Postmodernism

I have chosen two videos: “Educational Uses of Second Life” and “War Games” 

In the first video, I can identify some postmodern features. Firstly, Lyotard says: “All knowledge must be digitable to be preserved, anything that is not digitizable will cease to be knowledge” We can support his idea throughout the video since the world of education is being turned into an interactive virtual one.Definitely, the PC is playing a key role in this virtual environment. The computer has changed the way knowledge is arranged, distributed and stored.Secondly, knowledge becomes functional - we learn things, not to know them, but to use that knowledge. This is clearly reflected in the video when it says that students learn by doing. This means that they have an active role in the learning process. For instance, learners  can work together to collaborate in a project and co-create virtual 3D objects.This virtual world also gives learners and educators the chance to form part of communities.They can achieve this by resorting to tools like blogging, for example.

In the second video, “War Games", I can identify one major postmodern feature: the lack of distinction between game and reality. The young man, who seems to be a master at playing computer games, finds it difficult to distinguish game from reality.

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Features of postmodernism in “Introduction to Pop Art” and “ Warhol and the 20th century.”:

*A break down between high and low cultural forms: the line between fine art and commercial art is blurred. As pop art uses images of mass-product objects and celebrities that everyone could recognize in a second, it seems that everybody could understand art.

*Pop art makes use of repetition of these images. This is consistent with Baudrillard’s idea that in the postmodern world of mass media the original disappears and only copies exist.

*There is a questioning of what Lyotard calls “grand narratives”: pop art takes cheap, everyday objects and transform them into “art”, questioning the traditional conception that art should represent the most valuable ideas in a culture. Pop art introduced new questions about what art is, how it can be made, and who could make art. In Andy Warhol’s words: “The Pop idea, after all, was that anybody could do anything, so naturally we were all trying to do it all…”

Postmodernism

I selected “Intermission” and “The Final Cut”.

I think that the trailer of “Intermission” shows the postmodern (and modern) features of fragmentation, discontinuity and simultaneity. After watching this short video, I did not get a sense of “unity”-many characters are presented in different situations, as if several unrelated stories happen at the same time. These “micronarratives” or small stories(situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary), help to develop the idea of multiplicity and incompatibility, which is one of the most important characteristic of postmodernism.

In “The Final Cut”, postmodernism is clearly illustrated by the reliance on computer technology to the extent that it can manipulate and determine social practices. In this trailer, babies may be implanted a memory chip which will record every moment of their lives and after their deaths, the chip will be edited by a ‘cutter’ so that it has a certain length. In this society, the relationship between signifier/signified is non –existent (the events on the chip may be deleted). This lack of reality, also accounts for the passivity of the postmodern subject: people watching the content on the chip will take it as real, "the only reality they can know".

Postmodernism

I have chosen the videos Educational Uses of Second Life and Introduction to Pop Art to identify some of the features of postmodernism.

In the video Educational Uses of Second Life an element of postmodernism that I could identify is the way in which knowledge is distributed and arranged in a postmodern society. Here the use of computer technologies modifies the way in which learners acquire knowledge. They become part of a virtual reality and they learn from experiencing themselves, for example by being part of different periods of history. This way of presenting information and topics may be more motivating for students, and they probably will be able to remember things better.

In the video Introduction to Pop Art I could find elements of postmodernism related to mass production and consumption. Clear examples are the images of famous people produced by Andy Warhol such as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Onassis, Mao Tse-Tung, and Elizabeth Taylor. And also the Campbell’s tomato soup can.

These images exemplify the idea of simulacrum defined by Baudrillard claiming that the world of the mass media is full of imitations and copies without original. 

Postmodernism: elements

After watching the videos on Ohio University, Virtual Classroom Project and Pop Art, I found several features of postmodernism. In the first two, this movement is shown in the field of architecture and technology, while in the third, in art. In the three of them, emphasis is placed on how visual perception takes place.

