Steve’s Stuff

Helvetica is an interesting documentary about something that
superficially appears banal - the ubiquitous san serif font. This is a
stylish film that is actually about a lot more than typography.

The film pursues two angles. The first deals with typography directly
and is more expository in nature. It’s the ostensible topic of the
film, but the interest comes from the second angle, which deals with
issues of modernism, postmodernism, and the aesthetics of graphic
design. Yes, it’s interesting to learn about typography, but
typography is not an art per se (nor am I suggesting that the film
makes this claim). Rather, it is the manner its used that has the
potential to rise above its market-driven function and become an
artistic statement.

The film really hits its stride after about 40 minutes when the
modernism bubble bursts and we start getting a lot of resistance to
the world-wide helvetica saturation. After hearing modernist designers
extol the virtues of its clean lines and clarity, it’s nice to hear
some postmodernists begin to deconstruct its undercurrent of
conformity. By the end of the film, we’ve come back to a place where
helvetica is no longer mass market taboo and graphic designers are
free to use it, so long as they some how subvert its structure.

The best part about the film is that it really lays out the
modern/postmodern debate clearly by using something to which everyone
can relate. A comparison of modernist and postmodernist painting is
sure to leave those unfamiliar with the field of 20th century painting
confused, but by using something everyone has a lot of experience
with, the issues become increasingly clear.

I have a few issues with the film that keep me from giving it five
stars. It feels a bit long for its subject matter. There are quite a
few montage sections showing how the Helvetica typeface surrounds us
everywhere. I think most people get the picture within a few minutes.
All these montages feel a bit like filler. While it’s an engaging
topic, I’m not sure that it’s a “feature-length” topic. “Helvetica”
seemed to be a great 60-minute documentary that unfortunately ran 80
minutes.

Also, some of the interviewees are a bit fanatical about typography.
At least one individual borders on the verge of typographic fetishism.
I know the difference between enthusiasm and fetishism and this was
clearly the latter. You’ll see what I mean. I don’t mind that this guy
holds this position, but I think it weakens some of the arguments that
others make in support of the aesthetic complexity of typography.

In conclusion, I’ll say that “Helvetica” is a very nice documentary.
It’s not on the same level as, say, “Gates of Heaven” or “Shoah”, but
it’s solid. It’s definitely worth renting. I’m not sure how much
replay value is present - I don’t think I will watch it again soon,
only because it was straight-forward. It’s accessible enough to engage
individuals who don’t typically watch documentaries. It’s definitely
one you can watch with your friends.

Triadic Memories is my absolute favorite Feldman piano work and probably ranks up there with my top five Feldman works of all time (the others include his Piano and String Quartet, Rothko Chapel, King of Denmark, and Crippled Symmetry). Solo piano works so well for Feldman’s music for a number of reasons. Works such as “Why Patterns?” can sometimes sound a bit shrill if the musicians have not made good sonic choices. Anytime you have flute and orchestra bells as two thirds of an ensemble, you’re bound to risk a lot of high-frequency irritation. By contrast, the piano has a wonderful range that is never grating on the ears. (I should point out though that I do like “Why Patterns?” when it’s performed well)

I’ll comment first on the work itself and then on the interpretation.

There are some reviewers here that claim the work is “boring”. This could be for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is that they’re inexperienced with 20th century modernist art music. But, I’ll give these listeners the benefit of the doubt and address these criticisms anyway. There is no perceptible form at work here. You can’t follow it as you would a sonata. There is either very little repetition or quite a lot - it’s difficult to say which. Sometimes I feel like I’ve heard a certain section before, but other times it feels through-composed. That is all to say, there are valid reasons for not enjoying Triadic Memories.

Additionally, as with all extended-length Feldman, if you don’t happen to enjoy the mood and texture of a particular work, you’re probably not going to like it. “For Philip Guston” does not appeal to me because I happen to not like the small idea that Feldman expands into a nearly four-hour work. On the other hand, I like the sounds of his second String Quartet, which is even longer.

Ultimately, I would suggest listening to Amazon’s 30 second previews. They give a very representative sampling of the work. It’s as simple as this: if you like the preview, you’re in for a treat because it’s more of the same for about 93 minutes. If you don’t think it sounds good, then you’re not going to like the work.

