6

Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Showing in the interior of theMoscow Worldrsquos Fair auditorium

Enclosed by Images The Eamesesrsquo MultimediaArchitectureBEATRIZ COLOMINA

I We are surrounded today everywhere all the time by arrays of multiple simulta-neous images In the streets airports shopping centers and gyms but also on ourcomputers and television sets The idea of a single image commanding our attentionhas faded away It seems as if we need to be distracted in order to concentrate Asif wemdashall of us living in this new kind of space the space of informationmdashcouldbe diagnosed en masse with Attention Decit Disorder The state of distraction inthe metropolis described so eloquently by Walter Benjamin early in the twentiethcentury seems to have been replaced by a new form of distraction which is to saya new form of attention Rather than wandering cinematically through the city wenow look in one direction and see many juxtaposed moving images more than we can possibly synthesize or reduce to a single impression We sit in front of ourcomputers on our ergonomically perfected chairs staring with a xed gaze at manysimultaneously ldquoopenrdquo windows through which different kinds of informationstream toward us We hardly even notice it It seems natural as if we were simplybreathing in the information

How would one go about writing a history of this form of perception Shouldone go back to the organization of television studios with their walls of monitorsfrom which the director chooses the camera angle that will be presented to theviewer or should one go to Cape Canaveral and look at its Mission Control roomor should one even go back to World War II when so-called Situation Rooms wereenvisioned with multiple projections bringing information from all over the worldand presenting it side by side for instant analysis of the situation by leaders andmilitary commanders

But it is not simply the military or war technology that has dened this new formof perception Designers architects and artists were involved from the beginning

Grey Room 02 Winter 2001 pp 6ndash29 copy 2001 Grey Room Inc and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7

playing a crucial role in the evolution of the multiscreen and multimedia techniquesof presentation of information While the artistsrsquo use of these techniques tends to be associated with the ldquoHappeningsrdquo and ldquoExpanded Cinemardquo of the 1960sarchitects were involved much earlier and in very different contexts such as militaryoperations and governmental propaganda campaigns

Take the 1959 American exhibition in Moscow where the government enlistedsome of the countryrsquos most sophisticated designers Site of the famous KitchenDebate between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev the exhibition was a ColdWar operation in which the Eamesesrsquo multiscreen technique turned out to be apowerful weapon

To reconstruct a little bit of the atmosphere The USA and USSR had agreed in1958 to exchange national exhibits on ldquoscience technology and culturerdquo TheSoviet exhibition opened in the New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle in NewYork City in June of 1959 and the American exhibition opened in Sokolniki Parkin Moscow in July of the same year Vice President Nixon in Moscow to open theexhibition engaged in a heated debate withKhrushchev over the virtues of the American wayof life The exchange became known as theKitchen Debate because it took placemdashin an eventthat appeared impromptu but was actually stagedby the Americansmdashin the kitchen of a suburbanhouse split in half to allow easy viewing TheRussians called the house the ldquoSplitnikrdquo a pun onthe Sputnik the satellite the Soviets had put intoorbit two years before

What is remarkable about this debate is thefocus As historian Elaine Tyler-May has notedinstead of discussing ldquomissiles bombs or evenmodes of government [the two leaders] arguedover the relative merits of American and Sovietwashing machines televisions and electricrangesrdquo1 For Nixon American superiority restedon the ideal of the suburban home complete withmodern appliances and distinct gender roles Heproclaimed that this ldquomodelrdquo suburban homerepresented nothing less than American freedom

8 Grey Room 02

Top Stan VanDerBeek in the control room of WGBH-TV Boston Photo Gene Youngblood

Center NASA Mission ControlHouston

Bottom Christopher FaustSuburban Documentation ProjectMetro Traf c Control MinneapolisMinnesota 1993

To us diversity the right to choose is the most important thing We donrsquothave one decision made at the top by one government official We havemany different manufacturers and many different kinds of washing machinesso that the housewife has a choice2

The American exhibition in Moscow captivated the national and internationalmedia Newspapers illustrated magazines and television networks reported onthe event Symptomatically Life magazine put the wives instead of the politicianson the cover Pat Nixon appears as the prototype of the American woman depictedin advertisements of the 1950s slim well groomed fashionable happy In contrastthe Soviet ladies appear stocky and dowdy and while two of them Mrs Khrushchevand Mrs Mikoyan look proudly toward the camera the third one Mrs Kozlov inwhat Roland Barthes may have seen as the punctum of this photograph canrsquot keepher eyes off Pat Nixonrsquos dress3

Envymdashthat is what the American exhibition seems to have been designed toproduce (despite vigorous denials by Nixon in his debate with Khrushchev ldquoWedo not claim to astonish the Soviet peoplerdquo4) But not envy of scientic militaryor industrial achievements Envy of washing machines dishwashers color televi-sions suburban houses lawnmowers supermarkets stocked full of groceriesCadillac convertibles makeup colors lipstick spike-heeled shoes hi- sets cakemixes TV dinners Pepsi-Cola and so on ldquoWhat is thisrdquo the newspaper Izvestiaasked itself in its news report ldquoa national exhibit of a great country or a branchdepartment store Where is American science American industry and particu-larly their factory techniquesrdquo5 And a Russian teacher is quoted by the Wall StreetJournal ldquoYou have lots of dolls furniture dishes but where are your technicalexhibitsrdquo6 Even American newspapers described the main pavilion of the exhibi-tion as a ldquolush bargain basementrdquo but one that due to the dust of a crumbling concrete floor forty-eight hours after the opening already looked as if it ldquohadbarely survived a re salerdquo7

It was for this context that the Eameses produced their film Glimpses of theUSA projecting it onto seven twenty-by-thirty-foot screens suspended within avast (250 feet in diameter) golden geodesic dome designed by Buckminster FullerMore than 2200 still and moving images (some from Billy Wilderrsquos Some Like itHot) presented ldquoa typical work dayrdquo in the life of the United States in nine min-utes and ldquoa typical weekend dayrdquo in three minutes8 Thousands and thousands ofimages were pulled from many different sources including photo archives (such as

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 9

Magnum Photos Photo Researchers and the magazines Fortune Holiday LifeLook the Saturday Evening Post Sports Illustrated Sunset and Time) individualphotographers (such as Ferenc Berko Julius Shulman Ezra Stoller Ernst BraunGeorge Zimbel and Charles Eames) and friends and associates of the Eameses(including Eliot Noyes George Nelson Alexander Girard Eero Saarinen BillyWilder Don Albinson and Robert Staples)9 The images were combined into sevenseparate lm reels and projected simultaneously through seven interlocked pro-jectors Fuller later said that nobody had done anything like this before and thatadvertisers and lmmakers would soon follow the Eameses10

The Eameses did not simply install their film in Fullerrsquos space They wereinvolved in the organization of the whole exhibition from the beginning GeorgeNelson who had been commissioned by the United States Information Agency(USIA) to design the exhibition and Jack Masey from the USIA brought them intothe team According to Nelson it was in an evening meeting in the Eames Housein Los Angeles culminating three days of discussions where ldquoall the basic deci-sions for the fair were made Present were Nelson Ray and Charles (the latter occa-sionally swooping past on a swing hung from the ceiling) the movie director BillyWilder and Maseyrdquo11 According to Nelson by the end of the evening a basicscheme had emerged

(1) A dome (by Bucky Fuller)(2) A glass pavilion (by Welton Beckett) ldquoas a kind of bazaar stuffed full of things

[the] idea being that consumer products represented one of the areas in which wewere most effective as well as one in which the Russians were more interestedrdquo

(3) An introductory lm by the Eameses since the team felt that the ldquo80000square feet of exhibition space was not enough to communicate more than a smallfraction of what we wanted to sayrdquo12

In addition the USIA had already contracted for the inclusion of DisneyrsquosldquoCircaramardquo a 360-degree motion picture which offered a twenty-minute tour ofAmerican cities and tourist attractions and which played to about one thousandRussians an hour13 an architecture exhibit curated by Peter Blake a fashion showcurated by Eleanor Lambert a packaging exhibition by the Museum of ModernArtrsquos associate curator of design Mildred Constantine and Edward Steichenrsquos

10 Grey Room 02

famous photographic exhibit ldquoThe Family of Manrdquo14 The exhibition also includeda full-scale ranch-style suburban house put up by a Long Island builder and fur-nished by Macyrsquos It was in the kitchen of this fourteen thousand-dollar six-roomhouse lled with appliances that the Kitchen Debate began with an argument overautomatic washers

The multiscreen performance turned out to be one of the most popular exhibitsat the fair (second only to the cars and color televisions)15 Time magazine calledit the ldquosmash hit of the Fairrdquo16 the Wall Street Journal described it as the ldquorealbomb shellrdquo and US ofcials believed this was ldquothe real pile-driver of the fairrdquo17

Groups of five thousand people were brought into the dome every forty-five minutes sixteen times a day for the duration of the fair18 Close to three millionpeople saw the show and the oor had to be resurfaced three or four times duringthe six-week exhibition19

The Eameses were not just popular entertainers in an official exhibitionGlimpses of the USA was not just images inside a dome The huge array of sus-pended screens defined a space a space within a space The Eameses were self-consciously architects of a new kind of space The film breaks with the fixedperspectival view of the world In fact we nd ourselves in a space that can only beapprehended with the high technology of telescopes zoom lenses airplanes night-vision cameras and so on and where there is no privileged point of view It is notsimply that many of the individual images that make up Glimpses have been taken

with these instruments More importantly therelationship between the images re-enacts the operation of the technologies

The lm starts with images from outer spaceon all the screens stars across the sky sevenconstellations seven star clusters nebulae etcthen moves through aerial views of the city atnight from higher up to closer in until citylights from the air fill the screens The earlymorning comes with aerial views of landscapesfrom different parts of the country deserts

mountains hills seasfarms suburban develop-ments urban neighbor-hoods When the camera

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 11

Opposite Nikita Khruschev andRichard Nixon in ldquoThe KitchenDebaterdquo at the Moscow WorldrsquosFair 1959

Top American National ExhibitionMoscow Worldrsquos Fair 1959 AerialPerspective

Left Richard Nixon cutting theribbon of the American NationalExhibition with Buckminster Fullerdome in background MoscowWorldrsquos Fair 1959

eyes nally descend to the ground we see close-ups of newspapers and milk bottlesat doors But still no people only traces of their existence on earth

Not by chance the first signs of human life are centered upon the house anddomestic space From the stars at night and the aerial views the cameras zoom tothe most intimate scenes ldquopeople having breakfast at home men leaving for workkissing their wives kissing the baby being given lunchboxes getting into carswaving good-bye children leaving for school being given lunchboxes sayinggood-bye to dog piling into station wagons and cars getting into school busesbaby cryingrdquo20

As with the Eamesesrsquo later and much better-known lm Powers of Ten (1968)21

which incidentally reused images of the night sky from Glimpses of the USA22

the film moves from outer space to the close-up details of everyday life As theworking script of the lm indicates the close-ups are ldquolast sips of coffeerdquo of menbefore leaving for work ldquochildren washing hands before dinnerrdquo ldquohousewives onthe phone with clerks (supermarket food shelves in bg)rdquo23 and so on In Powersof Ten the movement will be set in reverse from the domestic space of a picnicspread with a man sleeping beside a woman in a park in Chicago out into theatmosphere and then back down inside the body through the skin of the manrsquoswrist to microscopic cells and to the atomic level Even if Powers of Ten initiallyproduced for the Commission on College Physics was a more scientific moreadvanced film in which space is measured in seconds the logic of both films(Glimpses and Powers of Ten) is the same Intimate domesticity is suspendedwithin an entirely new spatial systemmdasha system that was the product of esotericscientic-military research but that had entered the everyday public imaginationwith the launching of Sputnik in 1957 Fantasies that had long circulated in sciencefiction had become reality This shift from research and fantasy to tangible factmade new forms of communicating to a mass audience possible24 The Eamesesrsquoinnovative technique did not simply present the audience with a new way of seeing things Rather it gave form to a new mode of perception that was already ineverybodyrsquos mind

Glimpses breaks with the linear narrative of lm to bring snippets of informa-tion an ever-changing mosaic image of American life And yet the message of thefilm is linear and eerily consistent with the official message represented by theKitchen Debate From the stars in the sky at the beginning of the lmmdashwhich thenarrative insists are the same in the Soviet Union as in the USAmdashto the peoplekissing their goodnights and the forget-me-not owers in the last image the lm

12 Grey Room 02

emphasized universal emotions25 while at the same time it unambiguously rein-forced the material abundance of one country From the parking lots of factorieswhich the narrative describes as filled with the cars of the workers to the aerialviews of suburban houses with a blue swimming pool in each yard to the close-ups of shopping carts and shelves full of goodies in supermarkets and housewivescooking dinner in kitchens equipped with every imaginable appliance the messageof the lm was clear we are the same but on the material level we have more

