Wang, EugeneHuang, Bing2019-08-082018-052018-05-112018Huang, Bing. 2018. Art, Machine, and Learning in Eighteenth-Century China. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41128496This dissertation analyzes the visual and material repercussions of China’s encounters with European scientific devices. No less than today, a romance with technology at that time stoked dreams and changed lives. Celestial globes, precision timepieces, ivory spheres, and mechanical automata captivated interest; could machines, some wondered, be conscious? Discourses on consciousness, design, and precision reimagined art and technology, time and space, and man and machine. A drive to imbue both machines and art with life motivated the collection and creation of new devices and new genres. Combining art history with the history of science, I examine these objects not merely as luxury items of connoisseurship but as manifestations of a new kind of thinking about visuality and intelligence. New Media thus has an old (and Chinese) history.application/pdfenmachine learningeighteenth centuryclocksChinaQing DynastyQianlongKangxidesign thinkingautomataYongzhengmachine consciousnesspainting manualpolyhedron ivoryartificial intelligencemacartney embassyglobalizationbeauty paintingtime and spaceprecisionjaquet-drozart with lifejuanqinzhaiart and technology, man and machinenew mediacelestial globesarmillary sphereastronomical instrumentsrobotsThesis or Dissertation2019-08-080000-0002-7345-0323