CHArt Computers and the History of Art CHArt 2000 Conference Paper Abstracts

VISUAL CULTURE AND THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Charlie Gere,
Birkbeck College

Punk and the Digital Aesthetic

This paper looks at the development of a distinctive digital aesthetic that found expression across a number of fields. In music the possibilities of digital technology combined with the legacies of art school performance-oriented rock, disco and punk, produced 'techno' and its assorted variations. Punk was also one of the inspirations, along with 'postmodern' fiction for the science fiction genre known as 'cyberpunk'. The technological potential unleashed by desktop publishing and graphics software allied with the methodological potential offered by variously by Punk and French Deconstructionist philosophy produced a style of graphic design and typography known sometimes as 'Deconstructionist' graphic design. These developments share a fascination with contemporary technology and in both its utopian and dystopian possibilities, as well as employing strategies, of appropriation, juxtaposition, detournement, montage, collage, repetition, facilitated by or reflecting upon the extraordinary capabilities of that technology.'