Glimpses like the ldquoSplitnikrdquo house where the Kitchen Debate took place dis-placed the USA-USSR debate from the arms and space race to the battle of theappliances And yet the overall effect of the lm is that of an extraordinarily pow-erful viewing technology a hyperviewing mechanism which is hard to imagineoutside the very space program the exhibition was trying to downplay In fact thisextreme mode of viewing goes beyond the old fantasy of the eye in the sky IfGlimpses simulates the operation of satellite surveillance it exposes more than thedetails of life in the streets It penetrates the most intimate spaces and reveals everysecret Domestic life itself becomes the target the source of pride or insecurity TheAmericans made insecure by the thought of a Russian eye looking down on themcountered by exposing more than that eye could ever see (or at least pretending tosince ldquoa day in the life of the USArdquo became an image of the ldquoGood Liferdquo withoutghettos poverty domestic violence or depression)

Glimpses simply intensied an existing mode of perception In fact it synthesizedseveral already existing modes that were manifestin television space programs and military opera-tions As is typical of all the Eamesesrsquo work it wasthe simplicity and clarity of this synthesis thatmade it immediately accessible to all26

IIWhat kind of genealogy can one make of theEamesesrsquo development of this astonishingly suc-cessful technique

It was not the rst time they had deployed mul-tiple screens In fact the Eameses were involvedin one of the first multimedia presentations onrecord if not the rst Again it was George Nelsonwho set up the commission In 1952 he had been

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 13

Opposite Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Projection simulation in half-inchscale model of auditorium

Left Charles and Ray EamesPowers of Ten 1968 Storyboard

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

Enclosed by Images The Eamesesrsquo MultimediaArchitectureBEATRIZ COLOMINA

I We are surrounded today everywhere all the time by arrays of multiple simulta-neous images In the streets airports shopping centers and gyms but also on ourcomputers and television sets The idea of a single image commanding our attentionhas faded away It seems as if we need to be distracted in order to concentrate Asif wemdashall of us living in this new kind of space the space of informationmdashcouldbe diagnosed en masse with Attention Decit Disorder The state of distraction inthe metropolis described so eloquently by Walter Benjamin early in the twentiethcentury seems to have been replaced by a new form of distraction which is to saya new form of attention Rather than wandering cinematically through the city wenow look in one direction and see many juxtaposed moving images more than we can possibly synthesize or reduce to a single impression We sit in front of ourcomputers on our ergonomically perfected chairs staring with a xed gaze at manysimultaneously ldquoopenrdquo windows through which different kinds of informationstream toward us We hardly even notice it It seems natural as if we were simplybreathing in the information

How would one go about writing a history of this form of perception Shouldone go back to the organization of television studios with their walls of monitorsfrom which the director chooses the camera angle that will be presented to theviewer or should one go to Cape Canaveral and look at its Mission Control roomor should one even go back to World War II when so-called Situation Rooms wereenvisioned with multiple projections bringing information from all over the worldand presenting it side by side for instant analysis of the situation by leaders andmilitary commanders

But it is not simply the military or war technology that has dened this new formof perception Designers architects and artists were involved from the beginning

Grey Room 02 Winter 2001 pp 6ndash29 copy 2001 Grey Room Inc and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7

playing a crucial role in the evolution of the multiscreen and multimedia techniquesof presentation of information While the artistsrsquo use of these techniques tends to be associated with the ldquoHappeningsrdquo and ldquoExpanded Cinemardquo of the 1960sarchitects were involved much earlier and in very different contexts such as militaryoperations and governmental propaganda campaigns

Take the 1959 American exhibition in Moscow where the government enlistedsome of the countryrsquos most sophisticated designers Site of the famous KitchenDebate between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev the exhibition was a ColdWar operation in which the Eamesesrsquo multiscreen technique turned out to be apowerful weapon

To reconstruct a little bit of the atmosphere The USA and USSR had agreed in1958 to exchange national exhibits on ldquoscience technology and culturerdquo TheSoviet exhibition opened in the New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle in NewYork City in June of 1959 and the American exhibition opened in Sokolniki Parkin Moscow in July of the same year Vice President Nixon in Moscow to open theexhibition engaged in a heated debate withKhrushchev over the virtues of the American wayof life The exchange became known as theKitchen Debate because it took placemdashin an eventthat appeared impromptu but was actually stagedby the Americansmdashin the kitchen of a suburbanhouse split in half to allow easy viewing TheRussians called the house the ldquoSplitnikrdquo a pun onthe Sputnik the satellite the Soviets had put intoorbit two years before

What is remarkable about this debate is thefocus As historian Elaine Tyler-May has notedinstead of discussing ldquomissiles bombs or evenmodes of government [the two leaders] arguedover the relative merits of American and Sovietwashing machines televisions and electricrangesrdquo1 For Nixon American superiority restedon the ideal of the suburban home complete withmodern appliances and distinct gender roles Heproclaimed that this ldquomodelrdquo suburban homerepresented nothing less than American freedom

8 Grey Room 02

Top Stan VanDerBeek in the control room of WGBH-TV Boston Photo Gene Youngblood

Center NASA Mission ControlHouston

Bottom Christopher FaustSuburban Documentation ProjectMetro Traf c Control MinneapolisMinnesota 1993

To us diversity the right to choose is the most important thing We donrsquothave one decision made at the top by one government official We havemany different manufacturers and many different kinds of washing machinesso that the housewife has a choice2

The American exhibition in Moscow captivated the national and internationalmedia Newspapers illustrated magazines and television networks reported onthe event Symptomatically Life magazine put the wives instead of the politicianson the cover Pat Nixon appears as the prototype of the American woman depictedin advertisements of the 1950s slim well groomed fashionable happy In contrastthe Soviet ladies appear stocky and dowdy and while two of them Mrs Khrushchevand Mrs Mikoyan look proudly toward the camera the third one Mrs Kozlov inwhat Roland Barthes may have seen as the punctum of this photograph canrsquot keepher eyes off Pat Nixonrsquos dress3

Envymdashthat is what the American exhibition seems to have been designed toproduce (despite vigorous denials by Nixon in his debate with Khrushchev ldquoWedo not claim to astonish the Soviet peoplerdquo4) But not envy of scientic militaryor industrial achievements Envy of washing machines dishwashers color televi-sions suburban houses lawnmowers supermarkets stocked full of groceriesCadillac convertibles makeup colors lipstick spike-heeled shoes hi- sets cakemixes TV dinners Pepsi-Cola and so on ldquoWhat is thisrdquo the newspaper Izvestiaasked itself in its news report ldquoa national exhibit of a great country or a branchdepartment store Where is American science American industry and particu-larly their factory techniquesrdquo5 And a Russian teacher is quoted by the Wall StreetJournal ldquoYou have lots of dolls furniture dishes but where are your technicalexhibitsrdquo6 Even American newspapers described the main pavilion of the exhibi-tion as a ldquolush bargain basementrdquo but one that due to the dust of a crumbling concrete floor forty-eight hours after the opening already looked as if it ldquohadbarely survived a re salerdquo7

It was for this context that the Eameses produced their film Glimpses of theUSA projecting it onto seven twenty-by-thirty-foot screens suspended within avast (250 feet in diameter) golden geodesic dome designed by Buckminster FullerMore than 2200 still and moving images (some from Billy Wilderrsquos Some Like itHot) presented ldquoa typical work dayrdquo in the life of the United States in nine min-utes and ldquoa typical weekend dayrdquo in three minutes8 Thousands and thousands ofimages were pulled from many different sources including photo archives (such as

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 9

Magnum Photos Photo Researchers and the magazines Fortune Holiday LifeLook the Saturday Evening Post Sports Illustrated Sunset and Time) individualphotographers (such as Ferenc Berko Julius Shulman Ezra Stoller Ernst BraunGeorge Zimbel and Charles Eames) and friends and associates of the Eameses(including Eliot Noyes George Nelson Alexander Girard Eero Saarinen BillyWilder Don Albinson and Robert Staples)9 The images were combined into sevenseparate lm reels and projected simultaneously through seven interlocked pro-jectors Fuller later said that nobody had done anything like this before and thatadvertisers and lmmakers would soon follow the Eameses10

The Eameses did not simply install their film in Fullerrsquos space They wereinvolved in the organization of the whole exhibition from the beginning GeorgeNelson who had been commissioned by the United States Information Agency(USIA) to design the exhibition and Jack Masey from the USIA brought them intothe team According to Nelson it was in an evening meeting in the Eames Housein Los Angeles culminating three days of discussions where ldquoall the basic deci-sions for the fair were made Present were Nelson Ray and Charles (the latter occa-sionally swooping past on a swing hung from the ceiling) the movie director BillyWilder and Maseyrdquo11 According to Nelson by the end of the evening a basicscheme had emerged

(1) A dome (by Bucky Fuller)(2) A glass pavilion (by Welton Beckett) ldquoas a kind of bazaar stuffed full of things

[the] idea being that consumer products represented one of the areas in which wewere most effective as well as one in which the Russians were more interestedrdquo

(3) An introductory lm by the Eameses since the team felt that the ldquo80000square feet of exhibition space was not enough to communicate more than a smallfraction of what we wanted to sayrdquo12

In addition the USIA had already contracted for the inclusion of DisneyrsquosldquoCircaramardquo a 360-degree motion picture which offered a twenty-minute tour ofAmerican cities and tourist attractions and which played to about one thousandRussians an hour13 an architecture exhibit curated by Peter Blake a fashion showcurated by Eleanor Lambert a packaging exhibition by the Museum of ModernArtrsquos associate curator of design Mildred Constantine and Edward Steichenrsquos

10 Grey Room 02

famous photographic exhibit ldquoThe Family of Manrdquo14 The exhibition also includeda full-scale ranch-style suburban house put up by a Long Island builder and fur-nished by Macyrsquos It was in the kitchen of this fourteen thousand-dollar six-roomhouse lled with appliances that the Kitchen Debate began with an argument overautomatic washers

The multiscreen performance turned out to be one of the most popular exhibitsat the fair (second only to the cars and color televisions)15 Time magazine calledit the ldquosmash hit of the Fairrdquo16 the Wall Street Journal described it as the ldquorealbomb shellrdquo and US ofcials believed this was ldquothe real pile-driver of the fairrdquo17

Groups of five thousand people were brought into the dome every forty-five minutes sixteen times a day for the duration of the fair18 Close to three millionpeople saw the show and the oor had to be resurfaced three or four times duringthe six-week exhibition19

The Eameses were not just popular entertainers in an official exhibitionGlimpses of the USA was not just images inside a dome The huge array of sus-pended screens defined a space a space within a space The Eameses were self-consciously architects of a new kind of space The film breaks with the fixedperspectival view of the world In fact we nd ourselves in a space that can only beapprehended with the high technology of telescopes zoom lenses airplanes night-vision cameras and so on and where there is no privileged point of view It is notsimply that many of the individual images that make up Glimpses have been taken

with these instruments More importantly therelationship between the images re-enacts the operation of the technologies

The lm starts with images from outer spaceon all the screens stars across the sky sevenconstellations seven star clusters nebulae etcthen moves through aerial views of the city atnight from higher up to closer in until citylights from the air fill the screens The earlymorning comes with aerial views of landscapesfrom different parts of the country deserts

mountains hills seasfarms suburban develop-ments urban neighbor-hoods When the camera

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 11

Opposite Nikita Khruschev andRichard Nixon in ldquoThe KitchenDebaterdquo at the Moscow WorldrsquosFair 1959

Top American National ExhibitionMoscow Worldrsquos Fair 1959 AerialPerspective

Left Richard Nixon cutting theribbon of the American NationalExhibition with Buckminster Fullerdome in background MoscowWorldrsquos Fair 1959

eyes nally descend to the ground we see close-ups of newspapers and milk bottlesat doors But still no people only traces of their existence on earth

Not by chance the first signs of human life are centered upon the house anddomestic space From the stars at night and the aerial views the cameras zoom tothe most intimate scenes ldquopeople having breakfast at home men leaving for workkissing their wives kissing the baby being given lunchboxes getting into carswaving good-bye children leaving for school being given lunchboxes sayinggood-bye to dog piling into station wagons and cars getting into school busesbaby cryingrdquo20

As with the Eamesesrsquo later and much better-known lm Powers of Ten (1968)21

which incidentally reused images of the night sky from Glimpses of the USA22

the film moves from outer space to the close-up details of everyday life As theworking script of the lm indicates the close-ups are ldquolast sips of coffeerdquo of menbefore leaving for work ldquochildren washing hands before dinnerrdquo ldquohousewives onthe phone with clerks (supermarket food shelves in bg)rdquo23 and so on In Powersof Ten the movement will be set in reverse from the domestic space of a picnicspread with a man sleeping beside a woman in a park in Chicago out into theatmosphere and then back down inside the body through the skin of the manrsquoswrist to microscopic cells and to the atomic level Even if Powers of Ten initiallyproduced for the Commission on College Physics was a more scientific moreadvanced film in which space is measured in seconds the logic of both films(Glimpses and Powers of Ten) is the same Intimate domesticity is suspendedwithin an entirely new spatial systemmdasha system that was the product of esotericscientic-military research but that had entered the everyday public imaginationwith the launching of Sputnik in 1957 Fantasies that had long circulated in sciencefiction had become reality This shift from research and fantasy to tangible factmade new forms of communicating to a mass audience possible24 The Eamesesrsquoinnovative technique did not simply present the audience with a new way of seeing things Rather it gave form to a new mode of perception that was already ineverybodyrsquos mind

