Post-Modernism Lesson 5 (Continued)

Pluralism & Relativism


Pluralism: There is no answer to anything (pretty much)

Pluralism is split into two types:

Normative Pluralism or Nihilism - this is the acceptance of all narratives and the idea that no narratives are better than another.

Secondly, there is a kind of PoMo which is pluralist in the sense that it accepts different views, without denying that something is better than other things.

In the latter case of pluralism or PoMo we are faced with the old idea of defending other people's right to say whatever they wish, without accepting their points of view. It is this second kind which allows some form of rebuttal to criticisms of PoMo.

Jameson's analysis of PoMo attempted to view it as historically grounded; he therefore explicitly rejected any moralistic opposition to postmodernity as a cultural phenomenon, and continued to insist upon a Hegelian immanent critue that would "think the culturan evolution of late capitalism dialectically, as catastrophe and progress all together".

Linda Hutcheon on the other hand, argued that PoMo artists show greater historical sophistication, by analysing the discursive means by which historical narratives are constructed, than Jameson's account would allow.

Post-Modernism Lesson 5

Pastiche & Homage


Theorist: Tarantino


Homage: Respect to older styles.
Pastiche: Satirical/imitation of existing style. (Simulacra/Simulacrum)

Post-Modern audiences have to be highly literate.


Jacques Derrida
"The center is not the center. The concept of a centred structure...is contradictorily coherent. And, as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of desire."

Neale (1980): "Genres are instances of repetition and difference".

Post-Modernism Lesson 4

Computer Games

Genres: Racing, Puzzle, Role Play, FPS (First Person Shooting), Sport, Virtual Reality, Platform, Third-Person, Music, Stategy, 'Beat 'Em Up', Management.  etc.

Conventional Components Of a Computer Game:

Levels/missions

Power-ups

Coins/Rewards

Puzzles/Problems

Progressive Difficulty

Linear Structure

Binary Opposites

My Favourite Chosen Game: Need For Speed 'Most Wanted'

More Realistic/Hyper-reality

We cannot always distinguish the real with the fictional.

Post-Modernism Lesson 3

Jean Francois Lyotard


Jean Francois had the idea of "Little Narratives"


Lyotard's work is characterised by a persistent opposition to universals, meta-narratives and generality.


Lyotard notices that we have become alert to difference and diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.


He believes they are split into three things: Religion, Politics and Science.

Post-Modernism Lesson 2

Levi-Strauss


Addition: Add something extra to the narrative.
Deletion: Taking something away from the narrative.
Substitution: Substituting something within the narrative.
Transposition: Taking two unconnected things and adding them together. (<<this is a very common convention of PoMo)

Post-Modernism Lesson 1

I need to know...
The history of PoMo
The 'present' of PoMo (last 5 years)
The future of PoMo


A Post-Modernist feature is 'uncertainty in establishing the truth'.


What is truth?
the opposite of false


What if false?
the opposite of truth


Binary Opposites. There are no binary opposites.


Genre & Representation


Simulacra & Simulation


Simulacra: An image or representation of someone or something which is an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute.


Simulation: imitating some real thing or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours.








Daft Punk are very Post-Modern

Response To Creativity Question

Creativity is 'A process needed for problem solving...not a special gift enjoyed by a few but a common ability possessed by most people.' (Jones 1993) To what extent do you agree with this viewpoint?

  

I believe that creativity is a process that is needed for problem solving to some extent, but I believe that problem solving is a more logical process. I also believe that creativity is possessed by everybody, but the quantity of creativity varies in each person, as do many other human characteristics.

What Can Most People Do?

Creativity is defined as: The use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

In this case, barely anybody in the world is creative - nobody is original anymore as a 'new' product is usually just a recreation of another existing product.. Everything is ripped off one another or is inspired by something else. However, creative could be seen in the light of being inventive in which case many people have access to appropriate software/hardware which allows them to be largely inventive. Being inventive is a common trait possessed in people as with the use of the internet and other archives we are able to research and plan extensively which allows us to see forms and conventions of other existing media products and adapt our inventions around them.

