The Wish Machine: A World of Inventions

Location

Kunsthalle Wien
Karlsplatz

Curators: Brigitte Felderer, Manuel Chemineau

Artists

Thomas All
Jeremy Bentham
A. Blouet
Bodenehr
Hermann Böhrs
Franklin Booth
Etienne-Louis Boullée
Marianne Brandt
Johann Immanuel Breitkopf
Marcel Broodthaers
R. Buckminster Fuller
John Bunstone Bunning
Paul Citroën
James Clephan
Tullio Crali
Justuis Danckart
Theo van Doesburg
Goivanni Antonio Doni
Howard Ebenezer
Hugh Ferris
Maître François
Gottlieb Friedrich Frommann
Frank B. & Lilian Gilbreth
Frank Godwin
Gravelot
Wenzel Hablik
Peter Halley
Joseph Hamel
Hamilton
Annie Harrer
Hannah Höch
Hans & Ambrosius Holbein
Johann Baptist Homann
William Kip
Georgij Krutikov
Charles Lamb
Maria Lassnig
Le Corbusier
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux
El Lissitzky
Joly de Maizeroy
Kasimir Malevitch
Johann Carl Mare
William Marshall
Robert Michel
Johann von Nassau
Albert Robida
Werner Rohde
Antonio Sant'Elia
Oskar Schlemmer
Robert Smithson
Jakov Tschernichow
Conrad Tyroff
Jules Verne
Johann Jacob von Wallhausen
Peter Weibel
Thomas Willson

If we could remember the future, then everyday life the day after tomorrow would have been today’s vision. The Wish Machine: A World of Inventions exhibition explored the ideas, concepts and projects developed by artists, architects, designers and engineers to envisage a (technically) possible future. Using objects, models, images, prototypes and designs from architecture, art, science, film, engineering, advertising, science fiction and other fields, the exhibition illustrated how engineering and technology served as a catalyst for developing visions, translating them into utopian living environments and thereby inventing new worlds. Running alongside the exhibition, an international symposium was held in collaboration with the French Cultural Institute in Vienna on the topic of the challenges of communicating technology policy, balancing expertise, vision and responsibility.

The exhibition was part of the Wiener Festwochen.