These are all subjective perspectives anyway. Personal taste aside, this is one of Feldman’s strongest works. It perfectly realizes his delicate, haunting aesthetic and induces the type of meditative listening experience that he typically requests of his listeners. Beyond that, he finds variety with simple ideas. The broken chords of Triadic Memories, if stacked vertically, would form more-or-less normal triads, but Feldman arranges them into major and minor seconds that destroy any chance of triadic consonance. It’s beautiful stuff, really.

Marilyn Nonken provides a terrific interpretation of this difficult work. After listening to it around ten times, I cannot find any faults or errors. Her tempo is slow, but not too slow. Most importantly, she maintains excellent rhythmic integrity. For those who have had the chance to examine the score, you know that Triadic Memories is rhythmically complex - deceptively so, I might add. Nonken is able to convey this accurately and avoids the pitfall of making the notes seem like a random cloud of pitches.

Overall, I can’t recommend this recording highly enough. The only question for Feldman fans is whether to buy the double CD or the DVD-Audio version.

Gever continues Bovenschen’s search for a feminine aesthetic in The Feminism Factor with a survey of feminist video works. After pages of lengthy description of video works by Chenzira, Millner, Mendieta, Rosler, and Braderman, Gever concludes that there is, in fact, no discernable feminist aesthetic. I believe this is for the best. In my admittedly limited exposure to feminist discourse, I have seen two themes that frequently seem to be in opposition: feminists vying for equality with men, and feminists attempting to distinguish themselves from men, to present themselves as fundamentally different beings. Within the limited scope of a single article, I would like to explore the implications of a feminist aesthetic myself.

A feminist aesthetic would seem to indicate something disparate from the masculine aesthetic, unless I am interpreting the idea of a feminist aesthetic too literally. What is the “masculine aesthetic” if not all aesthetics throughout history? Gever’s search, like Bovenschen before her, implies that there is currently no feminist aesthetic, which further implies that all other aesthetics must be masculine. With the infrequency of female artists until the mid-to-late twentieth century, this seems reasonable, save for the fact that no one ever attempted to define aesthetics as inherently masculine.

What is to be gained from a feminist aesthetic? A separate feminist aesthetic is an invitation to the very marginalization of which feminism seeks to free itself. It seems counterproductive to try to invent something new rather than joining something existing. Don’t feminists want to participate in the same artistic movements as men? If they invent their own aesthetic theory, they will remain fundamentally different from the rest of art and will be easily restricted to an independent position of negligible importance and visibility.

This brings me back to the question of feminist goals. It appears that if women want equality, they shouldn’t attempt to drastically differentiate themselves from men. Their work should hang side-by-side with that of men, but if their works are described as “feminist”, critics will be able to apply a standard critique without truly seeing the work itself. If feminist art is easily classifiable, one can critique it with a one-size-fits-all formula. If, on the other hand, feminist art doesn’t differentiate itself with a pointless label, critics will be forced to judge each work on its own terms without gender providing an already available critical methodology. To be fair, this isn’t a criticism of a hypothetical feminist aesthetic per se, but of any artistic movement, that accepts any sort of label.

From the examples that Gever provides, it seems that the feminist video works aren’t necessarily feminine, but are simply excellent video art. Maybe a feminist aesthetic isn’t necessary—maybe women of the twenty-first century are free to create works, display them, and receive critiques based on the work alone. If they desire to isolate themselves from the rest of the artistic community, they have the opportunity. However, I feel that it is much more interesting if they are seamlessly integrated without rigid gender distinctions.

Generative art refers to art generated, composed, constructed, or somehow produced with an algorithm in a computer, mathematical, or other autonomous process. Prime examples include certain works by John Cage and, most currently, Brian Eno’s “77 Million Paintings”. During a recent visit to the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE), I saw first-hand many different generative art projects. I noticed an interesting thread throughout - each description included a phrase to the effect of “we’re ______ and then looking at all the possible outcomes to find the best results.”

The key is the “all possible outcomes”. Imagine if Stamitz had mathematically calculated every possible symphony in the 1700s. There would be nothing left to explore and the most respected of all forms would have disappeared almost as quickly as it began. Mozart and Beethoven surely wouldn’t bother composing symphonies because Stamitz had, in a sense, written them all. Sure, one could make a case for composers creatively breaking the rules of the algorithm to produce original results, but this is a hollow shell of an argument because no composer wants to use a form that has been played out, so to speak.

