Postmodern Unpacked

A Knight’s TaleDirector: Brian Helgeland

(Columbia 2001)

We Will Rock You

Postmodernism

?

IntentA Knights Tale: MovieFatboy Slim: MusicPeter Blake: ArtVenturi: Las VegasMadonna: PhilosophyMatrix: PhilospohyRobbie Williams and Mona Lisa: ?

er … so what is …

• Post-War Modernism responded to new urban issues

• Problems with slums & overcrowding

• Need for architect as authority to …

… design a ‘machine for living’

• Good design would lead to good living

1945-52

Unite de Habitation – Marseille

Le Corbusier

‘MACINE FOR LIVING’

1954-8

Seagram Building – New York

Mies van der Rohe / Johnson

St Georges Hotel – Cape Town

‘Form Follows Function’

• The function of a building should determine its shape.

‘Less is More’

• No Decoration

Integrity of Materials

• Nothing must masquerade as something else

Exposed Metal & Glass – No Plaster

No Outward Decoration – Less is MoreRepetition of Mass Produced Units

Office space expensive in CBD hence tall structure – Form follows function

Architecture

15h32 – 15/07/72

PRUITT -IGOE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

St. Louis

PUBLIC SERVICES BUILDING- PORTLAND

Modern Technology but …

Decorations & Colour

Retrospective References

- Art Deco

- Egyptian

GRAVES

RetrospectiveHistoricist

…but skewed proportions

Romanesque Arches

Greek Columns

VENTURI

AT & T BUILDING

New York

Chippendale Cabinet

Grand Father Clock

JOHNSON

VernacularFamiliarity

Common Vocabulary

Window that is not a window!

Window that is a window

‘Double Coded’

Vernacular

Disney World is nearer to what people want than what Architects have ever given them. Disney Land is the symbolic American Utopia

- Robert Venturi

Familiarity

Common Vocabulary

FEDSURE OFFICE CLUSTER

Cape Town

Rolls Royce Engine Grill?

RCI OFFICES

Belville

Classical Architectural Style

Acropolis Ruins - Greek Holidays

Modern Glass Facade

Irony‘Loss of innocence’

‘Intelligent audience’Umberto

Eco

U2

Song Writers

Musicians

‘Play their own music’

Play within a recognizable ‘Rock?’ style

Music

The Story of OVO

Peter Gabriel

References to other cultures Mixed in a western format

Pluralist

Mixture of styles

Eclectic

Barcelona

Freddie Mercury &

Caballe Monserrat

Lyrically – Synthesis of High and Popular culture

Marriage of high & pop culture

Progressive & retrospective

High & Pop - Lyrically - Barcelona

Because We Can

Fatboy Slim

Retrospective – Can CanCreative Process – LoopsCreative Process - MixVocals?

Bitter Sweet Symphony

The Verve

Musically – Mixture of StylesElectronic & Classical

Mixture of styles - Musically - Bittersweet Symphony

Mixtures- Historically – Because You Can

Sampling- Process –Sound Bytes

Linear

Plot

Genre Based• Westerns

• War

• Horror

• Action

Time Frame Authenticity

Film

Brian Helgeland

Baz Luhrman


(Columbia 2001)

Medieval Setting

21st Century Sensibility


(Columbia 2001)

Church vs Beauty & Materialism

Moulin RougeDirector: Baz Luhrmann

(20th Century Fox 2001)

Paris 1899

20th Musical Setting

(1960’s – 2001)

21st Sensibilities



Elephant love song



Gun Scene

Art

Roy Lichtenstein

Pablo Picasso

Jackson Pollock

Roy Lichtenstein

Erased De Kooning drawing

Rauchenberg

Rauschenberg

Peter Blake

TheoryJean Francois Lyotard

Jean Baudrillard

Michel Foucault

Fredric Jameson

Jacques Derrida

Deleuze & Guattari

Roland Barthes

Julia Kristava

Theory

Jean Baudrillard

Postmodern Issue No. 1

Can signs & images that originally represented reality exist independently?

BAUDRILLARD The 4 Phases of an Image

• The image/sign is a reflection of basic reality

• The image/sign masks or perverts a basic reality

• The image/sign marks the absence of a basic reality

• The image/sign bears no relation to any reality. It exists as a postmodern ‘simulacrum’

Simulacra?Copies of real objects

’Death of the Real!’

Modonna


So what is reality?

There are in fact multiple realities

Parallel realities


So what is real?

The MatrixLarry & Andrew Wachowski

(Warner Brothers 1999)

Future Dystopia

Reality vs. ‘The Matrix’ Simulation

Remember … The PM Question – ‘What is Real?’

NeuromancerWilliam Gibson

(Victor Gollancz 1984)

Cyberpunk Science Fiction

Cyberspace: The Internet

as geographical space

Cyborgs – Human/Machines

Manipulation?

9/11, the Afghanistan & Gulf WarsCNN Television Network

Mediated Reality

9/11, the Afghanistan & Gulf WarsCNN Television Network

Mediated Reality

“When the real is so systematically mediated through codes, images and models it becomes not unreal or surreal, a myth or a fantasy, but hyperreal, that is a reality that is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, from memory banks and command modules.”

Simulacra

‘Mediated reality’

Cyberspace- Cyberia

- Cyber war

- Cyber Sex

Hyper Reality

The MatrixLarry & Andrew Wachowski

(Warner Brothers 1999)

The Matrix explained

Hyper Reality

A window that is not a window

A song that is really a sound byte

A Madonna that’s no virgin

Brands that are more powerful than product

Monism--Pluralism

Elitist--Populist

Purposeful--Playful

Progressive--Retro

Serious--Ironic

Simplicity--Elaboration

Newtonian--Chaos

What now?Movies-Blade Runner (Ridley Scott 1982)

-Pulp Fiction (Quintin Tarrentino 1992)

-Malholland Drive (David Lynch 2001)

-Shrek (2001)

-Adaptation (2002)Philosophy- J Lyotard: The PostModern Condition: A Report on

Knowledge (1984)

- C Jencks: What is Postmodernism? (1986)

- M Foucault: Discipline and Punish (1972)

Novels- S Coupland: Generation X (1996)- John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Women (1969)- K Vonnegut: Slaughter House 5 (1969)- I Calvino: If On A Winters Night (1986) - S Rushdie: Satanic Verses & Midnights Children (1981)- J M Coetzee: Foe (1986)- T Pynchon: Gravities Rainbow (1973)- McEwan: Atonement

Robbie & Mona?

The beginning …..

Design

Postmodern Unpacked