The Tao of Postmodernism: Computer Art, Scientific Visualization and Other Paradoxes
Author(s): Donna J. Cox
Source: Leonardo. Supplemental Issue, Vol. 2, Computer Art in Context: SIGGRAPH '89 Art
Show Catalog (1989), pp. 7-12
Published by: The MIT Press
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The

Tao

of

ComputerPostmodernism:
Art,

Visualization and

ABSTRACT

Scientific
Other

Paradoxes[1]

DonnaJ. Cox

All right,so you want a styleout of America.Stickat it. butwhen it comes,it mayn't bewhereyou are lookingforit.
-Ezra Pound
Theart that is comingwill giveformal expressionto ourscientificconviction.
-Franz Marc
Some enlightening philosophical and social ideas haveemerged from postmodern art criticism. A brief review ofthe shift from modernism to postmodernism outlines someof the aesthetic consequences that include art market influence on artists. The second section of this paper elaborates critical issues that present problems to aesthetic activities such as the making of computer art and the productionof photography. These issues include an unprecedented
pluralism of artists' activities in this transition to postmodernism. The third section refutes the idea that postmodernism is merely a style; rather, it is a cultural norm that permeates many fields such as film, architecture and science.
Finally, section four places postmodernism in a much larger
context, based on Turchin's cybernetic approach to human
evolution. Some contemporary cultural characteristics suchas the recycling of aesthetic styles, interdisciplinary activity,and 'simulacra' are related to basic human creativityand themultiplicity of cultural systems.

teristics of advanced societies),it [mass produced image making] has become a principal
agent and a conduit of culture
and ideology" [4]. The suffering avant-garde, from Impressionists to Dadaists, were popularized in media and liberal arts
education. During the twentieth century, the 'Shock of theNew' was deformed into a lust
for the avant-garde. Like alga
and fungus that live symbiotically, the artist and the buyer
have evolved a symbiotic relationship that must feed its souland pocketbook with the newvanguard. This complex system
of artists, galleries, museums,
critics and art brokers has cometo be known as the art market[5].

Theauthor
suggeststhata
shiftmustoccurinart
paradigm
criticismto assimilate
thenonlinear
ofaesthetic
in
activities
branchingourera.Theseactivities
includeartandscientificvisualizacomputertion,andtheyreflectmanyissues
inpostmodern
addressed
dialoguesuchas ourimage-synthetic,"simulacrum"
society.Postmodernism
informs
mostdisciunexpectedly
thenaturalplines,including
sciences,andis a cultural
systemic
normthatrelatesto ourelectronic
information
age.TheTaoistconceptofonenessis usedas a metaof
phorfortheinterrelatedness
electronic-mediatedsocieties,andthissocialconnectedness
explains
theenfolding
andcomplex
natureofcontemporary
aesthetic
activity.
Acybernetic
paradigm
mightprovidea bettermodelforcriticism
thanmodernism
orpostmodernaism,sincethisparadigm
presents
holistic
viewthatconcentratesonandtheorganizationofcreativity
interrelated
systems.Theconvergenceofartwithscienceis assumedas a logicalinterdisciplinary
ofthiselectronic
outgrowth
oneness.

Fig. 1. Bea Nettles, Metamorphosis,altered and staged silver print,

7.5 x 7.5 in, 1988.The artist'sfine artexplorationshavealso in-volved alternative processes. This type of fine art photography
was a radical change from traditional 'straight' photography.

FROM MODERNISMTOPOSTMODERNISM
Artmaking since the beginning of the twentieth century has
been recognized as a major break from artmaking prior tothat time. Institutionalized, conventional analysis of art andits history proposes a kind of linear 'cause and effect', tracing lines of works and artistic styles'; this approach has provided a paradigm [2] to explain a transition that might cover
trends from pre-renaissance to modern [3]. Art historicalawareness and the age of mechanical reproduction are undeniable components in the development of modernism at
the turn of the century; and this image production provides
a gluttony for public consumption. "For inhabitants of industrialized societies (indeed, production and consumption of images serves as one of the distinguishing characDonnaJ. Cox (artist, educator), School of Art and Design, Adjunct Faculty for
Supercomputing Applications, National Center for Supercomputing Applications,
University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, 605 E. Springfield, Champaign, IL 61820,
U.SA.

