthetics and artworld social relations. It was a brave new world for the designer and the creator, both in the way that art looked and in the way it was consumed. The audience for art (and design) ceased to be the wealthy, aristocratic patron and became the ordinary person -- who could afford the kind of art and decorated object that was produced with the help of the machine.

The machine aesthetic was assumed by all sorts of objects. Shiny metals, molded plastics, and mirrored glass became important decorative devices. The design of cabinets and tea services resembled skyscrapers. Originally housed in enormous wood cabinets, radios became increasingly smaller and packaged in synthetic materials. The look of the machine was not universally celebrated, yet it was widespread nonetheless.

At the onset of the Depression, patronage of the arts, once the realm of the church and the private collector, shifted to business. Industry drove design and the machine aesthetic was pushed into the average citizen's home through a wide range of consumer items. As economic hardship impacted the country, traditional luxury items were unfeasible. Yet, mass-produced replicas of such items were affordable. As the machine aesthetic became more acceptable, such designs became more common. By 1934, as witnessed at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition, "the emphasis was on consumerism and labor-saving machines. In effect, the debate over modernism -- its existence, its appropriateness for America, and the merits of its aesthetic qualities -- became secondary to the need for economic recovery .... It was a modernism derived from Bauhaus functionalism, as opposed to the decorative French moderne style so popular in the preceding years. Functionalism -- the opinion that an object's form and appearance should be determined by its purposes -- was driving American design by the mid-thirties. Modern style was viewed as simple, practical, convenient, and sanitary.

Modernism was a mirror-image of the Arts and Crafts Movements -- as well as a mirror image of the virtues practiced and praised by artist and artisan from the Ptolemaic period to Impressionism. As Walter Benjamin argues, before the age of mechanical reproduction in art (and the age of machine-made everyday and decorative objects) each object was valued for its individuality. But with the rise of Modernism, every object became valued because it was like all the other examples of its type. While difference had once been the measure of the worth of an object, now lack of difference became that measure.

Rationalism and Other Aesthetic Philososphies

The changes that occurred in art and design from the Industrial Revolution through the Information Revolution can be examined in terms of their aesthetics, of the way that things look. This is in no way illegitimate, for while we were all told as children never to judge books by their covers, in art and design the appearance of something is of course of no small importance. However, to concentrate only on the way in which objects looked provides us with an incomplete picture of the fundamental changes that were taking place within the world of design during this period. We can only come to a fuller understanding of what was happening during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th in terms of the development of modern design language if we examine the social and cultural changes that prompted these differences in design. This further analysis, while important, should not be considered to be more important than a purely aesthetic one; rather, the two must be considered in conjunction with each other. For example, we must look both at the differences in terms of the "look" of objects made by hand between machines and those made by hand tools as well as the more fundamental social and economic and cultural changes that were occurring that prompted these visual changes.

In no small measure, as Fer, Batchelor and Wood (1993) argue, the creation of a language of modern design developed through an iterative process: Certain changes were brought about through the use of machines, which inevitably created new aesthetics. These aesthetics became admired (for the most part) because they represented the modern and progress, a concept that was then less epistemologically complex and ambiguous than it is now. The value that people placed on the aesthetics of "modern" objects and design further enhanced their liking for the aesthetics of modern objects, and this prompted people to create philosophies that celebrated both modern design and the social infrastructure and developments that undergirded such design.

One of the most important aesthetically-based philosophies during this period was that of Rationalism, which was linked to a generally rising secularism in society as a whole and was based on "an approach to life based on reason and evidence."

Rationalism was a somewhat loosely configured philosophy, and its borders were even harder to define once one moved into the realm of design, but overall it emphasized the importance of human agency, the importance of human intelligence and ingenuity. While committed to the search for rational (as opposed to divine) explanations for experiences and phenomena, Rationalism was also committed (within the realms of expressive culture) to a celebration of human emotion on the grounds that emotion is as much a part of human experience as is intellect.

