So I'm really excited to welcome Ellen Lofton to this event. She is a writer, curator, educator, designer. She is the Betty Cook and William O. Steinmetz design chair at Micah in Baltimore. She serves as senior curator at Cooper Hewitt and Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. And also she's just someone that I look up to as a writer and curator. Those are two things that I'm still always learning. And some of the best things I've learned have come from her books and her work. If you haven't had an opportunity to check out the Bauhaus book that we published the catalog for that goes along with Bauhaus at 100, please do. Her introduction is really an important part of that book and really sets the stage for what we tried to do with that show. So, so excited to welcome Ellen to the stage and really excited about this kind of collaborative event with Cooper Hewitt. Thanks for joining us, Ellen. Thanks, Steve, and I learned so much from you too. It's amazing. I'm delighted to be here. Greetings from Cooper Hewitt. I'm Ellen Lofton. I'm curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. And we are really delighted to be doing this program with you at the Letterform Archive. In the service of accessibility, I'm going to describe myself. I'm a white woman with dark blonde hair. I'm wearing a dark t-shirt and a modern pearl necklace designed by Betty Cook. And behind me are two of my favorite places in the world, the Letterform Archive and Cooper Hewitt Museum, and both galleries are overflowing with Bauhaus. And that makes me super happy. I'm a Bauhaus fan girl.  On behalf of Cooper Hewitt, this program is presented by the Parsons School of Design Cooper Hewitt MA program in the history of design and curatorial studies. Our lecture series, Graphic Design History, is part of our spring graduate seminar, which I'm teaching every week with a wonderful group of grad students. And some of our events are public, including tonight's talk. So welcome grad students. It's so great to have you here in the audience. Our lecture series was created by the curators at Cooper Hewitt to celebrate the work of our community of scholars and curators. So in 2019, Cooper Hewitt opened our exhibition, Herbert Bayer Bauhaus Master, which features pieces from our collection, and from the amazing collection of Meryl C. Berman. Last, the pandemic forced us to close our exhibition short. We didn't get to share it as much as we had hoped to. At the letter form archive you have a few more weeks to come and see the amazing exhibition Bauhaus typography at 100. And if you can't see it in person. Please check out the amazing book that Steven just mentioned. So full of new things and new photography of our favorite stuff up close and personal. And Cooper Hewitt also published a book about Herbert Bayer featuring a lot of pieces from our collection and Meryl Berman's collection. There's so many ways to enjoy the Bauhaus. And tonight is going to be one of them. It was a life altering experience for me to be able to walk through this exhibition, live and in person with Rob Saunders, who curated the show and his director of the letter form archive. And it's been 11 hours with me going through the extraordinary pieces that he assembled for this show. And so we're going to go on a quick little run through. There's early Bauhaus. There's high Bauhaus. There's some pre Bauhaus. And there's Bauhaus influencers. One of the favorite pieces in the exhibition is this weird little book cover by a German designer named Walter Dexel, and he's representing the human body here, the parts of the body with just lines and circles. Another theme we can kind of follow tonight is some of this anatomy of the Bauhaus body and sort of explore a rather strange and reduced sense of what the human form can be. Now Walter Dexel himself had rather mixed opinions of the Bauhaus and he was working at the same time and creating quite similar work to what people were doing at the Bauhaus. And it was rather annoying to him and he thought the Bauhaus was quite overrated and dependent on a never failing flow of publicity. And that my friends is exactly the point. The Bauhaus people knew from very early on that they needed graphic design and lots of it in order to get the word out and keep people interested in this little art school that was always struggling to stay open and graphic design was there as a subject matter and a medium, but also simply as a tool for survival. The exhibition also has a section called Beyond the Bauhaus that shows us what people did after they left, like the radical pedagogy of Max Bill or the influence of the Bauhaus on corporate modernism and corporate identity standards. And on a corporate note, one of my favorite pieces in the exhibition is this extraordinary poster by Vanessa Zuniga Tnitsere, who's a designer from Colombia, and she studies the graphic language of pre-Columbian pottery and analyzes it to uncover and present the modular language of representation found in those pieces and so beautiful and imaginative abstractions of human forms and animal forms and abstract decorative forms. And then that study of these indigenous design languages informs her own invention of her own language for her time and place. Let's dive in to the Bauhaus and start at the beginning, once upon a time in Weimar, Germany, a little art school opened. And the first director of the Bauhaus was the architect Walter Gropius. And by the time he left in 1928, just really a short time later, it was the most famous art school in the world. And in his opening statements about creating the school, he spoke of the devastation in his country and across Europe, wrought by World War One. He said, the ruined world, visible and invisible, will be resuscitated from our brains and from our hands. And it is with that kind of grand statement of utopian possibility that he started a school of art and design in Weimar. And the school has left us many things, many legacies. And one is his idea of a basic course of preliminary experience for incoming students that plunges everybody into a direct engagement with materials and form with the goal of erasing all the bad habits and all the received ideas that young artists might have brought with them to the school. And this idea remains in use in schools around the world. And here we see Gropius's very famous diagram translated into English of the Bauhaus curriculum with that basic course at the edge. I was really interested recently to find this more casual drawing by Paul Clay, who taught in the basic course at the Bauhaus, that takes that same content and renders it in a kind of different hand. And here at the top of the circle, two little flags have been planted. And one of them seems to say something like propaganda, and the other says Verlag or publishing. And so there at the edges in the outskirts in the suburbs of the Bauhaus mind was graphic design and publicity, making its little steak, right. And he was offering perhaps a lifeline to the school. The first leader of the basic course was Johannes Itten. He was a painter, a Swiss painter, he wore long robes and he studied an esoteric philosophy called Mazda, Mazda Zan. And he had many followers who actually came with him to the Bauhaus who already embraced his teachings which are very much based in expressionism and spirituality and principles of vegetarianism and celibacy and the work that his students did there in his classroom was very controlled and physical and raw. It may not be what many people associate with the Bauhaus when they think of sort of clean and perfect geometries. A beautiful project that it initiated and worked on is this portfolio of prints called utopia documents of reality. The cover is designed by Margie Terry Adler, who was a student of it and it's full of these extraordinary lithographic type studies or lettering studies by it and that are directly based on the teaching that he was doing in his basic course, where he would have just contemplate an image of an old master painting or a medieval painting, and attempt to chart their inner emotional response to the work and he got very angry if people didn't look really into it and really appropriately distressed by the emotional content of the first trigger warning in the early Bauhaus. And then this beautiful drawing here we see he's created this esoteric geometric diagram on top of the typography and that also flips over and lays on top of the image. It's another theme that we'll see in Bauhaus graphic design, these kind of networks of lines that make visible, invisible energies, life forces, ideas, thoughts, we could call them thought lines or theory lines. And it's something that we'll see many of the artists and designers at the school create, regardless of their particular ideological outlook. One of it and outstanding students was a young woman named Friedel Dicker, who followed it and to the Bauhaus and worked with him in his classroom, and created works like this extraordinary watercolor, in which he's exploring letter forms, not unlike those we saw it in his portfolio. And Dicker also studied with Kandinsky and clay, who were teaching in the basic course as well. And she was the first student to be invited to help teach that course. And she very early on took a leadership role and a pedagogical role at the school. And here we see some postcards designed by Kandinsky and clay for the first Bauhaus exhibition in 1923, where they're translating their drawings into kind of graphic advertisements for the energy and ideas of the Bauhaus. And we can see some of those energy lines at work in their graphics as well. Dicker collaborated with it on the utopia portfolio, which included not only those lithographic hand drawn letters by it, but this extraordinary series of letterpress prints, where Dicker worked with a printer to translate it and text into letterpress. A process that she spent several weeks on. It was very rigorous ongoing work. She wrote letters about it to her friend about the process of creating this typography for it. And we can come in and see the extraordinary typography, the use of much more decorative typefaces than you might associate with the Bauhaus. And attempting to translate some of that energy and ox from it and hand handmade letters into something distinctly typographic. And it's quite wonderful that a page proof exists from one of these prints, where we can see Dicker and or it and writing sketches and notes to the printer, and the printer would then go and make those corrections which are reflected as you see in the final print. So it's really fun when we get to get little scraps of the working process of our favorite designers. These, these traces of the real these traces of the thought process. After the Bauhaus Dicker worked as a designer artist and teacher between 1943 and 1944, she taught art to children in the Teresa and stop concentration camp ghetto. She herself was murdered in Auschwitz Poland in 1944, several of her students survived and became founders of the new discipline of art therapy and child psychology. So if we think about the legacy of Bauhaus teaching and Bauhaus pedagogy. This is one beautiful vein of this idea of art as experience and art as access to inner knowledge that carries forward today, and has survived in this most extraordinary manner. The worst experiences of human history. Dicker was able to save over 4000 of the drawings created by these children, and they are preserved today in the Jewish Museum and Prague Czech Republic. And you can see here the influence of clay and kandinsky and it and and Dicker herself carried forth into these extraordinary works. It's kind of heavy so I just want to take a moment for us all to think about that, especially in this time of war spirit Bauhaus. That's the thing. I think we all just experienced some of it together, the spirit of the place, carrying forward. Early years at the Bauhaus were very much embedded in an expressionist point of view. They were very interested in the other worldly Lothar Schreyer was an avant garde theater director. His work celebrated sound and movement and gesture over the traditional focus on literature in the theater. The 1921 play crucifixion is documented in this woodcut book which is in the exhibition and in the collection at the letter form archive, and