The Users. Psychology, Machines, Design, 1930-1980
The project »The Users« concerns a history of perception through the eyes of factory-workers, soldiers and office-clerks: of the ways visual perception in the 20th century was shaped, enhanced and mediated: by machines; in sites such as factories, office-spaces and zones of war; and by disciplines such as ergonomics, human factors engineering, and industrial design.
Visual artifacts such as instruments, machine tools and computers - their design, their uses as well as their problematizations on the part of applied psychologists, efficiency experts and other interested parties - are at the centre of the project. It is concerned, on the one hand, with the historicity of vision as seen through the lens of visual labours (or, for that matter, through the lens of man-machine-interactions); on the other, in telling this story it is also concerned with the genealogy of that very category: the »user«. By focusing on the entanglements of psychological science, machines/labour, and practices of design, Max's project retraces the story of modern machine-minding from the sensory, human »machines« of interwar Psychotechnik to the human »servos« and »monitors« that were exposed by mid-century, industrial »automation« to - in the era of personal computing - the situated, distributed and embodied mind still that is with us today.
Visual artifacts such as instruments, machine tools and computers - their design, their uses as well as their problematizations on the part of applied psychologists, efficiency experts and other interested parties - are at the centre of the project. It is concerned, on the one hand, with the historicity of vision as seen through the lens of visual labours (or, for that matter, through the lens of man-machine-interactions); on the other, in telling this story it is also concerned with the genealogy of that very category: the »user«. By focusing on the entanglements of psychological science, machines/labour, and practices of design, Max's project retraces the story of modern machine-minding from the sensory, human »machines« of interwar Psychotechnik to the human »servos« and »monitors« that were exposed by mid-century, industrial »automation« to - in the era of personal computing - the situated, distributed and embodied mind still that is with us today.