Name, first namecarolinaYear of birth1992eMailchiariottic@gmail.comUniversityHEADField of Interest / research fieldCommunication Design / Visual CommunicationTitle of projectTHINK things imagesAbstractThe Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) which later was renamed IBM, in 1911, with the word “THINK" coined his motto. When asked what the slogan meant, Thomas J. Watson (CEO and IBM President from 1914 to 1956) replied: "By THINK I mean: take everything into consideration. I refuse to make the sign more specific. If a man just sees THINK, he'll find out what I mean. We're not interested in a logic course.”
International Time Recording, one of the companies consolidated to form CTR, published the magazine TIME, that in 1935 IBM would rename THINK, underling how the motto was a key element of the corporate culture.
The first issue of THINK® was a magazine for IBM employees and clients, it features articles on wide-ranging topics, such as: education, science, art and international relations. In the first number of this magazine, the cover pictured Le Penseur : a bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin, so that all the people could understand the connection with the word “THINK”.
After 30 years, in 1964-65, in the IBM Pavilion for the New York Word’ s Fair, the designers Charles and Ray Eames, with the exhibition “THINK”, explained IBM’s philosophy with a multiscreen projection of different symbols and objects representing the american culture. The toaster, the organisation of a football team, the organisation of the dinner party, different aspects of the american daily life are the examples of the icons chosen to be deconstructed in the show, to illustrate with images familiar to the general public the extreme ramification of the IBM work and the multifaceted meanings of the motto THINK.
If you start thinking further, even about the simplest objects, you discover an hidden complexity and beauty which has a parallel with the IBM work and the depth of the THINK motto.
As we can notice, IBM switch its image from a classic sculpture that evoke thinking as a special activity, to a new set of images created by the Eames. What is the meaning of such a change? How did the film of the Eames contribute to change the way IBM was thinking itself as a compagny represented by the word/concept «think»? What is the role of images, (and of the special conception of images by the Eames) in this evolution? How did the interests of IBM met the particuliar competence of the Eames in the field of images and design?
In this particular context of « cold war of the objects », the ideological value of the word "think" must have been embedded in goods and products of daily life. How does the film Think manage to do such a thing? How did IBM try to move the definition of the concept "think", from an old fashioned and intangible activity, to symbols of american way of life?TutorsVivien PhilizotFileDownload file