Technology follows where the imagination dares to go; and if there might be trepidation with some, in others there appears to be limitless possibility. Time moves only forward and the motivation is to outrun the fixed system to move at ever faster pace in the ideal of better service. Utopia perhaps.
There are numerous and continuous forms that result from wo/man and the machine or versus the machine since the Industrial Revolution.
In the same paper on the same day: an article in which two major investors for a cellphone maker were urging action to curb smartphone addiction among children; an article on a cute robot that has been designed to promote emotional well-being for children with cancer.
The Romantics (think Turner or Blake here) in response to the move from life working on the land to the squalor of the factories - were concerned that technology was destroying a nostalgic idyllic heritage.
In the early 1900's the Futurist (Italy) movement strove to demolish established forms of power and celebrate through violent change a modern world of speed and the machine. Sensations of movement and rhythm to create dynamic, innovative works of art. They welcomed WWI as a destructive force to rid the yolk of the past and then became Fascists for WWII.
Die Brucke (Germany), in their art in years prior to WWI, feared the negative alienating impact that technology had on its people. As contemporaries of the Futurists, this group had an opposing attitude towards change occuring as a result of technology.
The Dadaists triumphed the ridiculous and absurd. In a disrobing of the conventional they embraced a notion of anti-art: anti-establishment.The Surrealists (in a way of explaining their way of being) grew out from the ideals of the Dadaists and were a reaction to rational thought which many thought (Industrial Revolution again here) was the cause of WWI. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung with their communication of the unconscious mind were at the heart of what was 'real' in art as apposed to rationalist works of art.
I read The Machine Stops (E.M. Forster) in school as part of our curriculum and can still visualize the story as it played out in my head - brilliant.
The year is 2018 and we live in marvelous times fraught with a true concept of danger...in technologically advancing times. Hopefully we will find a way to progress without alienation and reach out to each other. It is a good dream.
My art is an expression of my ideas and thoughts and feelings simple and complex and varied. I appreciate art in which these are expressed.