From Imaginations to Innovations: How Artists' Visions Shaped Our Future Throughout History
Artists are great visionaries, and their visions help us experience our world differently- transporting us to new places and shifting our perspectives through their fantastic imaginations. When we think of innovation, we often associate it with technology. Our culture and history have been undervaluing and overlooking the role of artists as innovators. Other professionals underutilize creativity as it's an attribution of the artist. Can innovation occur without imagination? Creativity with consistent actions and efforts, in fact, co-exists with innovation and fuels it. Artists have created a vision for our future throughout history, and their creativity fueled the most outstanding human technological achievements.
Throughout the centuries, humans have had the innate desire and fascinations with flight. The earliest evidence of the flight was allegorized in ancient Greek and Roman mythology, where Icarus gained flight with wings made out of wax and came to an end when he flew too close to the sun. Renowned for Mona Lisa, Salvator Mundi, and The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci was also an engineer and inventor. Discovered after his death, his notebooks filled with mechanical sketches shed light on some of the great inventions we know of today. Written backward, yet far ahead of his time, da Vinci's drawings gave rise to the evolution of airplanes, helicopters, gliders, and parachutes, which came to realization 300 years after his death.
Leonardo da Vinci. A sketch from the Codex on the Flight of Birds, ca. 1504
Image source: The Florence Insider
Despite the interpretation of Icarus' consequence as the human's over-ambition, it also embodies freedom. Icarus' father, Daedalus, created the wings with wax and feather as a mode of escape. Humans sought to achieve the freedom to travel and enhance our lifestyle through innovative technologies.
The 19th Century ushered in the Industrial Age and dawn of automation. To celebrate the 1900 Exposition Universelle (World Exposition) in Paris and its technological achievements, France commissioned various artists to envision the year 2000. Known as En L'An 2000, or roughly translated as France in the Year 2000, it consisted of 87 futuristic illustrations (54 images are on Wikimedia) and intended to be distributed as cigarette/cigar box inserts and, eventually, postcards. Due to budgetary constraints, these were produced in limited quantities. Science-fiction author Isaac Asimov rediscovered them and published them in his book, Futuredays: A Nineteenth-Century Vision of the Year 2000 (1986).
Villemard. Correspondance Cinema, 1910
Villemard. Audio Journal, 1910
Jean Marc Côté, The Rural Postman, 1899
Jean-Marc Côté. Electric Scrubbing, 1899
Jean Marc Côté (if 1901) or Villemard (if 1910). Future School, 1901 or 1910
Jean Marc Côté. Rolling Villa, 1899.
Albert Robida, A Night at the Opera, ca. 1882
Image source: Wikimedia
The time of 100 years seems very far; the idea of millennium seem even further away. The innovative concepts of video calls, audio devices that read newspapers (think Audible!), and airbuses came to a realization in the 2000s or prior. These innovations are now an integral part of our daily lives. A Night at the Opera by Albert Robida (ca. 1882) may have foretold or inspired the Jetsons' TV series. The Jetson took place in 2062; people communicated via video chats, robots doing mundane tasks, and commuting flying vehicles, which were still novel technologies in the 1960s. We're still missing flying mailman and flying cars or personal flying vehicles (maybe jet planes and helicopters come close). Although these renditions seem outdated or amusing in the eyes of today's audience, the concept remained the same- they were applying the futuristic vision to the technology available at the time, and we were able to refine them over time.
As technology evolved and improved, the first commercial air flight was introduced in the early 20th Century. Air travel became a more accessible and leisurely activity since the late 1950s. As air travel evolved, so did our ambition and curiosity. In the early 20th Century, Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Around the Moon (1870), and H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898) and The First Men in the Moon (1901) planted the seed of outer space travel. Space Exploration has been another step further to our quest for flight innovation and interplanetary travel. In 1961, the United States entered the "Space Race" with the Russians, which led humans to land on the moon. Today many private entities, such as SpaceX, are aiming to make private space flights more accessible and dreams of inhibiting Mars possible.
Robert Rauschenberg. Retroactive I 1963. Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas.
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut Gift of Susan Morse Hilles, RRF 64.004
Image source: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
In the arts, the artists began to create innovative works and use new technologies and new materials. The artists from the 1960s started to incorporate industrial materials to make a new form of art. Known for his Combines, Robert Rauschenberg incorporated printed images, ready-mades, electronic devices, and appliances that blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture. His life-long collaborations with performers, printmakers, engineers, writers, and artists further expand his "art and life" philosophy. Before the 1960s, the integration of art and technology was a new concept, and they were considered separate entities. Established in 1966, Rauschenberg co-founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit organization with engineers Billy Kluver, Fred Waldhauer, and artist Robert Whitman. Through this collaboration, they produced 9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering, events that demonstrated different ways to explore art through innovative technology and performance art, leaving an indelible legacy in Contemporary Art today.
Our curiosity and desire to explore uncharted territories and pushing our limitations and boundaries are still rooted in our DNA. Based on the historical evidence above, artists are also innovators who inspire science and technology advancement. Fast forward to today, scientists are still refining self-driving cars, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, mode of communication, and private space travel. We used to take air travel for granted; we longed to travel and connect more now because of the pandemic restrictions. Where do we go from here? What would artists today think up next, and what would be their vision of the next 100 years?