One could also argue that we would still have seminal works such as Haydn’s “London” symphony or Beethoven’s 9th, but they would be credited to Stamitz who would have discovered them while sifting through the results of his compositional algorithm. However, I counter this with two claims: first, generative “composers” are overwhelmed with a multitude of possibilities making them unable to examine every possibilities, thus ensuring that many of the results will go unnoticed; second, it’s likely that many symphonies that we now regard as classic would be discarded because they didn’t fit into the current style of the period. Bernstein’s “Kaddish”, for example, certainly wouldn’t make the cut, to say nothing of Schoenberg! If Stamitz had generated every possible symphony, and even if he lived long enough to examine each one, he would most certainly discard anything beyond what the 1700s regarded as musically beautiful and we would never get to hear Beethoven’s “Eroica” with its lopsided development or and of Mahler’s monster creations.

From this point of view, I pose the question: how many masterpieces did Brian Eno kill when he synthesized 77 million paintings? How many great works are we deprived of by generative artists everyday? Are these artists exploring a radical new creative methodology, or are they ruining art for everyone?

My final thought is that the human mind is creative beyond all understanding and if the symphony didn’t go on to become the preeminent art music form that it did, Haydn would have written equally great works using a different form. However, if all artists began composing algorithmically, finding original forms would quickly become difficult. As Umberto Eco points out, once we have the blank canvas, the ripped canvas, and the charred canvas, where can we go from there but backwards?

In From Work to Text, Barthes provides a very compact summary of the topics explored in S/Z (1970): namely, the idea of an open text with, not simply multiple possible meanings, but a simultaneous multiplicity of meanings. What Barthes referred to in S/Z as the “readerly text” becomes the Work and what was referred to as the “writerly text” now becomes the Text. Where the Work is a physical object that one can hold in three dimensional space, the Text is a living, changing, flow of signs that defy hermeneutic treatment. If in 2007

One interesting aspect of Barthes writing is the requirement of a meta-language to describe his ideas. He writes about the slippage and play of signification in the Text, but when he describes it in his flowing prose, he cannot afford to engage this play without sacrificing the clarity and direction of his thesis. The same is true of Derrida who is sharply critical of the Western supposition of logocentricity—he must resort to a meta-language in order to communicate concepts that he wishes to be interpreted in a very specific, “correct” manner. I can appreciate the difficulty of the situation and I forgive Barthes for being somewhat hypocritical in this way, but I wonder what a self-descriptive writerly text would look like. This relates back to the criticism of postmodern thinking in that if one calls for the resistance of absolute meaning, shouldn’t the reader also resist the meaning of the call to resist absolute meaning?

This is why Deleuze is so remarkable. His writing reflects his rhizomatous network of philosophical concepts. He encourages the reader to enter A Thousand Plateaus from any chapter, laughing in the face of the West’s obsession with teleological reasoning. Deleuze goes as far as to avoid absolute definitions of his many concepts (e.g. becoming, deterritorialization, the refrain) thereby sacrificing accessibility for a dedication to his ideas. This is a major sacrifice for any philosopher for, despite what some may claim, they surely wish to be understood (Lacan notwithstanding). Deleuze leaves the reader no choice but to jump right in and start because a definition of one concept always involves at least one of his other concepts.

Returning to Barthes, his reliance on meta-language is entirely forgivable because his ideas are so wonderfully stated. Even if the abjuration of logocentricity seems, in 2007, axiomatic, his statements of the ideas are clear, succinct, accessible, and useful. From Work to Text is nearly perfect as an introduction to the writerly and readerly text. If one wishes to understand this concept in greater detail and see it in practice, S/Z is waiting.

I have this wonderful image in my head. People are learning to play instruments, not for a teacher, not because their mother made them, and not necessarily even for public performance: they’re learning the instruments for themselves. They’re home alone making music for themselves only. There are no teachers, no critics, no others to judge them - just themselves and the music. I can’t take credit for the idea - it came from concert percussionist, publisher, and contemporary music advocate, Sylvia Smith. In an interview, she described how she tries to play a little xylophone everyday because she enjoys it. It’s music that no one hears (other than her husband, Stuart Saunders Smith - one of the most important contemporary composers today). It’s not practicing, there’s no goal, there’s no frustration, only the pleasure of creation.

Why don’t we have more people learning to play instruments for themselves? The closest thing we have are amateur guitarists. You’ll find an average of 1.4 guitars in every college dorm room*. Many of these guitarists have the right idea. You find them all over the place, playing songs that they write for themselves, not for anyone in particular - just for them, or a few close friends. They don’t need to be great and they don’t even need to be “good”. As long as they are happy with the sounds they make, that’s good enough.