I interpret that in Ohio University and Virtual Classroom Project there is an instance of omniscient third person narrator: In this case, the buildings are seen from various perspectives by the viewer, as if they were God, so as to show the premises from various angles.

I think there is reflexivity or self-consciousness about the production of the 3D videos as well as pop art works, as each piece calls viewers' attention to its particular form of production.

I also see spontaneity and discovery in creation, especially in 'Introduction to Pop Art'. These visual works favour the idea of fragmentation and provisionality. The first stage of capitalism is evident in Ohio University as well as Virtual Classroom Project, which include, among other aspects, electronically techological developments to satisfy students' needs by including sophisticated audiovisual aids as a learning resource. And the third phase, multinational capitalism, is also evident, at least in the American college, which beckons students from all over the world to enjoy the premises. What Frederic Jameson states about the bond between postmodernism and technology -specifically computers- is applicable to the 3D videos.

Postmodernism seems to offer alternatives to joining the global culture of comsumption. Pop art integrates other cultures' features like Chinese paintings and British music albums (namely, The Beatles'). That is how we notice the influence of global trends or cultures on American artists. In pop art, there is a predominance of signifier, as there are not many possible signifieds for the images. In my view, there is no great depth in the realm of hyperreality in these artistic creations.

In Ohio University and Virtual Classroom Project, we find what Baudrillard mentions as simulacrum, consisting in the signifier/signified relationship. We can see that the exhibition of the buildings, which are the signifiers, are representations that point out to something outside themselves, having a reality on its own. They are a representation without an original to copy, being a reality in itself. This is also applicable to Introduction to Pop Art.

I feel we can also find inderterminacy. Especially pop art resists or destabilises the Enlightenment mode of thought, knowledge or action, based on reason, rationality and science as well as traditional art forms. The idea that 'knowledge must be digitalisable to be preserved' is related to the use of computers in the university and visual classroom, which enable endless oportunities for discovery.

Postmodern Culture

The videos I have selected to try to identify postmodern features are "War Games" and "Educational Uses of Second Life". 

In the first video chosen there is a computer simulation of nuclear war which threatens to start a real nuclear war. The computer user, who is a young man very much acquainted with computer games, can hardly distinguish whether he is playing a video game or it is real life. Such difficulty to differentiate virtual from real life is distinctive feature of the postmodern culture. 

Regarding the second video selected, "Educational Uses of Second Life",it  presents a new way of learning through virtual reality in which learners are highly involved in their own learning process and in which an instance of functional knowledge is presented. Students not only learn to know, but they also learn to use that knowledge, which turns it into memorable as well as relevant knowledge.

I have chosen these two videos because they have in common the collapse between image and reality characteristic of postmodernism. both videos refer to Baudrillard's idea of simulacrum since while in the former the young man finds it difficult to differentiate reality from game-playing, in the latter the learners are immersed in a virtual real world.

Postmodernism

After watching the trailers of “War Games” and “Wag the Dog”, I could identify some of the characteristics of Postmodernism presented by Mary Klages.
 

“War Games”, for instance, clearly illustrates one of the features of postmodern culture- the lack of distinction between game and reality. Here, a boy finds a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III.  Similarly, the film “The Matrix”, presents the audience with a new and different reality, i.e the “true” nature of people’s reality. The film creates a world which becomes more “real” than the real world, making the audience think, as Klages states, that the “real world” is itself a constructed hyperreality.

The concept of hyperreality is also presented in the film “Wag the Dog”, in which a war is “fabricated” in order to cover-up a presidential sex-scandal. In this case, a false reality is presented as true, i.e the “real” reality. What appears in the screen becomes more real than what is actually happening in the world. And this idea is clearly related to Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum- the fact that the world has been replaced by a copy world, where people passively take that copy as the original. As Baudrillard suggests what’s on T.V. IS what is “real”, is the only reality we can know. We can’t be sure whether that reality is “really” happening.