Post Modernity- 18th March

Characteristics of Post-Modernism

-It is innovative and inventive
-it involves participation
-it communicates(through the sign)
-it depends on interpretation
-it considers want as well as need
-it relies on performance, play, chance, and choice
-the part may represent the whole
-it is a system of binary oppositions
-it focuses on the marginal
-it is web-orientated

Post modernism is not restricted by the norms of consistency.

Key dates

1956: Pop Culture and the House
1968: Innovation following the Apollo Moon landing
1968: Paris Student Uprising, which caused changes in university teaching and eventually in government. The messgae, autocracy not acceptable.
1969: Sottsass and the Olivetti Valentine typewriter
1972: Venturi Scott Brown, the iconography of the Duck and the Decorated Shed
1964,77: Roland Barthes and Semiotics
1989: End of the Cold War signaled by the destruction of the Berlin Wall
1959-75: Vietnam War. Jameson and the logic of Late Capitalism. Baudrillard and the Simulacrum
1984: Apple Macintosh

Lecture 2 - Modernism - Designing a New World

Causes
-Aftermath of WWI/Russian Revolution
-Rejection of History

-was experimental to start.

Pre Modernism
-Baroque 1600-1700
- emotional, curvilinear, ornamental
-Industrialisation
-confusion of old styles and new styles, still decorative and ornamental "Dilema of Style"

-William Morris
-pioneer of modernism
-defended craftmansshio and materiallity rather than mass production
- "change society through design"

-Louis Sullivan
-Frank Loyd Wright
-The Deutsher Werkbund (German Workband)
-Peter Behrens
-Walter Gropius & Adolf Meyer

1918 - WWI begins, KEY POINT BEGINNING OF MODERNISM

-Searching for Utopia

-Russian Constructavism
-Italian Futurism

Review of "The Revival of Handicraft" - William Morris

Main Points

-Demand for more handcrafted products, anti-machine.
-more poorly made goods in market due to capatalist manipulation, people have no choice.