<TITLE: Torus/Ester Conference: On the Scenes of Science 2
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: humanities
DISCIPLINE: history of science & technology
EVENT TYPE: conference presentation
FILE ID: CPRE03E
NOTES: continuation of and continued in CDIS03B (CDIS03A and CPRE03A-D are part of the same conference)

RECORDING DURATION: 33 min 4 sec

RECORDING DATE: 15.11.2003

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: unknown

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 4

S3: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: unknown

S4: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: female; AGE: 51-over

S7: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Swedish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S10: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: junior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50>


<S4> and [so on] </S4>
<S7> [thank] you very much yes i will indeed er not talk about these er older projects but er a new a new deal of research several of you in the room are urban historians or have strong interest in urban structures this is er for me relatively new field which er i have (dominantly) increasingly grown in- interest the last years in i will today try to it will be the talk will be quite different from the talk yesterday today i will if not er more to this talking out of a project that i've been i've been coordinating the last few years so on an e- european level so in in a way it will i will end up showing you some of the things we have we have er achieved within within this project up till now and what the the nearest future will bring (xx) but in order not to bore you with only this this er more er er , research policy oriented er material i will start by picking up a point which i made yesterday yesterday and try to show what's good in this (theme) in a lecture background of this e- EU project financed by the european science foundation and yesterday i tried to argue that that that er cultural approach to the history of technology will bring us new insight will will will enable us to understand the developments in user tech- <BAD SOUND QUALITY> on the new insights and new angles and i think or what i try to do in this in this project is to er use this this kind of methodology which i've also been using er <NAME S4> mentioned some of the works done earlier on other areas of technology what i will would do have to try to do the last years is to find that methodology for the city urban structure in the city it's erm and convinced that i think also of european group has shown this that urban historians and historians of technology not only do they have do we share share no- not only on the the sort of overlaps in the fields of studies we do i mean of course study the his- the city (xx) technology but also the way that we can approach developments of cities and the developments of urban technologies erm or in principle to be compatible to the challenge so i'll start with a <USING POWERPOINT, P:05> does it work , yeah , too far <FINISH USING POWERPOINT> so i wanted to start with the quotations to show you the the methodological er way of we go about doing this (in 1913) in the middle of the 1890s the town was one of the first in germany that designed a publically owned , and managed elect- electric tram network in all other areas of modern town management it has proven its progressive character be it in the area of industry or social life with those noble achievements town began construction of a first class water supply and sewage system erection of its slaughter house an electric power plant and the gas works as well as the building of an imposing swimming hall so i find this this quotation remarkable it's it's a it's er formulated by the town mayor in the town where i presently work in darmstadt a middle sized german town and this is a the the picture that the mayor wants to give to to er the message he wants to convey to the world about this town er what is i think (xx) interesting from a history history of technology point of view is what he here chooses to focus on i mean and i don't think a a mayor today or or a city could could do public relations for a town for the er in the today (we can express this) point to the technological achievements (xx) water supplies and sewage system these are things today which we consider consider er second nature and (at large large) a thing that we sort of we're particularly proud of , and what so the the point here is take this point of departure in studying the way that cities have been represented though the very central in also in a in a (xx) book which i write together with with a doctoral student of mine it's very central here is the word ss- the concept representation (xx) also er <NAME> yesterday also mentioned representation as as a central concept for the cultural and hist- history of technology of cultural erm this case urban urban (history) erm please also notice which is perhaps less less the er striking but still important i think the connection with the word modernity which is (xx) the word modern the modern town after that all these things that i mention here <P:20> we have coffee now or in the in the after i finish </S7>
<S4> i don't know , after this i think then we will have break before [(xx)] </S4>
