Description

Retrotech & Lowtech is the quintessence of 5 years of collective research to exhumate forgotten energy patents and innovations. After being published in French and in Japanese, the English version is now available!

For this book, our scientific committee has selected  64 stories, techniques and inventions which have disappeared from 1780 to the present day. Our work consisted in investigating reliable sources through archives and interviews,  researching all the iconography and writing the texts. We have also asked 10 experts in topics which surround our research to contribute by writing short essays. This will help the reader to put these old stories into perspective and connect them to our contemporary stakes.

Each story is displayed as a double page, including a short text with anecdotes as well as an illustration and some sources to explore further.

→ Format of the book : 18.5 cm x 26 cm ; 212 pages

→ 64 inventions from about 1780 to 1980

→ Short essays from several experts around the topic, including:

“Archives: Finding what is has not been lost” (Eric Dussert)

“Another History of Electric Aviation” (Kevin Desmond, researcher and writer)

“Paleo-technology: Breaking the thermo-industrial deadlock” (Alain Gras, sociologist)

“Art and Energy” (Alice Audouin, professor at the Sorbonne)

“Design fiction and innovations” (Olivier Wathelet, anthropologist of innovation)

“Simondon: open the machine” (Ludovic Duhem, expert in simondonian studies)

“Another history of mobility” (Arnaud Passalacqua, lecturer in contemporary history at the University of Paris VII)

“Intellectual properties and common interest” (La Paillasse, biohacking/open-research center at the origin of the international cancer project Epidemium)

“Energy storage” (Atelier 21)

“Homo Photosyntheticus” (Ewen Chardronnet, author, journalist, commissioner and member of artist collectives)

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