Glimpses breaks with the linear narrative of lm to bring snippets of informa-tion an ever-changing mosaic image of American life And yet the message of thefilm is linear and eerily consistent with the official message represented by theKitchen Debate From the stars in the sky at the beginning of the lmmdashwhich thenarrative insists are the same in the Soviet Union as in the USAmdashto the peoplekissing their goodnights and the forget-me-not owers in the last image the lm

12 Grey Room 02

emphasized universal emotions25 while at the same time it unambiguously rein-forced the material abundance of one country From the parking lots of factorieswhich the narrative describes as filled with the cars of the workers to the aerialviews of suburban houses with a blue swimming pool in each yard to the close-ups of shopping carts and shelves full of goodies in supermarkets and housewivescooking dinner in kitchens equipped with every imaginable appliance the messageof the lm was clear we are the same but on the material level we have more

Glimpses like the ldquoSplitnikrdquo house where the Kitchen Debate took place dis-placed the USA-USSR debate from the arms and space race to the battle of theappliances And yet the overall effect of the lm is that of an extraordinarily pow-erful viewing technology a hyperviewing mechanism which is hard to imagineoutside the very space program the exhibition was trying to downplay In fact thisextreme mode of viewing goes beyond the old fantasy of the eye in the sky IfGlimpses simulates the operation of satellite surveillance it exposes more than thedetails of life in the streets It penetrates the most intimate spaces and reveals everysecret Domestic life itself becomes the target the source of pride or insecurity TheAmericans made insecure by the thought of a Russian eye looking down on themcountered by exposing more than that eye could ever see (or at least pretending tosince ldquoa day in the life of the USArdquo became an image of the ldquoGood Liferdquo withoutghettos poverty domestic violence or depression)

Glimpses simply intensied an existing mode of perception In fact it synthesizedseveral already existing modes that were manifestin television space programs and military opera-tions As is typical of all the Eamesesrsquo work it wasthe simplicity and clarity of this synthesis thatmade it immediately accessible to all26

IIWhat kind of genealogy can one make of theEamesesrsquo development of this astonishingly suc-cessful technique

It was not the rst time they had deployed mul-tiple screens In fact the Eameses were involvedin one of the first multimedia presentations onrecord if not the rst Again it was George Nelsonwho set up the commission In 1952 he had been

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 13

Opposite Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Projection simulation in half-inchscale model of auditorium

Left Charles and Ray EamesPowers of Ten 1968 Storyboard

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

playing a crucial role in the evolution of the multiscreen and multimedia techniquesof presentation of information While the artistsrsquo use of these techniques tends to be associated with the ldquoHappeningsrdquo and ldquoExpanded Cinemardquo of the 1960sarchitects were involved much earlier and in very different contexts such as militaryoperations and governmental propaganda campaigns

Take the 1959 American exhibition in Moscow where the government enlistedsome of the countryrsquos most sophisticated designers Site of the famous KitchenDebate between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev the exhibition was a ColdWar operation in which the Eamesesrsquo multiscreen technique turned out to be apowerful weapon

To reconstruct a little bit of the atmosphere The USA and USSR had agreed in1958 to exchange national exhibits on ldquoscience technology and culturerdquo TheSoviet exhibition opened in the New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle in NewYork City in June of 1959 and the American exhibition opened in Sokolniki Parkin Moscow in July of the same year Vice President Nixon in Moscow to open theexhibition engaged in a heated debate withKhrushchev over the virtues of the American wayof life The exchange became known as theKitchen Debate because it took placemdashin an eventthat appeared impromptu but was actually stagedby the Americansmdashin the kitchen of a suburbanhouse split in half to allow easy viewing TheRussians called the house the ldquoSplitnikrdquo a pun onthe Sputnik the satellite the Soviets had put intoorbit two years before

What is remarkable about this debate is thefocus As historian Elaine Tyler-May has notedinstead of discussing ldquomissiles bombs or evenmodes of government [the two leaders] arguedover the relative merits of American and Sovietwashing machines televisions and electricrangesrdquo1 For Nixon American superiority restedon the ideal of the suburban home complete withmodern appliances and distinct gender roles Heproclaimed that this ldquomodelrdquo suburban homerepresented nothing less than American freedom

8 Grey Room 02

Top Stan VanDerBeek in the control room of WGBH-TV Boston Photo Gene Youngblood

Center NASA Mission ControlHouston

Bottom Christopher FaustSuburban Documentation ProjectMetro Traf c Control MinneapolisMinnesota 1993

To us diversity the right to choose is the most important thing We donrsquothave one decision made at the top by one government official We havemany different manufacturers and many different kinds of washing machinesso that the housewife has a choice2

The American exhibition in Moscow captivated the national and internationalmedia Newspapers illustrated magazines and television networks reported onthe event Symptomatically Life magazine put the wives instead of the politicianson the cover Pat Nixon appears as the prototype of the American woman depictedin advertisements of the 1950s slim well groomed fashionable happy In contrastthe Soviet ladies appear stocky and dowdy and while two of them Mrs Khrushchevand Mrs Mikoyan look proudly toward the camera the third one Mrs Kozlov inwhat Roland Barthes may have seen as the punctum of this photograph canrsquot keepher eyes off Pat Nixonrsquos dress3

Envymdashthat is what the American exhibition seems to have been designed toproduce (despite vigorous denials by Nixon in his debate with Khrushchev ldquoWedo not claim to astonish the Soviet peoplerdquo4) But not envy of scientic militaryor industrial achievements Envy of washing machines dishwashers color televi-sions suburban houses lawnmowers supermarkets stocked full of groceriesCadillac convertibles makeup colors lipstick spike-heeled shoes hi- sets cakemixes TV dinners Pepsi-Cola and so on ldquoWhat is thisrdquo the newspaper Izvestiaasked itself in its news report ldquoa national exhibit of a great country or a branchdepartment store Where is American science American industry and particu-larly their factory techniquesrdquo5 And a Russian teacher is quoted by the Wall StreetJournal ldquoYou have lots of dolls furniture dishes but where are your technicalexhibitsrdquo6 Even American newspapers described the main pavilion of the exhibi-tion as a ldquolush bargain basementrdquo but one that due to the dust of a crumbling concrete floor forty-eight hours after the opening already looked as if it ldquohadbarely survived a re salerdquo7

It was for this context that the Eameses produced their film Glimpses of theUSA projecting it onto seven twenty-by-thirty-foot screens suspended within avast (250 feet in diameter) golden geodesic dome designed by Buckminster FullerMore than 2200 still and moving images (some from Billy Wilderrsquos Some Like itHot) presented ldquoa typical work dayrdquo in the life of the United States in nine min-utes and ldquoa typical weekend dayrdquo in three minutes8 Thousands and thousands ofimages were pulled from many different sources including photo archives (such as

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 9

Magnum Photos Photo Researchers and the magazines Fortune Holiday LifeLook the Saturday Evening Post Sports Illustrated Sunset and Time) individualphotographers (such as Ferenc Berko Julius Shulman Ezra Stoller Ernst BraunGeorge Zimbel and Charles Eames) and friends and associates of the Eameses(including Eliot Noyes George Nelson Alexander Girard Eero Saarinen BillyWilder Don Albinson and Robert Staples)9 The images were combined into sevenseparate lm reels and projected simultaneously through seven interlocked pro-jectors Fuller later said that nobody had done anything like this before and thatadvertisers and lmmakers would soon follow the Eameses10

The Eameses did not simply install their film in Fullerrsquos space They wereinvolved in the organization of the whole exhibition from the beginning GeorgeNelson who had been commissioned by the United States Information Agency(USIA) to design the exhibition and Jack Masey from the USIA brought them intothe team According to Nelson it was in an evening meeting in the Eames Housein Los Angeles culminating three days of discussions where ldquoall the basic deci-sions for the fair were made Present were Nelson Ray and Charles (the latter occa-sionally swooping past on a swing hung from the ceiling) the movie director BillyWilder and Maseyrdquo11 According to Nelson by the end of the evening a basicscheme had emerged

(1) A dome (by Bucky Fuller)(2) A glass pavilion (by Welton Beckett) ldquoas a kind of bazaar stuffed full of things

[the] idea being that consumer products represented one of the areas in which wewere most effective as well as one in which the Russians were more interestedrdquo

(3) An introductory lm by the Eameses since the team felt that the ldquo80000square feet of exhibition space was not enough to communicate more than a smallfraction of what we wanted to sayrdquo12

In addition the USIA had already contracted for the inclusion of DisneyrsquosldquoCircaramardquo a 360-degree motion picture which offered a twenty-minute tour ofAmerican cities and tourist attractions and which played to about one thousandRussians an hour13 an architecture exhibit curated by Peter Blake a fashion showcurated by Eleanor Lambert a packaging exhibition by the Museum of ModernArtrsquos associate curator of design Mildred Constantine and Edward Steichenrsquos

10 Grey Room 02

famous photographic exhibit ldquoThe Family of Manrdquo14 The exhibition also includeda full-scale ranch-style suburban house put up by a Long Island builder and fur-nished by Macyrsquos It was in the kitchen of this fourteen thousand-dollar six-roomhouse lled with appliances that the Kitchen Debate began with an argument overautomatic washers

The multiscreen performance turned out to be one of the most popular exhibitsat the fair (second only to the cars and color televisions)15 Time magazine calledit the ldquosmash hit of the Fairrdquo16 the Wall Street Journal described it as the ldquorealbomb shellrdquo and US ofcials believed this was ldquothe real pile-driver of the fairrdquo17

Groups of five thousand people were brought into the dome every forty-five minutes sixteen times a day for the duration of the fair18 Close to three millionpeople saw the show and the oor had to be resurfaced three or four times duringthe six-week exhibition19

The Eameses were not just popular entertainers in an official exhibitionGlimpses of the USA was not just images inside a dome The huge array of sus-pended screens defined a space a space within a space The Eameses were self-consciously architects of a new kind of space The film breaks with the fixedperspectival view of the world In fact we nd ourselves in a space that can only beapprehended with the high technology of telescopes zoom lenses airplanes night-vision cameras and so on and where there is no privileged point of view It is notsimply that many of the individual images that make up Glimpses have been taken

with these instruments More importantly therelationship between the images re-enacts the operation of the technologies

The lm starts with images from outer spaceon all the screens stars across the sky sevenconstellations seven star clusters nebulae etcthen moves through aerial views of the city atnight from higher up to closer in until citylights from the air fill the screens The earlymorning comes with aerial views of landscapesfrom different parts of the country deserts

mountains hills seasfarms suburban develop-ments urban neighbor-hoods When the camera

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 11

Opposite Nikita Khruschev andRichard Nixon in ldquoThe KitchenDebaterdquo at the Moscow WorldrsquosFair 1959

Top American National ExhibitionMoscow Worldrsquos Fair 1959 AerialPerspective

Left Richard Nixon cutting theribbon of the American NationalExhibition with Buckminster Fullerdome in background MoscowWorldrsquos Fair 1959

eyes nally descend to the ground we see close-ups of newspapers and milk bottlesat doors But still no people only traces of their existence on earth

Not by chance the first signs of human life are centered upon the house anddomestic space From the stars at night and the aerial views the cameras zoom tothe most intimate scenes ldquopeople having breakfast at home men leaving for workkissing their wives kissing the baby being given lunchboxes getting into carswaving good-bye children leaving for school being given lunchboxes sayinggood-bye to dog piling into station wagons and cars getting into school busesbaby cryingrdquo20

As with the Eamesesrsquo later and much better-known lm Powers of Ten (1968)21

which incidentally reused images of the night sky from Glimpses of the USA22

the film moves from outer space to the close-up details of everyday life As theworking script of the lm indicates the close-ups are ldquolast sips of coffeerdquo of menbefore leaving for work ldquochildren washing hands before dinnerrdquo ldquohousewives onthe phone with clerks (supermarket food shelves in bg)rdquo23 and so on In Powersof Ten the movement will be set in reverse from the domestic space of a picnicspread with a man sleeping beside a woman in a park in Chicago out into theatmosphere and then back down inside the body through the skin of the manrsquoswrist to microscopic cells and to the atomic level Even if Powers of Ten initiallyproduced for the Commission on College Physics was a more scientific moreadvanced film in which space is measured in seconds the logic of both films(Glimpses and Powers of Ten) is the same Intimate domesticity is suspendedwithin an entirely new spatial systemmdasha system that was the product of esotericscientic-military research but that had entered the everyday public imaginationwith the launching of Sputnik in 1957 Fantasies that had long circulated in sciencefiction had become reality This shift from research and fantasy to tangible factmade new forms of communicating to a mass audience possible24 The Eamesesrsquoinnovative technique did not simply present the audience with a new way of seeing things Rather it gave form to a new mode of perception that was already ineverybodyrsquos mind

