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
Debbie Meinbresse
STS Program, MIT
617-452-2390
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