Olivetti Visual Culture 1968–1971: Sponsored Films, Environmental Media
摘要
The chapter examines the experimentalism that characterizes some of the films sponsored by Olivetti in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the context of a broader sensorial and environmental turning point in the activities of the company’s Cultural Relations, Industrial Design and Advertising Office headed by Renzo Zorzi. In addition to cinema, these activities include design, advertising, display and exhibition techniques, and reveal an authentically integrated and intermedial vision, which aims to deal with important aspects of contemporary visual culture, including expanded cinema, counter-cultural movements, new body politics. These years saw the emergence of unprecedented rhetorical and communicative possibilities for the films commissioned by Olivetti, as it increasingly developed solutions with a strong sensorial impact, while limiting or completely removing the didactic role of verbal commentary. These solutions are examined through the analysis of three films: After Effects by Bruno Munari and Marcello Piccardo, Olivetti Valentine Commercial by Stephen Dwoskin and Machine Seeks Form by Massimo Magrì.