? 1989 SAST

Presspic.PrintedinJapan.
Pergamon0024094X/89 $3.00+0.00

LEONARDO, ComputerArtin ContextSupplementalIssue.pp. 7-12, 1989

Fig. 2. Michael Norman, Jack Burns, Martin Snllkinen (scientists) and DonnaJ. Cox(artist), supetcomputer simulation of a galactic jet used for the front cover of Nature
magazine, 1988. This image is an example, developed in the hard sciences, of the'simulacra' in our society. Such image 'simulation' is characteristic of our Postmodern
electronically mediated culture.

By the mid-twentieth century, postmodern discourse exposed the art
market search for the next avant-garde(the dog-seeking-its-avant-garde-tail).
This convolution of thought has beencalled the 'transcendental historicism'of art. As Hal Foster explains: "No matter how 'transcendental' or radicallynew the art, it is usually recouped,
rendered familiar by historicism. Latemodernism only reworks the contradiction: art is avant-garde insofar as
it is radically historicist-the artist
delves into art historical conventions
in order to break out of them. Suchhistoricism (the New as its own Tradition) is both an origin and an end forthe avant-garde; and one aim for postmodernism is to retain its radicality
but be rid of its historicism" [6]. Thus,

8

Cox,The Tao of Postmodernism

some refer to late postmodernism as
post-historical.

COMPUTER ART: AN
ORPHAN CHIL.n OF'HIGH' ART CRITICISM
Historicism and the concept of 'style',
reified from art-historical thinking,have led theorists to conjecture that
artists tend to emulate older technologies with each new technology
until they find a 'pure' form of expression. For example, historians and critics proposed that early nineteenthcentury photographers emulated
painting style with the camera [7].
Likewise, it is possible that computer
artists are copying styles of older tech-

nologies as well [8,9]. However, if one
closely analyzes the evolution of fineart photography from the Industrial
Revolution into the postmodern era,
one gains a different perspective.
In order to establish photography
as a fine art, Alfred Stieglitz proposedthat the artist exploit the camera for
its unique qualities and create 'pure'
photographs that did not resemble'painterly' styles. He stated that thephotographer should not manipulate
photographs nor state allegories (asearly photographers had done).
Rather, he proposed, the pure photograph employs the camera for what it
does best: capturing a slice of the realworld from the personal viewpoint of
the artist. Thus the artist's personalstyle and photography's pure form of
expression emerged. Consequently,
the pure photograph was completely
divorced from painting by 1920. However, a transition to postmodernism
resulted in the complete inversion ofphotographic 'purity' by 1970. Staged,
altered (Fig. 1) and appropriated photographs have become the acceptedmarket, not the adulteration that
Stieglitz refuted with his 'straight' fineart photography [10]. As Abigail
Solomon-Godeau has noted, "theproperties of photographic imagery
which have made it a privileged medium in postmodern art are precisely
those which for generations art photographers have been concerned todisavow" [11]. Here we see a paradoxthat developed in fine art photography; such a paradox can also be foundin the evolution of computer art.
Virtuallyeverycriticalandtheoreticalissuewhichpostmodernistartmaybe
said to engage in in one sense oranothercan be locatedwith photography[andcomputerart].Issueshaving to do with authorship, subjectiv-

ity,and uniquenessare builtinto theverynatureof the photographic[andcomputer]processitself [12].
The computer artist represents adouble risk to the art market, because
the work is often twice removed froma personal style, authorship or uniqueness: first the art is made with a computer, then documented with a photograph. The computer art purist mightargue that the 'interactive' mode or
the 'artist-as-programmer' mode of
the computer aesthetic is sine qua non[13,14]. That is to say, the pure formof expression from the computer isrealized through interactivity or
through the artist's personal software.
However, interactive computer works