which I had only ever seen little black and white images of it in various Bauhaus publications. And it's so extraordinary to be able to encounter it up close and to see the real thing and how big and rich and material. Schreyer was director of the stage workshop at the Bauhaus and by more from 1921 to 1923 those early years those spirit years. And here is our theme of weird anatomies at the Bauhaus. These are some representations of the players on the stage and how they might have been dressed in a very abstracted way. This one is called Mutter or mother, and the mother here is a bunch of rectangles with circles for her eyes her face her mouth, her breasts, her womb, and inside the book perhaps it's most extraordinary element or influential element is this visual score that Schreyer created that was an attempt to translate the sounds words movements and tones of the theatrical performance into a kind of score, based on the linear layers of a musical score. He knew that most people would not be able to really recreate any kind of performance for it. And he saw it as something much more esoteric that would reach those with the special talent to understand what it was about. Schreyer was forced to leave the Bauhaus in 1923 as Gropius craved a new direction for the school. And he was replaced by Oscar Schlemmer as director of the theater workshop, who ushered in a new period of Bauhaus experimentation with bodies and space. And here we see a diagram of a player on a stage enveloped by a network of these thought lines or theory lines piercing the body turning the stage into a kind of space thickened by geometry. And then he moved into constructivist Bauhaus, a different time, a different place. It was also forced to resign in 1923. Gropius was fed up with the eccentricity. It was not a good luck for the people of Weimar a quite conservative town. Gropius was committed to moving the school in a new direction, more towards technology and industry. And he hired someone to replace it. A young artist named Laszlo Maholinage, who was Hungarian. He was only 28 years old when he started working at the Bauhaus. And he often was mistaken for a student because he was so youthful. And the other faculty, Clay, and Kandinsky, and Muka, other people who were teaching at the time are really a different generation from Maholinage.  And so they quickly became very close collaborators. And Maholinage was really licensed to do it, to make it happen, to make this new Bauhaus happen. In this portrait, he is by his wife, Lucia Maholi, he's shown wearing a engineer's cover all over his suit and tie, his shirt and tie. So he's really representing a very new image of the artist, who is not, not wearing long flowing robes like it, but is dressed as a kind of worker of the future and an intellectual worker of the future. He had already an established career before coming to the Bauhaus. As he traveled across eastern Germany to Berlin in 1920, he earned money for his train tickets by doing lettering and sign painting. So there is this survival instinct with graphic design. On his way to Berlin, he contracted the Spanish flu and nearly died, survived that pandemic. And he belonged to the Hungarian avant garde group MA, which means today, and continued throughout the magazine's publication to be the Berlin correspondent for the journal. Lucia Maholinage, his wife, was a photographer and writer. And before meeting Laszlo in 1920, she was working in the publishing industry and quite a bit of knowledge of how books and magazines are published. And she was also a photographer and began studying commercial photography while at the Bauhaus. If you're ever curious what their apartment looked like. Well, here you are in the actual dining room of Lucia and Laszlo, fitted out with Bauhaus furniture and Bauhaus artwork. Lucia Maholinage's photographs of people and objects and Bauhaus buildings became part of the visual bedrock of the Bauhaus myth, both during the time the school was opened and after the school closed. These pages from the Bauhaus journal, she is credited for her photography, but that would end later and Walter Gropius took her negatives with him when he emigrated to the United States and really use these glass negatives that she had created to help build the Bauhaus and spread the myth of the Bauhaus in the US and kind of cut her out of that process, something that she fought hard against for decades to come. Maholinage and Herbert Byer designed this catalog for the big 1923 exhibition in Weimar, which is sort of a last stand event to prove the value of the school. And this beautiful book which is available in a gorgeous facsimile that came out in 2019 really gets you inside the mind of the school at that moment. The cover is designed by Herbert Byer, the interior pages are designed by Maholinage, who worked with Gropius to make the book happen to edit the book as well as lay it out. So when we talk about designing a book, it isn't just someone being handed some files but really the whole conception of how it could happen. The book is Square, which reflected the philosophy of geometry that was being espoused by Kandinsky at that moment. And that was part of this kind of creation of a visible scientific image for the school, the yellow triangle, the red square, the blue circle, a kind of elementary sentence of visual geometry. Square book is hard to design. We can see Maholinage kind of struggling there with it with these very long lines. But here he is launching the new typography. And this is considered the first essay to use that phrase. And it would go on to have a huge influence on typography in the 1920s. Gropius and Maholinage also decided to publish an entire series of books, the Bauhaus book series, which are beautiful little slim volumes they were not meant to be big or imposing or expensive. They were written by leading artists and designers of the day, they were the voice of the avant garde written by people both at the Bauhaus and across Europe. And Maholinage designed these books often with the assistance of Lucia Maholi together they wrote Bauhaus book number eight painting photography film, although Lucia is not credited for the book. And the cover features an abstract photograph, which is a technique that Lucia and Maholi developed together in her dark room at the Bauhaus. Here's another beautiful printers proof. This is from painting photography film. And we can see here where Maholinage has told the printer that he wants these black bars to run off the edges of the page to bleed to be more dynamic and he's adding an arrow to create more sense of motion to the page. And that's how it got printed. So again, I just, I just love seeing that process taking place and imagining this, this young artist figuring it out, and kind of learning on the job how to create the new typography, something he had written about, but didn't quite get what it would be. And then really making it happen in essays like this and painting photography film. He's creating a score for a movie. So the idea of how to use typography and grid lines and photographs and repetition and symbols to create a visual translation of the action and unfolding of a film. And we can see the influence of Maholinage here and this beautiful book, which is featured in the exhibition at the letter form archive. The author took out a to Gaki visited Europe in the 20s and is very directly creating an homage here to Maholinage in this gorgeous book cover. He also looked at the idea of graphic notation in Bauhaus book for the theater of the Bauhaus, which he co authored with Oscar Schlemmer and Farcus Molnar. The cover here is by Schlemmer. Inside the book is this incredible piece of information design that folds out of the book, and is a score for performing on stage and Maholinage was deeply interested in theater and performance, and created many designs related to theatrical space and how it could develop the audience and engage the audience and use new new technologies of light and projection and stage design. So here we are at the top of this long graphic, and we can see Maholinage's diagram of the stage, which includes moving panels. And it includes a screen for projecting films and light on a lower visible stage for musical instruments and sound making of all kind. And underneath are these vertical bands showing the simultaneous creation of of form and light and music and movement. You can travel through the piece and see this beautiful diagrammatic design that for example the color bars are showing different intensities of light and simultaneity of light. So this is quite an interesting and elaborate system. And of course, we saw it earlier as similar interest in the more expressionistic woodcut work of Lothar Schreyer. Sometimes art historians and theater people say, well, these things are interesting experiments, but did they really work? Aren't they just too obscure for someone really to make sense of? And there's some truth to that. But really, if we think about time based media from a distance perspective from today, there are incredible parallels in the software we use in the interfaces for animation or video editing, which use these timelines and layers to help the creator work out camera movements and transitions and timing and sound all in simultaneous form. So I think the Bauhaus is always there inventing something and perhaps it's real use changes over time. And Maholi Naj's students was Mariana Brant, a German artist who came to the Bauhaus. She abandoned a career as an expressionist painter. It said that she burned all her paintings to start over and immerse herself in this new experience at the school. And she entered Maholi Naj's metal workshop, and she was the only woman in that workshop, and quickly became one of the most influential product designers with the Bauhaus, creating many of the school's most memorable and iconic objects. She ultimately became acting director when Maholi Naj left in 1928. And this self-portrait, we see her holding a camera up to a mirror to take an image of herself. And these are some of the incredible products that she made in the metal workshop. Her teapot from 1924 is one of her first products and was created in Weimar. It shows her fascination with these perfect geometries, which we'd seen throughout the course of the school, whether it was expressionist wounds and screaming faces of the mother, or a more rational geometry in the pedagogy of Kandinsky. Later, her work would become more functional, less founded in craft and sculpture, and more in the function within the home. So her hanging glass lamps were designed so that it would be easy for someone to adjust the height of the lamp as it hangs over, say, the dining room table or work area. And these lamps are still in production. They really work for people. The teapots not in production, but is one of the world's most coveted objects for sure. Mariana Brant also created photo montages. And most of these were done in a short period where she took a leave from the Bauhaus and did some traveling. And photo montages for many Bauhaus designers and artists and many artists of the era were kind of an outlet for personal expression. And they were cheap, because you could make photo montages by just cutting up magazines that you happen to have around. So we can imagine Mariana Brant with her favorite magazines, creating images of what it was like to live at that time. This image on the left shows a kind of liberated Bauhaus body, you know, body in space, wearing, you know, minimal clothing to exercise and have freedom of movement. But then on the right is another kind of reality where we have a woman kneeling and these lines of thought or these theory lines connecting her hands to a sort of bourgeois man in a hat and a suit, who's really controlling society and controlling her destiny. This is a design she did for a journal cover in 1927 that was intended for reproduction. I don't think it was ever reproduced but that was its intention. And here we see this kind of joyous engineering figure, this guy in a jumpsuit, manipulating the lever of a giant machine. And that machine seems to be cranking out typography as all machines should. And if you were ever curious about Mariana Brant's work from home set up, well, here you have it. There she is catching some sunlight on her Bauhaus balcony, reading the latest issue of Bauhaus magazine. Practical Bauhaus. So I want to tell you about one of my favorite Bauhaus people who was Herbert Byer. And Herbert Byer came to the Bauhaus as a student in 1921. He was very young, he was 21 years old. He didn't have a lot of background in art, he'd done some studies but he was pretty green to it. And he had this copy of Kandinsky's book concerning this ritual and art. And there's a similar copy in the exhibition at Letterform Archive and I like to imagine in my fantasy that that's Herbert's copy of the Kandinsky book. And he was so taken with this little book that he was compelled to go and enroll in the Bauhaus. He didn't afford a train ticket, so he walked 258 kilometers from Darmstadt to Weimar, according to Google Maps, that's a 54 hour hike. I hope he had some cookies. And in those early years at Weimar, there was no graphic design workshop, there is no formal training in graphic design. But Gropius recognized that Byer was interested in graphic design and encouraged him to do this work. And he knew it would be good for the school too, that the school needed some publicity. So this postcard for the 1923 exhibition uses those kind of theory lines, the thought lines in a very practical way.  