#Infuriating Trends in Architectural Visualization

[letsjonebenblog]

In the ever-evolving world of architecture, staying up-to-date with the latest Architectural visualization Trends and technologies is essential. a crucial aspect of the design process, has witnessed significant advancements in recent years. As we step into 2023 and look ahead to 2024, it’s vital for architects, designers, and enthusiasts to be aware of the emerging trends that are shaping the field. This blog will explore key trends in architectural visualization that will dominate the industry in 2023-24. 

[ktbensondc]

Post Modernity & Visual Culture

Post-modernism can be difficult, slippery, and infuriating to define. It dates roughly from the 1980′s to present day (therefore making everyone living through this age Post-Modernists). To say something is ‘post-modern’ is to say that it is trendy or fashionable. However, because we are living through this period, it is difficult to step outside the now to truly understand it. For example, some theorists say it does not exist.

Post-modernism is defined by what it isn’t: modernism. It can be:

anti-modernism

after-modernism

hyper-modernism

Modernism roughly dates from the 1850′s to the 1970′s. It was a sustained period of innovation in the arts. Science and art worked together during this time of overarching political power structures and two world wars. The Second World War disrupted Modernism in Europe and saw it move to America. Modernism is rationalism - the combining of science and art (scientific industrial determinism - what happens in science and industry influenced art).

Key themes in visual culture:

Crisis of representation. Taking an image and correlating it with something to change/give it meaning.

Foregrounding of high (elitist) culture

Belief in grand naratives - modernism is about telling a great story

Modernism as determinism:

Charles Darwin - Origin of the Species

Theory of Relativity - Einstein

The idea of God is scientifically challenged during this time.

1889 Paris Universal Exposition saw the union of science and art

Any account of history is always biased. Within Modernism, we know about cubism because key note collectors pushed up the price. People from different time periods will push for certain trends and tastes, thus leaving us with a certain idea of that time, but we are seeing it through very specific lenses.

After-Modernism Post-modernity reacts to all of this. In Robert Hughes’ The Shock of the New (1980), he announced Modernism was finished. The idea at the time, was that there was nothing left to be ‘modernized’.

Today, we are living in a post-industrial, post-Fordian economic age.

Computerisation - the digital age

Global markets (liberalisation) - You can work for anyone, anywhere

Turbo capitalism vs Post capitalism - we’re in the dying stages of capitalism

No more over-arching story, no grand narrative - are we living through fragmentation? Now there’s no story as Post-modernism displaces it all. There are now individual stories that can be followed through the rise of the Vlogger on social media platforms such as Youtube, or the rise of the Instagram Model. Instead of an overarching story, we see smaller narratives and tune into the day-to-day life of particular people

When we look back, will this time period be a mess? Or will it have structure?

Artists have begun to promote the idea of the ‘individual narrative’. Simon Patterson’s The Great Bear saw him turn the infamous London Underground Tube Map into a map of his interests, thus creating his own personal narrative. Tracy Emin’s My Bed saw her turn the private public. She was promoting the individual in that moment. TV shows like Love Island promote this individual narrative too.

Are we anti-modernist? Lyotard expressed that “Reason has been shaped by a dishonest pursuit of certainty”. Life is too complicated and has a multitude of outcomes. It’s a complex reaction to the failures of Modernism: the holocaust, ecological disasters, for example. How can we look back on this time and think it good?

Anti-foundational - no universal truth, rejection of rationalism

All history is a story, History is written by the victors

Scepticism 

Contradictory attitudes to modern media. Trust in correspondents to tell the truth but the news is packaged for entertainment value so there will always be slippage

Feminists put forward anti-patriarchal perspectives. People who write and promote particular Modernist artists, do so with ideology. Feminists aim to trace back on that time period and write back in artists who were written out

No more rules & Post-truth politics - Emotion is now more reliable than expert opinion, Trump is a key example of how the truth can be denied - Brett Kavanaugh’s recent scandal is another example of how the truth can be denied

Institutional Patriarchy

Modernism Rational (Rules, targeting an audience)

VS

Post-Modernism Experimental/ Iconoclastic (All about the look, the text, being an artist)

Hyper-Modernism Is modernism really dead? Or are we living in an age of accelerating modernism? Is it still constant? A natural unfolding of modernism.:

Modernism is incomplete

Cyclical

Technological advancements

Cyber-Culture

Post internet -> Cultural Hybridity

Technological determinism -> Apple company.