and electronic installations are intrinsically difficult to show and sell in theart marketplace [15]. These types of issues have left art curators and critics
in a quandary and have contributed tocomputer art being outside the mainstream of 'high' art criticism. Interesting out-of-the-art-mainstreampublications, such as SIGGRAPH [16] art
show catalogues, Leonardoor articles
from technical publications such as
Prince's reviews of computer art[17,18], present critical informationthat cannot be gleaned from the art
market coffers; because "artisticpractices employing film or photography[or computer], as well as those using
found objects, processes, or systems
where creative labor is apparently
absent, continue to problematize thetranscendental imperatives which predominate in critical and historical literature on art" [19].
In addition to the above, interdisciplinary activity has become a key
descriptor in the postmodern era andit prohibits the classification of works
merely by the medium. Photography
as well as traditional painting andsculpture experienced a radical realignment during the 1960s [20].
Painting and sculpture merged to create new hybrid forms. And, like photographers, many artists cast aside thepurity of the medium [21]. Douglas
Crimp states,
the easewithwhichmanyartistsmanaged, some ten yearsago, to change
media-from sculpture,say, to film
(Serra,Morris,et al.) or from dance
to film (Rainer)-or were willing to'corrupt' one medium with another-to present a work of sculpture, for example, in the form of aphotograph (Smithson, Long)-or
abjuredanyphysicalmanifestationof
the work (Barry,Weiner) makes itofclearthatthe actualcharacteristics
the medium, per se, cannot any
longertell us much aboutthe artist's
activity[22].
Other scholars submit that art
based upon technology isjust one possible mode of expression and that themedium should not claim to have any
special status [23]. Alas, many latemodernist or postmodern critics
would be dismayed at the fact thatcomputer art segregates itself via themedium rather than concentrates on
the artist's 'aesthetic activities'. Here
we see the computer art paradox:
many computer artworks are shunnedby the modernist for lack of purity,
authorship or originality at the sametime that they are shunned by post-

Fig. 3. Richard Elson, DonnaJ. Cox and Ray Idas7nk, cover image of a contemporary
science journal, Simulation,1988. This cover image, illustrating scientific simulacra, shows
the use of computer techniqles to visualize abstract numerical information from a supercomputer simulation of hot plastic polymer.

moder dialogue for computer art's
identification'.
'media/technology
Thus, computer art is like an orphan
child to most current art criticism. In
addition to analyzing these problems,
the next section delineates other negative social criticism surrounding themaking of computer images.

POSTMODERNISM IS
A NEW SYSTEMICCULTURAL NORM
It must be made clear here that postmodernism is not a so-called style;rather it is a "new systemic cultural
norm" that informs other disciplines,
including science fiction film, music,
poetry, architecture [24] and the natural sciences (as I will later demon-

strate). Postmodernism is like a force
field in which very different kinds ofimpulses and forms emerge from cultural production [25]. Postmodernism is not a style; rather it points to asocial and technological mechanism
from which styles are being generated.
Critics note the development of a society that has experienced a technological transformation of the socialworld where electronic artifacts suchas computers, television and video
constitute and symbolize the radical
alteration of our culture's time andspatial consciousness [26]. Computer
graphics and electronic image generation are viewed as contributors to theremoval of the individual from direct
experience of reality, resulting in asociety of simulacrum, image simulation of the real world. Real space is distorted into an electronically mediatedCox,The Tao of Postmodernism

9space, a weightless polygonalization,
as in 7ron, Star Warsor Star TrekII: 7he
Wrathof Khan. Real time is deformed
in an electronic culture of televised instant replays, generic pastiche and interactive mouse control. Postmodern
architecture and fine art are characterized by de-historicized collectionsof recycled aesthetic styles [27]. In theclassic postmodern film Bladerunner,
scenery resembles recycled international junk and costumes rehash fashions spanning many decades. In thisfilm, genetically engineered replicants, artificial simulations of real people, have become more human thanhuman.
Physics and other natural sciences
have been affected by this electronically mediated postmodern milieu of
simulacra. Scientific visualization is
the use of computer graphics to visualize 'simulations that model reality'.
Scientific observations of real data
have been transcended in this electronic age where supercomputers cansolve numerical equations that represent real physical models. These simulations are visualized with computer
graphics to represent such natural
phenomenon as an astrophysical jet(Figs 2, 3) that might be 100,000 lightyears in length [28]. While most ofthese models of reality cannot be experienced directly by human beings,
they can be computed, digitally
stored, recorded and electronically replayed on a VHS video tape deck, providing a vicarious view of invisible phenomena. Scientific simulations andcomputer-graphic visualizations cancompress geophysical time from tensof billions of years to a millisecond andshrink a blackhole deformation to thewidth of a television screen [29].
Humans have technologically warped
time and space and documented every
possible visual image. "Now, morethan ever before, different strata in
our society have converged in their
passionate interest in the image, inrepresentation, in the very process of
mediation and simulation" [30].
Thus, postmodernism is a dynamic,
systemic cultural condition that informs most disciplines in electronically mediated societies and can becharacterized primarily by the following:
1) Historical hypersensitivity-workers in many disciplines, media and art
have an increased historical awareness, and their works reflect historicalelements that have been recycled andrecombined into new aesthetic forms