Everything in this postcard is drawn by hand. The Bauhaus did not have any typesetting equipment at the Weimar. The print shop there was really intended for artistic printing and not for commercial printing. So we come in close to this original maquette from Merrill Berman's collection, where we can see Byer working it out in Guache. In 1925, the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, a city near Berlin, in a brand new campus designed by Walter Gropius, with architectural lettering by Herbert Byer. And Byer returned to the school now as a young master, no longer a student, and he set up a modern letterpress print shop at the Bauhaus for printing publications and documents and ads and postcards, and students worked with him. He was a very practical guy, he was not much interested in doing theoretical lectures, and he preferred to simply be working there in the shop with students, rather than devising elaborate exercises and experiences for them. Among the many things printed there in that letterpress workshop were letterheads. Herbert Byer was interested in contemporary theories at the time and what business correspondence should look like. So he used the letterhead as a testing ground for new ideas in design. So he's distributed the text across the field of the letterhead, creating a kind of typographic grid, and creating spaces for a typist to add their content to the letterhead. And across the bottom of the letterhead is a manifesto about why capital letters should be banished from writing. He felt that capital letters were unnecessary, they were not functional because we don't hear them in speech. They were a waste of metal, they made fonts too big and too difficult to produce, and they were kind of hierarchical. Lowercase letters and printing entirely in lowercase was a more egalitarian kind of typography. Now it is very, very exciting to Bauhaus fan girls and fan people all around the world that the letter form archive has acquired Herbert Byer's original actual drawing for his universal alphabet of 1926. How cool is that? Amazing. So of course the alphabet is only lowercase and it is an alphabet designed on modular principles using parts of circles and straight lines. So abandoning the organic complexity of traditional fonts for this very purified geometry and it's so fun to come in close and see the little guidelines that he used to create the letter forms, the anchor points for the compass, the mistakes, the retouching, the perfecting of those circles, the overlapping arcs. I love to see a font that actually preserved all that element of making in Herbert Byer's letter forms. So cool. Herbert Byer eventually emigrated to the United States and this remarkable photo montage is in the collection of Cooper Hewitt Museum. We have over 500 works by Byer, mostly from his career in the US. And so we're so proud to have this material and to be able to study it and share it. Here we see a giant ham flying through the sky, escorted by war planes. And Byer has added those theory lines or thought lines to the trajectory of the plane to kind of dramatize the space and the action going on here. Why is the ham flying through the air? Well, it turns out that this montage was created for an ad for gas stoves and the gas industry in the US was fighting the electric stove industry. And they use this kind of wartime depiction of the ham to suggest that cooking with gas was more patriotic. This is 1942. And there's Byer standing in one of his exhibition designs with his theory lines turned into physical objects. He's been able to make it real to put those lines into space. He was part of a wave of European emigres who promoted modernist design in the US. And throughout his long career in the US he never stopped talking about the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus was his point of origin, a calling card, a magical word that brought all kinds of intrigue and respect to the work that he was doing. And this is one of my favorite Herbert Byer pieces created in 1939 in the US and it shows a uterus beautifully rendered in pinks and red and black and gray surrounded by the menstrual cycle and the phases of the moon. And emanating from the center are those thought lines or theory lines, bringing us, you know, to the core of human generation. This is an extraordinary piece and the brochure is actually about five inches tall. It's a very tiny little piece that he made this extraordinary image for, and it was used to promote a hormone based pharmaceutical product to doctors. The Bauhaus, the Bauhaus at the center of everything. This extraordinary diagram of the Bauhaus in Dessau depicts the school in relation to how far it is from other cities in Germany and France and beyond. There's notion of the Bauhaus being in the middle and projecting outward, selling itself, promoting itself, sending out its products, its postcards, its books, and making itself heard through often graphic design. And the curriculum with its center in architecture, but it's periphery in basic design, creating this system of pedagogy that was adopted all around the world and is still with us. Bauhaus bodies, look at this extraordinary drawing by Kandinsky from his book Point and Line to Plain, a Bauhaus book, showing this ecstatic, circular, concentric body kind of exploding into space. This Bauhaus business, it was always a business, the school was always trying to stay afloat, it never had enough money. This gorgeous logo by Maholi Naj was designed to advertise and brand that Bauhaus book series. And that idea of business, it carries on this beautiful logo by Paul Rand who loved the Bauhaus and took those ideas in his own direction. Or Tom Guy's Mars Identity for Mobile Oil Company, also on view in the exhibition at the Letterform Archive. And then finally this incredible icon found by Vanessa Zuniga Tanitsere in the pre-Columbian pottery of indigenous and finding the Bauhaus everywhere, taking it back, finding that geometry wasn't invented in the 20s. It's bigger than all of us, it's forever, it's infinite. Every generation discovers and destroys the Bauhaus for itself. The Bauhaus always had enemies.  When Laszlo Maholi Naj left in 1928, he said, ah, I want to get out of here. It's just gotten too commercial. It's too focused on utilitarian stuff. And leaving with him the same year were Marcel Breuer, and Walter Gropius, and Zanti Shabinski, and they all went to Berlin to be commercial designers. Right, enough of art school. Let's make some stuff out there in the world. So the Bauhaus, we keep finding it, we keep finding new things there. I keep loving it. I keep seeing new ways to understand it. And new people who were forgotten or erased or overlooked who were making things and making it happen. So, so thank you. I enjoyed talking with you all about the Bauhaus, and perhaps we can have a conversation. Thank you so much, Ellen. That was fantastic.  And I've already, I mean, I thought I, well, never thought I knew at all about the Bauhaus, but there were a ton of things in there that were new to me. Thank you so so much for that. Really beautifully organized too. Thank you. We have a lot of questions, and probably won't get to them all, but I'll start picking out a few and I'll just do one. Now that just because it was, you were just talking about theory lines Craig Elias and asked, what was the source for that term. Similar forms referred to as lines of force in the context of futurist art, a label with a very different connotation for a very similar visual element. Yeah, I don't have an official word for it. I came up with theory lines. My friend Jenny Tobias and I have been bouncing like, what do you call this thing that recurs through so much Bauhaus design and yet is used sometimes in a very mystical way. Sometimes in a decorative way, sometimes in a functional way it's actually how something was made. But what they do is they visualize the invisible right so lines of forces is good too. And, you know, an American streamlining speed whiskers. So we're used to show objects moving and we're much maligned by the good modernists, because toasters don't actually move why do they need speed whiskers. So this this idea of trying to add a sense of movement but also I think of spirit or intellect to things like with these thin pencil lines they, they create relationships. They connect this to that. And so you see them and, you know, the paintings of my holy nudge, as well as his graphic design in Kandinsky, yes, and futurism, and lots of the artwork of the period. And I don't think there's any single point of origin. It's like a thing, a technique that gets used and it's all different meanings. I like coining our own terms whenever, whenever we can whenever we need to to help explain things and so I think that's an excellent one. Just answer a common question that's coming up often the chat that we will send the transcript of the chat to everyone after the event as well as a recording so don't worry you won't miss out on that if you had to come and go. Yeah, I mean, I'm an anonymous attendee. What are some common misconceptions people have about the house. I mean that the main one is that the Bauhaus is rational. And I know in my own writing I've said oh the rational period. I don't think the Bauhaus is very rational. You know, the Bauhaus is grandiose. It was theoretical. It was utopian. And there's that that expressionist period, the very spiritual period, which gets a bit buried and overshadowed and was deliberately buried by Gropius who became the spokesman for the Bauhaus and its afterlife right the main spokesman. So it's very that that period gets kind of brushed under the carpet and hidden away, and yet it is so much part of the school. And if you read the writings of Moholy nage and others who are associated with the so called rational Bauhaus. There's pretty wild stuff, you know about remaking man and this kind of reinventing the biology of human existence through design. It's not just rational. It's more than that. And I think sometimes people confuse the rational typography or what they see is rational typography with it with all of the ways that they were actually thinking but that's not necessarily the case. Yeah. Here's a question from hands cock. What were the inspirational and personal connections between Bauhaus designers and the Russian constructivists. Thank you for the wonderfully informative lecture. He traveled and lived in Germany during the early 1920s. And so he knew many of the Bauhaus people and they, and they knew him so there was a direct link there. Malavich, who was Ukrainian was hugely influential to the obviously the founding of constructivism but also to abstract art in Western Europe. And one of the Bauhaus books was a book by Malavich. There's a lot of influence there. But I think it's really important that there is also an avant garde in Poland and an avant garde in Hungary, and other Eastern European countries, and that part of the decolonization of the Bauhaus and the decolonization of modernism is really about looking at parts of Europe that kind of get squished between Germany and Russia by the sort of a hegemony of that constructivism is Russian and new typography is German. There are so many people working in other parts of Europe, and creating constructivist design and socialist inspired design. And, you know, I've been looking a lot just this week at Mahogany's career before the Bauhaus. So I had just had in my mind that, you know, Mahogany was so young and he had this opportunity to teach at the Bauhaus, and that created him. He actually had quite an interesting and extensive practice before he got to the Bauhaus, which frankly is why he got the job. And that some of those ideas like creating scores for a film. That entire project, he had already designed in Berlin in Hungarian in 1922.  