Mechanical brides ellen lupton download pdf

Get Mechanical Brides Books now! Download or read online Mechanical Brides written by Regina Rohrbach, published by Unknown which was released on Demonstrates how McLuhan extended insights derived from advances in physics and artistic experimentation into a theory of acoustic space which he then used to challenge the assumptions of visual space that had been produced through print culture.

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Women must look critically at who is in charge of the new technology and challenge the gender codes that can work against them. The idea of Canada as a consumer society was largely absent before but familiar by the mids. This change required more than rising incomes and greater impulses to buy; it involved the creation of new concepts. Buying Happiness explores the ways that key public thinkers represented, conceptualized, and institutionalized.

First Published in Mechanical Brides. Mechanical Brides by Ellen Lupton. Enduring Freedom by Laura Mullen. Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny by Edward Bateman. User s Manual by Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Goddesses and Monsters by Jane Caputi. Mechanical Brides by Zahava D. Mechanical Brides by Regina Rohrbach. McLuhan in Space by Richard Cavell. Visitor Reactions to the Exhibition An Alternative View Appendices A.

Supplementary Tabulations and Technical Notes Cooper-Hewitt Exhibition Audiences Survey Design and Implementation Mechanical Brides Survey Main Idea Understanding the Main Message of the Exhibition Czech Cubism.

Local or Non-Local Introduction Mechanical Brides: Women and Machinesfiom Home to Ofice, presented by Cooper- Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution in New York from August 17, to January 2,, was an exhibition with a theme -- the gender significance of familiar household and office objects, including telephones, typewriters, desks, washing machines and irons. In the words of Dianne Pilgrim, the National Design Museum's Director, Mechanical Brides: Women and Machinesfiom Home to Office, looks at the central place of laundry equipment, telephones, and typewriters in the cultural differences between women and men in American life.

Assumptions about the aspirations and responsibilities of women are reflected and reinforced by the way these machines have been designed, marketed, used, and imagined in the twentieth century. Mechanical Brides looks at the gender significance of seemingly neutral things by viewing them from the perspective of female consumers and users. She wrote, Mechanical Brides combines humor with critique to bring to life the inanimate world of appliances and office equipment.

By juxtaposing three-dimensional objects with advertising, photojournalism, film stills, TV commercials, and other documents, the exhibition reveals the social, sexual, and economic meaning of objects. The exhibition incorporates personal comments by women, men, and children about the home and office.

The project encourages viewers to think critically about the objects, places, and practices of daily life, and to recognize stereotypes of the past that remain active today.

Its results show that half of the exhibition audience left with a gender-related theme in mind, that most visitors found personal meaning in the contents of the exhibition, and that some types of objects and presentations were much more effective than others in achieving these ends. At the same time, the analysis suggests some distinctive features of the National Design Museum's visitors, and mu- seum audiences more generally, that should be considered in exhibition planning.

Lupton, Ellen. New York, ,p. Exhibition Press Release, August The Telephone Wall, designed in collaboration with NYNEX Science and Technology, featured a back-lit grid of images of women talking on the phone, taken from advertisements, film stills and documentary sources. Telephone receivers gave viewers access to the recorded voices of working women, who described their experiences as phone operators. On the other side of the Telephone Wall was a vitrine holding over 40 historic telephones.

The next room included washing machines, such as the first automatic home washers, advertisements for these and other laundry-related products, a display of historic irons, and a Video. The fifteen-minute video, produced and directed by Cathleen Campbell, featured interviews with contemporary men, women, and children talking about their experiences with laundry equipment. Intercut with these interviews were historical and contemporary clips and stills from commercials, industrial films, documentary photographs, and print advertisements.

Also included were comments by curator Ellen Lupton and museum educator Deirdre Scott. Visitors then encountered a small room with the Wizard-of-Oz Appliances.

Industrial designer Laurene Leon created a series of experimental prototypes for household appliances based on characters from the film The Wizard of Oz. The curator chose to include these objects in the exhibition for the following reasons: - the objects were experimental ideas for the future rather than familiar objects from the past; - the objects drew their meaning from the world of mass media; - by treating objects as characters from a popular film, the designer demonstrated in an overt and extreme manner a theme seen in the commonplace design and promotion of appliances: the turning of mechanical things into animate beings endowed with their own "personalities" and emotional functions.

Next, visitors passed by Hanging Laundry. The Hanging Laundry was included in order to encourage personal reflection and to contrast individual experiences with the euphoric imagery of advertising. The large, concluding gallery contained office equipment and furniture, including a wall of historic typewriters, clerical furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, The Desk of the Future, and The Telephone of the Future.

