Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Techniques and Disciplines of Creativity, c. 1880-1985 Ginger Nolan Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 ©2015 Ginger Nolan All rights reserved ABSTRACT Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Techniques and Disciplines of Creativity, c. 1880-1985 Ginger Nolan This dissertation explores how the imagined semiotic mode of the unconscious, illiterate “savage” was instrumental to twentieth-century technologies of production in two respects: firstly, in the context of a global division of labor, as a way to disqualify certain groups’ intellectual products from the category of intellectual property; and, secondly, in disciplines of aesthetic production, as an imaginary model on which to base new technologies of design and communication. In my dissertation, Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Techniques and Disciplines of Creativity (1870-1985), I argue that class inequalities under capitalism have been linked to the ongoing formulation of two distinct—albeit tacit—categories of epistemic subjectivity: one whose creative intellectual processes are believed to constitute personal property, and one whose creative intellectual processes—because these are deemed rote or unconscious—are not regarded as the property of those who wield them. This epistemic apartheid exists despite the fact that the unconscious psyche or, as I call it, the “Savage Mind,” was, at the same time, repeatedly invoked by modernist designers in their efforts to formulate creative technologies, ones that tended increasingly towards digital modes of production. The history I examine in the dissertation reveals how modernist design has implicitly constituted itself as the process through which unconscious, magical creativity becomes consciously systematized and reified as technological, scientific forms of production. The dissertation is structured around four disciplinary paradigms of design, which collectively span the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries—industrial design, architecture, environmental design, and media arts—and asks how and why each of these sub- disciplines invoked “savage thought” to develop new methods of creativity. While it is well-known that Europe’s avant-gardes often imitated the visual forms of so-called primitive societies, there is scant scholarship accounting for how the alleged thought processes of an “originary” intelligence—gleaned from the theories of anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists—were translated into modernist design methods. Designers in fact hoped to discover in “primitive” and magical thought specific intellectual mechanisms for linking designed things to larger contexts of signification, a search that dovetailed with early endeavors in the field of Artificial Intelligence to devise computational languages and environments. The Savage Mind thus lies at the heart of new media technologies, even while intellectual property in those technologies remains the purview of a scientific elite. Table of Contents LIST OF IMAGES ................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................v DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION: Epistemic Apartheids ..............................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: The Industrial Arts...................................................................................30 CHAPTER TWO: Architecture ............................................................................................97 CHAPTER THREE: The Environment ..............................................................................148 CHAPTER FOUR: Media Arts ..........................................................................................214 CITATIONS .....................................................................................................................282 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................314 IMAGES ........................................................................................................................324 i LIST OF IMAGES CHAPTER ONE [1.1] Ambidexterity exercises at the Public Industrial Arts School of Philadelphia (Photographer unknown. J. Liberty Tadd, New Methods in Education, 1899). [1.2] Ambidexterity exercises at the Public Industrial Arts School of Philadelphia (Photographer unknown. J. Liberty Tadd, New Methods in Education, 1899). [1.3] Designing from a rubric of simple forms at the Public Industrial Arts School of Philadelphia (Photographer unknown. J. Liberty Tadd, New Methods in Education, 1899). [1.4] Ambidexterity exercises