How young was he that was. Well he was 28 when he came to the Bauhaus. So he's not as young as Herbert Byer, who was really green Herbert Byer arrives, really is just a kid, you know, he was 21. And, you know, did not have his own voice as an artist, but Maholi Naj man. He came there with a voice and with knowledge, you know, Gropius didn't know what to do about constructivism. Maholi Naj brought that to the school. A quick question from Kevin Woodlands that asked if Maholi Naj coined the term, the new typography in that document you showed. Was that before anyone else chick hold of course is famous for using it but Well chick hold chick hold did not coin the term chick hold visited the Bauhaus exhibition and bought that book in 1923. Maholi Naj was a very close friend in Berlin with Kurt Schvitters, who we all know as a data, you know, artists but was also a graphic designer and very interested in typography and functional typography. Maholi Naj really got his typography bug from Schvitters, and was super interested in what Schvitters was was doing. Caroline Caroline or Caroline Hatch asks, it's interesting how much propaganda goes into the argument for the necessity of the school. We are at a time period now when so many pure art schools are suffering or closing or shifting focus to more marketable art programs like graphic design or design MBAs. What do you think current art schools could take from the bat house. Well, you know that communicating what you do matters. You know that a school isn't just what happens between faculty and students but the schools create knowledge, and that that knowledge can be shared and can can emanate and can can go further. The graphic design at the Bauhaus was not the most highly valued discipline, right. Far from it. It wasn't even in the curriculum at by my architecture was the most highly valued discipline, but grabbing design was there out of necessity. And part of the impulse to create that working print shop and death cell was knowing that they needed to print their own stuff. You know, so, you know, I love that about graphic design that it's necessary that we need it to communicate that we need it to explain who we are, and fine artists need it just as much as graphic designers do. We all need to communicate what we do. Beautiful. Thank you. Beppe Owen asks if you could share your thoughts on the Bauhaus's overlap or distinctions from the arts and crafts movement or more specifically for book design, the German private press movement Bremer, et cetera. Is it fair to say the spirit of the Bauhaus school looks forward into modernity while arts and crafts looks backwards. And I appreciate your insight. Well, there are whole books written on that. It's a huge topic. And the Bauhaus definitely came out of those reform movements, the reform of industry and so forth that arts and crafts represents. And the German work one, for example, is, you know, direct in a direct line with the Bauhaus. I don't want to speak in a scholarly way about it because there's just so much that's been written on that, but they are connected, not not this connected they're much more connected than they are separate. Susan Mantis asks, were they designing all non seraph typefaces. We actually posted an article on our blog. The letter forms designing most of the experiments in alphabets at the Bauhaus were just alphabets they weren't actually made into typefaces. But there was one typeface that the buyer designed that was a seraph. Any other answer to that question. You're the expert on that Steven I think you're forensics on Bauhaus typography. Right down to the fonts used by it and Friedel Dicker and their utopia book you know. That's pretty cool I know you have a good library. Yeah, but I to find that stuff. Yeah. That's just, it's often a misconception that they were designing typefaces there they were really experimenting with letter forms, but the typefaces that were used were the ones that were already in existence and they just did amazing things with them. For the most part, but they also use their lettering in things and you could consider those typefaces in a way. So Woodland asks, Hi Ellen to the designers of the Swiss typography movement, favor all lowercase settings for the same reasons that as buyer or is it for different reasons with fire really speaking for all the Bauhaus in that in that essay. Well first of all buyer did not invent this movement. It's one of many who espoused getting rid of capital letters and there's actually a management theory guy named, I think, Portsman, who really originated the notion of it. But yes, the Swiss designers also embrace the idea of lowercase letters as being more egalitarian and also more organic, which was very important to Max bill that typography be organic. And so those shapes were very desirable. And so, yes, the, the, the egalitarian quality of lowercase letters, I think was much better exploited by the Swiss designers later than they did at the Bauhaus. Neil Storsen asked, Can you touch on the balance of the Bauhaus idea of reducing things to their simplest form versus use of element and graphic design. Well, I think, I think the idea of reducing form is just one of the fundamental design principles explored at the Bauhaus, and I think it's important to acknowledge that people for all millennia have reduced to geometry right this is not owned by the Bauhaus it was articulated by the Bauhaus, but it is an incredible design principle, and one that has to be learned. I think we have impulse to make things more complex, and so that finding of the essence and removing what's extraneous is a, is a learning, you know whether you're a writer and learning to make a better sentence, or a designer, creating a layout. It's, it's a learning. Along with this Monica ready asked how can we take these, some of these Bauhaus principles to modern UX design. Hi Monica. Well, I mean it's the same idea of laying a field. I mean that letterhead that buyer did where the type is like points in a field, you know, like creating spaces for activity to happen. That's an interface idea. Maholi Nages score for theatrical performance is an interface idea. And so I just think that so much of what we see in these kind of mythical legendary works continue to inform what we do today and continue to have value as long as we have some kind of law that can't be broken. Right I think there's a history of the Bauhaus being seen as oppressive and creating a set of roles that are imposed on on people and that's to be avoided. I got one of the things I learned most and just experiencing this. I wasn't part of the curation process but just experiencing the exhibition and looking at the buyer exhibition is just how it was about experimentation more than rules that it was, there was all sorts of different things going on and not time to every one philosophy. Yvonne, this might be too long to answer for today but asked to explain the process of how hand drawn letters are transformed into something that can be used for printing. There might be some one that you would have multiple yeah there were multiple ways they could have done it through an engraving beginning plate that they would print from or later it could have been photographically reproduced but I'm not sure if they had that kind of technology yet. I'm not sure while making a photographic plate of type was very common logo or a headline or something. What art and design school today most embodies the philosophy and practice of the Bauhaus, can you comment on the institutional offspring of a house like home, which is a very important design school journey. That's a big one. I don't know. I mean I feel like art schools have become very corporate. But the Bauhaus wanted to be. You know the Bauhaus was trying to be a sustainable business. Do we see that kind of experimentation. I feel like a lot of art schools including where I teach we're focused on marketable skills and students want that and need that and they're paying a lot of money and you know want to work in the field. Often it doesn't feel like there's space to reinvent the world, you know, to create something radically new. You know how much time you have with this rep to get up at 15 after the hour. We have 21 more questions so we won't get to them all. How many two more scans good. So Omar asks if there any aesthetic hangovers from the Bauhaus movement movement that you notice regularly in design today. Oh dear. I don't think so I actually feel that people have in their mind that like Bauhaus typography was is better than it was. And when you look through like the Bauhaus books and Bauhaus posters and stuff there's something kind of homes fun about it. You know I think max bills generation really made it into something perfect. Right the Swiss design methodologies just so sleek and extendable and truly a system at the Bauhaus stuff is kind of raw. It's kind of messed up, you know, and I really love that about it that the imperfection and the seeking that you see in it. I think a lot of typography that we look at now and say oh that's so Bauhaus, it's really not people aren't looking closely. Yeah, absolutely that's another part of the thing I've learned from this exhibition is just how much expressionism there is in Bauhaus work and it wasn't necessarily again about, you know, following some sort of straight line set of rules. There's so many here I'm trying to pick like the best one we can close on random be random. Yeah okay. Well, this is, you know, kind of on topic for the moment but hands asks as a follow up to the Russian constructivists are there any interactions between Bauhaus and Rogchenko or stepanova. Um, Rogchenko never went to the Bauhaus he visited Europe once he went to Paris in 1925 for the art deco exhibition and installed his workers room there. And one of them never went to Europe. Of course their work was known. Why, because it was published in avant garde magazines, including you know my the Hungarian magazine there are just so many places that you could see this work. And so although they didn't have an opportunity to directly interact with designers in Germany or the Netherlands. Certainly their work was known as was tatling the great Ukrainian architect, his tower was never built. It was seen everywhere, because this plate this photograph of it was reproduced over and over again. Yeah, it's like without graphic design you have no avant garde. That is a tower existed, you know, there's a beautiful model of it but most people only ever saw the picture. That is a great way to close this what where would it be without graphic design. Ellen thank you so much for your generosity and your amazing scholarship and just making the stuff so accessible to so many people. It's really got to learn a lot from that and and I have personally to so thank you so much for this awesome event. It's been such a joy. Such a joy. Thank you. Thank you everyone and remember you will get a copy of the recording link sent to you and you'll be able to share that around as well as the chat. Thanks to you for Huwit thanks to manager for helping host this and Sarah who couldn't be with us and rest of lawyer from archive. Thank you again Ellen. Thank you. It was great fun. Thanks to Rob and Lucy Parker and everybody who made such a beautiful book and exhibition. It's been an honor to be part of it. So go check out the book everyone you will enjoy it and if you can come see us in person and see the show we will love to have you. All right. Take care. Thank you so much. Take care.


