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.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
T.H.E. University of Chicago Press
ISBN-13
9780226034164
eBay Product ID (ePID)
213380047
Product Key Features
Author
Adelheid Voskuhl
Publication Name
Androids in the Enlightenment-Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
Engineering & Technology, Science
Publication Year
2015
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
296 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
235 mm
Item Width
151 mm
Item Weight
446 g
Additional Product Features
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
Title_Author
Adelheid Voskuhl
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