10

Cox, The Tao of Postmodernism

2) Cross-and InterdisciplinaryActivity-inart, scienceand philosophy,

people have dissolved many boundaries between traditional modes of behavior, expressions and concepts
3) Simulacra-in society, our age of
mechanical reproduction and electronic media have collapsed time,
space and matter into image synthesis,
representation, simulation and electronic models of natural phenomena.

THE CYBERNETIC
PARADIGM
The postmodern characteristics noted
above can be related to cybernetics,
the theory of information control inliving organisms; this theory is basedon the concept of systems and subsystems that are organized into hierarchies [31]. Cybernetic processes include use of memory, free association,
visualization, but most importantly,
the construction of new mental models of reality. Humans build mental
models of reality through the association of representations. This modeling allows humans to create. When we
re-associate concepts or representations, the models undergo reorganization or change; thus humans create
and re-create models by this type offree association. Members of humansociety communicate on the highest
level of their individual organization
through this process. In this way,people
have contact by brain because thesemodels become a continuation ofeach individual brain [32,33]. Social
systems and subsystems in culture arenatural extensions of shared models
and paradigms within our society. And
people will utilize whatever technology is available to continue this creative process.
Twentieth-century technologicaladvances in electronic communication and image production have resulted in an accelerated contact of theindividual with an external world
through television and other media. If
people have contact by brain, thenpeople are having more brain contact
more rapidly than ever before. We areconstantly bombarded with changing
images and information that model
the external world through media.
Today, artmaking and other creative
disciplines increasingly reformulate
models, due to this efficient information flow and exposure of artists to abroader range of cultural associations.
Thus, intense exposure to historicstyles inevitably stimulates artists to
produce re-associations and sometimes to recycle these styles in theiraesthetic production. A natural outcome of this electronic information
flow is more interdisciplinary activity.
Simulacra, images synthesis, and theelectronic production of visual modelsof reality are social extensions of individual creativity resulting from ourelectronic age.
Cybernetics provides a model ofsociety as well as a model of individual
thought that explains the complex dynamic systems in which culture itself is
rapidly evolving. The whole of thesesocial systems is like one big brain thatmoves toward greater complexity
from which new levels of organizationand creativity emerge. The evolutionof collective consciousness takes placethrough the natural selection of themodels that humans create [34].
The necessaryselection of variants
for increasingthe complexityof theorganizationof matter by trial anderrornow takesplace in the humanhead.Thisprocessdiffersfundamentallyfrom the processof [Darwin's]
naturalselection and takesplace incomparably faster, but in both its
function (constructing and using
models of the environment) and inits results (growth in the total mass ofliving matter and its influence on
nonliving matter) it is completely
analogous to the earlier process [Darwin's natural selection] and is its natural continuation. The human being
becomes the point of concentration
for Cosmic Creativity. The pace ofevolution accelerates manyfold [35].
This holistic interrelationshipas abasis for creativity and life is evincedin other areas of twentieth-century
science. The old simple mechanistic
outlook has given rise to a holistic
approach, a view that treats "the organism as a whole, a view which, in-cidentally, echoes the old Chinese picture of the universe itself as aself-dependent organism" [36].

SUMMARY
People think, understand and createby building

mentalmodelsof theworld about them. These models
often develop into complex social systems that interact and influenceothers. For example, when Alfred