Hello and welcome. In this lecture, we will look at two concepts that while appearing to be somewhat futuristic, do have practical utility, particularly in the context of the kind of missions that we are currently thinking of. These concepts pertain to air breathing engines and photonic rockets. So, let us begin. Among the many ideas that are being explored, we will consider in this lecture two ideas that have some value in terms of the kind of missions that are being synthesized. In this regard, it is worth noting that the current configurations that we have discussed using the conventional hydrocarbon fuels including the cryogenic fuel are commonly practiced for most of the standard missions as well as some of the newer missions that are being evolved over the last 15 to 20 years. However, in the last decade or so, newer requirements have emerged which have necessitated the development of different types of launcher systems. And among the many new requirements that are emerging in today s scenario, the main ones which are driving the technological developments across the globe are directly related to two specific points, one larger sized spacecraft and missions to further planets. These are the missions that most of the space agencies are currently looking at to increase the mass fraction capability of most of the launch vehicles and to also send spacecrafts to larger distances in our solar system. In both these cases, such requirements make the cost and size of conventional launchers quite prohibitive. And thus, designers need to reduce significantly weight and cost before such missions can become feasible and practical. In this regard, of course, we need to take cognizance of the heavy lift launchers that are currently in operation which is a reflection of such requirements of heavy lift from both NASA and SpaceX. The NASA has its delta for heavy development which is supposed to lift much larger payloads and the SpaceX which is attempting the same option through what they are calling Falcon 9 heavy. So, it is not that we cannot lift heavier vehicles with the current technology, but then the cost is becoming larger, the vehicles are becoming massive and in the process, there are also infrastructural and technological constraints that starts impacting the overall mission performance. And in view of the above, there are other technological options that are also being explored of which the air breathing rockets and relativistic or the photonic rockets are the ones which are being actively talked about including experimentally developed. If we look at the basic ideas of these two concepts, we find that the air breathing rockets are a result of scranjet technology which is not new to us and is exploring the possibility of extracting oxygen from air to reduce rocket lift of mass. And we know that if we do that, then our payload fractions will significantly improve while keeping the cost within manageable limits. On the other hand, photonic rockets are those vehicles that make use of or intend to make use of matter anti-matter concepts which are in the domain of scientific developments along with the radiation principle to generate large speeds and still have lesser launch costs. We will explore these concepts a little more next. Let us first look at the air breathing rockets concept. The scranjet technology essentially makes use of atmospheric air to support combustion and is capable of propelling vehicles up to mark 15 speed which means that we can achieve very high speeds which is a requirement for sending the objects deeper into the space. The basic principle of course is the extension of the well-known scranjet principle wherein you create an engine which actually does not have any moving parts and you make use of the moving air kinetic energy to convert it into potential energy or pressure inside an engine and then we burn fuel inside that engine to significantly increase the temperature and the pressure which is then exited at a very high speed to generate large amount of impulse which is necessary for generating high speeds. An important aspect of this is that we need to sustain combustion at supersonic speeds. Typically most of the combustion in the conventional launch vehicle occurs at subsonic speeds but and particularly for air breathing systems use of supersonic combustion is something which requires a lot of effort and challenging work. In fact the scranjet is an extension of the ramjet where s and c stand for supersonic combustion which means if you take a ramjet engine and then you have combustion at supersonic speeds you get a scranjet engine. Typical concept of such an engine is shown below. So this is a typical sketch of a scranjet engine which takes in the air coming at hypersonic speeds that is speeds well beyond Mach 4 or 5 then creates a supersonic diffuser of reducing cross sectional area that significantly increases the pressure until it reaches a very high value and in the process the velocity is reduced to just about supersonic speeds at which the fuel is added and a large amount of heat is added to this flow at supersonic speeds to further generate very high pressure and temperature which is then again expanded through a supersonic nozzle which generates again hypersonic speeds at the exit and in the process generates a very large amount of thrust. This technology well greatly challenging has been found to provide great benefits and many countries are creating such engines for example X30 program of NASA, HSGDE of DRDL and ABPP of ISRO that is Air Breathing Propulsion Project which have also seen technology demonstrators in the last two or three years. This figure of course is courtesy Wikipedia which just talks about the basic idea of a scranjet engine. So how does one talk about thrust in such an engine? While you require a more complicated model to get the exact thrust expressions certain simplified formulation is possible which gives us a broad understanding of what the implications of such an engine are. So what you see below is a schematic of a scranjet engine which is moving at a forward speed of V and it is taking in a certain amount of air delta M in represented through that rectangular parallel pipe in front of the vehicle. The same air once it enters the scranjet engine exits with a high velocity VE and has the amount of mass exiting which is delta M out. Here delta M in is the incoming air mass while delta M out is the total mass which means it includes the mass of the air which came in plus the amount of fuel which has been added in the combustion chamber and the related combustion products. So given below is the simplified scranjet thrust equation and you will find that this is similar to the thrust equation that we had seen in the context of a conventional rocket except for one important difference which makes the scranjet engine generate lot more thrust. As you can see M dot in is the air mass flow rate while M dot F is the fuel flow rate. So in the conventional rocket the thrust is M dot G dot ISP which is M dot F whereas in the case of scranjet engine the total mass flow rate to which this ISP is attached is M dot in plus M dot F. Of course there is also an associated ram drag term because of the ram effect there is a drag which is experienced by this vehicle and that subtracts from this thrust but we know that by appropriately deciding the inlet air it is possible to significantly increase this term and hence generate a large amount of thrust through the air building principle and it can significantly increase the overall thrust capability of the engine and hence the mission itself. Let us now turn our attention to the photon or the relativistic rocket. In the context of rockets that are meant for missions to far away planets the velocities to be imparted are generally quite high and possibly not feasible with the conventional hydrocarbon fuels or even cryogenic fuels beyond a certain point. In this context we also know that as rockets approach the speed of light the relativistic effect become important and standard rocket equation is no longer valid. In this regard a novel concept though at the conceptual stage in the laboratories in scientific domain called matter anti-matter photon rocket is being looked at as a practical and viable option in future. The idea is that such a rocket would contain matter and anti-matter which would be allowed to annihilate each other leading to a sudden burst of gamma ray radiation. The basic phenomenon is shown as below schematically so you have a rocket which contains matter and anti-matter with zero velocity and then they are allowed to annihilate each other generating a burst of gamma ray radiation which is directed in the direction opposite to the desired velocity and as a result of this this energy radiation energy expanded in a very short time can generate a large amount of instantaneous change in momentum and can generate an instantaneous large velocity of the object of course. There is an important point that need we need to note that is the payload mass fraction which is possible in such scenarios and from simplified analysis for such a concept it is found that the mission payload ratios are given by this expression that is 1 by gamma into 1 plus beta where gamma is 1 minus v square by c square and beta is v by c. Typically you will find that these mass fractions are not very large particularly when you start approaching the velocities which are close to speed of light. I mean it can be shown that if you want a velocity which is one-tenth of the speed of light the mass fraction that you would support would be of the order of 10 to the power minus 6 not really useful but if you go to lower velocities velocities which are let us say 100th or 1000th of the speed of light in such situations you can still generate a decent amount of velocity for a decent amount of mass fraction. So to summarize air breathing and photonic rockets are exploring newer frontiers of technological options that aim to significantly improve the payload capability for missions to far out planets. However challenges are also quite substantial in terms of physical laws manufacturing materials etc. Hi so in this lecture segment we have just looked at two possible futuristic ideas to help us synthesize missions that require large payload fraction and large velocities for mission to far away planets. With this we have considered the launch systems and their configuration including their trajectory solutions and we will now turn our attention to two important operational features of launch vehicles which is necessary for creating missions that we are currently talking about. One of them is TSTO or called the or SSTO the single stage to orbit or two stage to orbit concepts directly and the other one is concept of launch window which is an essential ingredient for synthesizing mission that aim to visit far away planets establish orbits around them and also land on the surface. So we will look at these two ideas in the next lecture. So bye see you in the next lecture and thank you.


This is Keyhole Dam on the Belfouche River in northeast Wyoming. It was created to provide water storage for irrigation and flood control downstream. It also provides recreation at the reservoir. The dam does all of those things. Not surprisingly, dams like Keyhole affect the ecology along the stream below in a number of ways. Most prairie rivers actually have more mature, stable and diverse plant and animal communities than they had before the dams. However, there are trade-offs. Before dams, prairie rivers often flooded in the spring and nearly dried up in the late summer. Spring floods meandered across wide flood plains changing channels frequently and eroding cut banks like this on the outside of river bends and sand gravel point bars like this on the inside of the curve. Cottonwood and willow seedlings need point bars for their establishment. Age, disease, fire, agricultural activities and browsing by wild animals and the changing water tables take their toll on the older cottonwoods and the species associated with them. Once in a while, streams like the Belfouche need a high water event to flush them out and renew them. I'm Gene Gade from the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service.