Post internet is a potential name for our time period. Dealing with the ramifications of the post-internet age. Other names include: Post modernism, post capitalism, post structuralism.

Cultural hybridity - In the 50′s you are influenced by what is directly around you, but now you can look all over the world. Global and local ideas come together to make something new. 

Cult of technology i.e. Apple products became a symbol for wealth and high-earners in society. Regardless of the news stories coming out that Apple does purposefully make their products to break them around the time of new releases, people are willing to ignore this for having something deemed trendy and is acts as an icon for their worth.

Where is post-modernism? Merging of high and low cultural forms. High culture:

depth

high value

elitist

long lasting

politically motivated

Low culture:

surface

low value

gimmicky

mass-produced

politically influenced

They merge into one thing

Mutations of public space: Urban or fantasy architectural spaces - sampling of different historical period styles.

Global/cultural hybridity

Turbo consumerism

Hyper Reality

Nostalgia

Mutation of public space in shopping malls built to look the same all the way around. It is false and creates facades. Theme parks such as Disneyland mutate the vast public landscape and build a fictional reality. This is the ‘hyper-real’ in between fiction and reality.

The Unstable Image:

Hyper-real (semiotic overload)

Order of the simulacra

Bricolage

Parody + Pastiche

Intertextuality + Decoding

Hybrid genres and form

Irony

Retrovision

We are now living in the age of images, where there are more images now than ever before. Can this be defined as semiotic overload?  What happens when you have so many images?

Proliferation of images - we can no longer trust them as a result of the advancements of technology- namely, Photoshop which digitally alters an image. We can only look at the surface of the photograph and not dig deeper. The photograph used to mean reality and truth but now it is something to be questioned.

The degradation of the image- the more you copy, a copy, a copy, the further you get from the original. You are manipulating the image. The real is produced and the hyper-real is reproduced.

Reality television is a form of the real being retouched. It is formulaic and offer a falsified version of real life. American reality TV is often faked.

Andy Warhol was interested in celebrity culture and found that by repeating an image of famous actress Marilyn Monroe, he was able to get further away from her image being a photograph of her to something else entirely. The more you copy, the further away you get from the original.

Stage 1 - Reflection of reality Stage 2 - Masks and perverts reality Stage 3 - absence of reality Stage 4 - no relation to reality

Bricoalge - Sampling of images and ideas from the past (design, pop music etc) to create something new. Clash cover deliberately sampled Presley’s first album cover.

Parody - Referring to the original text and making fun of it. Putting new meaning to the original.

Pastiche - Images presented without reality or meaning. Taking the original but do not shine any new light. There’s no meaning, thus it is totally blank.

Intertextuality & Double coding - A text that refers to another text. References to other cultural sites/texts and appeals to different audience demographics i.e. The Simpsons - looking at 2 audiences, in this case, children and adults.

Hybridity & Irony - (Within film) Crushing genres together to create something new. Irony plays with the familiar models.

Retrovision - Nostalgic culture. Reinterpreting or repackaging the past in our own image. Taking all the hits of a previous time to look back on, but also stripping it of its original meaning as a side effect.

Society of the Spectacle:

Mediation - life lived on or through the screen

Multi-medialtiy

Complexity and simulation is the new reality

News is mediated.

Post-modernism - Why bother diffing for the truth? New media technologies means intense personal narratives. The general public are constantly over-dramatising and self editing what they share online, digitally altering the memory of the real life event.

However, in the end, post-modernism is a contested term. It could mean anything.