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charles1 wrote:

fragments wrote:@thread...everyone knows that this whole what you create = all ones influences stirred up in a pot is just post modernism right?

uhhhhhhh... postmodernism, in short, is a rejection of the modernist tendency to categorize the world. don't see how this really relates to that... care to explain?

Decently short definition of postmodernism for anyone interested: http://www.growthclass.org/postmodernism.html

Is this where you're coming from?

The link wrote:First, we are so enmeshed in our own situation—and we are so defined by our own situation and context—that we are unable to clearly see anything outside our own perspective. The ability to become some detached objective observer is a fiction.

Isnt collage and pastiche a part of post modernism? as well as the idea that there is nothing new under the sun? All creativity is just copy cat-ing that ends in a collage based on influences?

And yea that quote kinda almost begins to get at the idea.

Think DJ Shadow as an electronic music example. He is taking a bunch of pieces of art ...taker ng the bits he likes and rearranging them them to make something "new". Yet w/o those pieces parts the "new" thing isnt possible. The "new" is always dependant on what has come before.

charles1 wrote: well... postmodernism, in short, is a rejection of the modernist tendency to categorize the world.

lol pretty much summed up my second year Crit Studies essay. It isn't so cut and dry though. P-modernism is a pretty complicated movement but yeah basically it's a reaction to (against) Modernist values mixed up with the influence of the development of mass industrialization and mass media. Throwing away old values of collectivism and archetypal 'universal' themes and a focus on individualism, subjective experience and interpretation; as well as an evolution of the accepted arena of what art mediums could be, i.e. earthwork and conceptual art (the latter arguably pioneered much earlier in later modernism by Duchamp and other Dadaists).

The idea that 'nothing is new' isn't originally a post-modern perspective though it's a debate that's been going on since right back in the classical age. A good example of this is the use of a Camera Obscura as a device to mimic reality, showing an incentive to express art as a reflection of reality which is essentially the same driving principle that 'nothing is new'.

P-modernism is much more about art being the conceptual space between the 'art' and the observer, in as much as the art it's self is merely the perfunctory realization of the artists original intentions of imparting an experience upon the observer. The experience it's self being the 'art', the 'concept' is the art, as it were. Where the values are much more about the subjective experience of the individual as opposed to a 'universal language of art', which was a corner stone of Modernist perspective. So although the whole concept of art existing as a regurgitation of older themes exists within the post modern value set, it isn't what you could call a 'main' theme, nor was it developed as a post-modern perspective, it simply exists as an accepted value within the Post Modern movement.

It is of course a lot deeper than this but I can't really be assed to go in to it in any more depth.

^OK. Yea, it's coming back to me now. I didn't have a lot of theory courses as I was in a studio program, but that's making sense...where am I getting the collage and pastiche thing from? Pulling it out of my ass I suppose. I remember talking a lot about signs and signifers or something like that a lot in one of my courses. Only course I got a B in graduate school...all that PoMo shit gets my head twisted.

fragments wrote: signs and signifers

structuralism-- Barthes bridging the gap between modernism and po-mo, followed by Derrida/Foucault/etc/etc


holy shit i don't miss college. These are great ideas and studying structuralism really opened up my head to seeing connections between SO.MANY.THINGS in the world... but can you fucking imagine writing a 25-page essay on this stuff? Jesus.

Derrida is a laughing stock. His writings on the theory of relativity is beyond bizarre. My favourite po-mo "philosopher" would have to be Lacan though, who described his penis as the root square of one, which in physics describes a condition of oscillation.

Sharmaji wrote:

fragments wrote: signs and signifers

structuralism-- Barthes bridging the gap between modernism and po-mo, followed by Derrida/Foucault/etc/etc


holy shit i don't miss college. These are great ideas and studying structuralism really opened up my head to seeing connections between SO.MANY.THINGS in the world... but can you fucking imagine writing a 25-page essay on this stuff? Jesus.

Thankfully I only had to write a few of those long theory papers in grad school, did way more as an undergraduate. I've forgotten most of that theory stuff. If you don't use you loose it kind of deal.

Glad to have lost it

Turnipish Thoughts wrote:

charles1 wrote: well... postmodernism, in short, is a rejection of the modernist tendency to categorize the world.

lol pretty much summed up my second year Crit Studies essay. It isn't so cut and dry though. P-modernism is a pretty complicated movement but yeah basically it's a reaction to (against) Modernist values mixed up with the influence of the development of mass industrialization and mass media. Throwing away old values of collectivism and archetypal 'universal' themes and a focus on individualism, subjective experience and interpretation; as well as an evolution of the accepted arena of what art mediums could be, i.e. earthwork and conceptual art (the latter arguably pioneered much earlier in later modernism by Duchamp and other Dadaists).

