Timeline of Computer History →

Isamu Noguchi, My Arizona
fiberglass, plastic

1943-1977

via { the noguchi museum }:

LUNARS

Isamu Noguchi first envisioned illuminated sculpture in a model for a neon work in the late 1920s, and then in his 1933 design of a Musical Weathervane. But it was in the 1940s that he created his first sculptures of this kind, which he called Lunars. Made of magnesite enclosing light bulbs, these sculptures employed the biomorphic curves of Surrealism, and took the form of both reliefs and freestanding sculptures. In 1947-48 Noguchi created three dramatic lunar interiors, making the notion of illuminated sculpture fully environmental. Noguchi’s most well-known light sculptures, however, are his line of Akari lamps, fabricated of mulberry paper and bamboo. Beginning in 1951 Noguchi continued to design Akari models for the rest of his career.

image via { cityArts }

Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth" →

From Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology.
NewYork: Basic Books, 1963

+ from { Pfeiffer }

{ E.A.T. }

“In 1966, 10 New York artists worked with 30 engineers and scientists from the world renowned Bell Telephone Laboratories to create groundbreaking performances that incorporated new technology. Video projection, wireless sound transmission, and Doppler sonar had never been seen in the art of the 60s. The 9 Evenings DVD Series is an important documentation of the collaborations between the artists and engineers that produced innovative works using these emerging technologies. These performances still resonate today, as forerunners of the close and rapidly-evolving relationship between artists and technology.”
— Wikipedia

melisaki:

43rd Bombardment Group B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II’s route

1st airplane to circle the world, 26 Feb 1949

(via endlessforms)

Marshall McLuhan’s most widely known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)

Whole Earth Catalog, 1968 →

electronic version.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, 1971.

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The Whole Earth Catalog is an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds — things useful for a creative or self-sustainable lifestyle), the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves did not sell any of the products. Instead the vendors and their prices were listed right alongside with the items.

The title Whole Earth Catalog came from a previous project of Stewart Brand. In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, the first image of the “Whole Earth.” He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford-educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be.

Function
The Whole Earth Catalog functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the Catalog if it is deemed:

1. Useful as a tool
2. Relevant to independent education
3. High quality or low cost
4. Not already common knowledge
5. Easily available by mail

Catalog listings are continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of Catalog users and staff.

Purpose
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory — as via government, big business, formal education, church — has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing — power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by The Whole Earth Catalog.

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Image & text via { Textfield Inc. }

Profile of the Industrial Revolution, Buckminster Fuller, 1946.