Post PostModernism

 

What is "Postmodernism"? For that matter, what is modernism? And at what point did it become "post"? A lot of questions concerning something that most of us can accept and then ignore without ever calling it back to the mind. They concern a style of life that exists like the air and the wind in that it's there and not much can be done about it, and that which can is not obviously of benefit. To understand the world that I will soon go into, you, the reader, must understand the modernist form and the post modernist mutant. For this we can turn to the literal translator that is the highly regarded OED. Please note:

 

Modernism - 1. modern ideas, methods or styles. 2. a movement in the arts that aims to break with traditional styles or ideas.

 

Postmodernism - a style or movement in the arts that features a deliberate mixing of different styles and draws attention to artistic traditions.

 

Not exactly crystal is it? The problem with these explanations is that though they are grammatically immaculate (as one should expect from those at Oxford's most famous publication) they lack a certain specificity and humanity. Though some of us either have no need to understand things like this, and of course there are those of us who feel that we understand the terms without such prompts, some of us may need or want a more detailed or simplified terminology (and reminders in modern casts are always helpful). So let us "pop" these terms. Superman, his square jaw, good suit and senibilities, is a fine example of a modernistic superhero. Wolverine, his mutations, assorted ethics and raggid garb is postmodern to the core. For a more traditional explanation consult David Harvey's The Condition Of Postmodernism, particularly page 43 which lists opposing terms which can be applied to any facet of life and art from architecture to textiles. The two most telling for me are the modernist "purpose" and the postmodernist "play", but the list can answer almost any question that you may have about such a complex subject. Think of tower-blocks and power-stations and you are thinking modernism. Think about the Gherkin or the new Wembley with its grand arch and you are thinking postmodernism. The little black dress is a modernistic masterpiece, whereas the "page 3" girl wearing a pair of stilletos, two belts and a bit of fish net is postmodernism to a tee. Get it? Well, I hope so. We have moved from linear form to exagerated abstractions, from modern to postmodern, and now we are here...

 

...where? Harvey identified 1972 as the day the world went post modern. Today it is 2007 which means that... 35 years have passed since the trend began. There is never a time set for the ends and beginnings, so it is up to us to identify the moments when the world shifts, and I believe that I have pin pointed one such moment. I believe that I have found the very instance when postmodernism began to die. So, when the world looks back in years to come I would have them declare: Postmodernism - Gone but not forgotten - 1972-2004.

 

So perhaps before we delve into the specifics of why, to my mind, postmodernism only lasted 32 years, it would be wiser to discover just how one can go beyond something that is, in itself, a beyond (by use of the term "post" that is) and therefore we must open our minds to the concept of "beyond the beyond". Modernism was a uniform creativity defined by reason and sense of place. Postmodernism was a time of mingling styles, creative multiplicity and the notion of conventional unconventionalness. The problem one would seem to have is that, given the notion that nothing is new, one could always argue that whatever newness is thrown up is part of postmodernism no matter how uniform or radical. Even that which is obviously created today in a modernist style, can be labelled as postmodernism because any retrospection put into real space is a look to the past with an eye to the future, if you get my drift. Because postmodernism uses a mesh of the past to create a future, anything one creates could be noted as being part of that past, and therefore one is limited to a postmodernistic outlook. So where is left to go if postmodernism is a combination of everything, both academic and artistic? To explain this explaination quickly, we may use the example of architecture again (it really is quite useful). Consider a building. Something like the Gherkin (I know that we've already used it but it's a very good model) but anything constucted with aesthetics in mind as much as functionality. The most popular of these are always the ones that strike the right balance between the scientific and the artistic. They combine either as much science as they need and as much art as they can get in or as much art as they need and as much science as they can include. The notion of these balances between wants and needs may appear difficult to apply to something as erratic as the concept of postmodernism, but one only needs to examine their subject to see it to be true. The Gherkin is, afterall, a practicle structure to contain a workspace and this, for the sake of convenience if at the cost of some accuracy, we will call the scientifics. It had to work as a workplace, first and foremost. When such a prerequisite is completed, one can then introduce as much artist as possible, altering its shape, colours, styles and themes as much as possible. To put these balances into a more scientific form we might use the vulgar simplicities of percentage values. It could be  70% artistic/30% scientific, 30%artistic/70%scientific or anyhting in between that makes a round whole. The fact is that postmodernists, as much as they will hate to admit it, find balance in variations (as modernists find balance in formal singularities). If modernists are scientific artistics, and postmodernists are artistic scientifics, then what is left and where can we go from here?

