STS Brown Bag Talk - Tuesday, November 18th
Soviet Cybernetics, Design, and Control-Rooms
Margareta Tillberg
Humboldt University; visiting researcher, the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science, Berlin
12:00 noon - 1:30 pm, MIT, E51-275
Feel free to bring your lunch
Abstract:
The All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Technical Aesthetics
was founded in Moscow in 1962 to invent new design methods by
exploring the relationships
among science, technology, and art. Artists, engineers, architects,
mathematicians, physiologists and economists participated in
multi-disciplinary research groups at the Institute. Among the
projects carried out at the Institute was the design of control
rooms for various Soviet enterprises, including nuclear power
plants. The visual and organizational design of these spaces
involved complex studies by specialists in ergonomics, engineering
psychology, cybernetics, and art. This paper will discuss specific
examples of control room design in a wider context of Soviet
attitudes toward industrial design.
Bio:
Dr. Margareta Tillberg is a research associate in the Department of
History of Science and Technology, Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, and a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for
the History of Science in Berlin. She is the author of Coloured
Universe and the Russian Avant-Garde. Matiushin on Colour Vision in
Stalin's Russia (Stockholm, 2003). Her current project at the MPI,
"Observer and Observed in Soviet State Design Institutes,
1960s-1990s," is part of the MPI program, "The History of Scientific
Observation" (see
http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/projects/DeptII_Tillberg-ObservationSovietStateDesign/index_html
).
Note: a schedule of events for the upcoming week is posted on the
STS website: http://web.mit.edu/sts
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