Unfortunately, todays society tells us that if we’re going to do something, we’d better be amazing at it, or it’s not worth doing. Maybe we’re to blame. The guitar playing college kid is a stereotype that gets a lot of heat because “they suck”. By what standards do they “suck”? If you’re comparing them to Buckethead or D’jango Reinhardt, yeah - they do suck. But who are they hurting? They aren’t posing as professionals, they aren’t asking you to pay them, and they aren’t really hurting anybody.

With today’s overabundance of available media, there’s a constant flow of entertainment . Thus, there’s no need for us as individuals to create - we just let other people do it for us. After all, they come up with better stuff than we would, right? We’ve lost the sense of personal creation and the joy that comes with it. Muhammad from the TASD class understands this. On his blog he writes, “I simply make some noise, but it’s my noise and I love it.” This is exactly what we need more of. Now, lets see about something other than guitar because, seriously guys . . . :-)

*statistics made up on the spot by me.

With the age of the digital upon us, Mulvey takes the opportunity to revisit some previous critiques of cinema concerning the relationship between still photography and film as well as the presence of still images within a film (or motion picture). This topic is worth reassessing because digital media technology allows the spectator a greater degree of control over issues of playback including stopping the film, pausing the film, rewinding and re-watching, and other such techniques. Barthes’ book, Camera Ludica, is critical of the cinema because its images are less focused on one specific moment in time, one specific composition of subjects; and therefore the images don’t have the strong indexical moment of still photography. She wonders if this relatively new ability of the spectator to view motion pictures in various temporalities will reveal any changes since Barthes’ time.

To begin, I feel that Barthes’ critique of the cinematic image may be biased due to his long-standing love of photography. Barthes knows photography, but does he know cinema in the way that he knows photography? Surely many stills from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary are nearly as effective as the expressionist paints that inspired its distinctive mise-en-scene. Similarly, Carl Th. Dreyer’s absolute mastery of mise-en-scene produces still images that communicate volumes as in The Passion of Joan of Arc or Ordet. His points on the indexical moment are well taken, but I wonder how different the indexical moment of a photographed dancer is from a still image taken from a film of the same dancer.

Although I know that the artist’s intentions are different between still photography and film, I believe that the masters of mise-en-scene always produce images that can function both in motion and still. Furthermore, I believe films, when viewed as still images have another important difference from photography: by looking at subsequent stills, we can see “what happens next”. A great mystery of photographs, especially portraits, is the conditions surrounding their production (e.g. why the Mona Lisa is smiling, what was the morbidly obese transsexual doing prior to his/her arrest when Weegee captured the image on film?). Film can provide a still image, but it can also provide a context, should we choose to be interested. Photographs of figures in motion are interesting in the fact that we can stop time and study them at our leisure, but they’re also limited in the fact that we don’t know what happens after Lois Greenfield’s dancers land, or if they land at all. I should note that this applies strictly to directors who use mise-en-scene effectively. There are plenty of films with a sort of “practical” mise-en-scene where the camera is simply there to record the action without much regard to framing, staging, sets, blocking, and the like.

Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles provides a particularly interesting case. The lack of activity in the frame allows us time to explore the image much in the way we would a still photograph. As we watch Jeanne for over four hours pealing potatoes, cleaning the house, or washing every single dish from supper, we have plenty of time to analyze minute details with only slight variations. Akerman’s film, or in a similar manner, De Sica’s Umberto D, functions almost as photographic portraits—the lack of onscreen activity gives the viewer time to examine the image in detail while the creative mise-en-scene and depth of character gives the viewer something worth looking at.

Mulvey brings up the issue of narrative linearity because narrative films have a certain forward momentum. Bellour makes an interesting point about the manner in which a still photograph within a film can “stop” the forward momentum of the film itself. Though thought provoking, I feel this is a bit short sighted. When we look at a photograph in real life, we don’t have a sense that time has stopped because we are in the act of looking, analyzing, and thinking. When we are presented with a still photograph in a film, we’re still looking, analyzing, and thinking, but there is an additional layer of complexity that Bellour seems content to ignore: namely, the act of looking through another’s eyes. Say there is a photograph of a clown in a film. We’re seeing the clown ourselves, but we’re also seeing the clown through the eyes of a diegetic character whose father was killed by a clown last year. We’re wondering how the character sees it and how they feel. The use of a POV shot requires us to search for clues to answer this: does the character stare for a long duration, is it a quick glance, does the camera move up and down the image as if to suggest the character is searching for something? Because of this, I don’t think a still photograph within a film necessarily has the halting, jarring effect that Bellour claims. Additionally, there is the popular “Ken Burnes Effect” that attempts to show still photographs in artificial motion. Would Bellour also feel this technique is a “jarring” sensation to the spectator?

