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October 9, 2008
The postmodern turn in the arts reacted against what was seen as both the decay of an institutionalized high modernism and a failed avant-garde. Against modernism and the avant-garde, however, postmodernism declares both the death of the author and of the work, replacing the former with the decentered self or bricoleur and the latter with the "text", which refers to any artistic or social creation that signifies and can be conceptually interpreted.
Consider this image of the low, relatively uncratered, plains of the northern hemisphere of Mars:
Mars, Merging Lobate Debris Aprons of Deuteronilus Mensae, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
This effectively does away with the artist creator of high modernism ----a creative genius, or an originary and unique self who produces the new in an authentic vision---who defended the autonomy of art, excoriates mass culture and expresses a self-reflexive criticality that violates the aesthetic conventions of a medium-specific art tradition. Though high modernism never managed to gain much power beyond the walls of the academy in Australia the idea of the author/creator did.
What we have above and below are formally good images produced by a camera machine that is part of an orbiting satellite. What is produced is not kitsch---ie., magazine covers, illustrations, ads, slick and pulp fictions, comics, Tin Pan Alley music, tap dancing, Hollywood movies etc. It is a good picture or image that requires interpretation by the viewer.
This deconstruction of the author subject, plus the idea of bricoleur (involving recycling and assemblage), opens the door to photography being fundamentally about communication and meaning rather than space or structure. This is turn leads to the the realization that the culture of the book has receded in that the book is simply not the dominant medium it once was. The conservative response is the declinist narrative in which contemporary culture is sliding towards a mass culture of immediate gratification and mindless entertainment. Big Brother.
What is replacing the book is digital media in which participants learn by doing — often through a collaborative learning network of peers, such as the online network that is Flickr. This is part of a much larger history of people's desire to take media in their own hands and to produce content that reflect their own perspective, their own experience. Blogging or uploading images on file- sharing such as Flickr are much more clearly continuous with professional functions in media production much as journalism, public relations and graphic design.The digital literacy blurs the roles of producer and consumer, and is demand led and generated by its uses, rather than by a fixed body of expert knowledge.
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there must be lots of postproduction of the raw image back on earth