The Desk of the Future was commissioned from industrial designers Laurene Leon and Constantin Boym, who were asked to create a speculative "Desk of the Future" which showed the integration of home and office work. With the rise of the home office and "telecommuting," the distinction between domestic space and office space is breaking down. The designers were asked to present a concept that would be surprising and unfamiliar rather than a "real" solution.

The environment they designed included a detachable baby's playpen and a round storage element -- based on a "Lazy Susan" -- that combined traditional office storage with kitchen cabinets, a refrigerator, and a hot plate for coffee and sandwiches. The Telephone of the Future showed how services for the home and office are coming together in emerging telecommunications systems that enable working, playing, shopping, and chatting from home-based terminals that combine telephone, television, and computing services.

The installation simulated various telephone "conversations," including a personal call, a business call, an electronic "visit" from the copy-machine repairwoman, and a film preview, each illustrated with video clips. Contents of the Report The next two sections present our results. First, we try to identify which elements of the exhibitions were most effective in communicating the exhibition's major message. Then, we differentiate visitors into those who came specifically to see the exhibition and those who came to the National Design Museum for some other reason and we explore differ- ences in their experience of the exhibition.

The appendices include additional materials. The questionnaire is in Appendix A and supplementary data tables are in Appendix B. A comparison of the characteristics of audiences who attended three exhibitions at the National Design Museum, including Mechanical Brides forms Appendix C.

Visitor Reactions to the Exhibition Responding to the Exhibition Theme Interviewers asked visitors leaving the exhibition an open-ended question, "After seeing the exhibition, what is the main idea you came away with? Those who responded with other ideas either failed to recognize the dominant4 theme or considered it less significant than something else. Table 1 Visitor Responses to "What is the main idea you came awav with? A description of the study is in Appendix D.

A total of visitors were interviewed. See Table B. In some cases that dominant thought was the message of the exhibition, in others it was some personal response, either intellectual or emotional, and in yet others there was no particular reaction at all. The best way to phrase this result is to say that at least half of the audience left with the curator's theme in mind. Some visitors who gave the interviewer a reply that made no reference to gender recognized the point of the exhibition as can be seen in the exam- ples below.

Presumably they responded differentlyon impulse or by reason of their individual psychology rather than because of a lesser level of comprehension. We will focus first on visitors who gave gender-related replies, i. Some Examples of Main Idea Responses For those who made a gender-related response 53percent of visitors , the main idea was a central theme of the exhibition, sometirnes with a strongly emotional tone. A random selection of these replies, for example, includes "how advertising is geared to women," "how advertising plays on social issues," "women have grown out of tradi- tional roles of being directed solely by men," "underscoringof how cultural attitudes affect technology and the marketplace," "women tied to machines and mechanization takes command," "gender orientation in design," "design related to gender roles," "I'm glad I was born now, because women had to do so much before," and "history of women's liberation.

I used to use them," "to see things from childhood," "progression of style, concept, machinery - how it evolved," "seeing products as art - raising awareness of the product as designed," and "applianceshave changed. House should have been kept the way it was," and "building should not have been changed from the Carnegie days. When we compare visitors who reported a gender-related response with those who did not, two features stand out immediately: three out of four of those who gave a gender- related response were women; and a greater percentage of them had higher levels of education.

Only the following were significant: Gender - Women were 9 percent more likely to give a gender-related reply compared to men. Education - Having some college increased the probability of a gender-related reply by 13 percent, having a B. Exhibition elements - Visitors who said that the display of texts imprinted on hanging laundry enhanced their experience of the exhibition were 10 percent more likely to cite a gender-related main idea.

Those who said that the display of the Desk of the Future enhanced the exhibition experience were 8 percent more likely.

Those who said that the display of the Wizard of Oz-inspired appliances detracted from the exhibition were 9 percent more likely to cite a gender-related main idea. In each case, this was in contrast to those who gave an opposite response. These influences were independent of one another. For example, a woman with an M. This result demonstrates that the hanging laundry and the Desk of the Future were particularly strong in supporting the curator's theme, while the Wizard of Oz appliances not only failed to support the message, but tended to be viewed negatively by those who resonated most strongly with the exhibition's central theme.

Among those who left the exhibition with the curator's theme uppermost in their mind, the ads were the chief means of communication. We conclude that if the advertisements had not been included in the exhibition, visitor responses would have been very different. The close links between gender-related ideas and ads on the one hand, and non-gender- related ideas and objects on the other, stand out even more when considering the rela- tionship from the other direction.