Shall I begin, or will we both continue to sit here in silence? Oh, by all means, be my guest. Is that what I am? A guest? After a fashion. Because I am quite unused to having an audience. Given your current predicament, I suggest you become accustomed to the idea sooner rather than later. I know my feelings on the matter don't, well, matter.  Is that what you think of us? That we would dedicate precious order resources to monitoring the work of a lone scribe on a world of billions? That I have agents redacting whatever you pen that does not meet my own personal standards? That we disseminate your work, robbed of whatever truths you so desperately work to fill it with? Blunted. Toothless. Worthless. The cruelty is the point, is it not? Proceed with your record. Just pretend I'm not here, even if I am absolutely here. The Holy Ordos of His Imperial Majesty's most divine Inquisition serve the Golden Throne of Terror as a clandestine organization dedicated to the investigation of and defense against the myriad threats to the God Emperor's Imperium. Through the actions of its Inquisitors is darkness held at bay. The distinction, staved off for another day, is the battle for the Emperor's soul waged far from the eyes of oblivious civilian populations. The Inquisition is, in essence, a secret police force, but one, unbeholden, to any form of centralized organization. The Inquisition's authority, by design, comes from the Emperor himself. Most of the Ordos are thus unrestricted in who they may investigate, who they may accuse, and what means they utilize to conduct their work. The only boundaries placed upon an Inquisitor are their own morals, convictions, and capabilities. Anything less, and their ability to pronounce judgment upon the Imperium, could be irrecovably curtailed and hampered. They are not so much above the law as outside it, beyond it. Designed, in effect, to operate completely removed from the Lex Imperialis in order to perpetuate its enforcement. The justification is, of course, in the nature of the threats the Inquisition counts under its remit. The Alien, the Demon, the Heretic. The Galaxy is a place most dangerous, and the enemies of humanity myriad in their malevolence. The means to oppose them are, by the Inquisition's word, justified by the destruction of the foe, heedless of any cost to the Imperium itself. The Ordos are concerned with nothing but the survival of humanity. And if humans have to die to achieve this, then that is simply the cost of mankind's endurance. I sense some criticism edging into your tone, Oculus. Oh, far be it from me to presume to know what the material cost of human life is when weighed against insuring the death of a Heretic. You truly do not. Neither, I imagine, do you. When you see people as coins spent to balance ledgers, how can their lives possibly mean anything? Unlike the coin in Imperial coffers, human life isn't bound by even the faintest notion of scarcity. The average life expectancy on a mid-high of menial on terror is 40 years, planetary standard. Even that has been reduced significantly since the Noctis Eterna and the subsequent efforts to re-establish law and order. Do you truly believe such an existence has more value than the God-Emperor's eternal dominion? The survival of our species? That the calculation has to be made, marks us as unworthy of survival. Continue with the record. The origins of the Inquisition are, as you may expect, unclear. The Inquisition itself has seen the formation of the Ordo Originatus, a minor Ordo dedicated to unraveling the secrets of the organization's founding. Although these cabals frequently find themselves in conflict with those of the Ordo Redactus, who seek to expunge as much inquisitorial history as possible for the preservation of modern minds from past wretched deeds. It is broadly understood that the Inquisition was founded in the dying days of the Horus Heresy, seeing its origins in agents of Malkador the Sigillite, Regent of Terra and right hand of the Emperor himself. The Sigillites chosen operated in a similar fashion to modern inquisitors, albeit with a centralized figure to lead them, dispatched on critical missions, they were granted essentially limitless powers to curtail the influence or activity of the warmaster Horus' traitor forces, and were selected for their abilities and characters that set them apart from their peers. The reported founding members of the Inquisition are believed to have been present with the Sigillite during the final days of the Siege of Terra. Former iterator Primus under Horus Lupercal's sixty-third expeditionary fleet, Promeus, formerly Lemuel Goemon, Remembrancer attached to the Thousand Sons Legion, Zaracexanthus, and Moriana Mohausen. Conflicting accounts exist of the circumstances that brought about the modern Inquisition's birth. The death of the Sigillite robbed the chosen of the central authority and direction, and if records are to be believed before his internment in the Golden Throne in the Siege's final hours, Malkador psychically bequeathed his agents with directives, lore, and genders, apparently randomly. A telepathic informational dump that, considering the vast intellect of the man, must have been utterly disorientating to the chosen that received it. I must wonder if in that moment the mind of Zaracexanthus broke. Felt the heretic. It is my understanding that Zaracexanthus insisted his purity and loyalty were entirely uncorrupted. Show me a heretic that insists upon their innocence, and I will show you all the stars in the sky. Of course. Innocence proves nothing. Just so. Xanthites are a scourge upon the Ordos. The legacy of Zaracexanthus is one of misbegotten pride and reckless meddling in the most malevolent forces in the universe. I would not waste my spit to extinguish the ashes of his corpse. And yet within his work lies the origins of the powers that permit you to wear that rosette. Within the most noble of intent is oft the seeds of downfall, Oculus. You, more than any, should be painfully aware of that. Continue. From this point onwards the details are shrouded. No doubt in large part thanks to the unremitting devastation of the siege's end and the tumult of reform and reorganization that swept the Imperium following the internment of the Emperor within the Golden Throne. The legacy of pre-internment organizations and leadership persisted but now bereft of the guidance of the monumental figures that had now passed. It is unclear, and one doubts there will ever be a definitive answer on precisely how the Inquisition was able to lay claim to the supreme and unquestionable authority it has come to possess. With the codification of the Lex Imperialis by the 13th Primarch, Robert Gulliman, and the Adeptus Terra, the formation of the Sanatorium Imperialis' High Twelve from the Lateral Council of Terra, and the formalization of many emergency legislative features into inviolable law. It is perhaps not hard to see how the chosen of the Sigillite bearers of not only Malkador the hero's heritage but the overwhelming body of knowledge he had personally bequeathed unto them would have immediately sought to place themselves outside of traditional imperial authorities, operating now as they had done under the region's direct purview, beyond the boundaries of the law for the sake of preservation of the state. It would appear that the surviving Primarchs and civilian authorities ceded to this, deeming it a necessity in the horrific days of the scouring that were to come. The Imperium was post-catastrophe, a wounded, frantic polity struggling to define itself after what had been essentially regicide, seeking to not only re-establish its authority over an entire galaxy but root out possible recidivist elements that yet remained within itself. Historically, regimes on a war footing seldom transition out of one with ease. The Imperium simply never has. The Archenemy, the forces of chaos, were everywhere, and in this the Inquisition was vital in combating it. Insidious and omnipresent, the Dark Pantheon were everywhere and nowhere. Their influence extended over a hapless and bleeding galaxy. And the starties with a bolter could combat their corrupted soldiery, but what could combat the idea of chaos? The early days of the Inquisition were defined by this conflict. There were no Ordos. The Primordial Annihilator was the only enemy. It is pleasing to see you grasp the necessity of it. Do you really believe I do? Whether you want to or not, you are, fundamentally, aware that sometimes you need someone to commit an act for the sake of the betterment of the whole, regardless of moral judgment. Necessity has always been the excuse of those who simply desire power. Every monstrous act committed upon the innocent by those who sought dominance has always been for the right reasons. It has always been done because there was simply no other choice. Necessity is a cloth draped over a gun, so that whoever holds it does not have to look too hard at what it is precisely they are doing. Spurkin like someone who has never had to hold a gun. Go on. The foundation of the Inquisition is likely a matter of both emergency and convenience. The power vacuum left by the siege had mauled the institutions previously dedicated to the suppression of rogue elements within the Imperial State. The loss of so many of the Ligio Costodes, during the latter years of the heresy, had no doubt mauled their efferoy sodalities quite terribly. The order Elucidatum, whose role had once been to monitor and purge the Imperium of hazardous religious cults, had been disbanded by the Sigillite himself prior to the heresy's end. Its reams of data folded into his other clandestine bodies. The officio assassinorum, however secretive, had never been tasked with intelligence-gathering, only acting on the directives of higher organizations, and the divisio-investigates of the adeptus Astra Telepathica, the silent sisterhood, were as badly wounded as their Costodes counterparts. Military intelligence wings of the Exertus Imperialis and the newly founded Command Prefectus, with their bowetharks, were too disparate and specialized to form coherent working groups.  