Rationalists, in addition to adhering to atheism (or agnosticism) also advocated that society be remade in a more liberal, more egalitarian form. Such an open society would have a number of important cultural and political consequences, including the elevation of beauty (whether in terms of "high art" or in the design of the everyday):

Society is should be an "open society," where each individual is able to live "freely and equally practise their chosen life stance, and in which human potential is realised to the benefit of the individual and the community at large."

As well as approaching life through reason, rationalists enjoy those things in life where emotion and imagination are to the fore.

There has been a long tradition of artists and writers who have been associated with rationalism and its sister movement, humanism, or have pre-empted rationalist ideas in their writings. George Eliot, E.M. Forster and Emile Zola are all examples of such writers.

Concentrating Power, Disrupting Power

The rise of the computer and of the Internet have influenced the language of design in a myriad of ways. The most obvious are also the least important such as the affinity of designers for typefaces that look as if they were generated by a silicon-based brain. These computer fonts, such as Amethyst and Quiver, enjoyed a very brief period of popularity, that briefness due no doubt both to the fact that the primary attraction of these fonts (which first appeared in the 1970s as computers began to enter into the collective consciousness) as well as to the fact that these typefaces are difficult to read -- as well as in general ugly.

However, in general the effect of the Information Revolution on design language was a positive one: Anyone who remembers (or who has ever seen) a mimeographed page will understand how dramatically the introduction of Macs and PCs has raised the general quality of graphic design (which has had a spill-over effect into other arenas of design from commercials to clothing design to theater sets). Even the first generation of PCs allowed a person sitting at home to have access to the kinds of typefaces and typographic capabilities (such as justification and leding controls) that before had only been available to professional typesetters. And with this capability of producing professional-quality design work at home arose the expectation that such capacities would be used. A brief glance through the computer-generated holiday cards that most of us have been receiving for the past several months is a useful demonstration of the ways in which graphic design especially has given rise to a sophisticated design language that is widely available.

Postmodernism and the Computer Age

In many ways, as noted above, the Information Revolution -- and especially the relatively widespread ownership of PCs and Macintosh computers has been a democratizing influence. We now own -- as Karl Marx urged in his call to revolution -- the means of production. A person with a thousand dollars (a fortune to many, but well within the ability of a large percentage of Americans to raise) can buy a computer and start a business.

However, the Information Revolution has overall tended to concentrate both money and wealth. This has important political and economic implications, but it also has important aesthetic implications. As we live in an increasingly globalized world with ownership of those companies in increasingly few hands, the power of the computer to create a design language also becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. The value of sameness that first arose with the Industrial Revolution has been expanded with the rise of the power of the computer. The following citation spells out both the potential advantages and the potential disadvantages of this increasing homogenization:

With the facilitation of communication and information exchange by new and improved information technologies, workers will be liberated from menial tasks and will be retrained for more fulfilling jobs. Indeed, many workers will work from home or at least out of the city. In any case, work, as we know it, is about to undergo a massive transformation. Perhaps most importantly, the time afforded by these new technologies will allow for more introspection. People will become more socially and politically aware as governments are made accessible with computer technology. In essence, the reach of information technology will see MacLuhan's global village realized. Nothing short of an economic, political, and social renaissance is expected.

Those that would argue that what we are witnessing is more evolutionary than revolutionary ask who, exactly, is revolting? Certainly not the proletariat, they assert. What system is being overthrown and what will be its replacement? None, they answer - our capitalist, multinational system is thriving like it never has. It is admitted that information is more important in the sense that it is now perceived as a commodity whose trade is facilitated by technology, but has capitalism, indeed society, not always relied on information? Is the increased reliance on information not different, just accelerated?

Indeed, the Information Revolution would appear to be a top-down endeavour. Moreover, the selling, trading, and consuming of information made easier with information technology serves to funnel even more power to those who already have it. Even more power is wrested from the individual, and there is nothing revolutionary about that.

This push toward homogenization has not been unchallenged. There have been some relatively mild forms of child such as Chrysler's PT Cruiser. It exemplifies much that is best in terms of the aesthetics of our computer-based age. Such cars could not be produced without all of the paraphernalia of the modern factory and yet at the same time the dramatic success of these cars has come about as a result of people's boredom with (and even disgust with) a world in which everything is the same.