<S7> [then] (the point was that) so to speak er the connection (of this study) between modern on the one and slaughter houses , electric plants gas works trams so this is sort of our our point of departure how come that at the turn of the century already these aren't to take another quote which is not here from the same text this these are called they're self representation of the city cultural achievements , so and the same city also at this time and the town prouded them pri- prouded itself of prided itself of being an artists' town the the the grand duke invited several leading leading er artists at the turn of the century and arranged for this still today for an artist village in darmstadt and in the several visitation this was of course also a cultural achievement er and but the interesting thing is that this achievement this (xx) exactly the same level as the technical the technological achievements of the town and also these are all cultural achievements so that is er this is one way and representing the city's (xx) the quotation is taken from this monograph of german cities which is a very nice source er most middle and larger cities in germany used to each town produced one monograph in the first decades of the (xx) century so erm so er the this way of this is sort of the the point of entrance to to our work we were interested in in they the ways that technologies are loaded with meanings and how these meanings are used perhaps mhm instrumentalised i mean this this quotation it's s- obviously very very intentional use of of the terms cultural and and modern of course it it's not always that intentional not always always conscious the way that these connections are being made and but nevertheless they are i think really important in understanding the modernisation of urban life and its the the achievements of er as we heard yesterday (xx) once more the achievements of municipal socialists in in so many cities of course not only in german cities in the end of the 19th and the early 20th century of course had a very a a (xx) background town towns were filthy there wasn't enough water et cetera but the the the the point here is not to say that that there were not very concrete mate- material health and other problems like health problems the the point is here to say that that is not the whole story i tried to say yesterday about the aut- automobile economic erm or technical factors is not the whole story that they're important part of the story is that these technologies were were installed also for reasons of of a of a representation in the in the sense that er er you presenting yourself to the the outside world also in darmstadt in the in the eight 1880s (when) the grand duke installed 3,000 electric light bulbs in this theatre it was er the 60 per cent of the power the first power plant was was er serve that theatre erm of course the theatre was not in er was centre piece centre means of representing this city or creating a represent to the aura in this city so erm and and these places (xx) that the germans been used in in a small study but i meant otherwise erm on to the peter schott has talked about the image policies of of several of some german cities and what we saw in the last (xx) was of course very conscious way of of er creating an image of of towns images that which was still still are very important to today just in in brackets darmstadt shrouds itself to be city of of science scientific city <FOREIGN> wissenschaft stadt </FOREIGN> and er and they they love to use this term er in all over and over again , and (still further) erm (xx) here here is that also that this is this kind of self representation erm , it goes on an analysis about that goes only just it only goes that far i mean it it's not particularly surprising that people tried to put their own city in a positive light (xx) years to follow what happens to these pictures er they're taken up by others and who will try as far as possible in this part er just to do this and what do we know for example this quotation that the urban cities discovered by e- experts i mentioned yesterday briefly erm when we discussed <NAME> 's paper that in the in the fact not now particularly darmstadt but a- the the german model , which they they themselves were very proud of was also regarded very positively in united in the united states to the american (historical framework) so this is just to , give you an idea of what kind of of images to (give you) but we try also to deal on another level with another kind of of re- representations and er to what it this is this is part of an an other study which i also also did together with my graduate student and now we've started to getting into , more closer to what i what i er wa- was a title of the talk today er called the narratives of the european city and of of this self representation is one of the one ka- kind kind of a narrative the the way that the stories that city authorities wanted to create of themselves the stories that american urban planners wanted to to tell about german cities in order to influence the local policies in their in their home home country another way of another kind of narrative and here , there are a large number i can only sketch a couple of them here <COUGH> another kind of and other kinds of narratives are created by completely other other kinds of people er in this case er artists er yesterday we showed showed a film film clip film makers also create narratives about cities er er this is in a way could be could be er described as a kind of decadence city you are er , (probably) two prostitutes and this is one very common theme in artistic representation of of cities er here i admittedly technology's not the at the forefront erm er and also of course in in in novels if political speeches that the decadent character of the modern cities often often er discussed another narrative is the what we call the overwhelming city the where the ss- the city life becoming this is a common theme among a lot of artists writers the city really er er they say in germany <FOREIGN> molch </FOREIGN> it's a er kind of creature that that becomes for the individual almost impossible to to er take up it becomes more or less impossible to survive in the urban jungle , er and here is another our way of analysing these kinds of pictures and and er and er novels is to use it er er because of black narrative try to show what is really what kind of message these people really try to convey more positive image , is this (posit-) positive or or (xx) look at it quite a long time (xx) is a er is a futurist painter the town i- is grown here of course one could interpret it negatively but the that erm the way at least that the artist orients interpretative (xx) painting is rather