The earliest of Inquisitors were no doubt born of and recruited directly from many of these other organizations. Only the Costodes, sisterhood, and assassinorum were, of course, exempted from providing acolytes to the Founders, although these groups were nominally able to be utilized by Inquisitors themselves for whatever operations they deemed necessary. Since the beginning it has been so. The Inquisition by law has the ability to elicit the aid of any other Imperial body for their own purposes. Former Elucidatum Tallymen could now command the might of a sisterhood pursuer cadre, for instance, or a Remembrancer elevated to Inquisitor could second to their forces a fleet of Starships. All should they need to be dire enough? Should this form of essentially unbridled power seem to be at odds with the spirit of the times, it should be remembered that once human demigods had reduced the works of the Imperium to ash and rubble, the Lygiones Estates had turned on us and demolished the works of the God Emperor. His own son had interred him eternal upon the throne. Human, human control was needed to reign in the excesses of the past and steer us towards a prosperous future. Certainly the reformation of the Lygiones Estates into the Adeptus Estates, strengthening of the powers of the Senator and the Imperialis, and civilian arms of the government or defining traits of the era, was nevertheless a simple transfer of absolute rule from a soul individual to a rotating body of twelve. All of whom operate under the eye of the Inquisition. Ah, yes, the famed oversight of the Lord's Marshall Temporal and Atlesiastical. Tell me, Inquisitor, about the time that you investigated Bardo Slithst for potential conflicts of interest, or vetted earth who he metallian for ideological purity. Because from where I'm sitting, that's just two members of the High Lords who completely evaded inquisitorial oversight to launch a coup against the Primarch, not years hence. And, might I add, with the inquisitorial representative on the High Twelve itself? Lady Cleopatra Arx is a woman of unimpeachable ability, and operates on a scale you simply cannot comprehend. Well then maybe you should question her yourself about the disappearance of one inquisitor Erasmus Crowell. How precisely do you know that name? Madam, this is Terra. I would suggest that you continue with your record, Oculus. This particular thread is one even you may not wish to pull on too hard. Matters pertaining to the activities of the earliest inquisitors are still a matter of investigation for oneself and one's colleagues within the Logos Historic Avertia. As is no doubt obvious, we face extreme resistance from such attempts at chronicling the organization's foundational years, not to mention the difficulty in uncovering any material at all regarding the turbulent years of reform and reconquest that history has come to term a scouring. There were initially no Ordos. The remit of the Inquisition was blunt in the post-Harris-y days, hunt down and destroy traitors, uncover their sympathizers, enforce the Lex Imperialis in a galaxy that had known not but death and destruction for over a decade. It was not until the Imperium faced existential threats approaching that of Horus that reform and specialization was deemed necessary. The War of the Beast in M32 brought crashing to an end the post-scouring prosperity and stability the Imperium had enjoyed, and the sheer ingeniousness of the alien orc menace shook the complacent Inquisition into the formation of the Ordo Xenos, dedicated to pursuing, studying, and eliminating the myriad alien threats that would now bear their fangs following that calamitous conflict. The third and thus far final Ordo Majoris was created in the aftermath of the Age of Apostasy, the mad tyrant Goge Vandier had usurped the High Lord's seats of both Ministorum and Administratum to usher in his reign of blood. The Hereticus now exists to police the Imperium internally, whereas the Malius and Xenos Orders may have concerned themselves with rogue chaotic elements or alien elements operating within the Imperium's borders. This new Ordo was now explicitly concerned with the policing of the heaving masses of the Imperial populace, rooting out recidivism, illegal psychana, and petty heresies with the same ruthlessness the Imperium meted out upon its external enemies. Inquisitors had ever been the subjects of fear, and whispered about authority stalking the quiet roots of the Imperium upon dread business. Now that fear was to be brought to bear upon the population that fledged to the God Emperor himself. This is in large part what has led to the consistently ever more fragmentary nature of the Inquisition. Always a body created to monitor itself, the only thing that may gain, say, the word of an Inquisitor is that of another Inquisitor. A statement they routinely make to assure that the organization is rigorously self-policing. Not even the executors of fear can be free from fear. An agent dedicated to rooting out clandestine enemies will begin, slowly but surely, to see enemies everywhere. Ordos minoris are myriad these days, dedicating themselves to some aspect of their eternal secret war, often in direct conflict with other minor Ordos of their supposed colleagues. You are once again displaying an extreme inability to grasp the nature of necessity, Oculus. I am so utterly exhausted with that word. Its use has stripped it of all meaning. Would you rather the Hereticus did not exist? Are you certain, you wish to state, that their formation after the reign of blood was not for the benefit of the Imperium? I stated no such thing, madam. To my eyes, the founding of the Hereticus allowed the Inquisition to achieve its logical end state. An institutional ideal of horrific perfection carefully honed over the course of millennia. Oh, do please elaborate. You have annihilated any distinction between the enemy abroad and the population at home. In truth, I doubt there was ever a way for a secret police force to regard its jurisdiction as being merely external. You would have inevitably subsumed the adeptus arbites, but you barely waited at all. To operate with any degree of coherency, organizations such as yours have needed to be placed under some degree of law and oversight, lest you inevitably turn upon those from whom you draw your mandate. But we derive our mandate from the God-Emperor of the Imperium. Precisely. A divine Godhead who does not communicate directly with any of his flock. We are granted a measure of his divinity to ensure his will be done. And thus freeze you from any oversight. As I have said, the only force that monitors an Inquisitor is another Inquisitor. You are unbound by the strictures of the Lex. Law is, by definition, restriction and constraint upon power. You have none. We need none. Place an iota of restriction upon what questions an Inquisitor can ask, and you have robbed yourself of all defence against threats of which you cannot conceive. Because only absolute power can give you what you need to fight the enemy? That may be the most astute observation you have made thus far.  Again, two in a row. You're starting to impress me. But how can you claim to be of the Imperium? You exist outside it. Above the state, for you are not of the state. You can't be. You have all the trappings of an Imperial institution, but you are anything but. We are the custodians of his vision. Of his soul. You justify your absolute authority by invoking an absolute authority that will never hold you to account. Do you dare to suppose the Emperor does not weave his intercession into the threads of every single act I have undertaken in my service to him? Well, I am supposing that you are remarkably good at saying he does. What you are capable of, Inquisitor Calendra. It's not limited by the Lex Imperialis. It is limited only by raw materials. Your political capital, your own will. I'm sure you wish to consider the latter the most important factor, but in reality I believe we both know that it is politics. What is an Inquisitor who cannot requisition an army or a fleet? Despite what you may say, how is such an individual any more effective to the throne than a grox farmer or a white shield with their first las-rifle? I think you underestimate the will of someone capable of becoming an Inquisitor in the first place and vastly overestimate what you can say in my presence. Oh, how blithely dismissive. Reduce everything to individual choice. Remove the systemic. It is not the fault of how your organization operates and robs an Inquisitor of their efficacy. No, it's merely that Inquisitor's fervor. No wonder so many of you run to hide yourselves in zealotry.  Appealing to an even more nebulously absolute authority than the one you operate under is the most basic refuge of the coward. Did you see how easy that was? Did you even see me move? It would be a matter of utter simplicity to end your existence. To end this heretical drivel.  And you wouldn't even know. Why don't you? Just do it. If you mean to end me, then just end me. At this point it is better than all of this. I think I'm curious to see precisely where your little diatribe will end. And whether it warrants sending the next round straight through that iris scrawled on your forehead. Because that's the best weapon in your arsenal, is it not? Terror. Mass. Terror for the mass population. For that's all we are to you, isn't it? A vast heaving undifferentiated mass. Human resources. Capital to be spent or leveraged or utilized. The heresy stripped away what little facets of differentiation we plebs could even have had the chance to possess. The imperial regime allows for no political organization. No differing interests. There's only the god emperors, and by definition the imperiums interests. They dedicate our place, our purpose, our self. We are chaffed to be turned at its will. In the past, I am aware, policies like this would usually enact steep costs in souls and people. Blood tithe. That even the maddest of tyrants could not easily pay. The price of total authority, of total domination, is measured in steel and promethium, yes. But also in bodies. But that is one thing you do not lack. That is the abundance of the imperium manifold. The great human herd, boundless, uncountable, limitless. And when the use for these great masses is finally made superfluous, barely anything other than a line item right beside shells and uniforms on a production line, when that happens, you are limitless. There is nothing you cannot simply throw bodies at. No great gears you cannot clog, grind to a halt with piles of pulped human meat and bone. All you lack would be the will to do what is necessary. And then what does it mean for the people? Or should I say the masses? It is likely easier for you to think of us that way. People, well, people have feelings. Wants, needs, desires, hopes, dreams, fears, nightmares, lives. Masses, well, those are just numbers. Data points on a graph. Ticking down, ticking up. A resource to be dug out of the ground and thrown upon the furnace. Where those wants, needs, desires, hopes, dreams, fears, nightmares, and lives are eaten. You are the terror that stalks them. Far more so than the alien or the heretic or the demon. You need to be. What is your favorite mantra? Innocence proves nothing? Maybe in another time that would have been ludicrous hyperbole, but not for you, no. It is the perfect distillation of all that you are. The consequence of unlimited authority run amuck. That power is only as good as those who wield it.  And what use is precision to terror? If anything, it works better when it's wielded indiscriminately. Wantonly trampling under your boot the lives of the innocent is the point. You seek to cast a shadow so wide, so all-encompassing that every soul under it will wonder, am I next? That's the point of you. Who was from the very beginning? It's the end state of the Inquisition. No one is innocent. Innocence doesn't exist. Dealing with an actual enemy, one of the never-born or an orc, that simply relieves you of the burden of arbitrary choice, because we, the masses, are just as undesirable, just as likely to be the enemy. Facts are dead. They cannot matter in a regime such as this. Truth is a lie meant to stall and obfuscate. Every crime your mind can concoct must be punished, even if it has not been committed. Innocence proves nothing. One simply... Must possess the will. It is a triumph of it. Is it not? The Inquisition. Humanity can offer. Untrammeled by whims of genetic enhancement and psychoconditioning, unrestrained by law or politics, unlimited in resource or supply. Humanity unleashed. Capable of anything to which we put our minds. Our will. Have you no justification for it beyond that? Is that what you want? Justification. An explanation. A reason why.  