Glimpses breaks with the linear narrative of lm to bring snippets of informa-tion an ever-changing mosaic image of American life And yet the message of thefilm is linear and eerily consistent with the official message represented by theKitchen Debate From the stars in the sky at the beginning of the lmmdashwhich thenarrative insists are the same in the Soviet Union as in the USAmdashto the peoplekissing their goodnights and the forget-me-not owers in the last image the lm

12 Grey Room 02

emphasized universal emotions25 while at the same time it unambiguously rein-forced the material abundance of one country From the parking lots of factorieswhich the narrative describes as filled with the cars of the workers to the aerialviews of suburban houses with a blue swimming pool in each yard to the close-ups of shopping carts and shelves full of goodies in supermarkets and housewivescooking dinner in kitchens equipped with every imaginable appliance the messageof the lm was clear we are the same but on the material level we have more

Glimpses like the ldquoSplitnikrdquo house where the Kitchen Debate took place dis-placed the USA-USSR debate from the arms and space race to the battle of theappliances And yet the overall effect of the lm is that of an extraordinarily pow-erful viewing technology a hyperviewing mechanism which is hard to imagineoutside the very space program the exhibition was trying to downplay In fact thisextreme mode of viewing goes beyond the old fantasy of the eye in the sky IfGlimpses simulates the operation of satellite surveillance it exposes more than thedetails of life in the streets It penetrates the most intimate spaces and reveals everysecret Domestic life itself becomes the target the source of pride or insecurity TheAmericans made insecure by the thought of a Russian eye looking down on themcountered by exposing more than that eye could ever see (or at least pretending tosince ldquoa day in the life of the USArdquo became an image of the ldquoGood Liferdquo withoutghettos poverty domestic violence or depression)

Glimpses simply intensied an existing mode of perception In fact it synthesizedseveral already existing modes that were manifestin television space programs and military opera-tions As is typical of all the Eamesesrsquo work it wasthe simplicity and clarity of this synthesis thatmade it immediately accessible to all26

IIWhat kind of genealogy can one make of theEamesesrsquo development of this astonishingly suc-cessful technique

It was not the rst time they had deployed mul-tiple screens In fact the Eameses were involvedin one of the first multimedia presentations onrecord if not the rst Again it was George Nelsonwho set up the commission In 1952 he had been

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 13

Opposite Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Projection simulation in half-inchscale model of auditorium

Left Charles and Ray EamesPowers of Ten 1968 Storyboard

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

To us diversity the right to choose is the most important thing We donrsquothave one decision made at the top by one government official We havemany different manufacturers and many different kinds of washing machinesso that the housewife has a choice2

The American exhibition in Moscow captivated the national and internationalmedia Newspapers illustrated magazines and television networks reported onthe event Symptomatically Life magazine put the wives instead of the politicianson the cover Pat Nixon appears as the prototype of the American woman depictedin advertisements of the 1950s slim well groomed fashionable happy In contrastthe Soviet ladies appear stocky and dowdy and while two of them Mrs Khrushchevand Mrs Mikoyan look proudly toward the camera the third one Mrs Kozlov inwhat Roland Barthes may have seen as the punctum of this photograph canrsquot keepher eyes off Pat Nixonrsquos dress3

Envymdashthat is what the American exhibition seems to have been designed toproduce (despite vigorous denials by Nixon in his debate with Khrushchev ldquoWedo not claim to astonish the Soviet peoplerdquo4) But not envy of scientic militaryor industrial achievements Envy of washing machines dishwashers color televi-sions suburban houses lawnmowers supermarkets stocked full of groceriesCadillac convertibles makeup colors lipstick spike-heeled shoes hi- sets cakemixes TV dinners Pepsi-Cola and so on ldquoWhat is thisrdquo the newspaper Izvestiaasked itself in its news report ldquoa national exhibit of a great country or a branchdepartment store Where is American science American industry and particu-larly their factory techniquesrdquo5 And a Russian teacher is quoted by the Wall StreetJournal ldquoYou have lots of dolls furniture dishes but where are your technicalexhibitsrdquo6 Even American newspapers described the main pavilion of the exhibi-tion as a ldquolush bargain basementrdquo but one that due to the dust of a crumbling concrete floor forty-eight hours after the opening already looked as if it ldquohadbarely survived a re salerdquo7

It was for this context that the Eameses produced their film Glimpses of theUSA projecting it onto seven twenty-by-thirty-foot screens suspended within avast (250 feet in diameter) golden geodesic dome designed by Buckminster FullerMore than 2200 still and moving images (some from Billy Wilderrsquos Some Like itHot) presented ldquoa typical work dayrdquo in the life of the United States in nine min-utes and ldquoa typical weekend dayrdquo in three minutes8 Thousands and thousands ofimages were pulled from many different sources including photo archives (such as

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 9

Magnum Photos Photo Researchers and the magazines Fortune Holiday LifeLook the Saturday Evening Post Sports Illustrated Sunset and Time) individualphotographers (such as Ferenc Berko Julius Shulman Ezra Stoller Ernst BraunGeorge Zimbel and Charles Eames) and friends and associates of the Eameses(including Eliot Noyes George Nelson Alexander Girard Eero Saarinen BillyWilder Don Albinson and Robert Staples)9 The images were combined into sevenseparate lm reels and projected simultaneously through seven interlocked pro-jectors Fuller later said that nobody had done anything like this before and thatadvertisers and lmmakers would soon follow the Eameses10

The Eameses did not simply install their film in Fullerrsquos space They wereinvolved in the organization of the whole exhibition from the beginning GeorgeNelson who had been commissioned by the United States Information Agency(USIA) to design the exhibition and Jack Masey from the USIA brought them intothe team According to Nelson it was in an evening meeting in the Eames Housein Los Angeles culminating three days of discussions where ldquoall the basic deci-sions for the fair were made Present were Nelson Ray and Charles (the latter occa-sionally swooping past on a swing hung from the ceiling) the movie director BillyWilder and Maseyrdquo11 According to Nelson by the end of the evening a basicscheme had emerged

(1) A dome (by Bucky Fuller)(2) A glass pavilion (by Welton Beckett) ldquoas a kind of bazaar stuffed full of things

[the] idea being that consumer products represented one of the areas in which wewere most effective as well as one in which the Russians were more interestedrdquo

(3) An introductory lm by the Eameses since the team felt that the ldquo80000square feet of exhibition space was not enough to communicate more than a smallfraction of what we wanted to sayrdquo12

In addition the USIA had already contracted for the inclusion of DisneyrsquosldquoCircaramardquo a 360-degree motion picture which offered a twenty-minute tour ofAmerican cities and tourist attractions and which played to about one thousandRussians an hour13 an architecture exhibit curated by Peter Blake a fashion showcurated by Eleanor Lambert a packaging exhibition by the Museum of ModernArtrsquos associate curator of design Mildred Constantine and Edward Steichenrsquos

10 Grey Room 02

famous photographic exhibit ldquoThe Family of Manrdquo14 The exhibition also includeda full-scale ranch-style suburban house put up by a Long Island builder and fur-nished by Macyrsquos It was in the kitchen of this fourteen thousand-dollar six-roomhouse lled with appliances that the Kitchen Debate began with an argument overautomatic washers

The multiscreen performance turned out to be one of the most popular exhibitsat the fair (second only to the cars and color televisions)15 Time magazine calledit the ldquosmash hit of the Fairrdquo16 the Wall Street Journal described it as the ldquorealbomb shellrdquo and US ofcials believed this was ldquothe real pile-driver of the fairrdquo17

Groups of five thousand people were brought into the dome every forty-five minutes sixteen times a day for the duration of the fair18 Close to three millionpeople saw the show and the oor had to be resurfaced three or four times duringthe six-week exhibition19

The Eameses were not just popular entertainers in an official exhibitionGlimpses of the USA was not just images inside a dome The huge array of sus-pended screens defined a space a space within a space The Eameses were self-consciously architects of a new kind of space The film breaks with the fixedperspectival view of the world In fact we nd ourselves in a space that can only beapprehended with the high technology of telescopes zoom lenses airplanes night-vision cameras and so on and where there is no privileged point of view It is notsimply that many of the individual images that make up Glimpses have been taken

with these instruments More importantly therelationship between the images re-enacts the operation of the technologies

The lm starts with images from outer spaceon all the screens stars across the sky sevenconstellations seven star clusters nebulae etcthen moves through aerial views of the city atnight from higher up to closer in until citylights from the air fill the screens The earlymorning comes with aerial views of landscapesfrom different parts of the country deserts

mountains hills seasfarms suburban develop-ments urban neighbor-hoods When the camera

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 11

Opposite Nikita Khruschev andRichard Nixon in ldquoThe KitchenDebaterdquo at the Moscow WorldrsquosFair 1959

Top American National ExhibitionMoscow Worldrsquos Fair 1959 AerialPerspective

Left Richard Nixon cutting theribbon of the American NationalExhibition with Buckminster Fullerdome in background MoscowWorldrsquos Fair 1959

eyes nally descend to the ground we see close-ups of newspapers and milk bottlesat doors But still no people only traces of their existence on earth

Not by chance the first signs of human life are centered upon the house anddomestic space From the stars at night and the aerial views the cameras zoom tothe most intimate scenes ldquopeople having breakfast at home men leaving for workkissing their wives kissing the baby being given lunchboxes getting into carswaving good-bye children leaving for school being given lunchboxes sayinggood-bye to dog piling into station wagons and cars getting into school busesbaby cryingrdquo20

As with the Eamesesrsquo later and much better-known lm Powers of Ten (1968)21

which incidentally reused images of the night sky from Glimpses of the USA22

the film moves from outer space to the close-up details of everyday life As theworking script of the lm indicates the close-ups are ldquolast sips of coffeerdquo of menbefore leaving for work ldquochildren washing hands before dinnerrdquo ldquohousewives onthe phone with clerks (supermarket food shelves in bg)rdquo23 and so on In Powersof Ten the movement will be set in reverse from the domestic space of a picnicspread with a man sleeping beside a woman in a park in Chicago out into theatmosphere and then back down inside the body through the skin of the manrsquoswrist to microscopic cells and to the atomic level Even if Powers of Ten initiallyproduced for the Commission on College Physics was a more scientific moreadvanced film in which space is measured in seconds the logic of both films(Glimpses and Powers of Ten) is the same Intimate domesticity is suspendedwithin an entirely new spatial systemmdasha system that was the product of esotericscientic-military research but that had entered the everyday public imaginationwith the launching of Sputnik in 1957 Fantasies that had long circulated in sciencefiction had become reality This shift from research and fantasy to tangible factmade new forms of communicating to a mass audience possible24 The Eamesesrsquoinnovative technique did not simply present the audience with a new way of seeing things Rather it gave form to a new mode of perception that was already ineverybodyrsquos mind

Glimpses breaks with the linear narrative of lm to bring snippets of informa-tion an ever-changing mosaic image of American life And yet the message of thefilm is linear and eerily consistent with the official message represented by theKitchen Debate From the stars in the sky at the beginning of the lmmdashwhich thenarrative insists are the same in the Soviet Union as in the USAmdashto the peoplekissing their goodnights and the forget-me-not owers in the last image the lm

12 Grey Room 02

emphasized universal emotions25 while at the same time it unambiguously rein-forced the material abundance of one country From the parking lots of factorieswhich the narrative describes as filled with the cars of the workers to the aerialviews of suburban houses with a blue swimming pool in each yard to the close-ups of shopping carts and shelves full of goodies in supermarkets and housewivescooking dinner in kitchens equipped with every imaginable appliance the messageof the lm was clear we are the same but on the material level we have more

Glimpses like the ldquoSplitnikrdquo house where the Kitchen Debate took place dis-placed the USA-USSR debate from the arms and space race to the battle of theappliances And yet the overall effect of the lm is that of an extraordinarily pow-erful viewing technology a hyperviewing mechanism which is hard to imagineoutside the very space program the exhibition was trying to downplay In fact thisextreme mode of viewing goes beyond the old fantasy of the eye in the sky IfGlimpses simulates the operation of satellite surveillance it exposes more than thedetails of life in the streets It penetrates the most intimate spaces and reveals everysecret Domestic life itself becomes the target the source of pride or insecurity TheAmericans made insecure by the thought of a Russian eye looking down on themcountered by exposing more than that eye could ever see (or at least pretending tosince ldquoa day in the life of the USArdquo became an image of the ldquoGood Liferdquo withoutghettos poverty domestic violence or depression)

Glimpses simply intensied an existing mode of perception In fact it synthesizedseveral already existing modes that were manifestin television space programs and military opera-tions As is typical of all the Eamesesrsquo work it wasthe simplicity and clarity of this synthesis thatmade it immediately accessible to all26