that it's a it's the power it's the the the the really the explosive in a positive sense explosive power of the expanding city which is here being described the ss- the city as as a dynamic creature not a dangerous creature , and this could of course go on but i will not er i have some german quotes because i didn't have , er , i just pointed to some of the (xx) and noise (xx) sort of this shows in order not to take or credit to get the picture that all art is a negative futurist i mean this is a very common , common kind of position that that very many artists and writers are ambivalent and also something which which in these these classic work of town and cities perceived as (complex but) the ambivalence of the city is is very (xx) on the other hand you have you have the <COUGH> the the noise of the city of the technol- technologic created when you look at (read this word) right this picture he's lied in his bed and he the noise from the street is so loud that he has the feeling that tram is going through his body that on the other hand at the same time is beautiful it's a it's like a it's like a fairy tale to this er double character which i think is very it it's a kind of of a story line that goes through analyses of cities perhaps even today , so er what some of the narratives that we have , more or less i wouldn't say ideal typically but er some of the narratives that we have sort of distilled out of the period that we've studied are are these , now i take now i come to to the project of the this european network and the way i can see this this network the way that i would would be interested to go about studying the the relationship between urban technologies and urban developments or try to use these narratives as the point of of de-departure because in all of these all of these in all all of these narratives carry a mixture of technological no- and non-technological factors for example <COUGH> , the the the a- (atlas) city or then perhaps even better the the monotonous city on the one hand the monotony of the (xx) modern modern city are by ss- by several artists described described er in without any reference to technologies or buildings as a service to serss- ss- social social kind of phenomenon of the of the er , er in many er people who moved to the cities become become isolated get depression depressive for sitting there er in their human attic or basement room or in the in their cheap attic apartments <COUGH> erm , and and complain about , for example the the monotonous character of urban modern life a- and and this is also kind of metaphor or picture which you which also has po- potential as also to to to technological side especially to bring in architectural ss- struc- structures as a subject and become criticism which we find o- over and over also in the in the literature so my my idea was to sort of use the the metaphors or the narratives as the glue between urban historians and historians of technology and that has that worked for a while in the beginning of what we er did was to set up a network consisting of of a of a 12 15 people under wh- as a sub er sub theme under this project i don't know how many of you are familiar with the with this project <NAME NS13> is is actively taking part in another erm another group under this heading i don't know if , anybody else in the room has any direct connections </S7>
<S10> <NAME> has been involved (xx) mobility history (xx) </S10>
<S7> in which </S7>
<S10> mobility [history] </S10>
<S7> [mobility] okay mhm </S7>
<S3> and er i have been discussing tom leeds and miriam welling about the university history </S3>
<S7> okay er okay so <COUGH> then i don't have to but er for those who you are you are not fa- familiar i recommend we have a look at this this homepage and this this (xx) as i said a european network consisting all and all about of about 150 to 200 researchers has been going on for about three years now and was originally divided in these ten so-called themes i don't know if you can read it there at the back , er , the ones that <NAME> was mentioning were mentioning is the , european mobility there er a network in europe also communication and a network that i have been er been coordinating is this one on narratives of the european city if you're interested in other topics i i recommend that we go on to this homepage and we can get more information i will now tell you a bit more about , ou- our roots this is the way the first page looks like there is a discuss- a description of this this er some of the background which i now described (although i have) today i i chose to to take a concrete example there's a big discussion about the the concept of narrative and ss- out of this we we started out by by dividing ss- studies of the european city in the 20th century along er the the the participating researchers and this was sort of one of the er one of the our first ways to sort of get a handle on this i mean it's a very co- complicated pro- process we have re- representatives from about ten countries about 15 people and we have theoretically an <SIC> innumerous </SIC> number of possible topics and sort of use this kind of erm mixture of narrative and and the and subject oriented er , well erm er grid to to er to talk to some different topics , erm i won't read all this this now doesn't make make sense i show the paper on another (xx) these are the people that have been active and are still active as you can see from there's also some americans taking taking part er that is no no problem and that the european net- network er , this is er i mean especially in this area of history of technology united states is very important as a as a as a as erm area which wi- with which we can compare make comparisons also er persons like dario gaggio or or er tom misa are also working on european topics <COUGH> , that is a normal from for finland that a <COUGH> , and what we did was we we we er conceived this work in three steps and ha- have until now made been able to complete two of these steps the first step , this