in Itten’s course at the Bauhaus (Photographer unknown. Johannes Itten, Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus, Otto Maier Verlag, 1963). [1.5] Drawing a figure eight. (Drawing by Johannes Itten, n.d., Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus). [1.6] Hieroglyphics indicative of natural semiotic forms. (Drawing by Johannes Itten, n.d., Tagebuch). [1.7] Different line types and textures. Vorkurs exercise (Artist unknown, Johannes Itten, Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus). [1.8] Old Master’s Study in grayscale grid at Itten’s course at the Bauhaus (Johannes Itten, Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus). [1.9] Students’ texture studies from Itten’s Vorkurs (Artist unknown, Johannes Itten, Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus). [1.10] Students’ texture studies from Moholy-Nagy’s Vorkurs (Artist unknown, Hans Wingler, Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago). [1.11] Diagram of Bauhaus curriculum. (Drawing by Walter Gropius, c. 1920). [1.12] Diagram of the evolution of the division of labor. (Drawing by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision, 1928). ii CHAPTER TWO [2.1] Haan with his aluminum ball. (Photographer unknown, n.d.). [2.2] Dogon granaries. (Photograph by Herman Haan, n.d.). [2.3] Frontispiece for Laugier’s Essai sur l’architecture (Artist unknown, 1753). [2.4] The architectural framework of Dogon’s taxonomic system of species. (Drawing by Marcel Griaule, Dieu d’eau: Entretiens avec Ogotemmêli, 1948). [2.5] An angel admonishes a would-be homeowner… (Manual by Yona Friedman, n.d.). [2. 6] “If each of us imagined his or her own house...” (Manual by Yona Friedman, n.d.). [2.7] “The material form of a collective infrastructure…” (Manual by Yona Friedman, n.d.). [2. 8] Architecture becoming “virtual”… (Drawing by Yona Friedman, poster for Documenta, 2001). [2.9] Friedman’s New Year’s greeting card reads “Tour de Babel a louer / to rent”. (Yona Friedman, 1979.) CHAPTER THREE [3.1] Advertisement for Aspen ski resort. (Graphic designer unknown, Walter Paepcke Papers c. 1948,). [3.2] Land art at Aspen Institute (Artist and Photographer: Herbert Bayer, Herbert Bayer: visuelle Kommunikation, Architekt, Malerei). [3.3] Men clearing the forest at Lambaréné. (Photograph by Albert Schweitzer, Zwischen Wasser und Urwald, 1926). [3.4] R.B. Fuller’s “World Energy Map” (Drawing by R.B. Fuller and Herbert Bayer for the World Geo-Graphic Atlas, Container Corporation of America, 1953). [3.5] The migration of races. (William Diller Matthew, Climate and Evolution, New York Academy of Science, 1939). [3.6] Isotherms and human history. (R.B. Fuller, Times Magazine, 1943). [3.7] The earth as atmosphere. (Newspaper clipping from Monroe Wheeler’s files for Airways to Peace). iii [3.8] The Nature of Atmosphere. (Herbert Bayer, photograph by Grottscho-Schleisner, Inc., New York’s Museum of Modern Art, 1943). [3.9] Bayer’s display strategy for Bauhaus exhibition (Herbert Bayer, Herbert Bayer:visuelle Kommunikation, Architekur, Malerei, 1967). [3.10] Outside-in globe (Herbert Bayer, Airways to Peace, New York’s Museum of Modern Art). [3.11] “How to Assemble the Globe” (R.B. Fuller, Times Magazine, 1943). [3.12] In contrast to those entrapped in the global sphere… (Photographer unknown, Whole Earth Catalog, March 1970). [3.13] Checkerboard pattern “to signal hope and despair” (Anon, reproduced in William Houseman, The Harlem River Yards: Bridging a South Bronx Community Need, 1978). [3.14] “Environmental Bridge” (Anon., reproduced in William Houseman, The Harlem River Yards: Bridging a South Bronx Community Need, 1978). CHAPTER FOUR [4.1] AGORA issue themed on agriculture and informatics (artist anon., AGORA, Vol. 1, issue 8 April-June, 1982). [4.2] Electronic circuitry and jungle vines (artist anon., AGORA, Vol. 1, issue 7, January-March, 1982). [4.3] Sugar interface (One Laptop Per Child website). [4.4] Promotional material (One Laptop Per Child website). iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Fittingly for a dissertation that undertakes a critique of intellectual property, the proceeding work could not have come into existence without the intellectual generosity of many people and the largesse of many institutions. It has been supported by fellowships from: the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (Carter Manny Award), the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the Center for Canadian Architecture (CCA), the Buell Center for American Architecture, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through its funding of Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and