What Is The Process Of Being Creative?

In order to be, what we assume is, creative, we must research and plan thoroughly in order to find out what conventions the media product we are aiming to create uses in order for the product for us to create to fit into this genre of product. Audiences of today will not recognise the type of product we are aiming to create without the use of conventions as it will not be seen as 'normal' to the genre - so the product will not be successful. If a product is truly creative, it will use barely any (if any) of the conventions of another media product - therefore it would not be the type of product you are aiming for and so would create its own genre. So even by being creative in media you have limitations.

After you have looked into this research for the conventions, you must create your product, evaluate it and re-assess or change it as necessary. Being creative in making your media product has many refining processes and analyses in order to make it just as you wish. Arguably, by the time you have finished creating your product, you have analysed it in such depth you are no longer being creative as the elements you have assumed to be 'creative' have been removed to solve problems of not fulfilling conventions. So, looking back over the quote from Jones, I think that creativity is not a process used for problem solving, but instead problem solving destroys creativity in order to fulfill the conventions of today's society's media products.

Creativity In My Products

When creating my prelim magazine, I used conventions which I thought I already knew to create a magazine which was, in my opinion, not a bad first attempt:

However, after looking at conventions, developing the product and using research and planning - my final product actually ended up like this:

As you can see, the magazine is not too different from the prelim as there are only so many conventions in magazine that you can find. The brief of the prelim magazine and the coursework magazine meant that their were time constraints on my creativity, conventions of the music magazine meant I was not able to create something completely new and interesting and the budget of my magazine meant that I had to be quite minimalistic in the props I used and the editing skills I had. The teacher's input to improve my grade was also another factor which meant that my creativity was not as free-flowing as i'd liked it to have been. This, again, shows how creativity is destroyed by problem solving and to fit into conventions.

When we created our remake of Busted's 'That's What I Go To School For', our creativity was very limited as we had to use a direct copy, however, creativity came through in our use of materials we had and the technology we used. But creativity was not really showed in this part of the preliminary task.

When we came to making our final coursework video, we ended up re-filming most parts of the planned scenes such as playing the guitars as it did not fit conventions of the genre, however, when it came to the scenes of disjuncture where the band were playing and having fun, we did not have to re-shoot anything as it fit into the 'disjuncture' area of the genre we were aiming for and so our creativity was able to flow freely and we could make the most of the resources we had.


The Skeleton Boys - One Night In October by Harry_Tibbles


In terms of the digipak and poster, I was able to use my creativity more extensively than in any of my other media products I had created to date. The reason for this was because the spectrum of digipaks is far wider than that of a music video or a magazine and there are far less conventions to abide by and you are able to get away with more artistic and convention-challenging ideas. Our band fitted into the 'Indie' genre and as part of the indie genre, bands tend to use quite simplistic ideas and images which would seem to an outsider like they have effortlessly created an image - but this is not the case. The art form which Vampire Weekend use is very different to many other different artists and so I used my product knowledge to be inventive and create a product which is strongly inspired by this. This time, I did not use creativity for problem solving but instead to make something which was aesthetic. Although you could argue I created this product for problem solving as it is practical as it shows song names on the back cover.

This inventive digipak, however, was not particularly continued through into my poster as I just copied, within reason, all of the elements from my digipak but into a marketable form. This, therefore was to solve the problem of potential customers not recognising the branding of my products.

To conclude, I do not think that creativity is used for problem solving, as that is a more logical process, I do think, however, that creativity is possessed by many people, but, like I said in the introduction, the quantity in each person varies, along with other human characteristics.

Desert Bus

http://desertbus-game.org/plain-index.php

Although Desert Bus is realistic, I do not think it would be a game I would choose to go on unless for charity or fed up with life to a point of suicide.

It does, however, contain many conventions of a computer game: Levels/missions; power-ups; coins/rewards; puzzles/problems; progressive difficulty; linear structure and binary opposites.