The rise of postmodernism, as both a philosophy and an aesthetic, reflects an even more fundamental dissatisfaction for the smooth-surfaced uniformity that has arisen with the overlaying of the Information Age onto the Machine Age. Postmodernism as a design language selects pieces that its creators like from other styles and reassembles them. There is very little if anything that is absolutely new within the realm of postmodernism; rather, it is a compendium of older styles. It is a visual analogue of information overload, the response of designers living in a world in which there is simply too much to know, too much to see, too much to try to understand: "Just as modern culture was driven by the need to come to terms with the industrial age, so postmodernism has been fueled by the desire for accommodation with the electronic age."

Perhaps the most important development of Postmodernism in terms of design from the erasure of many of the still-remaining distinctions between art and design. These distinctions had been fading for centuries -- since the first mechanical forms of reproduction allowed people to buy the various forms of multiple art. However, in no small part because of the ability of computer technology to produce an infinite series of works that were identical to each other (with none of the physical degradation of image that occurs with lithographs or etchings, for example) many of the remaining borders between high culture and low culture were swept aside, at least temporarily, for, as Bourdieu (1987) argues, those with power in a society are constantly creating new aesthetic distinctions to mark themselves as belonging to a higher social class than those around them.

Postmodernism certainly did not spell the end of high art; it did, however, allow for new hybridized forms of design that had never been seen before, such as sculpture-furniture that was meant both to be admired and used.

Such a breakdown between the abstract and the practical was guided by the ways in which computers allow us to create virtual models and to play with designs in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. We are no longer required to build labor-intensive models of whatever it is that we wish to create. When a new design is just a click or two away, there is an incentive to innovate given that (at least at the initial stages of conceptualization and design) there is very little cost involved in trying something -- or a score of things -- that are new, as Coyne (1995) argues.

Postmodernism has also given rise to a certain flexibility in our ways of thinking about relationships. We are all now so used to hypertext links in webpages that the only time that we are likely to think about them is when we are annoyed by a link that is no longer active. However, as Coyne notes, the ability to make connections between two things that we would have thought entirely unrelated is an important design as well as intellectual breakthrough, and one that is linked to the emphasis on amalgamation and appropriation that was the hallmark of Postmodernism. Complex linkages now dominate much of modern design as well as much of our contemporary thinking: Such links create a path through the complex forest of knowledge that has grown up around us during the Information Revolution.

However, it should be noted that while much of design -- whether in clothing, cars, or commercials -- tends toward Postmodernist ambiguity and layers of meanings, there has almost necessarily been a reaction in some design quarters against such complexity of meaning. The Purist school of design -- founded by painter Le Corbusier -- was based on the idea that art as well as all other forms of design should be derived from "the lessons inherent in the precision of machinery"

The original aesthetic of Purism now seems rather quaint to us, as we can seen from the description of Purist works:

In their rigorously clear compositions depicting geometric forms in unmixed colors, images of tools are used to evoke an ideal world, recalling both Cubist still-lifes and the geometric illusionism of the painter Fernand Leger's homages to cylindrical machine forms.

However, while we no longer see such unblunted and uncritical paeans to the machine and its age (for which we must be grateful to Postmodernism), this deep-rooted attraction both to machines themselves and to objects that are obviously machine-produced remains at the core of the design language of the early 21st century. We have only to think about the way in which the Macintosh or the iBook are designed to understand our continuing fascination with and love for the machine. Macintosh computers are lovely to look at even as they are also capable of producing lovely things: They epitomize (both inside and out) our attraction for the computer and the Information Revolution, both of which are irrevocably joined with our older fascination with the machine itself and the Industrial Revolution. Our relationship to the machines that affect our lives so deeply is certain not simply -- we alternate between a Purist celebration of them and a Postmodern condemnation of their power. But our expectation of how the world should look -- of how we should both design and create every aspect of our lives -- is for our own generation at least tied irrevocably to the machine and the things that it can make.