Correlating the Body with the Machine

research thesis
supervisor:
Kostas Daflos,

Assistant Professor NTUA Scool of

Architecture

Vanda Chalyvopoulou,

Assistant Professor at TEI of Athens

This essay attempts to reflect on a comparison commonly used in

daily language between human actions and mechanic attributes:
I acted automatically. If we define architecture as the design process
of space which receives individual and social desires, and through
which the human body and notion is effectively affected, the research
on the affinity between the human body and the machine can be seen
to acquire importance. Therefore, the subject of this essay is the correlation of the human body and the machine, literal or not, as it was
expressed in artistic practices and everyday body practices, during
the first decades of the 20th century. The aim of this research is to
detect the concepts that follow this affinity and the way they shape
the body, individual or collective.

abstract

1. Koss, Juliet, Bauhaus: Theater of Human

Dolls, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 85, No. 4 (Dec.,
2003), ed. College Art Association, p. 731
2. Foster, Hal, Prosthetic Gods, Cambridge,
London: ed. The MIT Press, 2004, p.171

The first chapter of the essay refers to the work of artists from the field
of visual arts and theater. At first, it is attempted to analyse the work of
Futurist Fillipo Marinetti and Vorticist Wyndham Lewis, during the First
World War. Marinetti and Lewis depict the human body in relatively different ways, however they both claim that it should be united with the machine for the bodily senses to reach new qualities. Consequently, the work
of Dadaist Max Ernst is examined, during the same historic period. His
collages not only depict a machine body but also an automatized artistic
process through which they are produced. Following the reference to the
work of these visual artists, the correlation of the body with the machine
is researched in the field of theater, particularly in the work of Naturalist Konsantin Stanislavsky, Constructivist Vesvold Meyerhold and Oscar
Schlemmer from the Bauhaus movement. Stanislavsky who was the first
who tried to systematize the actors education, believed that the actor was
a natural machine. His teaching method consists of body exercises which,
through intensive repetition, would lead the actor to true feelings during
performance. Meyerholds Biomechanics method reduced the actors body
movements to basic, finite parts, so that the actor would be able to consciously control every one of them. Finally, Oscar Schlemmer perceives the
human body as an assemblage of mechanic relations. In his productions
at the theater of the Bauhaus, he focused on the design of the performers
costumes which drastically affected their movement.

1.

2.

Modernity is typically defined as the pasttraditional, past-Middle Age historical period, which
is characterized by the transition from feudalism to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, rationalization, national/state organization
and the analogous form of institutionalized supervision. (Barker 2005, 444). Particularly, this
historic era is periodized into three conventional phases, Early modernity (15001789), Classical modernity (17891900) and Late modernity
(19001989). http://en.wikipedia.org
1

3. Pol Vault, 1870, Etienne-Jules Marey

4. Study of a man walking, 1870,
by Etienne-Jules Marey

The second chapter of the essay concerns the affinity of the body and the
machine, literal or not, in the field of everyday body practices. The purpose
of this chapter is to explore the specific historic and social frame in which
the for mentioned tendency in the arts was developed. At first, a determinate description of modernity1 , is attempted. The application of scientific
method to fields other than the disciplines of science is very characteristic
of this period. Particularly, Frederick Taylors method of scientific management of workers movements during work is a prime example. At the
same time, significant progress is made in technological inventions that
record body movement in relation to time, like Etien-Jules Mareys chronophotographic gun. Consequently, we question this scientific management of the body in a larger frame, in every day body practices. According
to Marcel Mauss (1934), the ways we use our body in everyday practices,
like walking or eating, consist of body techniques which are predefined
by society. The means that conduct these techniques to the body, according to Nobert Elias (1939), differ through the ages and, particularly, they
are affected by changes in societys structure and technological equipment.
Lastly, in research of a more detailed description on how technology affects
body techniques and body perception we approach Katherine Hayles analysis on body knowledge and contemporary digital technologies.
The last chapter of the essay concerns the way the for mentioned mechanic
management of the body affects public space. In research of this relation,
we appeal to Hannah Arendts (1958) philosophical analysis on human
condition.

3.

4.

In conclusion, it is comprehended that a historical period, which is characterized by industrialization and scientific progress, had a great impact in
the contemporary artistic movements. The artists that were analyzed above
depicted those significant changes through a representation or perception
of the human body as a machine, either through a utopia or a dystopia
of the body. According to the utopian approach, the human body should
adopt automatic reflexes in order to be protected from the outer world, or
to handle its inner impulses. On the contrary, according to the dystopian
approach, this mechanic body has lost its uniqueness. Furthermore, it is
appreciated that the mechanic management of the body not only was attempted not only in arts, but also in everyday practices. The human body
is adopted in socially specified kinetic assemblages, which differentiate
through time. This fact shapes a faceless public space in which bodies interact with each other by repeating those kinetic prototypes. Finally, it is
comprehended that in this kind of public shape, which lacks personal action, the adopting mechanism is shifted in an illusionary way to the very
inanimate prototype.