The public examination will took place at Metsätalo B317 (lecture room 6) from 1 pm onwards. The opponent is Professor Kjetil Fallan from University of Oslo, and custos is Professor Kirsi Saarikangas.
In his doctoral dissertation Autio investigates three interdependent phenomena integral to modernity: car design, images of the future, and the petroleum-based energy system. These phenomena are interpreted as being essential in the historical processes that produced today’s “petroculture,” along with its manifestations and consequences. This historical trajectory toward perpetually better imagined future is examined through the design objects known as “concept cars.” These three-dimensional car facsimiles are analyzed as “images of the future,” that reflect the broader evolution of future expectations in society. The main research question is why Japanese car design envisioned utopian images of the future like those seen in the 1960s and 1970s.
The first part of the dissertation introduces a chronology of Japanese concept cars and the evolving images of the future they embodied. The part is based on a vast body of primary source materials collected during the research also conducted in Japan. The second part develops a theoretical model aimed at explaining these phenomena from a contemporary perspective that acknowledges the ongoing ecological breakdown and the automotive industry’s historical contribution to it. This discussion formulates a theoretical framework that elucidates the interdependencies between the image of the future, car design, and petroleum. To demonstrate these interdependencies Autio introduces the concept of “petrodesign,” which describes the predominant characteristics of industrial design in petroleum-driven societies.
Autio argues that the images of the future reflected and manipulated in the design of the concept cars were the result of the expanding petroleum dependency and the growing dominance of petroculture. The institutionalized future orientation of petroculture, along with the crises inherent to it, explains the transitions of these visions. The dissertation reinforces the previous interpretation that the car-dependent societies did not emerge from an increase in passenger car ownership. Rather, they developed through the design and implementation of an infrastructure that first made car use possible, then accessible, and finally, unavoidable. Autio clarifies that this occurred due to the future orientation intrinsic to car design and petroleum-based capitalism.
After receiving a doctorate, Autio will continue as post-doctoral researcher in the Ecoconjuctions -project.