Here is a railway safety poster by Leonard Cusden. I’ve posted before about Leonard Cusden and safety posters…just google, bagdcontext and cusden. This poster is from before 1940; so, it’s quite early for this kind of thing.
Also, you can look on my poster blog to find many more, non-railway, safety images
http://paulsposterproject.rennart.co.uk/
On an other note, I recently posted about Jerry Deller’s film, English Magic (2013). It’s terrific and well worth watching…my post made a connection between Deller’s film and an historic, and mainly British, strand of film-making. Quite a number of the films I mentioned made use of the railway…I’ve begun to think about film-time and railway-time…interesting!
I’ve recently been posting, on my other blog, about the cultural impact of speed…
I used the term machine-ensemble, in those posts and below, to describe the context of what I was describing. It turns out that the term is not widely known, and I have been asked to explain it. So, here goes…
The machine-ensemble is a term, first coined by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, in relation to the 19C railway system. The term recognises the scale, scope and speed of machine integration so that the systemic and mechanical workings of the whole are given expression through this term. As the term suggests, it’s a group of connected machines of different sorts. The whole thing is a network system that becomes a meta-machine.
You can get a clear sense of what Schivelbusch means by looking at the integrated railway timetables for Europe. The parts all work in relation to each other.
One way of thinking about this, is to imagine an enormous train set…where all the parts move in relation to each other…and where everyone and everything arrives safely. Just by thinking about this, you can see how complex and sophisticated such a system would have to be. It’s the co-ordination that turns it into an ensemble. In practical terms, things have to be in the right place at the right time.
Actually, there are a number of examples of this kind of railway layout as system design. The film, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), also provides a compelling, if slightly dystopian, vision of the modern machine-ensemble. Otherwise, you can look at the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany. This is the world’s largest model railway!
Nowadays, it’s not just trains though; it’s trains, boats, planes and cars. Each moving as part of a huge and co-ordinated ensemble. Don’t forget that all the goods and services that are provided also feed into this. The internet-of-things is the next step of this co-ordinated and systemic development.
How we engage (safely) with the machine-ensemble is a matter of public health…requiring: rules, discipline, courtesy and education.
A number of interesting ideas flow form these observations….
The first is that the machine-ensemble concept develops an ealier idea of the human body as a form of precise clockwork…and applies the same form of mechanical precision across a much greater field…observation and logic reveal cause-and-effect in terms of consistent and general rules.
The second idea is that the speed of the machine ensemble is not constant…it’s accelerating. We can trace the acceleration of modern life through stages of foot, horse, railway, and internal combustion. Later, there are jet powered, solid-state and digital stages. Each of these technologies provides the basis for a step-change, or quantum advance, in the speed of everything.
The machine-ensemble isn’t just accelerating though; it’s getting bigger… Scale and speed combine as an expression of power. Needless to say, when big automated machines are moving it’s best to stay out of the way. That’s where safety issues come in.
The idea of safety is important because it protects us and keeps the ensemble going. Like the city, the machine-ensemble is never allowed to stop.
The machine-ensemble also devolves from the factory organisation that provided for the great standardisation – that’s Babbage, and Whitworth and Ford. The organisational framework of Ford’s production line evolved from an economic logic of production and became a management theory of evidence-based scientific management and, later, of data-crunching operational research…
The integration of elements and the automation of function that is implicit in the machine-ensemble change the way we see the world…it’s the matrix; but in mechanical form.
The computer pioneer, Jon von Neumann, identified artificial intelligence as depending on the possibility of a self-replicating automata. When asked what these machines might look like; he pointed to the people around the table! We became the prototype.
I mentioned, earlier, about how the the speed of the machine-ensemble changes the way we see the world. What I mean is that we needed new kinds of image culture to represent that world as we experience it. The modern poster, distinguished by colour, scale, and the integration of word and image, provided for a form of communication that could be read at distance, at a glance and whilst moving. But, the speed of the machine-ensemble also changed painting, film, literature and music!