IIWhat kind of genealogy can one make of theEamesesrsquo development of this astonishingly suc-cessful technique

It was not the rst time they had deployed mul-tiple screens In fact the Eameses were involvedin one of the first multimedia presentations onrecord if not the rst Again it was George Nelsonwho set up the commission In 1952 he had been

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 13

Opposite Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Projection simulation in half-inchscale model of auditorium

Left Charles and Ray EamesPowers of Ten 1968 Storyboard

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

Magnum Photos Photo Researchers and the magazines Fortune Holiday LifeLook the Saturday Evening Post Sports Illustrated Sunset and Time) individualphotographers (such as Ferenc Berko Julius Shulman Ezra Stoller Ernst BraunGeorge Zimbel and Charles Eames) and friends and associates of the Eameses(including Eliot Noyes George Nelson Alexander Girard Eero Saarinen BillyWilder Don Albinson and Robert Staples)9 The images were combined into sevenseparate lm reels and projected simultaneously through seven interlocked pro-jectors Fuller later said that nobody had done anything like this before and thatadvertisers and lmmakers would soon follow the Eameses10

The Eameses did not simply install their film in Fullerrsquos space They wereinvolved in the organization of the whole exhibition from the beginning GeorgeNelson who had been commissioned by the United States Information Agency(USIA) to design the exhibition and Jack Masey from the USIA brought them intothe team According to Nelson it was in an evening meeting in the Eames Housein Los Angeles culminating three days of discussions where ldquoall the basic deci-sions for the fair were made Present were Nelson Ray and Charles (the latter occa-sionally swooping past on a swing hung from the ceiling) the movie director BillyWilder and Maseyrdquo11 According to Nelson by the end of the evening a basicscheme had emerged

(1) A dome (by Bucky Fuller)(2) A glass pavilion (by Welton Beckett) ldquoas a kind of bazaar stuffed full of things

[the] idea being that consumer products represented one of the areas in which wewere most effective as well as one in which the Russians were more interestedrdquo

(3) An introductory lm by the Eameses since the team felt that the ldquo80000square feet of exhibition space was not enough to communicate more than a smallfraction of what we wanted to sayrdquo12

In addition the USIA had already contracted for the inclusion of DisneyrsquosldquoCircaramardquo a 360-degree motion picture which offered a twenty-minute tour ofAmerican cities and tourist attractions and which played to about one thousandRussians an hour13 an architecture exhibit curated by Peter Blake a fashion showcurated by Eleanor Lambert a packaging exhibition by the Museum of ModernArtrsquos associate curator of design Mildred Constantine and Edward Steichenrsquos

10 Grey Room 02

famous photographic exhibit ldquoThe Family of Manrdquo14 The exhibition also includeda full-scale ranch-style suburban house put up by a Long Island builder and fur-nished by Macyrsquos It was in the kitchen of this fourteen thousand-dollar six-roomhouse lled with appliances that the Kitchen Debate began with an argument overautomatic washers

The multiscreen performance turned out to be one of the most popular exhibitsat the fair (second only to the cars and color televisions)15 Time magazine calledit the ldquosmash hit of the Fairrdquo16 the Wall Street Journal described it as the ldquorealbomb shellrdquo and US ofcials believed this was ldquothe real pile-driver of the fairrdquo17

Groups of five thousand people were brought into the dome every forty-five minutes sixteen times a day for the duration of the fair18 Close to three millionpeople saw the show and the oor had to be resurfaced three or four times duringthe six-week exhibition19

The Eameses were not just popular entertainers in an official exhibitionGlimpses of the USA was not just images inside a dome The huge array of sus-pended screens defined a space a space within a space The Eameses were self-consciously architects of a new kind of space The film breaks with the fixedperspectival view of the world In fact we nd ourselves in a space that can only beapprehended with the high technology of telescopes zoom lenses airplanes night-vision cameras and so on and where there is no privileged point of view It is notsimply that many of the individual images that make up Glimpses have been taken

with these instruments More importantly therelationship between the images re-enacts the operation of the technologies

The lm starts with images from outer spaceon all the screens stars across the sky sevenconstellations seven star clusters nebulae etcthen moves through aerial views of the city atnight from higher up to closer in until citylights from the air fill the screens The earlymorning comes with aerial views of landscapesfrom different parts of the country deserts

mountains hills seasfarms suburban develop-ments urban neighbor-hoods When the camera

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 11

Opposite Nikita Khruschev andRichard Nixon in ldquoThe KitchenDebaterdquo at the Moscow WorldrsquosFair 1959

Top American National ExhibitionMoscow Worldrsquos Fair 1959 AerialPerspective

Left Richard Nixon cutting theribbon of the American NationalExhibition with Buckminster Fullerdome in background MoscowWorldrsquos Fair 1959

eyes nally descend to the ground we see close-ups of newspapers and milk bottlesat doors But still no people only traces of their existence on earth

Not by chance the first signs of human life are centered upon the house anddomestic space From the stars at night and the aerial views the cameras zoom tothe most intimate scenes ldquopeople having breakfast at home men leaving for workkissing their wives kissing the baby being given lunchboxes getting into carswaving good-bye children leaving for school being given lunchboxes sayinggood-bye to dog piling into station wagons and cars getting into school busesbaby cryingrdquo20

As with the Eamesesrsquo later and much better-known lm Powers of Ten (1968)21

which incidentally reused images of the night sky from Glimpses of the USA22

the film moves from outer space to the close-up details of everyday life As theworking script of the lm indicates the close-ups are ldquolast sips of coffeerdquo of menbefore leaving for work ldquochildren washing hands before dinnerrdquo ldquohousewives onthe phone with clerks (supermarket food shelves in bg)rdquo23 and so on In Powersof Ten the movement will be set in reverse from the domestic space of a picnicspread with a man sleeping beside a woman in a park in Chicago out into theatmosphere and then back down inside the body through the skin of the manrsquoswrist to microscopic cells and to the atomic level Even if Powers of Ten initiallyproduced for the Commission on College Physics was a more scientific moreadvanced film in which space is measured in seconds the logic of both films(Glimpses and Powers of Ten) is the same Intimate domesticity is suspendedwithin an entirely new spatial systemmdasha system that was the product of esotericscientic-military research but that had entered the everyday public imaginationwith the launching of Sputnik in 1957 Fantasies that had long circulated in sciencefiction had become reality This shift from research and fantasy to tangible factmade new forms of communicating to a mass audience possible24 The Eamesesrsquoinnovative technique did not simply present the audience with a new way of seeing things Rather it gave form to a new mode of perception that was already ineverybodyrsquos mind

Glimpses breaks with the linear narrative of lm to bring snippets of informa-tion an ever-changing mosaic image of American life And yet the message of thefilm is linear and eerily consistent with the official message represented by theKitchen Debate From the stars in the sky at the beginning of the lmmdashwhich thenarrative insists are the same in the Soviet Union as in the USAmdashto the peoplekissing their goodnights and the forget-me-not owers in the last image the lm

12 Grey Room 02

emphasized universal emotions25 while at the same time it unambiguously rein-forced the material abundance of one country From the parking lots of factorieswhich the narrative describes as filled with the cars of the workers to the aerialviews of suburban houses with a blue swimming pool in each yard to the close-ups of shopping carts and shelves full of goodies in supermarkets and housewivescooking dinner in kitchens equipped with every imaginable appliance the messageof the lm was clear we are the same but on the material level we have more

Glimpses like the ldquoSplitnikrdquo house where the Kitchen Debate took place dis-placed the USA-USSR debate from the arms and space race to the battle of theappliances And yet the overall effect of the lm is that of an extraordinarily pow-erful viewing technology a hyperviewing mechanism which is hard to imagineoutside the very space program the exhibition was trying to downplay In fact thisextreme mode of viewing goes beyond the old fantasy of the eye in the sky IfGlimpses simulates the operation of satellite surveillance it exposes more than thedetails of life in the streets It penetrates the most intimate spaces and reveals everysecret Domestic life itself becomes the target the source of pride or insecurity TheAmericans made insecure by the thought of a Russian eye looking down on themcountered by exposing more than that eye could ever see (or at least pretending tosince ldquoa day in the life of the USArdquo became an image of the ldquoGood Liferdquo withoutghettos poverty domestic violence or depression)

Glimpses simply intensied an existing mode of perception In fact it synthesizedseveral already existing modes that were manifestin television space programs and military opera-tions As is typical of all the Eamesesrsquo work it wasthe simplicity and clarity of this synthesis thatmade it immediately accessible to all26

IIWhat kind of genealogy can one make of theEamesesrsquo development of this astonishingly suc-cessful technique

It was not the rst time they had deployed mul-tiple screens In fact the Eameses were involvedin one of the first multimedia presentations onrecord if not the rst Again it was George Nelsonwho set up the commission In 1952 he had been

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 13

Opposite Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Projection simulation in half-inchscale model of auditorium

Left Charles and Ray EamesPowers of Ten 1968 Storyboard

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

famous photographic exhibit ldquoThe Family of Manrdquo14 The exhibition also includeda full-scale ranch-style suburban house put up by a Long Island builder and fur-nished by Macyrsquos It was in the kitchen of this fourteen thousand-dollar six-roomhouse lled with appliances that the Kitchen Debate began with an argument overautomatic washers

The multiscreen performance turned out to be one of the most popular exhibitsat the fair (second only to the cars and color televisions)15 Time magazine calledit the ldquosmash hit of the Fairrdquo16 the Wall Street Journal described it as the ldquorealbomb shellrdquo and US ofcials believed this was ldquothe real pile-driver of the fairrdquo17

Groups of five thousand people were brought into the dome every forty-five minutes sixteen times a day for the duration of the fair18 Close to three millionpeople saw the show and the oor had to be resurfaced three or four times duringthe six-week exhibition19

The Eameses were not just popular entertainers in an official exhibitionGlimpses of the USA was not just images inside a dome The huge array of sus-pended screens defined a space a space within a space The Eameses were self-consciously architects of a new kind of space The film breaks with the fixedperspectival view of the world In fact we nd ourselves in a space that can only beapprehended with the high technology of telescopes zoom lenses airplanes night-vision cameras and so on and where there is no privileged point of view It is notsimply that many of the individual images that make up Glimpses have been taken

with these instruments More importantly therelationship between the images re-enacts the operation of the technologies

The lm starts with images from outer spaceon all the screens stars across the sky sevenconstellations seven star clusters nebulae etcthen moves through aerial views of the city atnight from higher up to closer in until citylights from the air fill the screens The earlymorning comes with aerial views of landscapesfrom different parts of the country deserts

mountains hills seasfarms suburban develop-ments urban neighbor-hoods When the camera

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 11

Opposite Nikita Khruschev andRichard Nixon in ldquoThe KitchenDebaterdquo at the Moscow WorldrsquosFair 1959

Top American National ExhibitionMoscow Worldrsquos Fair 1959 AerialPerspective

Left Richard Nixon cutting theribbon of the American NationalExhibition with Buckminster Fullerdome in background MoscowWorldrsquos Fair 1959

eyes nally descend to the ground we see close-ups of newspapers and milk bottlesat doors But still no people only traces of their existence on earth

Not by chance the first signs of human life are centered upon the house anddomestic space From the stars at night and the aerial views the cameras zoom tothe most intimate scenes ldquopeople having breakfast at home men leaving for workkissing their wives kissing the baby being given lunchboxes getting into carswaving good-bye children leaving for school being given lunchboxes sayinggood-bye to dog piling into station wagons and cars getting into school busesbaby cryingrdquo20

As with the Eamesesrsquo later and much better-known lm Powers of Ten (1968)21

which incidentally reused images of the night sky from Glimpses of the USA22

the film moves from outer space to the close-up details of everyday life As theworking script of the lm indicates the close-ups are ldquolast sips of coffeerdquo of menbefore leaving for work ldquochildren washing hands before dinnerrdquo ldquohousewives onthe phone with clerks (supermarket food shelves in bg)rdquo23 and so on In Powersof Ten the movement will be set in reverse from the domestic space of a picnicspread with a man sleeping beside a woman in a park in Chicago out into theatmosphere and then back down inside the body through the skin of the manrsquoswrist to microscopic cells and to the atomic level Even if Powers of Ten initiallyproduced for the Commission on College Physics was a more scientific moreadvanced film in which space is measured in seconds the logic of both films(Glimpses and Powers of Ten) is the same Intimate domesticity is suspendedwithin an entirely new spatial systemmdasha system that was the product of esotericscientic-military research but that had entered the everyday public imaginationwith the launching of Sputnik in 1957 Fantasies that had long circulated in sciencefiction had become reality This shift from research and fantasy to tangible factmade new forms of communicating to a mass audience possible24 The Eamesesrsquoinnovative technique did not simply present the audience with a new way of seeing things Rather it gave form to a new mode of perception that was already ineverybodyrsquos mind