The idea that 'nothing is new' isn't originally a post-modern perspective though it's a debate that's been going on since right back in the classical age. A good example of this is the use of a Camera Obscura as a device to mimic reality, showing an incentive to express art as a reflection of reality which is essentially the same driving principle that 'nothing is new'.

P-modernism is much more about art being the conceptual space between the 'art' and the observer, in as much as the art it's self is merely the perfunctory realization of the artists original intentions of imparting an experience upon the observer. The experience it's self being the 'art', the 'concept' is the art, as it were. Where the values are much more about the subjective experience of the individual as opposed to a 'universal language of art', which was a corner stone of Modernist perspective. So although the whole concept of art existing as a regurgitation of older themes exists within the post modern value set, it isn't what you could call a 'main' theme, nor was it developed as a post-modern perspective, it simply exists as an accepted value within the Post Modern movement.

It is of course a lot deeper than this but I can't really be assed to go in to it in any more depth.

My take on it (from Baudrillard's 'Simulacra & Simulation') was that Postmodernism was a cultural condition, and not necessarily a desirable one, that was essentially "post-historical" - all innate meanings are lost and all signs/signifiers are as good as any other, so all context is lost. A McDonald's sign is as "meaningful" as the Christian cross as the dollar sign as the Apple logo... it is the process of deconstruction run amok to the point where anything can be re-appropriated at any time without consideration of original context.

Toolman4 wrote:at the end of the day, I'm more so influenced to open ableton, than I am influenced to create a particular piece/sound/arrangement...Inevitably, regardless of how something comes to fruition.
(Wub..Moar like this please )

Could not agree with you more, I'm more inspired to open my DAW than to actually make a sound, but when it comes to visuals like art, that's what pushes me toward a specific type of emotion in a track.

Moods and sensations, feelings in real life obviously. Sitting in the back of my parent's car as a child on a drive back from somewhere late at night, seeing the lights of the motorway or city. Really afraid of never again feeling the emotions I remember feeling a few years ago, in my early teens and in childhood lol.

Also, definitely videogames. Playing the original Halo with my mate when I was 11-12ish, marveling at how mysterious and vast the gameworld seemed. The distinct feel of Braid. Mass Effect 1. The utter darkness of something like Penumbra or Doom 3 (before it got really silly and the skeleton rocket-men started showing up). Metroid Fusion, too. That game is eerie as fuck for a 2D game!

As far as music, I'm probably pretty run-of-the mill here. Illmatic is probably a strong influence. The immersive sense of place in that record is incredible. Hearing Dizzee's second album, not really knowing what Grime was, and tunes like Face showing me weird, off-beat rhythms like that. Also, I'm guessing it won't earn me many cool points around here, but I fell head-over-heels in love with Leftism when I first heard that too. "Song of Life" and "Storm 300" for the first time, utter euphoria. Similar feeling with The Prodigy's first album. Your Love Remix is unelievable. Nathan Fake's track, Outhouse. More recent, but still very strong influences is dark, rhythmically intense stuff like Source Direct, Ed Rush around 1994-96, Vex'd, Skull Disco stuff and Burial obviously. And I heard Entroducing less than a year ago, that too is unbelievably good.

fragments wrote:

Sharmaji wrote:

fragments wrote: signs and signifers

structuralism-- Barthes bridging the gap between modernism and po-mo, followed by Derrida/Foucault/etc/etc


holy shit i don't miss college. These are great ideas and studying structuralism really opened up my head to seeing connections between SO.MANY.THINGS in the world... but can you fucking imagine writing a 25-page essay on this stuff? Jesus.

Thankfully I only had to write a few of those long theory papers in grad school, did way more as an undergraduate. I've forgotten most of that theory stuff. If you don't use you loose it kind of deal.

Glad to have lost it

Whats a good book to start with if im a beginner to this sort of stuff? Ive been interested in certain scholars like Foucault but never quite knew how to really start grasping their ideas...

@Jizzman - arguably Umberto Eco. He's the most "readable" to most people anyway.

alphacat wrote:@Jizzman - arguably Umberto Eco. He's the most "readable" to most people anyway.

Plus he comes in movie form if required;

wub wrote:

alphacat wrote:@Jizzman - arguably Umberto Eco. He's the most "readable" to most people anyway.

Plus he comes in movie form if required;

nice one guys, I'll check that movie and google through some related books and whatnot