 

Clear definition (modernism) evolved into balanced mixture (postmodernism) and so it is my belief that what we are growing into is a mixture that has gone beyond mixing, a completed recipe if you like. In the post postmodernist structure, art has become a science and science has become art. The two are now becoming the same, beyond anything that has come before. Not a mixture, but a single thing. I never subscribed to the ideas of people like Gaston Bachelard who would have us believe that there is such a thing as "artistic truth" because art is about the individual and taking that relativity brings a different perspective to each of us, there can be no fundamental truth because there is always variation in our opinions about everything. I am talking now of appreciating an object that is past the labels of art and science, on a level where it is both, none and possibly everything else. And I have an example for you which was released 2004.

 

The Ferrari F60 "Enzo" is, I believe, the earliest evidence to support my theory that we are past the restriction of postmodernism. It may sound like a ridiculous prospect, a car defining the commencement of a new way of looking at the world, but when one examines further it really isn't. What percentage of the world today goes a day without seeing a motor vehicle? I have no idea, but it can't be a very high number. Some remote South American tribes, parts of central Africa and maybe some people at the North Pole. Not much. And in 1972, what percentage of people saw buildings designed for their aesthetics every day? A much larger number surely. Cars, in particular of most vehicles, represent everyone, from the scavenged, semi-homemade and temperamental necessities of the just-past-3rd world to the glamourous, fine-tuned and near perfect hyper-cars that tear through the tarmac roads of the west. Some women judge a man by his car, some men judge each other by their cars and the fact that this scientific achievement has become a marker of someone's status in society surely points to the cultural and sociological importance of these machines. And never has their been such a roaringly quiet revolution as the one brought forth by the Enzo. This machine (which I suggest you seek out now with an image search) is something entirely new, from a design point of view, and in terms of its relationship to functionality and decadence. It is now my job to explain this to you, but please remember that language is perhaps a little limiting when dealing with these concepts.

 

When one examines the car, we can see two different machines, the "Formula 1" racer and the supercar. One is a worker, designed with heavy science to win championships and honed with aerodynamics and expertise. The other is an aesthetic wonder, designed to wow the people on the street with curvacious form and symphonic noise. Combined this would seem perhaps to be a straight homage to postmodernism, but it is in my mind, a step beyond. The science and art would seem combined, but in fact they are synonymous, the same thing. Its curves are beautiful and functional, but in the same way that the sky is bright blue and azure. There is no longer a need for percentages and when we see this car, we see a machine that is 100% scientific and 100% artistic. The speeds it can reach can win races and thrill the mind, the interior controls are defined by necessity and exravagance, as if they were the same thing. To say that it is all things to all men would be foolish, but one cannot deny that this is a machine built purely for function and purely for style in a way that nothing else has ever been built before.

 

But what makes it different to any other super, or hyper, car? Well, there are several ways in which it blurs the definitions on Harvey's chart and we must now explore them. It's already blurred the selection/combination dichotomy in its singular essence that combines both beauty and science. It has also destroyed Harvey's pairing of distance or participation because there are just 400 of these machines and yet everyone can appreciate them without driving them. Also, this elitest motorcar's 400th edition was auctioned for charity fetching well over one million dollars for charity (tsunami relief), making it exclusive and inclusive. This car is the ultimate, complete and finished object, and yet the art is in the driving, making it perpetually a work in progress. It is a thousand different shapes from a thousand different angles, and yet it is always going to be a penis-extension. And then their's the name. Enzo is a tibute to the man who created the make, Enzo Ferrari who was not an educated or effluent man in his youth who rescued his family name when he took to his dream of racing cars. He founded Ferrari to create racers and he was exceptionally successful in this feet. When the company went public, a dynasty was born that is recognised the world over. Its like one of those American Dreams, but it didn't happen in America. Going from an experimental company trying to win races, to an elite badge that can choose who can own their cars, the Enzo is the ultimate culmination of a legacy, a true pinnacle. But there is still more to come. Not all Ferraris have the "F" badge, the sign of greatness, and more are being produced all of the time, making this a dynasty inside of a dynasty, an end inside an ongoing story, yet it was regarded as be all and end all of cars, things move on. Even the technical abilities that the driver must possess were altered beyond anything with the release of this car (racer on the road format again) with speeds beyond anything that had come before forcing drivers to concentrate on the science while developing their artform, which are the same thing.

