When the guns fell silent at the end of World War I, empires had crumbled and millions of lives had been destroyed. 

Artillery, poison gas, machine guns, tanks and planes had killed millions of soldiers. This mechanised carnage heralded the beginning of the machine age. 

During the interwar years, the fear of losing control over technology transformed into the dream of the 'New Man', a kind of superman able to reassert his authority over history. 

The legacy of this trauma and the responses to it is still part of our imagination, and confronting it may be more important than ever before.