All of the things that I’ve described, above, combine to impact on the psychological formation of modern subjectivity. In cognitive terms, human beings are hard-wired to move towards what they recognise as familiar…so the visual representations of modern life provide for a powerful normative experience of what to expect when you leave the house!
These images provide the signs of prompt and command that train us, according to behaviourism, to act in specific and prescribed ways. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we are conditioned to act according to the rules and reward of the machine-ensemble.
The objects and signs of modernity prompt us to act in ways that optimise the system…first we make our tools (machines and systems) and then they make us.
Nowadays, the big-data in the system is visually expressed as a kind of flow…you can see this in the architecture of Zaha Hadid, and on a blog that I found about footwear design…
Actually, it’s not that surprising to find that footwear and the machine-ensemble are connected…it’s all about movement and speed!
The BBC are showing a classic Hitchcock film on Christmas day evening…It’s The Lady Vanishes (1938). I’ve posted before about Hitchcock, cinema and trains…here’s an edited text that combines bits of all these old posts.
Happy holidays to you all.
Alfred Hitchcock was one of the great film directors of the 20C.
He was born in England and enjoyed success at home and in America. Hitchcock’s career began in the silent-era and continued until the 1970s. His professional career also included a stay in Berlin, working at the UFA studios. This short, but important, period introduced Hitchcock to the potential of expressionistic feeling in film.
The Lady Vanishes (1938) comes from the end of Hitchcock’s “English” period. These black-and-white films were made in the 1930s and explore some of the ideas that Hitchcock had discovered in Berlin during the 1920s. The English films describe these psychological themes within the context of a more structured, not to say repressed, society.
The story is a modern (20C) reworking of the classic “vanishing hotel room” trick. The original version is a late 19C story about what happens when the usual reference points of civilised society are turned on their heads. Circumstances, paranoia (anxiety), and feeling, combine to reveal the social construction of reality, and the dark consensus of social conformity.
The film is in three parts; the opening and scene setting…in which the protagonists are introduced and an element of time pressure is introduced; the train journey – in which the lady vanishes and a search begins; and part three, the conclusion in which all is revealed and everyone live happily thereafter…
The link between cinema and psychoanalysis is well established. It’s enshrined in a whole body of theoretical work that devolves from the obvious association between the cinematic experience with dreams and with voyeurism. The darkness of the cinema and the flickering experience of the film also correspond to our notions of memory and dreaming – both important aspects of the psychoanalytical interpretation of the unconscious. The railway train also provides a distanced, and voyeuristic, platform for observation of the world.
By placing the action of the film on a train, the story is given an extra dimension of suspense. We know that speed and time are conspiring to bring the story to a climax. The established punctuality of railway services provids a readily understandable timeframe against which the action of the film can be played out. The time-pressure implicit in this sense of an unalterable timetable is a most effective device in creating a feeling of excitement, suspense and anxiety as good-and-bad play out along the tracks. Lastly, the speeding train gives the protagonists, and the audience, a powerful sense of unstoppable destiny. Obviously and because the train is roaring along the tracks, there is no escape from this destiny.
Hitchcock used the image of the steam locomotive in the central dream sequence of the Lady Vanishes. The visual association between train and dream makes the psychoanalytical association of images explicit.
Furthermore, the train projects its own systemic organisation onto the world – machinery, time, and motion, are integrated into a single coherent experience. Indeed, it is this specific experience of being “on track,” that is both comforting and disconcerting at the same time. The train passenger abandons the usual autonomy of identity, in favour of being driven… There’s a powerful sense of the train, and system, being unstoppable. That’s terrifying, and exciting.
At the same time, the train (especially the luxury trans-Eurpean express) is a place where social conventions are observed in their most minute detail, and are a little bit relaxed. There’s definitely a holiday mood.
