Browse Hierarchy STA7003: Technological Aesthetics: Art, Power, and Cold War Divides

This module crosses the East-West divides of the Cold War era to offer an interdisciplinary exploration of the major approaches to the question of technology and its aesthetic dimensions. Case studies and visual analyses will include discussions of the human, the post-human and the cyborg across the Cold War frontiers, the utopian urbanism and science fiction in the Soviet Union, the debate over NASA's first satellite image of the Earth, the involvement of the British cyberneticist Stafford Beer in the Chilean project Cybersyn, Qian Xuesen's project of engineering cybernetics in the Cold War environment and the first AI systems in the USSR and the US. In covering these diverse materials, the module fosters visual fluency and cultural competence in assessing the continuing impact of Cold War dynamics on contemporary technological narratives.