The Tao of Postmodernism: Computer Art, Scientific Visualization and Other Paradoxes Author(S): Donna J
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The Tao of Postmodernism: Computer Art, Scientific Visualization and Other Paradoxes Author(s): Donna J. Cox Source: Leonardo. Supplemental Issue, Vol. 2, Computer Art in Context: SIGGRAPH '89 Art Show Catalog (1989), pp. 7-12 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1557936 Accessed: 05/04/2010 22:26 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Leonardo. Supplemental Issue. http://www.jstor.org The Tao of Postmodernism: Computer Art, Scientific ABSTRACT The authorsuggests that a [1] paradigmshift must occur in art Visualization and Other Paradoxes criticismto assimilatethe nonlinear branchingof aesthetic activities in ourera. These activities include artand scientific visualiza- DonnaJ. Cox computer tion,and they reflect many issues addressedin postmodern dialogue suchas ourimage-synthetic, "simu- lacrum"society. Postmodernism unexpectedlyinforms most disci- plines,including the natural sciences,and is a culturalsystemic All right, so you want a styleout of America.Stick at it. but teristics of advanced societies), normthat relates to ourelectronic information TheTaoist con- when it comes,it 't be where are it. it [mass mak- age. mayn you lookingfor produced image ceptof onenessis usedas a meta- has become a -Ezra Pound ing] principal phorfor the interrelatedness of agent and a conduit of culture electronic-mediatedsocieties, and and ideology" [4]. The suffer- thissocial connectedness explains The art that is comingwill giveformal expressionto our the and nature ing avant-garde, from Impres- enfolding complex conviction. ofcontemporary aesthetic activity. scientific sionists to Dadaists, were popu- Acybernetic paradigm might pro- -Franz Marc larized in media and liberal arts videa bettermodel for criticism education. During the twenti- thanmodernism orpostmodern- Some enlightening philosophical and social ideas have eth century, the 'Shock of the ism,since this paradigm presents a from art criticism. A brief review of New' was deformed into a lust holisticview that concentrates on emerged postmodern andthe of for the Like creativity organization the shift from modernism to postmodernism outlines some avant-garde. alga interrelatedsystems. The conver- of the aesthetic consequences that include art market in- and fungus that live symbioti- genceof artwith science is as- fluence on artists. The second section of this paper elabo- cally, the artist and the buyer sumedas a logicalinterdisciplinary rates critical issues that to aesthetic activi- have evolved a rela- outgrowthofthis electronic present problems symbiotic oneness. ties such as the making of computer art and the production tionship that must feed its soul of photography. These issues include an unprecedented and pocketbook with the new pluralism of artists' activities in this transition to postmod- vanguard. This complex system ernism. The third section refutes the idea that postmodern- of artists, galleries, museums, ism is merely a style; rather, it is a cultural norm that perme- critics and art brokers has come ates many fields such as film, architecture and science. to be known as the art market Finally, section four places postmodernism in a much larger [5]. context, based on Turchin's cybernetic approach to human evolution. Some cultural characteristics such contemporary Fig. 1. Bea Nettles, Metamorphosis,altered and staged silver print, as the recycling of aesthetic styles, interdisciplinary activity, 7.5 x 7.5 in, 1988.The artist'sfine art explorationshave also in- and 'simulacra' are related to basic human creativity and the volved alternative processes. This type of fine art photography multiplicity of cultural systems. was a radical change from traditional 'straight' photography. FROM MODERNISM TO POSTMODERNISM Artmaking since the beginning of the twentieth century has been recognized as a major break from artmaking prior to that time. Institutionalized, conventional analysis of art and its history proposes a kind of linear 'cause and effect', trac- ing lines of works and artistic styles'; this approach has pro- vided a paradigm [2] to explain a transition that might cover trends from pre-renaissance to modern [3]. Art historical awareness and the age of mechanical reproduction are un- deniable components in the development of modernism at the turn of the century; and this image production provides a gluttony for public consumption. "For inhabitants of in- dustrialized societies (indeed, production and consump- tion of images serves as one of the distinguishing charac- DonnaJ. Cox (artist, educator), School of Art and Design, Adjunct Faculty for Supercomputing Applications, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, 605 E. Springfield, Champaign, IL 61820, U.SA. ? 1989 SAST PergamonPress pic. Printed in Japan. 0024094X/89 $3.00+0.00 LEONARDO, ComputerArtin ContextSupplemental Issue. pp. 7-12, 1989 nologies as well [8,9]. However, if one closely analyzes the evolution of fine art photography from the Industrial Revolution into the postmodern era, one gains a different perspective. In order to establish photography as a fine art, Alfred Stieglitz proposed that the artist exploit the camera for its unique qualities and create 'pure' photographs that did not resemble 'painterly' styles. He stated that the photographer should not manipulate photographs nor state allegories (as early photographers had done). Rather, he proposed, the pure photo- graph employs the camera for what it does best: capturing a slice of the real world from the personal viewpoint of the artist. Thus the artist's personal style and photography's pure form of expression emerged. Consequently, the pure photograph was completely divorced from painting by 1920. How- ever, a transition to postmodernism resulted in the complete inversion of photographic 'purity' by 1970. Staged, altered (Fig. 1) and appropriated pho- tographs have become the accepted market, not the adulteration that Stieglitz refuted with his 'straight' fine art photography [10]. As Abigail Solomon-Godeau has noted, "the properties of photographic imagery which have made it a privileged me- dium in postmodern art are precisely those which for generations art pho- tographers have been concerned to disavow" [11]. Here we see a paradox that in fine art Fig. 2. Michael Norman, Jack Burns, Martin Snllkinen (scientists) and DonnaJ. Cox developed photogra- (artist), supetcomputer simulation of a galactic jet used for the front cover of Nature phy; such a paradox can also be found magazine, 1988. This image is an example, developed in the hard sciences, of the in the evolution of computer art. 'simulacra' in our Such 'simulation' is characteristic of our Postmodern society. image criticaland theoretical electronically mediated culture. Virtuallyevery issuewhich postmodernist art may be said to engage in in one sense or By the mid-twentieth century, post- some refer to late postmodernism as another can be locatedwith photog- modern discourse the art raphy[and computer art]. Issueshav- exposed post-historical. to do with market search for the next ing authorship, subjectiv- avant-garde ity,and uniquenessare built into the (the dog-seeking-its-avant-garde-tail). verynature of the photographic[and This convolution of thought has been COMPUTER ART: AN computer]process itself [12]. called the 'transcendental historicism' ORPHAN CHIL.n OF The computer artist represents a of art. As Hal Foster "No mat- explains: 'HIGH' ART CRITICISM double risk to the art market, because ter how 'transcendental' or radically the work is often twice removed from new the art, it is usually recouped, Historicism and the concept of 'style', a style, or rendered familiar historicism. Late personal authorship unique- by reified from art-historical thinking, ness: first the art is made with a com- modernism reworks the contra- only have led theorists to conjecture that puter, then documented with a photo- diction: art is insofar as avant-garde artists tend to emulate older tech- graph. The computer art purist might it is historicist-the artist radically nologies with each new technology argue that the 'interactive' mode or delves into art historical conventions until they find a 'pure' form of expres- the 'artist-as-programmer' mode of in order to break out of them. Such sion. For example, historians and crit- the computer aesthetic is sine qua non historicism