For Hitchcock the train was also entirely practical. It was, first of all, widely familiar to all of his audience. Not so the car in 1935! It then had the great advantage of containing the action of the film. This constraint provided a creative challenge to Hitchcock at the same time as providing reassurance to the financial administrators of the production.
Not only did the train contain the action of the film, it provided a scenic and cinematic backdrop through the train window. The slightly detached observation of the world, facilitated through the train window, was understood as analogous to the sensation of dreaming.
Hitchcock exploited the voyeuristic potential of both film and train. The erotic potential associated with Hitchcock’s exploration of suspense was heightened by the director’s use of cool, elegant and blond-tinted actresses, chosen as lady travellers.
As Freud’s ideas gained popular currency, the film experience became increasingly understood as psychologically contiguous to voyeurism. The voyeuristic observer, hidden or otherwise, and marked with the obsessive-compulsive personality associated with sexual dysfunction, became a staple, not just for Hitchcock, but for the whole of cinema.
Cinema had been born on the station platform… The Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat (1896), a short film by the Lumiere brothers, caused a sensation. Audiences jumped from their seats as the train entered the station. Later, the railway tracks became associated with the villainy of damsels in distress. Indeed, the subconscious associations between train travel, anxiety and desire were always being emphasised by Hitchcock.
Our own feelings towards trains are equivocal. We appreciate the convenience of this form of transport. But we recall, through the long history of accident and fatality that this machine-ensemble can be brutal. Suicide victims acknowledge this practicality and symbolism in their widespread use of railway platforms and bridges. The rich Freudian potential of all of these meanings was expertly used by Hitchcock, the master of suspense.
There’s also a lovely gag throughout the film about two “little Englanders,” travelling through Europe, whose main interest is the test match score. The whole world is about to go up in flames… and they are worrying about cricket!
My new issue of eye, the international review of graphic design, arrived today. Imagine my surprise and delight to discover this amazing gatefold of a Wrigley billboard design by Otis and Dorothy Shepard from 1937…the airbrush and streamlining of the train work brilliantly together to create a very dramatic effect.
Mid-century American poster design seems to have been directed towards these large-scale billboard formats. I know there are a couple of these kinds of design by A M Cassandre, the Russian/French poster genius, from when he worked in the USA.
There’s a new book about the Shepards…forgotten masters of American graphic design…Brilliant.
This is the cover from the new eye, No89…Amazingly, I have a complete run of this magazine. I’ve even written for it a few times. I’m proud to be associated with this publication, as both subscriber and contributor. Long may they continue.
My friend and colleague, Dave Hendley, sent this over…lovely and atmospheric. I especially like the curve of the rails and the light on them. The smoke and telegraph wires add vertical drama too.
Here’s a poster image of BRs famous new identity from the mid1960s…it still looks pretty good now. The identities associated with the privatisation of the railway have been pretty poor – except that they provide plenty of opportunity for corporate identity designers!
This marks the end of a certain kind of design that emerged after WW2. This used materials and technology to provide solutions…but, within the context of a consumer-driven economy, it was difficult to balance design sophistication with planned obsolescence. Once the BR identity was established, there was nowhere to go with it. It became something that lay across the train tracks.
There’s a copy of the original identity manual on display in the studio just now.
Thought for the day
Maybe the world is better when it is filled with ephemeral junk…or the prison of perfection.
Here’s a photograph by Walker Evans. It shows a small railway station, out in the sticks.
Evans was a photographer associated with the Farm Security Administration. During the 1930s, the FSA documented the lives of ordinary Americans working in the agricultural sector.
I recently posted a cover design, with box-car, from the US business magazine, Fortune. Here are some more railway themed covers…
Fortune was a remarkable publication. It was expertly art-directed and always had great cover designs. Often, these designs were by modernist graphic designers…from America and Europe.
Quite apart from the intrinsic interest of railway images; these covers chart a progression from illustration through to graphic design, via commercial art and photography.