The idea of Progress was communicated primarily by laundry equipment i. Did visitors find so much personal meaning in objects that their private memories momentarily obscured the broad, social themes of the exhibition? We explored these questions by considering how visitors answered the questions, "Did anything in the exhibition have a personal meaning to you? If so, what? Residence: Those who live in the NYC suburbs New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut were 8 percent more likely to find items with personal meaning compared to those who live elsewhere.

Exhibition Elements: Visitors who felt that the Video, Hanging Laundry and the Desk of the Future enhanced the exhibition were more inclined to identify a personally meaningful part of the exhibition compared to those who felt they detracted. The effect for Video and Hanging Laundry each of which increases the probability of finding personal meaning by 10 percent was greater than the effect for the Desk 5 percent increase in probability.

We interpret these results as reflecting both background factors and the power of some of the exhibition display elements. Age may have made a difference because those aged 35 to 44 in were in their formative years ages 15 to 20 during the period to , a period in which women's issues became sharply defined within the public consciousness.

Residence may have mattered because those who live in the suburbs are more likely to be deeply involved with the consumer culture that most values these kinds of objects. From the point of view of either age or residence, these visitors were most inclined to ask themselves, "what does this mean to my life?

They were both effective and liked. The Laundry and Desk were two of the three most popular and most noticed components Although nearly one-third of visitors did not see the video, i. We also asked visitors what these meaningful items were and why they were important. Their answers ranged widely, but their reasons did not: the item was either owned or used by the respondents or their families.

We could not find any significant rela- tionships between the specific objects that visitors found personally meaningful and the main ideas that they took away from the exhibition. We did learn, however, that visitors who were surprised to find advertisements in the exhibition were more likely to say that the ads communicated the main idea they took away from the exhibition.

And individuals who said that they were surprised because of the way the l1 The third was the Telephone Wall. ResDonses to Exhibition ComDonents Advertisements and the Hanging Laundry installation appear to have been the most effective elements of the exhibition.

The ads best communicated the curatorial theme and the laundry installation both supported it and influenced visitors to find something of personal meaning in the exhibition. The laundry line installation was also the most popular display component See Table B.

Compared to the Desk of the Future, the Telephone Wall, the Telephone of the Future, the Video in the fireplace, and the Wizard of Oz Appliances, more people said that the Hanging Laundryenhanced the exhibition and except for the Video fewer said that it detracted from the exhibition. Independently of whether an individual believed that an exhibition component enhanced or detracted from the exhibition, just noticing the component increased the likelihood that the visitor would get the curator's point.

Among those who saw two or fewer of the components, only 31 percent gave a gender-related main idea. This percentage increases to 47 percent when an individual saw either three or four of the components, and then to 59 percent for those who saw five or more. An Alternative View In the preceding analysis, we assumed a traditional model of exhibition communication that attributes the reactions of the audience primarily to the effectiveness of contents and presentation in conveying the curatorial theme.

In this type of model, meaning is treated as if it "moves"from the exhibition to the visitor. By emphasizing the respon- sibility of the exhibition, the model helps to identify which elements in this case advertisementsand Hanging Laundry were most effective.

The model may exaggerate the communicative power of objects and displays. In studies of other exhibitions where we have distinguished between how visitors felt before the exhibition and how they felt afterwards,l3 we found that changes due to the exhibition experience alone were relatively slight. And when we compared museum- goers who attended an exhibition with those who did n o t p we found that the audience was self-selecting -- those who understood in advance what an exhibition was about and who agreed with its premises were the ones who were most likely to go see it.

Although the Mechanical Brides study was not designed to address this issue directly, it does offera limited opportunity to con- sider two very different subsets of the National Design Museum audience. These two groups, dissimilar in background and motivation, did not respond to the exhibition's communication strategies in the same way.

Doering, A. Kindlon and A. Report Pekarik and A. But for those who found something of personal meaning, the items that they found and the reasons why they responded to them were very similar in both groups. Both types of visitors felt approximately the same a,bout the Desk of the Future. The objects that communicated the main ideas of the exhibition were also very different between these two groups. The chronological displays of irons, telephones and typewriters encouraged Unintentional Visitors but not Intentional Visitors to report ideas of Progress i.

Why did these two groups of visitors have such different responses to the same objects and the same displays? We believe that the difference can be attributed to visitor expectations, which, in turn, reflected backgrounds and experiences. The expectations of Intentional Visitors matched the curator's intentions. The expectations of Unintentional Visitors did not.