How can you comprehend something so thoroughly and yet be so utterly naive in the same instant? Did you hear nothing of the effluent that spewed from your own mouth? You apathetic. Can you not see you spent all this time in your little library with your scrolls and records, reading about the concept of absolute power without for once grasping the reality behind it? The authority is the justification. Control. Power. It is the reason. It is the only thing that matters. My ability to control your life. To wield it as I see fit for my purpose. It does not matter if I am an ardent believer in my ends justifying my means, or a psychopathic dullard unaware of the cacophonic tragedies they inflict on the world as they careen through it. The power is the point. I have all of it. You have none of it. And you can do nothing to stop me. That is just the way I like it. It is the order of things. It is not. If you even begin to say the word, fair, I will lose what scant measure of respect I yet restrain for your intelligence. Do you even know how many thousands of you I have ordered kill? How many millions I have had thrown into dark places to rot? They all thought themselves unique too. Awaken to the truths of all things. You utterly perplex me, your type. A person of learning so resolute in knowing what's right, but unwilling to do anything about it. Unable. A failure of will. If you wished, you could leap across the table and throttle me this very instant. You could spit in the face of authority and try to wring the life from it with your own hands. And I would be dead before my hands even made contact. Yes, but you would have tried. Your statement to authority would have been made, unobserved, uncelebrated, filed away, and comfortably forgotten, but it would have been made. And maybe I would step over your corpse with a measure of admiration for the consistency between what you say and what you do. But we both know you never will. The shadow of your terror. Is limitless. I think we're about done here. My record is not completed. Well, I trust you to finish it in your own time, submit it in your own time, and let whosoever has clearance, pass it in their own time. And why have me here? I wanted to see what you would do. To see if you would kill me? Oh, Oculus. No. You do remain useful. You do retain some measure of efficacy. Your work is not bad by any means, even given your flights of fancy, permissible to the correct eyes, tolerable, at least for now, and quite manageable. And if I am to kill you, it will not be anywhere like this. The theatrics earlier, oh my. They don't understand how this works, do you? Your death, if and when it arrives, will come with no notice, no warning, and no realisation. At one moment you will be, and another you will not. Your work will be attributed to others, or far more likely reduced to so many ashes. Those who knew you will purge themselves of all memory, let the shadow of your sins fall upon them. Everything you were, are, and will be, will end. And as far as the galaxy is concerned, you will never have existed at all. It truly is that simple. It will almost certainly be my decision, but you will never know of it, or even if it was me. That is how you will live. Your sentence is existence, for as long as I will allow it to continue. You will toil away down there, clacking away at your cogitator, in the dark among the stacks. Chronically and compiling, hoping your work makes a difference, but knowing it probably does not. Hoping someone is listening, but knowing you are alone, except for me. And the gun held right at your forehead. This sentence you to life, Oculus. That is my will. 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The damage illegal immigration and drug smuggling has on the land management agencies is significant. But the impacts do not stop there. Employees themselves also feel threatened and get emotionally worn down. First, employees find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, surprised by illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. If they come across people, usually they're either doing some field work and they're either doing some resource monitoring work or some type of work in the back country and they'll either come over a hill and there will be a group of people anywhere from one to a hundred people can be the encounter. You know, we've had so many instances where staff have run across drug smugglers. I've done that personally.  You know, I had already seen them. I just drove by and called law enforcement. We were thinning out of the pasture and I saw a guy walking along the fence so I went to see what was going on and the guy actually pushed me and hit me on the shoulders. He thought I was going to detain him. He took up running. That time I got nervous though because if he wanted to hit me, I mean just imagine whatever he could be hiding drugs or a big group of illegals. We got water patrol and they caught the guy and he had a group of 20 illegals with him and he was hiding in the canyon. You know, on horseback or if you're out on foot doing project work like an example is we're out doing a project over in Puerto Spring just north of here. They were doing some welding on a spring exposure and they were, you know, doing their work and 120 people walked right through the project where they were welding at. But an interesting occasion was when I was first assigned the new vehicle that I drive here at work and it didn't have the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service logo on it yet. So I was driving along the Eravaka Road in the Riparian section which is an area they like to lay up, the lay-up sites when they're waiting for pre-arranged rides, waiting for the next leg of their journey. And I was writing some notes down. They caught some movement in the rearview mirror and I looked back and here's these two guys. They came up out of the ditch and they were running toward me. They thought I was their pickup. So I took off and they looked so bewildered. There was one time when we were just camping and recreating out at Anzabrego and basically, you know, there's a group of us and I remember in the middle of the night, you know, half asleep I could hear noises out there and when I woke up I saw that I was actually sleeping right next to a trail, you know, an illegal immigrant traveling. So it's a little unsettling when you're totally vulnerable and people are just traveling right next to you. You know, anything could have happened. Another impact on employees is always having the creepy feeling of being watched. You know that when you're in the woods these days that you're likely to be watched 24 hours a day, seven days a week by somebody and so you never feel like you're alone You always get that kind of feeling on the back of your neck, you know, that somebody's watching and it's just one of those things that you have to deal with. I think it answers a lot of stress to the employees knowing that, you know, you really can't go out and relax in the forest because you really probably are most of the time under some kind of surveillance. On the Cabeza Prieta, if you're being watched, you're being watched from a real high point. They're called spotters and we've detected them and caught them from time to time and they're capable of being in place for days. They'll be supplied with food, with water. They may have communication equipment to communicate with counterparts in Mexico and they're watching border patrol. They're watching movement. Are you being watched all the time? We don't know, you know, but sometimes we're surprised at what we do fine out there and they do come equipped with night vision goggles, with radio contact, camouflaged up on some of these high points and mountaintops. The knowledge that we are almost always being watched while in the back country is a strange thing and it's partly the scouts that are operating for the illegal migrants and the smugglers but also the law enforcement surveillance is out there too and it's a pretty safe assumption that if you're out in the back country anyway, you're being watched and it is a weird feeling to have. Knowing that you're being watched all the time, it does make life interesting for simple things. You know, what do you do if you're working out in the back country all day long and it's lunch break and you've got to take a potty break. It's a whole different world for people now because you can safely assume you're being watched. So that's kind of the funny angle to it but the other part of it is to look at that and think about how does that affect my safety here today and my security and I find that I'm less likely now to actually go and explore something that I might see from a distance and I'll use that knowledge that I'm being watched to really kind of affect what I'm doing at a much earlier point and start backing off. It kind of fuels your paranoia out here but having paranoia here is kind of a survival skill. As human traffic moves north into the United States, a lot of waste and debris are discarded along the way, posing a possible biological hazard to employees. And so anytime our staff is working in the field, they have to be very aware of where they're at and if they see that they're in a layup site or a site where there has been immigrants in the area with trash, they have to be aware that there's biohazards in those areas that they have to be very, very careful about.  There's human waste here, sometimes there's drug paraphernalia here, hypodermic syringes, broken glass, things of that nature. There is concern about human disease, you know. We don't know what kind of disease might be coming across the border. Again, you're not just cleaning up boulds and things. There's human waste in there. We don't have portapies out throughout the desert so when they got to go, well, you know. So you don't know what you're going to come across. There's a whole lot of different hazards. Finally, living and working along the border can wear employees down emotionally. There's a whole aspect of employee wellness, too, on the border. This activity is, even when you're off work, it's still there, still 24 hours. When you want to go hiking in the park, you know it's there. When you want to have some personal time, you know that the activity is going on. There's potential for your car to be broken into, your house to be broken into. So it's a vigilance, it's a state of vigilance that you have to be in all the time. We have employees transfer. It gets to a situation where they find that they need to move on because of the emotional stress. For the people who have worked here for quite a while, like myself, and knowing and remembering how it was, it's very discouraging. It's very sad to see what's happening here. You can't even stay on top of it and it is a daily issue for all of us to be seeing immigrants on the side of the road and mother and child waving you down on the road as you're driving to work. Or just the trash cleanup or the number of trails and the impact to the wildlife. It's very discouraging and sometimes wonder what our mission is after a while because the border issues have taken over.  My instinct to want to take care of that person and help them would be so great. And that was hard the day that we had to leave the woman behind whose legs were hurt. It was one of the most awful feelings ever to feel like here's a woman who's crying and she's crying out in pain and I have to leave her and I can't.  I'm basic, functional, I can get by. And to not be able to explain to her we're not leaving you stranded. I was going to come get you was just the most painful feeling that I've ever had working out here to not be able to communicate that to her. And it makes it difficult, you know, on just a personal level. In this module, you heard about the drug smuggling and illegal immigration that takes place along the U.S.-Mexico border. You also heard of these activities impact land management agencies and their employees. The problems you heard about in this module may seem overwhelming. However, in module two, protecting yourself, you will hear how experienced employees deal with these issues, maintain their personal safety and still find meaning in their work despite all of these problems.