When I buckled up to write the reflection of my second T&T Class, I was a little confused about what points to cover as our discussion was majorly about “Ferrari – Under the Skin” Exhibition held in London Design Museum somewhere in 2017. As far as I comprehended, the reason behind discussing that particular exhibition was to witness the integration of technology in various design fields and procedures. The overall exhibition seemed great and although I’m not a big fan of cars but the idea and the setting was something that I find appreciable.
Somewhere in between my Online T&T lecture, It was mentioned by our instructor there is a massive debate going on internationally about the difference between Industrial and Product Design and that particular comment hit home. Obviously if we talk about design museums, we know it gives the idea that there would be artistic stuff exhibited there whereas the term industrial museum paints the picture of an exhibition like this Ferrari exhibition.
Now having done my graduation in Product and Industrial design, if I see the work being done in international industries and product designing fields, I feel like what I studied in those 4 years didn’t even touch the basics of it. As a product designer, I studied about the whole process of first designing a product and then eventually working on its manufacturing too but the multiple limitations in terms of limited industries and resources played a role of great hindrance in the whole designing process.
The field Product and Industrial design itself is a vast umbrella that has ties with a number of fields. But I was so surprised when I realized this that what I have studied as just the tip of the ice-berg. There is a lot of ground that is still to be covered here in regards with industries and we have just started to do that.
Now, coming towards the subject matter of this particular article, it must have been pellucid from the title that it’s not affiliated to cars or stuff. When Sir Aarish was remarkably narrating to us the details of this exhibition he mentioned a phrase that instantly gave me something to do research about. He mentioned that this exhibition somehow embodied all the minor details regarding the assemblage process of Ferrari cars.
Every minute machinery article and the detailed anatomy of Ferrari cars were displayed there for the public eye. The miniature models displayed there showed all the intricate details. For Ferrari die-hard fans, who used to have surf internet for hours trying to gather intricate details about their favorite car’s assemblage, must have found this exhibition meritorious. This act of transparency must have been appreciated by the Ferrari lovers. The reversed- engineering, that’s what I would call it as the Ferrari organization has laid open their ‘secret’ anatomy of the cars, gives me hope that sooner or later we would be seeing a lot of secrets getting unsealed.
Ferrari: Under the Skin Exhibit 
Now while the particulars were being discussed there, I was thinking about the recent unsealing of the Vatican archives that has toppled the internet with tons of articles claiming it to be the new Pandora box.
Just like Ferrari has come out in the open with this exhibition, The Vatican City has also unsealed their secret Vatican archives for a number of scholars in an attempt to come clean about some allegations that has been thrown to the Late Pope Pius XII regarding his alleged silence over the holocaust during the Nazi regime. Now I know this whole debate is nowhere in connection with this course but I got the idea to do research about this when I was going through the images from the Ferrari exhibition, so I though why not write about this.
Late Pope Pius XII was under the spotlight since decades after the premier of a German play manifesting that the Pope in question, during his era, showed indifference to the sufferings of the Jews under the Nazi regime. This resulted in deliverance of some documents from the war times in the support of the pope which were branded by the critiques as “insufficient”.
For decades the archives were kept sealed, never to be shed light upon, not even scholars or researchers were given permission to access them.
Recently Pope Francis granted permission to make the archives accessible for scholars stating that:
“The church isn’t afraid of history.”
Not all the scholars have been granted permission to in the archives; only 60 lucky scholars have been selected who will have the pleasure of going through the archives of late Pope Pius XII.
Bishop Sergio Pagano has stated:
“We will leave each person to draw their own conclusions but we have no fear. The good [that Pius did] was so great that it will dwarf the few shadows.”
But the historians have other opinions. Well this is a long debate and we can just wait and see what will be the eventual outcome but this trend of unsealing secrets either in industries or organizations seems to be contagious as we see secret’s been spilling out lately. Could it be recognized as the ‘flaw’ in this digital world? I wonder.
Tools & Technology in Art Education 