Finally, to address Mulvey’s idea of the pensive spectator, I agree to the point that digital technology allows the curious cinephile new ways to view experience film, but to use such a loaded word as “fetishistic”, seems unnecessary. Her description of the “fetishistic” spectator seems, to me at least, in line with the work of a film scholar or a connoisseur. Then again, perhaps Roger Ebert’s famous frame-by-frame analyses at the University of Colorado are not entirely for the benefit of the students!

Pelzer examines technical reproduction, its rapid expansion in the twentieth century, and its ramifications through the philosophical writings by media critics, Benjamin, McLuhan, Debord, Baudrillard, and even a little Adorno. Because each of these thinkers did most of their work before the 1980s, and therefore missed the advent of personal computers and the explosion of easily accessible information via the internet, Pelzer provides some commentary and analysis of how history progressed in relation to each thinker’s forecast.

Both Benjamin and McLuhan saw great potential for the global dissemination of ideas, and Benjamin in particular, sees mass media as a means for distributing political ideology although his positivist perspectives failed to account for the inevitable subversion by the culture industry. Pelzer points out the failure of his overly hopeful prospects for mass media in relation to Adorno’s fundamental distrust of mass-anything. I personally find Benjamin’s idea of the “aura” to be his most interesting contribution as it predates Barthes semiotics. In S/Z, Barthes describes the complex and unpredictable nature a text where the signifier/signified relationship is called into question. Barthes’ idea of signifiers always leaving traces of other signifiers seems very similar to Benjamin’s idea of the aura giving a sense of something not entirely present.

Baudrillard provides an interesting idea of “hyperreality”, where simulations provide a level of reality beyond what one would normally experience in the same situation. The all-seeing camera allows the spectator to view every important detail of a situation in a super-human manner while providing and interpreting a wealth of information thus transforming the viewer into a Sherlock Holmes of sorts. Baudrillard is wary of the accessibility and increasing presence of simulations and fears that eventually society will begin to confuse simulated reality with true reality.

Pelzer makes the interesting point that most people will experience a situation vicariously through a TV show or film before actually experiencing it in real life. This is an interesting idea because this doesn’t seem entirely bad. There are many situations best avoided in real life. A simulated car accident serves to warn young drivers of the danger they will be facing once on the road, while protecting them from injury. Along the same lines, many people wish to travel and see the world, but are unable for a variety of reasons. An Imax feature on mountain climbing provides them a simulated journey that they themselves would never be able to take. It is once these simulations venture into the territory of the mundane that they become problematic. Virtual relationships are no substitute for the real thing and in this sense, Baudrillard is correct to be skeptical. Therefore, I conclude that we must approach these simulated experiences with a degree of caution and in doing so, we can enjoy the benefits they provide.

My main issue with the article is that Adorno is only mentioned in passing, while Pelzer would do well to read some of his work such as The Curves of the Needle (1927/65) or Opera and the Long Playing Record (1969). Adorno’s death in 1969 halted his long-standing project Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (2006), a book on the transcription and interpretive performance of music. Where the reproduction of a painting is simply a matter of taking a photograph and generating as many prints as desired, music exists as graphic notation (which may or may not be the most effective method of communicating the composer’s intentions) and must be realized, often with a variable degree of interpretation by each musician.

Although Adorno is primarily concerned with music, his essay, Opera and the Long Playing Record, is equally applicable to visual art. Adorno was strongly opposed to the 78 acetate records that could scarcely contain a single movement of a Schoenberg string quartet, but when the LP allowed fifteen minutes per side, Adorno offered praise. Furthermore, he argues that the LP is the ideal medium for certain genres such as opera for many reasons including the senseless attempts at modernization of sets and staging. Similarly, he states that “it is obvious that Mozart’s operas cannot be performed in oratorio fashion with an unintentionally comic effect” (248).

