2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Soft Drinks, Gumballs, & Gold Bars, June 29, 2010
This review is from: Vending Machines: Coined Consumerism (Hardcover)
Vending Machines: Coined Consumerism is more coffee table art book than the social history of vending machines the product description led me to expect. It's a curious book, both in the sense that it's hard to pigeonhole and that it looks at vending machines in original ways.
Some of the photographers/artists see the machines as futuristic and daring, such as the machines that vend tiny original artworks or the machines that are more performance art than public convenience. There's the coffee dispenser that contains an actual woman serving the coffee, for instance.
Other artists see the machines as decaying relics of the past. Rust-streaked, with parts missing, advertising products that are obsolete, they look desolate and depressing.
Many of the photos are of machines in Japan, where there are more vending machines per capita than anywhere else. In addition to the usual soft drinks and cigarettes, avant garde machines dispense toilet paper, rice, koi, and books.
Vending machines for books, now there's a good idea. I saw a book vending machine in an airport not long ago, with paperback mysteries, thrillers, sudoku, romances, magazines. Perfect for airplane reading. And a recent newspaper article told of a company in Germany that's taking abandoned cigarette vending machines from the 1970s and restocking them with books.
Although most of the older vending machines in the book are portrayed as forlorn, some are shown as cool and retro, repurposed for new products.
Then there are the ultra modern machines that vend practically everything - umbrellas, bathing suits, fresh pizza made on the spot, gold bars. Gold bars. A machine vends actual gold bars and gold wafers, at a 30% markup over the current price of gold, which it monitors. I wonder why anyone would need a gold bar so much that they'd pay a premium that high.
The book opens with a few pages on the history of vending machines and some thoughts about vending machines in popular culture. Many of the photos are accompanied by some text, but this is mainly a book to look at rather than to read.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine.', June 6, 2010
This review is from: Vending Machines: Coined Consumerism (Hardcover)
Though this wise book exploring the iconography and history of vending machines form the early forms in ancient Greece to the proliferation of the fantastical inventions of today is printed as yet another evidence of the art of graphic design by Mark Batty Publisher, VENDING MACHINES: COINED CONSUMERISM, in the informed hands of writer Christopher D Salyers is more a statement of our obsession with instant gratification. Have a need? Look around and find a freestanding machine that can dispense money 9ATM), movies (Red Box), of course sodas and junk food of all sorts, tickets, condoms, sanitary pads, instant photos, newspapers, coffee, cigarettes, toys - the list in close to infinite. How these machines developed and became popular, with terms such as 'Automat' becoming a dictionary entry since the 1940s, is the journey Salyers takes us on.
The book is divided into section, each of which explores more fully the type of vending process featured: Weird World (hypodermic needle vending sources!); Japan is the Future; Capsules, Candies & Claw Machine; Retro Vending; In Soda We Trust; and two well composed interviews with Michael Keferl who invented CScout (a trend research agency) of Japan and Clark Whittington, the inventor of Art-O-Mat - an entirely new form of art that is the obvious end variant of an obsession of a machine that does everything else for us!
Throughout the book are brilliant colored photographs of the machines in freestanding position and in details of some particular aspects that spark our interest and curiosity. As Salyers puts it, 'The vending machine, in its truest form, represents an overhaul of the psychology of consumerism - there is no human element to interfere with the advertisements of the medium.' This very readable book is a fine history book of a small segment of our daily lives that has blossomed into a mega-industry, employing millions of workers from design to production to servicing these contemporary robots. The book is a sizzler! Grady Harp, June 10
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