But the game is still flawed in terms of "playing to have a good time".

Is A Text Only Postmodern If The Audience Are Aware Of The 'Socially Recognisable Debris'?

http://smithlcmedia.blogspot.com/2011/02/dan-black-symphonies-with-references.html

Task 1 

Addition - Adding something extra to the narrative. Examples in this particular text are the amount of different narratives there are combined into the one video.

Deletion - Taking something away within the narrative. An example in the video is: never finding out what actually happens in any of the narratives, it simply says "the end" leaving all stories with no definite ending.

Substitution - Substituting something within the narrative. This video is full of substitution as it contains many different scenes which are inspired from many different places except he's replaced the characters from the sources with himself i.e. Dan Black in a car instead of the Thunderbirds.

Transposition - Take two unconnected things and add them together. The video, again, is full of this. Nothing in the video really connects he's just copied and imitated many different sources. For example, the space scenes do not connect with the double yellow lines at the beginning of the video.

Task 2

Identifying Intertextual References:

Universal Pictures

Lost Highway

Starman

A Bout De Souffle

King Solomon's Mines

Bonanza

E.T

Thunderbirds

King Kong

These intertextual references are significant as Dan Black is trying to show how 'original' ideas are just ripped off one another. Nothing is completely original and it doesn't take a genius to create them - despite what people think. Also, none of these intertextual links connect in any way with one another - making the video Postmodern. Dan Black has decided to use a video purely on intertextual references in a mocking way as a sort of "f**k you" to the people who said he could not use their videos/songs in order to mock them and make a point.

Task 3

The video and song in Symphonies conforms to Charles Jencks' view that 'Post-Modernism is fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of its immediate past...' to a great extent as Dan Black has used purely intertextual references throughout the video, therefore using an 'eclectic mixture' of many traditions in doing so.

3 Quotes On Creativity

"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something." - Frank Capra

"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail." - Edwin Land

"Out of limitations comes creativity." - Debbie Allen

Comprehension

What do you understand by ‘creativity’ and to what extent have you been creative?
The use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. We have been creative in our music video as we used disjuncture with performance elements. Disjuncture in the indie genre generally involves creative ideas and we have done exactly that.
- How have you tried to facilitate and encourage your own creativity?
By using disjuncture instead of performance or illustration. Disjuncture has given us more room to play around with our own ideas and be creative.
- Did you experience limits/blocks on your own creativity?
Yes, in order to achieve the grades we wanted we had to sacrifice a few ideas as we would not of been able to evaluate them well enough. We also had time limits and money limits.
- How easy/difficult was it to be creative while still working to the brief?
It was difficult as the criteria meant we were unable to use many of the ideas we would of liked to.
- Did working within conventions stifle your creativity?
No, I think that working within conventions made our music video more professional and helped us think of more ideas as we were able to take inspiration form many different areas for different reasons.
- To what extent did you need to work with others and ‘bounce ideas’ off other people to be truly creative?
I think that our ideas would not be as complete or successful if I had not of worked in a group as somebody would think of an idea and then other members would pick apart the flaws of the idea and then utilise the creative elements we had left.
How much of your creativity was about trying to picture things in your mind’s eye?
Most of my creativity was vivid in my mind, but it was hard to create on a video due to a lack of 'know-how' and obviously money, time etc.
- How much of your creativity was about trial and error?
We didn't really trial and error anything, we stuck to what we knew was achievable so that we could finish it on time (arguably making us uncreative).
- To what extent was a lack of confidence an issue in terms of your creativity?
This did affect us a little as we were uncertain if some ideas could work, so we didn't even bother trying them as our time limits made us unable to experiment with many ideas.
- To what extent was a lack of technical competence/confidence an obstacle to your creativity?
We would of liked to have used crane shots, tracking shots and other things such as these, however, they are very expensive to use and set up, so we could not use them, we had to use what we had, which was an obstacle to our creativity.