Context of Practice: Modernism & Modernity

This post is basically about my first lecture for the module 'Context of Practice'. This module is about developing an understanding between theory and practice through learning about the historical backgrounds of art and media. Modernism/Modernity are pretty much the roots to this historical understanding starting from urbanisation and the advance in technology to modern art forms and architecture.

The term 'modernism' is used to describe 'the new' and really carries that novelty of improvement. After doing Product Design for the last two years I've already developed an understanding on the impact that modernism had in terms of innovative designs and architecture. With my course being media based my main focus will be in the advance in technology and the impact that media brought to the society and our way or thinking. 

In the time of modernity which was around the early 20th century, Paris was considered to be the most modern city. The industrial revolution was a the real turning point for life itself, shifting rural life into city life. A sense of time was put forward as people were pulled away from using the sun/moon and seasonal changes and thrown into very time specific routines. Life itself accelerated as transportation was introduced.  Everything became accessible and even more so with the arrival of the telephone. Everyone was connected, and this opened up a whole new line of thinking and had an impact on our collective subconsciousness. Artists and began to use the city as a subject and started to draw people in a different light. They started to draw people in response to this new urban experience. 

In Caillebotte's - A Balcony, you can see how people have been drawn together yet they don't seem to interact with one another. And this was the kind of environment that urbanisation brought about. In everyday life, everyone just gets on with their own things, heading to different places. We've all been pulled together by the city life yet for the most part, everyone remains a stranger. 

Edouard Manet's - The Balcony is also another example of how artists began to capture the dis-connectivity between people, for this instance a family. In comparison to portraits before the time of modernity this image, rather than being just a family portrait shows the distance between all the family members. This was an emphasis on urban life and how it brought together strangers. 

Modernism in design

Bauhaus Cutlery

Modernism sought to create a new way of looking at conventions in which they made rules for modern design like, truth to materials - How materials should be allowed to speak for themselves. And form over function - aesthetics come second to the product functionality. "Ornate is crime" (Adolf  Loos). To expand on this, minimalistic aesthetics were seen as the way forward because this way, designs would be timeless. Decorating products in a contemporary fashion was no longer seen as a 'good design' because trends go out of fashion. The simplicity of design also gave out a language in which everyone could understand and recognise all over the world. 

Now, in relation to my subject area, I stumbled upon an interesting quote/article from Edge magazine: Heroic, #233 November 2011. This got me thinking about where we're heading in terms of technological advances.   Modernism is all about not looking back and creating new innovations but as far as the game and film industry are concerned we seem to be going backwards in a sense or rather, not moving. Technology has developed so much that it's becoming difficult to progress further. 

"Everything's already been done," rants Tom Sizemore in Strange Days, a movie about VR junkies and social entropy on the eve of the 21st century. "Every kind of music's been tried, every kind of government has been tried, every f***ing hairstyle, bubblegum flavour, breakfast cereal... How are we gonna make another thousand years?" The answer, we're now discovering, is to revive to previous 50."  

"HD remakes are just the latest avenue through which gaming's past is being rebranded and repriced for the present."

After reading this, I've come to realise that this is happening in the film industry too, for example, old Disney classics are being reborn in 3D. The reproduction of old games and films really tears down the sense of modernism that still lingers today and really brings about that trail of thought that post-modernism brings, which is the crisis in confidence; the anxiety of where the world is going. After all these classics have been remade what happens next? Where are these industries heading? Are we coming to a stand still? All these are the kind of questions that people will begin to ask in the same way that post modernism questions modernism. Anyway, I'll be looking at post modernism in more depth in my next post so to conclude, since the industrial evolution or even just the past 10 years, technology has advanced so much but I wonder how much further it can really go.