Glimpses breaks with the linear narrative of lm to bring snippets of informa-tion an ever-changing mosaic image of American life And yet the message of thefilm is linear and eerily consistent with the official message represented by theKitchen Debate From the stars in the sky at the beginning of the lmmdashwhich thenarrative insists are the same in the Soviet Union as in the USAmdashto the peoplekissing their goodnights and the forget-me-not owers in the last image the lm

12 Grey Room 02

emphasized universal emotions25 while at the same time it unambiguously rein-forced the material abundance of one country From the parking lots of factorieswhich the narrative describes as filled with the cars of the workers to the aerialviews of suburban houses with a blue swimming pool in each yard to the close-ups of shopping carts and shelves full of goodies in supermarkets and housewivescooking dinner in kitchens equipped with every imaginable appliance the messageof the lm was clear we are the same but on the material level we have more

Glimpses like the ldquoSplitnikrdquo house where the Kitchen Debate took place dis-placed the USA-USSR debate from the arms and space race to the battle of theappliances And yet the overall effect of the lm is that of an extraordinarily pow-erful viewing technology a hyperviewing mechanism which is hard to imagineoutside the very space program the exhibition was trying to downplay In fact thisextreme mode of viewing goes beyond the old fantasy of the eye in the sky IfGlimpses simulates the operation of satellite surveillance it exposes more than thedetails of life in the streets It penetrates the most intimate spaces and reveals everysecret Domestic life itself becomes the target the source of pride or insecurity TheAmericans made insecure by the thought of a Russian eye looking down on themcountered by exposing more than that eye could ever see (or at least pretending tosince ldquoa day in the life of the USArdquo became an image of the ldquoGood Liferdquo withoutghettos poverty domestic violence or depression)

Glimpses simply intensied an existing mode of perception In fact it synthesizedseveral already existing modes that were manifestin television space programs and military opera-tions As is typical of all the Eamesesrsquo work it wasthe simplicity and clarity of this synthesis thatmade it immediately accessible to all26

IIWhat kind of genealogy can one make of theEamesesrsquo development of this astonishingly suc-cessful technique

It was not the rst time they had deployed mul-tiple screens In fact the Eameses were involvedin one of the first multimedia presentations onrecord if not the rst Again it was George Nelsonwho set up the commission In 1952 he had been

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 13

Opposite Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Projection simulation in half-inchscale model of auditorium

Left Charles and Ray EamesPowers of Ten 1968 Storyboard

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

eyes nally descend to the ground we see close-ups of newspapers and milk bottlesat doors But still no people only traces of their existence on earth

Not by chance the first signs of human life are centered upon the house anddomestic space From the stars at night and the aerial views the cameras zoom tothe most intimate scenes ldquopeople having breakfast at home men leaving for workkissing their wives kissing the baby being given lunchboxes getting into carswaving good-bye children leaving for school being given lunchboxes sayinggood-bye to dog piling into station wagons and cars getting into school busesbaby cryingrdquo20

As with the Eamesesrsquo later and much better-known lm Powers of Ten (1968)21

which incidentally reused images of the night sky from Glimpses of the USA22

the film moves from outer space to the close-up details of everyday life As theworking script of the lm indicates the close-ups are ldquolast sips of coffeerdquo of menbefore leaving for work ldquochildren washing hands before dinnerrdquo ldquohousewives onthe phone with clerks (supermarket food shelves in bg)rdquo23 and so on In Powersof Ten the movement will be set in reverse from the domestic space of a picnicspread with a man sleeping beside a woman in a park in Chicago out into theatmosphere and then back down inside the body through the skin of the manrsquoswrist to microscopic cells and to the atomic level Even if Powers of Ten initiallyproduced for the Commission on College Physics was a more scientific moreadvanced film in which space is measured in seconds the logic of both films(Glimpses and Powers of Ten) is the same Intimate domesticity is suspendedwithin an entirely new spatial systemmdasha system that was the product of esotericscientic-military research but that had entered the everyday public imaginationwith the launching of Sputnik in 1957 Fantasies that had long circulated in sciencefiction had become reality This shift from research and fantasy to tangible factmade new forms of communicating to a mass audience possible24 The Eamesesrsquoinnovative technique did not simply present the audience with a new way of seeing things Rather it gave form to a new mode of perception that was already ineverybodyrsquos mind

Glimpses breaks with the linear narrative of lm to bring snippets of informa-tion an ever-changing mosaic image of American life And yet the message of thefilm is linear and eerily consistent with the official message represented by theKitchen Debate From the stars in the sky at the beginning of the lmmdashwhich thenarrative insists are the same in the Soviet Union as in the USAmdashto the peoplekissing their goodnights and the forget-me-not owers in the last image the lm

12 Grey Room 02

emphasized universal emotions25 while at the same time it unambiguously rein-forced the material abundance of one country From the parking lots of factorieswhich the narrative describes as filled with the cars of the workers to the aerialviews of suburban houses with a blue swimming pool in each yard to the close-ups of shopping carts and shelves full of goodies in supermarkets and housewivescooking dinner in kitchens equipped with every imaginable appliance the messageof the lm was clear we are the same but on the material level we have more

Glimpses like the ldquoSplitnikrdquo house where the Kitchen Debate took place dis-placed the USA-USSR debate from the arms and space race to the battle of theappliances And yet the overall effect of the lm is that of an extraordinarily pow-erful viewing technology a hyperviewing mechanism which is hard to imagineoutside the very space program the exhibition was trying to downplay In fact thisextreme mode of viewing goes beyond the old fantasy of the eye in the sky IfGlimpses simulates the operation of satellite surveillance it exposes more than thedetails of life in the streets It penetrates the most intimate spaces and reveals everysecret Domestic life itself becomes the target the source of pride or insecurity TheAmericans made insecure by the thought of a Russian eye looking down on themcountered by exposing more than that eye could ever see (or at least pretending tosince ldquoa day in the life of the USArdquo became an image of the ldquoGood Liferdquo withoutghettos poverty domestic violence or depression)

Glimpses simply intensied an existing mode of perception In fact it synthesizedseveral already existing modes that were manifestin television space programs and military opera-tions As is typical of all the Eamesesrsquo work it wasthe simplicity and clarity of this synthesis thatmade it immediately accessible to all26

IIWhat kind of genealogy can one make of theEamesesrsquo development of this astonishingly suc-cessful technique

It was not the rst time they had deployed mul-tiple screens In fact the Eameses were involvedin one of the first multimedia presentations onrecord if not the rst Again it was George Nelsonwho set up the commission In 1952 he had been

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 13

Opposite Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Projection simulation in half-inchscale model of auditorium

Left Charles and Ray EamesPowers of Ten 1968 Storyboard

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

emphasized universal emotions25 while at the same time it unambiguously rein-forced the material abundance of one country From the parking lots of factorieswhich the narrative describes as filled with the cars of the workers to the aerialviews of suburban houses with a blue swimming pool in each yard to the close-ups of shopping carts and shelves full of goodies in supermarkets and housewivescooking dinner in kitchens equipped with every imaginable appliance the messageof the lm was clear we are the same but on the material level we have more

Glimpses like the ldquoSplitnikrdquo house where the Kitchen Debate took place dis-placed the USA-USSR debate from the arms and space race to the battle of theappliances And yet the overall effect of the lm is that of an extraordinarily pow-erful viewing technology a hyperviewing mechanism which is hard to imagineoutside the very space program the exhibition was trying to downplay In fact thisextreme mode of viewing goes beyond the old fantasy of the eye in the sky IfGlimpses simulates the operation of satellite surveillance it exposes more than thedetails of life in the streets It penetrates the most intimate spaces and reveals everysecret Domestic life itself becomes the target the source of pride or insecurity TheAmericans made insecure by the thought of a Russian eye looking down on themcountered by exposing more than that eye could ever see (or at least pretending tosince ldquoa day in the life of the USArdquo became an image of the ldquoGood Liferdquo withoutghettos poverty domestic violence or depression)

Glimpses simply intensied an existing mode of perception In fact it synthesizedseveral already existing modes that were manifestin television space programs and military opera-tions As is typical of all the Eamesesrsquo work it wasthe simplicity and clarity of this synthesis thatmade it immediately accessible to all26

IIWhat kind of genealogy can one make of theEamesesrsquo development of this astonishingly suc-cessful technique

It was not the rst time they had deployed mul-tiple screens In fact the Eameses were involvedin one of the first multimedia presentations onrecord if not the rst Again it was George Nelsonwho set up the commission In 1952 he had been

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 13

Opposite Charles and Ray EamesGlimpses of the USA 1959Projection simulation in half-inchscale model of auditorium

Left Charles and Ray EamesPowers of Ten 1968 Storyboard

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

asked to make a study for the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Georgiain Athens and he brought along Ray and Charles Eames and Alexander GirardInstead of writing a report they decided to collaborate on a ldquoshow for a typicalclassrdquo of fifty-five minutes Nelson referred to it as ldquoArt Xrdquo while the Eamesescalled it ldquoA Rough Sketch for a Sample Lesson for a Hypothetical Courserdquo The sub-ject of the lesson was ldquoCommunicationsrdquo27 and the stated goals included ldquothebreaking down of barriers between fields of learning making people a littlemore intuitive [and] increasing communication between people and thingsrdquo28

The performance included a live narrator multiple images (still and moving pic-tures) and even smells and sounds (music and narration) Charles Eames later saidldquoWe used a lot of sound sometimes carried to a very high volume so you wouldactually feel the vibrationsrdquo29 The idea was to produce an intense sensory envi-ronment so as to ldquoheighten awarenessrdquo The effect was so convincing that appar-ently some people even smelled things when no smells were introduced only asuggestion in an image or a sound (for example the smell of oil in the machinery)30

It was a major production Nelson described the team arriving in Athens ldquobur-dened with only slightly less equipment than Ringling Brothers This included amovie projector three slide projectors three screens three or four tape recorderscans of lms boxes of slides and reels of magnetic tape Girard brought a collec-tion of bottled synthetic odors that were to be fed into the auditorium during theshow through the air-conditioning ductsrdquo31

The reference to the circus was not accidental Talking to a reporter for Voguemagazine Charles later argued that ldquolsquoSample Lessonrsquo was a blast on all senses asuper-saturated three-ring circusSimultaneously the students wereassaulted by three sets of slidestwo tape recorders a motion pic-ture with sound and peripheralpanels for further distractionrdquo32

The circus was one of theEamesesrsquo lifetime fascinations33mdashso much so that in the fortieswhen they were out of work andmoney they were about to audi-tion for parts at the circus Theywould have been clowns but

14 Grey Room 02

Right Charles EamesPhotographs of the circus

Opposite Henry DreyfussPresidential War Situation RoomSketch view

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

ultimately a contract to make plywood furniture allowed them to continue asdesigners And from the mid-1940s on they took hundreds and hundreds of pho-tographs of the circus which they used in many contexts including Circus (a 180-slide three-screen slide show accompanied by a soundtrack featuring circus musicand other sounds recorded at the circus) presented as part of the Charles EliotNorton Lectures at Harvard University that Charles delivered in 1970 and the lmClown Face (1971) a training lm about ldquothe precise and classical art of applyingmakeuprdquo made for Bill Ballentine director of the Clown College of Ringling BrothersBarnum amp Bailey Circus The Eameses had been friends with the Ballentines sincethe late forties when the Eameses photographed the circusrsquos behind-the-scenesactivities during an engagement in Los Angeles34 Charles was on the board of theRingling Brothers College and often referred to the circus as an example of whatdesign and art should be not self-expression but precise discipline

Everything in the circus is pushing the possible beyond the limitmdashbears donot really ride on bicycles people do not really execute three and a half turnsomersaults in the air from a board to a ball and until recently no onedressed the way iers do Yet within this apparent freewheeling licensewe nd a discipline which is almost unbelievable The circus may looklike the epitome of pleasure but the person ying on a high wire or execut-ing a balancing act or being shot from a cannon must take his pleasure veryvery seriously In the same vein the scientist in his laboratory is pushing thepossible beyond the limit and he too must take his pleasure very seriously35

The circus as an event that offers a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences thatcannot be taken in entirely by the viewer was the Eamesesrsquo model for their designof multimedia exhibitions and the fast-cutting technique of their lms and slideshows36 where the objective was always to communicate the maximum amountof information in a way that was both pleasurable and effective

But the technological model for multiscreen multimedia presentations mayhave been provided by the War Situation Room which was designed in those sameyears to bring information in simultaneously from numerous sources around theworld so that the president and military commanders could make decisions It isnot without irony in that sense that the Eameses read the organization of the circusas a form of crisis control In a circus Charles said ldquothere is a strict hierarchy ofevents and an elimination of choice under stress so that one event can automati-cally follow another There is a recognized mission for everyone involved In a

