Languages of Art and Languages of Science

Abstract

At the turn of the 19th century, new inventions and technologies, such as the railways, the internal combustion engine, the motor car, and the airplane began to change human visual experiences. Karl Benz's Motorwagen was launched in 1886, and the Ford Model T car began to be made in 1908. The Wright brothers flew their airplane in 1903, and Louis Bleriot made his air journey from Calais to Dover in 1909. Riding the fast-moving machines provided previously unknown views, such as the blurred perspective seen from a speeding car. Furthermore, photography, and later film, enabled analysis of serial images. The surroundings in cities also changed dramatically, becoming man-made to a greater extent—to mention only the impact of gas and then electric lighting. A striking example of the new architectural possibilities was the iron structure of the Eiffel tower, built in 1889 for the Paris World's Fair Exhibition. Perhaps symbolically, its designer, Gustave Eiffel, was an engineer, not an architect 1. There also were changes in the intellectual framework for perceiving the world. From 1905 to 1911 Albert Einstein introduced the theory of relativity, which shook the “fixed” world of Newtonian physics. Henri Bergson's philosophy of human experience, which emphasized process and change, followed similar lines. Between 1900 and the beginning of the First World War in …