Stieglitz proposed his pure photography as the appropriate modus operandi, he created a model that inte-

grated fine art photography into theexisting system of the art market. His
rationaleprovided

anacceptablemodel for fine art photographers until
a new model was adopted.
Another example of modeling ispresented here regarding the transition from modernism to postmodernism. The first section proposes that aninteraction among the cultural systems of art history, the art market, andmass media resulted in a hypersensitive art historical awareness, and thisawareness influenced artists in theirattempts to transcend history and create an avant-garde. This simple analysis provides a model of an interaction
among several cultural systems and its
effects upon art. Such an analysis reflects the cybernetic approach and recognizes the major influences that social systems and paradigms have uponartmaking.
The point here is that artists are inextricably immersed in culture; they
are constantly attempting to operate
within a multiplicity of social systems
including the art market, mass media
and academia. The complete analysisof an art object would recognize andinclude the multiplicity of systems
within which the artist works. Artists
have contact by brain with all parts of
the world in today's electronically mediated culture. And to simply say that'the art work speaks for itself is toignore the whole from which the work
evolves.
The shift from modernism to postmodernism has been a transition fromone paradigm to another. Postmodernism is more general than modernism because it subsumes many modernist concepts (e.g. aesthetic purity
and lineage of styles) and re-evaluatesthem in a new context. It proffers aschema that clarifies interdisciplinary
aesthetic activities. Likewise, postmodernism generalizes across social
criticism and incorporates many aspects of our high-technological, electronic culture through such concepts
as simulacra.
However, many postmodern critics,
in their languid historicism, fail to recognize the 'real' 'new', and this period
where the old is dying and the new
cannot be born results in many morbid symptoms [37]. Many view electronic/computer media as evil, as a
primary contribution to the negationof humanism. This technophobic attitude handicaps any emerging technological aesthetic. Unfortunately, computer art was born in the transition
between modernism and postmodernism. While both paradigms broachcomputer art issues, for the most partthese issues have been relegated totechnological biases.
If one agrees that computer art istreated like an orphan child by mainstream art criticism, then one would
also agree that a model is yet to beborn that will assimilate scientific aesthetic activity such as scientific visualization. This type of artistic exploration
attempts to cross an even greaterchasm between two disparate social
systems-that of science and that ofart. Technological art is often viewed
suspiciously enough, but art delving
into both science and technology is
too distant from the current imperatives of the art world. A shift in criticism must occur to assimilate suchalien aesthetic activities as scientificvisualization.
The cybernetic paradigm subsumes
computer art, scientific visualizationand other art paradoxes into a modelof human evolution where technology, simulacra, historicism and eclecticism characterize intense cultural
creativity. This approach encourages
analysis of the complex network of systems and subsystems in an evolving,
dynamic society. Artmaking crosses
many of these subsystems, and thistype of analysis might prove to be very
enlightening. For example, a comparison between the current art market
and SIGGRAPHmight reveal interesting influences that these two economic systems have had upon computer art production. Likewise, thiscomparison might reveal the tensions
and frustrations of those artistswho attempt to operate between these twosystems. This type of analysis-where
the whole social organism is considered integral to individual artmaking-is characteristic of a cybernetic
approach to art criticism.
Criticism should address art production within all aspects of culture,including economics, mass media, science and the whole interrelatednessof our heterogeneous cultural life.
Jameson has negatively characterized
current cultural production as schizophrenic and randomly heterogeneous. However, none of these eclectic
features should be seen as random;rather they confirm one another in an
intricate network of social systems andhistorical meaning that can be understood within the context of humancreativity [38]. Electronically mediated societies are rapidly and collectively re-creating new models of reality
because of the increased exposure to
image and information. Metaphori-

cally speaking, this continually evolving re-creation and modeling of reality can be symbolized by the "Tao...,the one ultimate, tireless activity...