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 15

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

crisis there can be no question as to what needs to be donerdquo37 A number of theEamesesrsquo friends were involved in the secret military project of the War Roomsincluding Buckminster Fuller Eero Saarinen and Henry Dreyfuss whose unreal-ized design involved a wall of parallel projected images of different kinds of infor-mation38 It is not clear that the Eameses knew anything about the project duringthe war years but it is very likely given their friendship with Fuller Saarinen andDreyfuss that they would have found out after the war In 1970 in the context ofhis second Norton Lecture at Harvard University Charles referred to the WarRooms as a model for city management

In the management of a city linear discourse certainly canrsquot cope We imaginea City Room or a World Health Room (rather like a War Room) where all theinformation from satellite monitors and other sources could be monitored[Fullerrsquos World Game is an example] The city problem involves con-icting interests and points of view So the place where information is corre-lated also has to be a place where each group can try out plans for its ownchanging needs39

The overall theme of the Norton Lectures was announced as ldquoProblems Relatingto Visual Communication and the Visual Environmentrdquo and a consistent themewas the ldquonecessity to devise visual models for matters of practical concern wherelinear description isnrsquot enoughrdquo Gyorgy Kepesrsquos Language of Vision was a constantreference point for the Eameses The ldquolanguage of visionrdquo was seen as a ldquoreal threatto the discontinuityrdquo (between the arts between university departments betweenart and everyday life etc) that the Eameses were always ghting40 Architecture(ldquoa most non-discontinuous artrdquo) was seen as both the ultimate model for discon-tinuity and where the new technologies should be implemented

A number of wartime research projects including work on communicationsballistics and experimental computers had quickly developed after the war into afull-fledged theory of information flow most famously with the publication ofClaude Shannonrsquos The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949 whichformalized the idea of an information channel from sender to recipient whose ef-ciency could be measured in terms of speed and noise

16 Grey Room 02

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

This sense of information ow organized the Sample Lesson performance TheEameses said ldquowe were trying to cram into a short time a class hour the mostbackground material possiblerdquo41 As part of the project the Eameses produced ACommunication Primer a lm that presents the theory of information explainingShannonrsquos famous diagram of the passage of information The film was subse-quently developed in an effort to present current ideas in communication theoryto architects and planners and to encourage them to use these ideas in their workThe basic idea was to integrate architecture and information ow

If the great heroes of the Renaissance were for the Eameses ldquopeople concernedwith ways of modelingimaging not with self-expression or bravura Brunelleschi but not Michelangelordquo42 the great architects of our time would be theones concerned with the new forms of communication particularly computers

It appeared to us that the real current problems for architects nowmdashthe prob-lems that a Brunelleschi say would gravitate tomdashare problems of organiza-tion of information For city planning for regional planning the rst need isclear accessible models of current states-of-affairs drawn from a data basethat only a computer can handle for you43

The logic of information flow is further developed in the 1955 Eames filmHouse After Five Years of Living The lm was entirely made from thousands ofcolor slides the Eameses had been taking of their house over the rst ve years of itslife44 The images are shown in quick succession (a technique called ldquofast cuttingrdquofor which the Eameses won an Emmy Award in 196045) and accompanied

with music by Elmer Bernstein AsMichael Braune wrote in 1966

The interesting point aboutthis method of lm making isnot only that it is relativelysimple to produce and thatrather more information canbe conveyed than when thereis movement on the screenbut that it corresponds sur-prisingly closely with the wayin which the brain normally

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 17

Opposite Charles and RayEames A CommunicationsPrimer 1953 Film frame

Left Charles and Ray EamesHouse After Five Years of Living1955 Collection of Stills

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

records the images it receives I would assume that it also corresponds ratherclosely with the way Eamesrsquos own thought processes tend to work I think itsymptomatic for instance that he is extremely interested in computers and that one of the essential characteristics of computers is their need to sep-arate information into components before being able to assemble them into alarge number of different wholes46

This technique was developed even further in Glimpses which is organizedaround a strict logic of information transmission The role of the designer is todesign a particular ow of information The central principle is one of compres-sion At the end of the design meeting in the Eames House in preparation for theAmerican exhibition in Moscow the idea of the lm emerged precisely ldquoas a wayof compressing into a small volume the tremendous quantity of informationrdquo theywanted to present which would have been impossible to do in the eighty thousandsquare feet of the exhibition47 The space of the multiscreen lm like the space ofthe computer compresses physical space Each screen shows a different scene butall seven at each moment are on the same general subjectmdashhousing transporta-tion jazz and so forth As the New York Times described it

Perhaps fty clover-leaf highway intersections are shown in just a few secondsSo are dozens of housing projects bridges skyscrapers scenes supermarketsuniversities museums theatres churches farms laboratories and much more48

18 Grey Room 02

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

According to the Eameses repetition was done for credibility They said ldquoif forexample we were to show a freeway interchange somebody would look at it andsay lsquoWe have one at Smolensk and one at Minsk we have two they have onersquomdashthat kind of thing So we conceived the idea of having the imagery come on in mul-tiple forms as in the Rough Sketch for a Sample Lessonrdquo49 But the issue was muchmore than one of efciency of communication or the polemical need to have mul-tiple examples The idea was as with the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo to produce sensoryoverload As the Eameses suggested to Vogue Sample Lesson tried to providemany forms of ldquodistractionrdquo instead of asking students to concentrate on a singularmessage50 The audience drifts through a multimedia space that exceeds theircapacity to absorb it The Eames-Nelson team thought that the most importantthing to communicate to undergraduates was a sense of the relationships betweenthings what the Eameses would later call ldquoConnectionsrdquo Nelson and the Eamesesargued that this awareness of relationships between seemingly unrelated phe-nomena is achieved by ldquohigh-speed techniquesrdquo They produce an excessive inputfrom different directions that has to be synthesized by the audience LikewiseCharles said of Glimpses

We wanted to have a credible number of images but not so many that theycouldnrsquot be scanned in the time allotted At the same time the number ofimages had to be large enough so that people wouldnrsquot be exactly sure howmany they have seen We arrived at the number seven With four images youalways knew there were four but by the time you got up to eight images you werenrsquot quite sure They were very big imagesmdashthe width across four ofthem was half the length of a football eld51

One journalist described it as ldquoinformation overloadmdashan avalanche of relateddata that comes at a viewer too fast for him to cull and reject it a twelve-minuteblitzrdquo The viewer is overwhelmed More than anything the Eameses wanted anemotional response produced as much by the excess of images as their contentThey said

At the Moscow Worldrsquos Fair in 1959mdashwhen we used seven screens over anarea that was over half the length of a football eldmdashthat was just a desper-ate attempt to make a credible statement to a group of people in Moscowwhen words had almost ceased to have meaning We were telling the storystraight and we wanted to do it in 12 minutes with images but we found that

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 19

Opposite left Charles and RayEames Glimpses of the USA 1959

Opposite right Charles and RayEames Notation of timing ofsequences for Glimpses of theUSA 1959

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

we couldnrsquot really give credibility to it in a linear way However when we couldput 50 images on the screen for a certain subject in a matter of 10 seconds wegot a kind of breadth which we felt we couldnrsquot get any other way52

The multiscreen technique goes through one more signicant development inthe 1964 Worldrsquos Fair in New York In the IBM ovoid building designed by theSaarinen office visitors board the ldquopeople wallrdquo and are greeted by a ldquohostrdquodressed in coat-tails who slowly drops down from the IBM ovoid the seated vehundred-person audience is then lifted up hydraulically from the ground level intothe dark interior of the egg where they are surrounded by fourteen screens onwhich the Eameses project the film Think53 To enter the theater is no longer tocross the threshold to pass through the ceremonial space of the entrance as in atraditional public building To enter here is to be lifted in front of a multiplicity ofscreens The screens wrap the audience in a way that is reminiscent of HerbertBayerrsquos 1930 ldquodiagram of the eld of visionrdquo produced as a sketch for the installa-tion of an architecture and furniture exhibition54 The eye cannot escape thescreens and each screen is bordered by other screens Unlike the screens inMoscow those in the IBM building are of different sizes and shapes But onceagain the eye has to jump around from image to image and can never fully catchup with all of them and their diverse contents Fragments are presented to bemomentarily linked together The lm is organized by the same logic of compres-sion Each momentary connection is replaced with another The speed of the lmis meant to be the speed of the mind The ldquohostrdquo welcomes the audience to ldquotheIBM Information Machinerdquo

a machine designed to help me give you a lot of information in a veryshort time The machine brings you information in much the same way asyour mind gets itmdash in fragments and glimpsesmdashsometimes relating to thesame idea or incident Like making toast in the morning55

Already in 1959 the design team (Nelson the Eameses etc) had used exactlythe same termmdashldquoinformation machinerdquomdashto describe the role of Fullerrsquos dome inMoscow taking it from the title of a 1957 film the Eameses had prepared for the1958 Brussels Worldrsquos Fair In addition to the multiscreens the dome housed ahuge RAMAC 305 computer an ldquoelectronic brainrdquo which offered written repliesto 3500 questions about life in the United States56 The architecture was conceivedof from the very start as a combination of structure multiscreen lm and computer

20 Grey Room 02

Right RocheDinkeloo andAssociates IBM CorporationPavilion for the New York WorldrsquosFair 1964ndash65

Opposite top Herbert BayerDiagram of Field of Vision 1930

Opposite bottom Charles and Ray Eames Think 1965Multiscreen projection

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 21

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

Each technology creates an architecture in which insideoutside enteringleavingmeant entirely different things and yet they co-existed All were housed by thesame physical structure Fullerrsquos dome but each dened a different kind of spaceto be explored in different ways From the ldquoSample Lessonrdquo in 1953 to IBM in1964 the Eameses treated architecture as a multichannel information machineAnd equally multimedia installations as a kind of architecture

IIIAll of the Eamesesrsquo designs can be understood as multiscreen performances theyprovide a framework in which objects can be placed and replaced Even the partsof their furniture can be rearranged Spaces are defined as arrays of informationcollected and constantly changed by the users

This is the space of the media The space of a newspaper or an illustrated mag-azine is a grid in which information is arranged and rearranged as it comes in a space the reader navigates in his or her own way at a glance or by fully enteringa particular story The reader viewer consumer constructs the space participatingactively in the design It is a space where continuities are made through ldquocuttingrdquoThe same is true of the space of newsreels and television The logic of the Eamesesmultiscreens is simply the logic of the mass media

It is not by chance that CharlesEames was always nostalgic for thetime of his set design job for MGMin the early forties continuouslyarranging and rearranging existingprops at short notice57 All Eamesarchitecture can be understood asset design The Eameses even pre-sent themselves like Hollywood gures as if in a movie or an adver-tisement always so happy with theever-changing array of objects astheir backdrop

This logic of architecture as a setfor staging the good life was centralto the design of the Moscow exhibi-tion Even the famous kitchen for

22 Grey Room 02

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

example was cut in half not only to allow viewing by visitors but most impor-tantly to turn it into a photo op for the Kitchen Debate Photographers and jour-nalists knew already the night before that they had to be there choosing theirangle Architecture was reorganized to produce a certain image Charles hadalready spoken in 1950 of our time as the era of communication He was acutelyaware that the new media were displacing the old role of architecture And yeteverything for the Eameses in this world of communication that they were embrac-ing so happily is architecture ldquoThe chairs are architecture the lmsmdashthey havea structure just as the front page of a newspaper has a structure The chairs are lit-erally like architecture in miniature architecture you can get your hands onrdquo58

In the notes for a letter to Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti accompanying a copy ofPowers of Ten they write ldquoIn the past fty years the world has gradually been nd-ing out something that architects have always known that is that everything isarchitecture The problems of environment have become more and more interre-lated This is a sketch for a lm that shows something of how largemdashand smallmdashour environment isrdquo59

In every sense Eames architecture is all about the space of informationPerhaps we can no longer talk about ldquospacerdquo but rather about ldquostructurerdquo or moreprecisely about time Structure for the Eameses is organization in time Thedetails that are central to Mies van der Rohersquos architecture are replaced by whatthe Eameses call the ldquoConnectionsrdquo As Charles said in a film about a storage system they had designed ldquoThe details are not details They make the product The connections the connections the connectionsrdquo60 But as Ralph Caplanpointed out the connections in their work are not only between such ldquodisparatematerials as wood and steelrdquo or between ldquoseemingly alien disciplinesrdquo likephysics and the circus but also between ideas Their technique of ldquoinformationoverloadrdquo used in lms and multimedia presentations as well as in their trade-mark ldquoinformation wallrdquo in exhibitions was not used to ldquoovertax the viewerrsquosbrainrdquo but precisely to offer a ldquobroad menu of optionsrdquo and to create an ldquoimpulseto make connectionsrdquo61

For the Eameses structure is not linear They reected often on the impossibil-ity of linear discourse The structure of their exhibitions has been compared to ascholarly paper loaded with footnotes where ldquothe highest level of participationconsists in getting fascinated by the pieces and connecting them for oneselfrdquo62

Seemingly static structures like the frames of their buildings or of their plywoodcabinets are but frameworks for positioning ever-changing objects And the frame