 

Now, all of this can be argued against, and reading back I understand that my language is floored, but I hope that this will provide a basis for others to examine one of the moments that I think brought forth a new age in design concepts and ideals. The name may need tweaking (post postmodernism isn't exactly original or convenient) but it is my firm belief that we are entering an era when the formal and the mutant become the same thing. There are some other examples which I will publish here in the fullness of time. But for now, I urge you to examine the space around you and consider that which is modern, that which is postmodern and that which could be both at the same time. There have been several evolutions to date that I know of, but I would appreciate any further examples if a legitimate one can be found. Please check back to see where we take post postmodernism.

 

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Cosider if you will, the evolution of Nintendo. They first released the Nintedo Entertainment Sytem (NES) in the 1980s (it might have been the late 1970s but it't in that area). It was simple with limited graphics and actions due to its controller. This is the important part of it. The controller, attached by wire to the machine had just two buttons and what is known as a "d-pad" or direction pad. As technology improved, Nintendo unvailed the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) which had four buttons, two shoulder buttons and the d-pad. The buttons were colourful and the machine itself was twice as powerful as its older brother, and aesthetically more pleasing with curves instead of edges. In Japan, Nintendo's homeland, it even had limited community gaming and information supply that preceded the Internet. The games were far more involving too, and this would always be the case with each new generation offering greater gaming experiences. Then would come the N64 and the Gamecube during the height of postmodernism. By this stage, the controllers could vibrate, they had vast arrays of buttons, two analogue sticks (more versatile interpretations of the d-pad) and the ever trusty d-pad to boot. Some of them even harnessed Infra-red to break free of the wire constraints.  Remember Harvey's "form over functionality" argument and consider that by this stage the way that a console looked physically was seen as an important part of its marketability despite it having nothing to do with actual gameplay. So these pretty, powerful and luxurious consoles could be said to be the very definitions of postmodern products, if we also consider the things that were said about the Enzo. And thinking about it, the idea of a high-tech machine being bought purely for pleasure can only be postmodern.

 

Then came the humourously titled Wii. Released in 2006, this machine, I will argue, is pure post-postmodernism. The controller, immediately broke from tradition coming in two seperate parts which were not always necessary. They were never intended to be connected physically with the machine, instead using motion sensor and infra-red technology. And the first part of it, labelled the "Wii-mote" had just seven buttons, the d-pad and nthing else. But though it had less buttons, because of its motion sensor activity, it could do more. Nintendo had gone forewards and backwards at the same time. The motion-sensitivity made it active, in a realm that was the very definition of inactivity and it has even been proven to help develop hand-eye coordination and help its users to lose weight. Now, had the machine not been a success, this argument would be specious, but in recent months, Nintendo has been almost unable to match demand with supply. It's cheaper too, perhaps signalling an end to the status symbolism of money. It can even be used to surf the internet, and download software originally designed for machines around twenty years older than itself, and even do work. This backward-compatability is another sign of humanity harking back to simpler times with fond overtones. So the Wii is form and function, sociable solitude, active inactivity and work at play. These features are not postmodern, they are in fact post-postmodern.

 

Now take the I-pod, not a machine by Nintendo but by another of Microsoft's great rivals, Apple. The idea of mp3 files is quite an interesting one in itself so perhaps it would make a good starting point. For decades, music collections have sat proudly in their owner's homes, be they vinyl, cassette tape or CD. But with the introduction of affordable downloads and easier to use computer programs, the collections have left their high mantles in favour of the quasi-mataphysical understatement in the form of a small icon on a desktop which isn't really there. Apple were waiting for this to happen and released the I-pod which now appears in various forms to rapturous applause. Market experts and consumers alike mark it as the most popular of all mp3 players, and it has just one button. By their end, personal CD players had tens of buttons, analogue software, shock-buffers and they were growing in their complicated looks and actions. But the I-pod has just one button. It does have a multi-functional action wheel and a hold button, but essentially, the machine has just one thing that could be called a button in its strictist sense. Rather than being bedecked with switches and things that click, it has almost removed activity from the physical world, basing most of itself inside the invisible notion of a software program. And though the machine is physically small, it can hold shelf upon shelf of music. It is enormous and minute, practical and fun, it is everything modern and it is everything postmodern. It is post-postmodern.