G.R. Iranna's The Birth of Blindness, 2007 (Coutesy Aicon Gallery)

The Role of the Artist
The artist has taken a step into the role of authority on content and social commentary. Earlier postmodernism was described as exhibiting a sort of unabashed, and vicarious exploration of unrelated symbols. “Anything goes, and it doesn’t matter anyway” is an interpretation of postmodern art making that I often hear.

There is more and more evidence to suggest, that the role of the artist is shifting from that of the “replicator of symbols” to a role of social engineer and/or commentator. Artists now develop works that require viewer interaction in order to create the meaning of the work. In fact, I would argue that artworks are designed with the concept of how the viewer/user will interact with the artwork, now more than ever. Artworks take on the incorporation of a wide range of approaches to inviting user interaction. The question then becomes, “How does behavioral interaction by the viewer/user, with creative works, shape how the viewer/user thinks and emotes?” Culture industry and popular media are the most obvious examples. Toy designers study this issue extensively. Video game developers know how this changes the thought process of the user, to such a point that the U.S. military is intimately engaged in the development of combat strategy games (Aaron Ruby, Heather Chaplin, SmartBomb).

Miltos Manetas' "People Against Things", 2001

Population Management
One of the more disturbing trends in contemporary (recent postmodernist) culture, is the comprehensive effort to suppress the intelligence of populations. The torture, brainwashing and interrogation scenarios from the 1940’s through the 80’s have been exposed in the news media. But, all of these techniques have already been extrapolated to the wider population as control devices. Governments have a much easier time managing populations by maintaining a cult mentality among constituents and by waging information warfare on their own citizens. The election protests in Iran of 2009 would be a classic example: the Iranian government was blocking and posting disinformation about protest rallies on social networks. Web searches for “Tienanmen Square” are restricted if you live in China. Political party loyalties in the United States are now inseparable from cult mentalities as there seems to be a rabid push for a pseudo-polarization of what is supposed to look like a two party system. This cult mentality is on display as an accepted matter of critical discourse in the “news” media.

Cowboy George W Bush - Glebe, Sydney (the art has since been painted over)

In the latter stage of postmodernism, governments needed the military to control their own citizens. We currently attempt to use our military to control the citizens of other countries. In the United States, the last real protest (to my recollection) of a worldwide governmental/economic entity occurred in the late 90’s, in Seattle during the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference. The protesters were apparently calling for an end to police brutality, fair wages for workers and other similar issues. These messages seem to have emerged from individuals who possessed some understanding of global economics. You were able to find out about these issues just by reading the paper, or watching the news. More recently, in Pittsburgh, we had the G-20 Summit. Most of the media outcry brought forth headlines such as “What is the G-20″ and “Peaceful Protests at the G-20 Summit”. Coverage by the “local news media” showed protesters wearing masks and strolling down a street, some locals telling the “idiots” to go home. The “news media” didn’t convey that the protesters had any grasp on the socioeconomic issues at hand. As a final slap in the face, the President of the United States, thanked the city (a town with 2 major University Campuses) for a very “tranquil” hosting of the summit.

There is more evidence to suggest that debate and discourse surrounding serious macroeconomic and societal issues exists solely as a fictitious narrative in the media. However, this is an aspect of recent postmodernism. This writing isn’t an attempt to bring forth a complete overview.

Richard Serra's "Sequence" 2006, "Torqued Torus Inversion" 2006, and "Band" 2006, Museum of Modern Art: "Richard Serra's Sculpture: Forty Years." Photo: Lorenz Kienzle

An attempt to define a cultural state that is completely beyond postmodernism is premature. While the qualities that exist now are quite different than those that were dominant 10 or 20 years ago, the condition seems to have taken on a more acute stage of postmodernism.

Earlier postmodernism exhibited some of the following traits:

1. Global Village (Marshall McLuhan)
2. Viewer of artworks is a passive reader of signs and signifiers
3. Cultural and semiotic environment resembles the psychological state of schizophrenic personality disorder (Lacan – The New School)
4. Viewer’s identity is related metaphorically to scenarios expressed in artworks
5. The artist is a replicator of content
6. Populations are managed by international paramilitary organizations

Recent developments in postmodernism present a slight paradigm shift, but not a drastic change from this scenario:

1. Global Village (Marshall McLuhan)
2. Viewer of artworks is an active replicator of content – viewer is now a “user”
3. Cultural and semiotic environment resembles the psychological state of narcissistic personality disorder
4. User’s identity is assimilated into a semiotic environment and regurgitated back as part of the simulacra of popular culture
5. The artist creates scenarios or environments that engage the “viewer’s/user’s” decision making process
6. Populations are managed by the use of information and entertainment media

I won’t get into extensive explanations on postmodernism, because there is more than enough literature on the subject. Given the nature of what content currently exists, it seems that an assessment of the present situation, in some kind of general form may be due. I’ll try to describe the differences as I see them.

Louise Bourgeois's "Maman" at Rockefeller Center in New York, 2001 (Courtesy National Gallery of Canada, Cheim & Read)

The Role of the Viewer
Some writers note that in earlier postmodernism, that the viewer is an active reader of content. I differ with them in terms of referring to the viewer as “active”. While compared to the modern era, the viewer had to be more engaged in order to gain an understanding of the work, the level of activity this required was significantly less than it is now. Users, in the larger scope of cultural communications, are more active than they have ever been before. The type of activity in which they are engaged is different, however. The earlier postmodern scenario engaged the viewer in an active pursuit of synthesizing and following the string of concepts presented before them. This was a highly cognitive action. The level of activity that has changed, surrounds the fact that “users” participate in a form of the creative process. Contemporary artworks engage (what Richard Serra has called) the “behavioral space” of the viewer; making the viewer an active participant in the “performance” of an artwork. Viewers are continually made unwitting participants in works of art. To use the example of Serra’s sculpture, the work becomes a performance piece, a sculptural form designed to provoke or invite “user” participation; making the viewer a participant in the performance of the work. This becomes the environment that the artist has orchestrated. The content in publishing, popular film and television depends more and more heavily on marketing research data, which is perpetually harvested from an array of internet-based social utilities (data given voluntarily and unwittingly by the user).

About Tom Estlack:  Tom is an intermedia artist with an international exhibition record. He works with “new media”, sculpture, drawing and painting. Tom’s work incorporates video, animation, music, interactivity and multisensory stimuli. He holds a bachelors degree in painting from Columbus College of Art and Design, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Tom has been teaching foundations, web authoring and design since 2002.