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 23

Charles and Ray Eames Eames House 1945ndash49

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

itself is anyway meant to be changed all the time These changes this ever-uc-tuating movement can never be pinned down

Mies van der Rohersquos exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in1947 was significant according to the Eameses not because of the individualexhibits but because of the way the architect had organized them63 The organiza-tional system of the exhibition communicated in their view the idea of Miesrsquosarchitecture better than any single object (model drawing photograph) on displayWhen Charles published his photographs of the Mies exhibition in Arts ampArchitecture he wrote ldquoThe significant thing seems to be the way in which he[Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says lsquothis is what itrsquos all aboutrsquordquo64

The multiscreen presentations the exhibition technique and the Eamesesrsquo lmsare likewise signicant not because of the individual factoids they offer or eventhe story they tell but because of the way the factoids are used as elements in creating a space that says ldquothis is what [the space of information] is all aboutrdquo

Like all architects the Eameses controlled the space they produced The mostimportant factor was to regulate the ow of information They prepared extremelydetailed technical instructions for the running of even their simplest three-screenslide show65 Performances were carefully planned to appear as effortless as a circus act Timing and the elimination of ldquonoiserdquo were the major considerationsTheir ofce produced masses of documents even drawings showing the rise and fallof intensity through the course of a lm literally dening the space they wantedto produce or more precisely the existing space of the media that they wanted to intensify

With Glimpses the Eameses retained complete control over their work by turn-ing up in Moscow only forty-eight hours before the opening as Peter Blake recallsit ldquodressed like a boy scout and a girl scoutrdquo clutching the reels of the film66 Aphotograph shows the smiling couple descending from the plane reels in Charlesrsquoshands posing for the camera As he later put it

Theoretically it was a statement made by our State Department and yet wedid it entirely here and it was never seen by anyone from our governmentuntil they saw it in Moscow If you ask for criticism you get it If you donrsquotthere is a chance everyone will be too busy to worry about it67

The experience for the audience in Moscow was almost overwhelmingJournalists speak of too many images too much information too fast For the MTV

24 Grey Room 02

Charles and Ray Eames A Computer Perspective 1971Exhibition view

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

and the Internet generation watching the lm today it would not be fast enoughand yet we do not seem to have come that far either The logic of the Internet isalready spelled out in the Eameses multiscreen projects

Coming out of the war mentality the Eamesesrsquo innovations in the world of com-munication their exhibitions lms and multiscreen performances transformedthe status of architecture Their highly controlled flows of simultaneous imagesprovided a space an enclosuremdashthe kind of space we now occupy continuouslywithout thinking

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 25

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

Notes1 Elaine Tyler May Homeward Bound

American Families in the Cold War Era (NewYork Basic Books 1988) 16 See also Karal AnnMarling As Seen on TV The Visual Culture ofEveryday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1994)

2 Quoted by May in Homeward Bound 17 Fortranscripts of the debate see ldquoThe Two Worlds A DayndashLong Debaterdquo New York Times 25 July1959 1ndash3 ldquoWhen Nixon Took on Khrushchevrdquoa report of the meeting and the text of Nixonrsquosaddress at the opening of the American NationalExhibition in Moscow on 24 July 1959 printedin ldquoSetting Russia Straight On Facts about USrdquoUS News and World Report 3 August 195936ndash39 70ndash72 ldquoEncounterrdquo Newsweek 3 August1959 15ndash19 and ldquoBetter to See Oncerdquo Time 3 August 1959 12ndash14

3 Life 10 August 1959 4 Khrushchev ldquoYou Americans expect that

the Soviet people will be amazed It is not so Wehave all these things in our new apartmentsrdquo

Nixon ldquoWe do not claim to astonish the SovietpeoplerdquoUS News amp World Report 3 August 1958 36ndash37

5 Quoted in Alan L Otten ldquoRussians EagerlyTour US Exhibit Despite Cool Ofcial AttituderdquoWall Street Journal 28 July 1959 p 16 col 4

6 Otten p 16 col 4 7 Max Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues

US Fairrdquo New York Times 28 July 1959 p 12col 3

8 John Neuhart Marilyn Neuhart and RayEames Eames Design The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York Harry N Abrams 1989) 238ndash241 See also HeacutelegraveneLipstadt ldquoNatural Overlap Charles and RayEames and the Federal Governmentrdquo in The Workof Charles and Ray Eames A Legacy of Invention

ed Donald Albrecht (New York Abrams 1997)160ndash166

9 Eames Archives Library of Congress box 202

10 Letter from Buckminster Fuller to MsCamp 7 November 1973 Eames Archives Libraryof Congress box 30

11 Stanley Abercrombie George Nelson TheDesign of Modern Design (Cambridge MassMIT Press 1995) 163

12 Abercrombie 16413 Max Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo New York Times 23 August 1959ldquoCircaramardquo had already been shown in the 1958Worldrsquos Fair in Brussels

14 Abercrombie 167 15 ldquoThe seven-screen quickie is intended as

a general introduction to the fair According tothe votes of Russians however it is the mostpopular exhibit after the automobiles and thecolor televisionrdquo Frankel ldquoImage of America atIssue in Sovietrdquo

16 ldquoWatching the thousands of colorfulglimpses of the US and its people the Russianswere entranced and the slides are the smash hitof the fairrdquo ldquoThe US in Moscow Russia Comesto the Fairrdquo Time 3 August 1959 14

17 ldquoAnd Mr Khrushchev watched unsmil-ingly as the real bombshell explodedmdasha hugeexhibit of typical American scenes flashed onseven huge ceiling screens Each screen shows adifferent scene but all seven at each moment areon the same general subjectmdashhousing trans-portation jazz and so forth US ofcials believethis is the real pile-driver of the fair and the pre-mierrsquos phlegmatic attitudemdashnot even smilingwhen seven huge Marilyn Monroes dashed onthe screen or when Mr Nixon pointed out golf-ing scenesmdashshowed his unhappiness with thedisplayrdquo Wall Street Journal 28 July 1959

26 Grey Room 02

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

18 Frankel ldquoDust From Floor Plagues USFairrdquo p 12 col 3

19 Pat Kirkham Charles and Ray EamesDesigners of the Twentieth Century (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1995) 324 From interview ofWilder by Kirkham in 1993

20 Taken from the working script of GlimpsesEames Archives Library of Congress box 202

21 Powers of Ten was based on the 1957 bookby Kees Boeke Cosmic View The Universe inForty Jumps The film was produced for theCommission on College Physics An updatedand more developed version was produced in1977 In the second version the starting point isstill a picnic scene but it takes place in a parkbordering lake Michigan in Chicago SeeNeuhart Neuhart and Eames 336ndash337 and440ndash441

22 See handwritten notes on the manuscriptof the first version of Powers of Ten EamesArchives Library of Congress box 207 The lmis still referred to as Cosmic View

23 Working script of Glimpses EamesArchives Library of Congress box 202

24 In 1970 in the context of Charles Eamesrsquosthird Charles Eliot Norton Lecture at HarvardUniversity where he once again insisted on theneed to incorporate media into the classroom hestill spoke of changing forms of communicationswith reference to Sputnik ldquoIn post-Sputnik panica great demand for taping science lectures whenthey were shown on television distribution costended up as 1001 of production cost no way to run a railroadrdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

25 Apparently even the forget-me-not owerswere understood in precisely the intended wayas symbols of friendship and loyalty Accordingto the Eameses the audience could be heard saying ldquonezabutkirdquo ldquoforget-me-notrdquo as the owers

appeared on the screen as the last image of thelm Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 241

26 For example Powers of Ten was a ldquosketchfilmrdquo to be presented at an ldquoassembly of onethousand of Americarsquos top physicistsrdquo but theEameses decided that it should ldquoappeal to a ten-year-old as well as a physicistrdquo Paul SchraderldquoPoetry of Ideas The Films of Charles EamesrdquoFilm Quarterly 23 no 3 (Spring 1970) 10

27 ldquoGrist for Atlanta paper versionrdquo manu-script in the Eames Archives Library of Congressbox 217 folder 15

28 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 17729 Owen Gingerich ldquoA Conversation with

Charles Eamesrdquo The American Scholar 46 no 3(Summer 1977) 331

30 Gingerich 331 31 Abercrombie 145 quoting George Nelson

ldquoThe Georgia Experiment An Industrial Approachto Problems of Educationrdquo manuscript October1954

32 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August1959 144

33 Beatriz Colomina ldquoReflections on theEames Houserdquo in The Work of Charles and RayEames 128

34 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 373 BillBallentine Clown Alley (Boston Little Brownand Co 1982)

35 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision TheNuts and Boltsrdquo Bulletin of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences 28 no 1 (October1974) 17ndash18

36 Neuhart Neuhart and Eames 9137 Charles Eames ldquoLanguage of Vision The

Nuts and Boltsrdquo 17ndash18 See also typescript of theactual lecture in Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 12

38 Barry Katz ldquoThe Arts of War lsquoVisualPresentationrsquo and National Intelligencerdquo Design

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 27

Issues 12 no 2 (Summer 1996) 3ndash21 I am grateful to Dennis Doordan for pointing out thisarticle to me

39 Partial transcript of Norton LecturesEames Archives Library of Congress box 217folder 10 Square brackets appear in original

40 See for example Charles Eames ldquoOnReducing Discontinuityrdquo manuscript of a talk tothe American Academy of Arts and Sciences in1976 ldquoMy wife and I had made a commitment todisregard the sacred enclosure around a specialset of phenomena called art in our view preoc-cupation with respecting that boundary leads toan unfortunate and unwarranted limitation onthe aesthetic experiencerdquo Eames ArchivesLibrary of Congress box 217 folder 17

41 Gingerich 33242 Notes for second Norton Lecture Eames

is referring here to ldquoProfessor Lawrence Hillrsquos Renaissancerdquo Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 217 folder 10

43 ldquolsquoCommunications Primerrsquo was a recom-mendation to architects to recognize the need for more complex information for new kindsof models of informationrdquo Eames ldquoGrist forAtlanta paper versionrdquo manuscript in the Eames Archives Library of Congress box 217folder 15

44 Colomina passim45 Charles and Ray Eames won an Emmy

Award for Graphics for their rapid cutting exper-iments in The Fabulous Fifties a television pro-gram broadcast on 22 January 1960 on the CBSnetwork It included six lm segments made bythe Eames Ofce Schrader 3

46 Michael Braune ldquoThe Wit of TechnologyrdquoArchitectural Design 36 (September 1966) 452

47 See Abercrombie 163ndash16448 Frankel ldquoImage of America at Issue

in Sovietrdquo

49 Gingerich 332ndash333 50 Allene Talmey ldquoEamesrdquo Vogue 15 August

1959 14451 Gingerich 33352 Digby Diehl ldquoWest QampA Charles Eamesrdquo

manuscript in the Eames Archives Library ofCongress box 24 folder 4ndash5 Published asldquoCharles Eames QampArdquo Los Angeles TimesWEST Magazine 8 October 1972 Reprinted inDigby Diehl Supertalk (New York Doubleday1974)

53 Mina Hamilton ldquoFilms at the Fair IIrdquoIndustrial Design (May 1964) 37-41

54 Arthur A Cohen Herbert Bayer TheComplete Work (Cambridge Mass MIT Press1994) 292 Mary Anne Staniszewski The Powerof Display A History of Exhibition Installationsat the Museum of Modern Art (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1998) 25ndash28

55 Script of the IBM film View from thePeople Wall for the Ovoid Theater New YorkWorld Fair 1964 Eames Archives Library ofCongress

56 ldquoUS Gives Soviet Glittering Showrdquo NewYork Times 25 July 1959

57 Colomina 12958 Gingerich 32759 ldquoPowers of TenmdashGregottirdquo handwritten

notes Eames Archives Library of Congress box217 folder 11

60 Charles Eames speaking in a lm about astorage system the Eameses had designedQuoted in Ralph Caplan ldquoMaking ConnectionsThe Work of Charles and Ray Eamesrdquo Connec-tions The Work of Charles and Ray Eames catalogue of an exhibition at the University ofCalifornia Los Angeles (Los Angeles UCLA1976) 15

61 Caplan 43 62 Caplan 45

28 Grey Room 02

63 Colomina 14664 Charles Eames ldquoMies van der Roherdquo

photographs by Charles Eames taken at the exhi-bition Arts amp Architecture 64 no 12 (December1947) 27

65 ldquoTo show a 3ndashScreen slide showrdquo manu-script in Eames Archives detailing the necessarypreparations for an ldquoEames 3 screen 6 projectorsslide showrdquo with ldquosoundrdquo and ldquopicture operation

procedurerdquo illustrated with multiple drawings14 pp Eames Archives Library of Congress box 211 folder 10

66 Peter Blake in ldquoAn Eames CelebrationThe Several Worlds of Charles and Ray EamesrdquoWNET Television New York 3 February 1975Quoted in Kirkham 320

67 Eames in Gingerich 333

Colomina | Enclosed by Images 29