Changing the medium drastically effects the consumer’s engagement with the work itself, and not necessarily for the worse. Perhaps a work of monumental proportions, such as Barney’s Cremaster cycle is best experienced through a medium that permits multiple viewings over a period of time. How can one expect to comprehend ten hours worth of highly metaphoric film art without revisiting the work a number of times? Along the same lines, a work such as Michael Snow’s Wavelength, renown for its soporific nature, may be more effective viewed alone, free from the distractions of bored and restless spectators. A DVD would also allow the viewer to watch at multiple speeds, thereby possibly uncovering structural features that would be difficult to detect if sufficiently spaced during the performance.

Overall, Pelzer provides a concise overview of important media theorists showing the benefits and hazards of the burgeoning media industry. Just as Benjamin and McLuhan saw great potential, I too see potential, but as a disingenuous disciple of Adorno, I doubt it will work out that way.

Emerging from Jameson’s dense prose, I find the message: video art provides a “total flow” of meaning (meaning in a very qualified, postmodern sense) where signifiers are constantly in flux, constantly redefined, constantly re-contextualized, and where the only referent possible is that of indisputable historical fact, or in other words, the Lacanian Real. Thus, video is, as Jameson concludes, the ideal medium of transmission of postmodern thought. Over the course of the article, Jameson uses a particular video work, AlienNATION , to demonstrate his points. Jameson refrains from offering any sort of aesthetic judgment, preferring to describe video as a medium, to analyze interesting features, and to explore a variety of interpretive methodologies.

Jameson makes an important phenomenological distinction between video and film because where film (even art film) has a lengthy history of concept and technique, video is (at the time of his essay) slightly over twenty years old and thus doesn’t have the same foundations or expectations.

Although Jameson seems as neutral as possible, he has what appears to be a pessimistic view of the possibilities of postmodern textual manipulation. When he writes, “we are left with that pure and random play of signifiers . . . which no longer produces monumental works of the modernist type but ceaselessly reshuffles the fragments of preexistent texts, the building blocks of older cultural and social production”, he is presenting the situation as if postmodern works are doomed to randomly repeat segments of the past without any sort of intelligent design. While it’s true that, as Derrida shows us, we cannot reasonably assume any sort of logocentricity, if there was no possibility of, say, ironic juxtaposition, there would be no point in making postmodern works—they would just be meaningless jumbles of infinitely meaningful (and thus meaningless) signifiers.

In Intertextual Irony and Levels of Reading, Eco shows how he uses this freedom of signification to generate a surplus of meaning within his literature. Similarly, Tarantino’s cinema is filled with intertextual elements such as the briefcase scene in Pulp Fiction, where the viewer is reminded of the myth of Pandora’s box, the final scene in Repo Man, as well as Raiders of the Lost Arc. The briefcase scene generates at least three specific and purposeful meanings, hardly the random jumble that Jameson describes.

While Jameson may have a dim view of postmodernity in art, he does an excellent job explaining why other forms of interpretation fail to say anything useful about postmodern works. He writes that if the “ephemeral” and “disposable” text is the building block of postmodern art, then there can be little gleaned from an analysis of any one fragment. Similarly, no video work can be viewed in isolation from the whole of the video art world. He goes on to contend that though one may attempt to “sort the material out into thematic blocks and rhythms and repunctuate it with beginnings and endings, with graphs of rising and falling emotivity, climaxes, dead passages, transitions, recapitulations, and the like”, the result will be different upon every viewing.

Insofar as that is a true statement, is it necessarily a positive or negative characteristic of postmodern art? There must be a certain value to a work that allows one to return over and over again for a completely new experience. Again, Jameson language is telling: phrases such as “____ is reduced to” indicate that he doesn’t see this potential for varied readings as a positive characteristic because if the author cannot control the message, there must be no message and therefore no art in creation. I see the potential for multiple and diverse readings as an intriguing characteristic of postmodern art. Furthermore, this whole notion of interpretive impossibility is specious. Again referring to Eco, the author creatively engages multiple levels of signification and though there are always already infinite readings, certain readings make a lot more sense. Even if one cannot definitively state the “correct” reading of a text, one can find a range of readings that generate the most coherent and meaningful interpretation. Jameson is correct to poke fun at the standard interpretive question—“what does it mean?”—because this assumes a single “correct” reading, but just because there is no definitive reading, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there are no readings that are better than others.

The scope of Jameson’s article is, perhaps, its best feature. It’s fascinating how he manages to describe such a wide range of postmodernity in art while talking only about video art. If I take issue with certain points, it doesn’t mean that the article on the whole is flawed. Simply, everyone will approach the concepts of postmodernism from a different perspective and now I’ve presented mine.