2ème Partie

Entendre & Parler

L'homme Parle pour communiquer des informations, mais Chante pour faire passer des émotions.

Une intonation, une inflexion de voix sont des indications d'état d'esprit qui permettent de captiver, parfois de persuader et toujours de mieux comprendre et se faire comprendre. 

Si, en 1456, Gutenberg invente la reproduction et la distribution de masse de mots avec l'impression de livres (180 exemplaires !), il faudra attendre 1877 (soit plus de 420 ans !) et Edison pour que l'on puisse reproduire un son à l'identique et le dupliquer.
Le facteur déterminant est sans conteste l'électricité, qui ferra son entrée en fanfare à l'Exposition Internationale de 1881. Disques (1877), téléphone (1878), radio (1894), télévision (1926) toutes ces inventions/distractions expérimentent et utilisent tous les matériaux existants et même en inventent de nouveaux ! 
Au début le bois confirma sa suprématie de matériaux noble destiné aux pièces de réception des habitations. Mais très vite le modernisme l'emporta et le métal, la bakélite, les plastiques et autres matériaux composites prirent le dessus.
Le Design Industriel faisait ses premiers ravages.
Micros, radio, électrophone, téléviseur, téléphone, magnétophone, chaîne Hi-Fi, etc. Nos vies sont jalonnées d'outils qu'un jour nous avons rêvé de posséder pour mieux les abandonner dés l'apparition d'un autre outil, plus petit, plus joli, moins cher, plus fiable.

Hearing/Speaking/Singing/Listening

Since the beginning of time, man has spoken to communicate information, but has sung the better to communicate emotion. An intonation or an inflection of the voice are indicators of a state of mind that allow us to perceive, sometimes to persuade, but always the better to understand and make ourselves understood.
If, in 1456, Gutenberg invented the means of mass reproduction and distribution of words by book-printing (180 copies!), it took until 1877 (or more than 420 years!) and Edison for us to be able to faithfully reproduce and duplicate sound. And for books, as with sound, and as with almost all past inventions, the multiplying factor was without doubt electricity, which made its triumphant entrance at the International Exhibition of Electricity in Paris in 1881. From one day to the next the distribution of electrical energy allowed inventors to discover new fields of research and to give free reign to their imagination.
This riot of inventiveness was to participate in the democratization of the Western world by creating "markets" for these new products. Records (1877), the telephone, (1878), radio (1894), television (1926), all of these inventions and entertainments experimented with and used pre-existing materials, and even invented new ones! In the beginning wood confirmed its supremacy as the noble material designated for the reception rooms of homes the world over. However, modernism rapidly carried the day, and metal, bakelite, plastics and other composite materials took the lead.
Industrial design made its first killing. Micros, radios, record-players, televisions, telephones, tape-recorders, stereos etc. Our lives are punctuated by the different tools that we have at one time wished to own, only to abandon them as soon as another, smaller, more attractive, cheaper, or more reliable comes along.
They are our day-to-day companions, providers of both services and pleasure, in solo or shared. They have borne witness, immobile, to our evolutions and revolutions. And then, discreetly, after months and sometimes years of loyal service, they fade away, standing back in favour of the new, the more dynamic, more colorful, the more "fashionable". They retire first into cupboards, then into cellars and attics. Today they are back in the limelight, in all their splendor and re-found modernity.
In this part can be seen:
Record players, cds and records, record-holders, radios, telephones, answering-machines, intercoms, megaphones, loud-speakers, Walkmans, dictaphones, tape-recorders, microphones.

3ème Partie

Voir/Écrire/Décrire/Lire/Regarder/Parler/Entendre/Chanter/Écouter: l'Ordinateur

L'an 2 000 fut bien, comme le craignait l'homme, la fin du monde ! En tout cas la fin d'un monde ! En réalité l'an 2 000 arriva en 1990 avec l'arrivée du World Wide Web plus connu sous le nom générique de Internet.
Jusqu'à la fin des années 80 le rêve de l'homme est simple à énoncer, mais à priori impossible à réaliser: voir et être vu, parler et être entendu, écrire et être lu, décrire et être regardé, chanter et être écouté. Tout cela de façon permanente, 24h sur 24, 365 jours par an, sans limite de temps, d'argent, de lieux avec la même machine bon marché et utilisable par tous !
Nous entrions dans l’ère du numérique, de l’Ordinateur, des 0 et des 1, la Révolution numérique est en marche et avec elle une nouvelle Esthétique.

Seeing/Writing/ Describing/Reading/Looking/Speaking/Hearing/Singing/Listening (and More if possible)

Just as mankind feared, the year 2000 well and truly marked the end of the world! Or in any event the end of a world! In fact the year 2000 came about in 1990 with the arrival of the World Wide Web, better known under the name of Internet.
Until the end of the 1980s man's dream, if relatively simple to express, was in principle impossible to fulfill: to see and be seen, speak and be heard, write and be read, describe and be watched, sing and be listened to. All of that in a state of permanency, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unlimited by time or money, and at the disposal of all.
This is henceforth possible thanks to the digital era, to computers and Internet. And Man's creative genius today acts upon all these new objects of communication in order to make them, as always, smaller, more efficient, cheaper, more portable, more powerful. The adventure continues.