In both cases each signhcant cell represented about 20 percent of N. Among those who couldn't remember where they heard of the exhibition, half gave a gender-related main idea. Of those who cited - one source where they heard of the exhibition, two-thirds gave a gender-related main idea.

And, of those who gave two or more sources where they heard of the exhibition, three-quarters gave a gender-related main idea. Three out of four visitors who cited either of these left with the theme, compared to 70 percent of newspaper readers and 63 percent of TV viewers. For those who gave only one source of information, word-of-mouth was most effective over 72 percent leave with the curator's theme , with magazines a close second 70 percent.

Influenced by their sources, these individuals knew what they could expect to find in the exhibition and they came to the National Design Museum to immerse themselves in it. Comparing their responses with those of the Unintentional Visitors, we suggest that Intentional Visitors entered the exhibition believing that products were marketed in a particular way to women and that women were socially oppressed.

Education: Intentional Visitors were better educated B. The visitor who did not know about the Mechanical Brides exhibition came because of other information sources or past experiences. From these they had constructed a mental irnage of what a visit to the National Design Museum visit would be like however accurate or inaccurate such an image may be. Since this study was not designed to facilitate this kind of analysis, there is little we can say about this one-third of the visitors.

Because they came for a "museum experience" rather than a specific "exhibition experience," they may even have had a different level of expectation, atten- tion, and social expectation. Their responses to this exhibition suggest that they entered the museum expecting to find a story of technological and historical progress.

When they saw the chronological sets of telephones, irons, and typewriters, they found confirma- tion of their ideas, and left with these thoughts foremost in their minds. They differed only in the conclusions they drew from the exhibition as a whole, and, we suggest here, these conclusions were based as much or more on the ideas they brought with them when they entered as on what the exhibition was trying to say.

Further research would be necessary to clearly identify their proportion within the overall National Design Museum audience, and the assumptions and attitudes they bring to this museum.

The museum can then consciously attempt to alter unintentional visitor expectations through long-term publicity program and through a consistent exhibition program. Although major exhibitions at the National Design Museum dominate the physical space more than they do at other Smithsonian museums, all Smithsonian exhibitions have Intentional and Unintentional Visitors, and these lessons about expectations and visitor background apply to them, as well.

Who are you here with today? Are you or your household a member of the 9. Before today, had you heard about "Mechanical Brides"? How did you hear about this exhibition today?

Appendix A DId anything In the exhibition surprise you? What is your age? Where do you live? Above 96th St. What is your culturallraciallethnic identity? Islander Caucasian oni :rz1 Nat. Gender: MARK. What is your occupation?

Arts professional e. Painter, artist, photographer,c. TeacherEducator Art related 0 0 Design professional e. Physicians, engineers, comp. Banker, lawyer, self- employed, etc. What is the highest level of education you have completed? Note on the Statistical Methods The statistical results presented in this report are based on a range of analytic procedures used to uncover differences in the background of visitors to the exhibitions, and differences in the opinions of visitors due to their experience in the exhibition.

In the main text, statistical tests have generally not been noted. In all cases, however, the analytic strategies and statistical tests were driven by the measurement characteristics of the underlying variables. For analyses of categorical variables, e. To assess the simultaneous effects of a set of independent variables on a particular dependent variable, logistic regression models were estimated. These models are linear regression models that transform dichotomous dependent variables e.

The resulting coefficients measure changes in the probability of an event occurring due to a unit change in the independent variable.

For these models, the test of overall fit is a maximum-likelihood Chi-square test. For the effects of individual independent variables, a T-test is used. Throughout the analysis, the level of significance was established at the. As always, readers with further questions about the analyses and their implications are encouraged to contact the Institutional Studies Office directly.

Weighted and Unweighted Number of ResBondents As noted in Appendix D, since the respondent selection intervals during different interviewing sessions were unequal, weights were needed in the survey analysis. The use of weighted data allows for the extrapolation of the sample results to the population of all surveyed visitors who exited during the hours of data collection.

The percentages reported in the tables in the appendices, and used in constructing the figures in the text, are based on weighted data. Consequently, all statistical tests and modeling reported here were performed on unweighted data.

If, for example, weighted data were used in the tests of significance, the effect of each observation would be greatly exaggerated. Since the purpose of most of the tests used is to measure differences between actual and expected results, only actual observations can be used with validity. Sample sizes N's are not reported at the bottom of tables in the text unweighted or weighted.

However, for the more technically oriented reader, below are the various sample and subsample sizes. Table B. Gender-related Ideas: Oppression of Women Advertisements Yes Family owned it Surprise You?