Androids in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self - Brossura

Voskuhl, Adelheid

Brossura

ISBN 10: 022603416X ISBN 13: 9780226034164

Casa editrice: University of Chicago Press, 2015

Riassunto

The eighteenth century saw the creation of a number of remarkable mechanical androids: at least ten prominent automata were built between 1735 and 1810 by clockmakers, court mechanics, and other artisans from France, Switzerland, Austria, and the German lands. Designed to perform sophisticated activities such as writing, drawing, or music making, these “Enlightenment automata” have attracted continuous critical attention from the time they were made to the present, often as harbingers of the modern industrial age, an era during which human bodies and souls supposedly became mechanized.

In Androids in the Enlightenment, Adelheid Voskuhl investigates two such automata—both depicting piano-playing women. These automata not only play music, but also move their heads, eyes, and torsos to mimic a sentimental body technique of the eighteenth century: musicians were expected to generate sentiments in themselves while playing, then communicate them to the audience through bodily motions. Voskuhl argues, contrary to much of the subsequent scholarly conversation, that these automata were unique masterpieces that illustrated the sentimental culture of a civil society rather than expressions of anxiety about the mechanization of humans by industrial technology. She demonstrates that only in a later age of industrial factory production did mechanical androids instill the fear that modern selves and societies had become indistinguishable from machines.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Adelheid Voskuhl is associate professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: University of Chicago Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• ISBN 10: 022603416X
• ISBN 13: 9780226034164
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 294