see here the the first step and that was put on the net erm almost two years ago is an annotated bibliography of recent literature in this field , er that was the the first task we set ourselves every of each person in in the group chose from his language area the most important works that had been published the last about 20 years and wrote for each work a small annotation like three to ten lines describing the work and that was divided , er like this not not along narrative lines but along along er <SIC> sectorial </SIC> lines and if you're interested in in a topic you can click on that and up comes something like this if you click on environment water and waste you get a list of of of what we have considered important literature and for each title you get a small english description (xx) and i hope that this is useful i have no idea how exactly @how many people@ have visited this but at least it's available so that was the first thing we did create an annotated bibliography and who organised two year to we had we had one year ago or a half year ago a a er conference in in darmstadt transforming spaces where several of the people participating in the in er the network also public er presented papers er that has i- in the mean time been published electronically on on er er my homepage or our homepage in in darmstadt and ss- some of the people this is not only about cities this is about different about the concept of space and and er there were other several several thoughts also on urban spaces if you're interested this is now available on on on the net ta- talk a lot of the (referred) technology studies of the logical meaning with the the science of the studies space , and tha- that was the first part the second task we set ourselves was to to produce to produce erm literature reviews and er you have most of you (well i don't know if you) but all of you have at least been been ss- asked to have a look at this publication , which erm i put on the net a couple of months months ago the urban machine recent lit- literature on european cities in the 20th century which consists of an number of essay review for dif- different topics and the the idea behind this this this kind of essay review or the rationale for doing this this task was to er see wha- what has been done in this area in the case of urban history and history of technology un- until now and more importantly where are the the holes in the in the present literature in which direction should or could future research be going and er i think that comes out pretty well in it's not in most of the of the papers within this electronic publication erm and there's it's it's (xx) chicago on tom misa's ho- homepage erm and on that homepage we can also we can't get into this right now because this is is still er work in progress that is the last and and third task we've set ourselves that is to to to write sort of (figure to) real book and er collection of essays and i cannot pro- i cannot yet promise that that will come through i i hope so and i believe it will come through we have come pretty far in in in er we had a meeting in new york last march and we will discuss the final chapters the coming march in budapest so this is so this is a very tentative outline of of the coming book consisting of four parts the title of the book is urban machinery defining and designing european cities 1850 to 2000 here you can see this is sort of the titles that attempt to bring out this double sided -ness of representation and constructions , er well there there is one one section of the book will deal with representation and reality helke's chapter on visions tom misa has a chapter on on the so co- so-called modern city i am with a doctoral student harold stippak writing er where the the first quote i i've showed you came from from that that chapter er my colleague in darmstadt toyka-seid is writing on on er how the european city was transformed in into south east asia , second part of the book will will deal with , (finding) prof- prophesies in sweden traffic planning in (xx) con- context for example the importance of the mhm british the channel plan in the se- 60s and 70s er the american dario gaggio has a book on book of (fortress) city the third part of the book , will deal with nations and ne- networks one one piece on on er dutch streets one on the gas networks in spain one on energy systems in a in a in a european comparative european perspective and one on the rhein which is er very interesting river cities and group of figurations will be be sort of following the the the rhein and and erm er discussing for the rhein as not only as a technical network but also as a as a piece of nature which is slowly but surely turned into a piece of technology and on the last part of the book which erm , will will be dealing with structures and sites erm discussion from italy writing writing on consumption and tourism mikkel thomassen from norway and industrial industrial cities in in in norway and the eastern eastern cont- eastern european countries martina hessler er on er taking up the discussion on innovative milieus for the same kind of dis- discourse which (xx) yesterday (xx) so but as i said i can't promise that this book will come through we have erm but all these people have sort of half ready manuscripts at this point in time and and er if you are able to come to budapest in the middle march next year er they are we are this is a this is a comprehensible (xx) of europe all these tens ten network these ten themes which i showed (you) on on er the er earlier slides all these ten themes will come together and discuss present their different er re- results of their work also people who have until now not been part of the network have been invited to to present paper papers erm and my little group will er on the first day of the conference have have a have also s- smaller workshop where we will be dis- discussing the fut- future of this book so that's a good note to end on i hope to see you in budapest <S4> mhm </S4> thank you </S7>
