Reflections on Transparency - Perspectives

Today's lecture was furthering the investigation into the development and understanding of postmodernism and what this meant to the establishment.

Publications to research

• Introducing Postmodernism (1995) by Richard Appiganesi and Chris Garret
• Ornament and Crime (1908) by Alfred Loos
• Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009)

Key Ideas of Postmodernism

• Ahistorical - lacking historical perspective or context
• Irreducible - not be able to be reduced or simplified
• Objective - not influenced by personal feelings or opinions, in considering or representing ideas
• Transparent - easy to understand, perceive or detect; allowing light to pass through so that objects/layers behind can be clearly seen
• Universal - communicates effectively to everyone despite culture, age or location
• Definitive - for general use and typically of standard design, not special or commemorative. A certain statement or piece. 
• Fixed - predetermined and not able to be changed
• Structuralism - art and culture should be analysed as a science by looking at its overall whole
• Universal structures - the idea that all human being, despite their cultures and/or background have the same neural structures, meaning that our thought processes and therefore experiences were ultimately the same. 
• Post-structuralism - to understand an object (or piece of work), it is necessary to study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object. 
• Reflexivity - the fact of someone being able to examine his or her own feelings, reactions and motives, and how these influence what he or she does or thinks in a situation. 
• Modernity - a period or condition loosely identified with the progressive era, the Industrial Revolution, or the Enlightenment
• The Enlightenment Project - refers to the ideas debated by Philosophers and Scientists in the period of Enlightenment (late 17th-19th century), in the educated or enlightened parts of the world. Old ideas and religious concepts were questioned due to scientific developments, and new philosophies.
• The Unreliable narrator - a character who tells the reader a story that cannot be taken at face value. This may be because the point of view character is insane, lying, deluded or for any number of other reasons. 

Inception

The film we watched this week was Inception. We were then asked to identify five ways in which the film was postmodern.

• Hyper-reality - offers an alternate reality that could be seen as different, more desirable universe to our own. 
• Intertextuality - Inception directly references "Citizen Kane" visually when you see multiple versions of himself in the mirrors. 
• Simulation - creation of the dream world, outside of our world
• Semiotics - Use of the totem as a representation of the division between the real and dream world. Shows the presence of gravity.
• Time/World Bending - the use of time and world literally bending.