itinevitably retains the impression of anunlimited past and as surely moulds
the ceaseless future, but is itself unconditioned by time, space, or matter"[39].
Glossary
association-in thought or information processing, association is the connection of concepts,
images or models. When the brain 'associates' it
brings together representations into a new association, and this process results in a new association of representations, a recombinant association. The latter is at a higher level of hierarchy inthe organization of thought processes. Associating is a primary function in the process ofmodeling.
appropriation-in postmodernisin fine art photography, this ternl referisto artworksexemplified
by Sherrie Levine or Richard Prince, where theartists copy and exhibit other artists' works.
Levine and Prince intended to make an artistic
statement about authorship and originality andattempted to dismantle subjectivity in the art
works. However, the art market, with its innate
ability to commodify almost anything, has also
marketed these plagiarized photographs as art.
art market-people, businesses and institutions
who have an interest in normalizing and benefiting from avant-garde art (this category includes
dealers, collectors, museum officials, directors ofcultural programs, critics, artists).
art world-a term that is inclusive of the art market as well as university and other art educators,
non-professional art students, artists who do notparticipate in the art market, public art exhibit attendees who do not generally buy art.
cybernetics-Norbert Weiner's cybernetics is thestudy of relationships aindinformation control in
the living organism. This term has come to meana study of human control fuictions and of the mechanical and electric systems designed to replacethem. This theory is based on the concept of systems and subsystems that are organized into hierarchies. Turchin outlines human cybernetic processes that include use of memory or history, freeassociation, visualization, playfulness and the creation of models of reality; and he applies theseideas to society as a whole.
modeling-the creation of models is simply themental interconnection of associations or representations that have a time coordinate and a resultant capability to foresee the future; this is theidea of constructing a model of the environment.
For example, concepts such as 'season' or 'taxes'
provide simple models that retain a sense of timeand regularity and allow one to predict a continuation of the phenomenon. In this sense, amodel both provides a mental representation andallows one to plan the ftittre. Knowledge is thepresence in the brain of a certain model of reality. In our brains, this model of reality is at a highlevel in the hierarchy of associations that enables
us to foresee the results of our actions (Turchin,p. 73). A model that is shared among many people
as a system of belief is a paradigm.
modernm-characteristic of contemporary styles
that reject traditionally accepted or sanctioned
forms and emphasize individual experimentationand sensibility. Modernism is thought to havebegun around the end of nineteenth century andto have peaked during the first half of the twentieth century.
paradigm-a

model

or standard;in this paper,paradigm refers to Thomas Kuhn's meaning (seeRef. [2]). At any given time, a discipline or specialty will disclose a set of recurrent and quasi-

Cox, The Tao of Postmodernisin

1

standard illustrations of various theories in theirconceptual, observational and instrumental applications. These are the community's paradigms,
revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory
exercises (Ref. [2] p. 43). Paradigm is used in two
different senses: on the one hand, it stands for theentire body of beliefs, values, techniques and soon shared by the members of a given community.
On the other, it denotes a single concept that is
employed as a model or standard (Ref. [2] p.
175). Paradigm also refers to a model of realitythat is shared by many people and that has
evolved into a system of belief.
postmodern-an art and social-criticism termthat originated in fine art photography and that
describes the art that followed modernism; postmodernism developed during the mid-twentiethcentury. Postmodern criticism reveals a hypersensitive historical awareness, recognizes the print/
electronic media as central to the conduit of culture and suggests that electronic media have created an isolation of the individual from direct experience of reality; critics observe that art fromthe postmodern era involves a pastiche of recycled styles.
simulacra-artifacts, images and cultural production that al-e created by electronic simulation to
produce an artificial space and time or are produced in any synthetic manner to give the appearance of or represent some other thing, possibly
from some other time or place. This type of cultural production often appears as a pastiche orcollage of recycled historic styles. Also, simulacrum is any reproduced synthetic form that is
made to give the appearance of some other thing
or represent something else. Electronic simulacra
often remove the individual from direct experience of reality (e.g. television, video, etc.).
Taoism-'the way' or perhaps 'the order of nature'; ancient Chinese religion and philosophy
proposed the unity of nature and oneness of theuniverse. The universe was seen as an organism
made from an interrelated network of hierarchical systems; nature must be studied as a whole, notreduced to its parts. The Taoists were among thefirst great scientists and artists of China; this philosophy began a-ound the same time as ancient
Greek science, fifth century B.C.

References

and Notes

1. The title of this article is in the spirit of TheTao
of Poohby Benjamin Hoff and TheTao ofPhysicsby
Fritjof Capra, who is doing research in theoretical high energy physics at Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory and is a lecturer at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley.
2. T. S. Kuhn, TheStructureofScientificRevolutions,
2nd Ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1962, 1970). Ktuhi explains that science progresses through major paradigm shifts (e.g. fromPtolemy's geocentric solar system to Copernicus's
heliocentric solar system; from Newton's classicalphysics to Einstein's Theory of Relativity). In art,from Kuhn's point of view, the shift from premodern to modern might be considered a paradigm shift. He notes that, in the past, scholars
have shown the tendency to see the history ofscience as a linear or cumulative process. However, contemporary historiography raises serious
doubts about this linear approach (pp. 2-3, pp.

12

Cox,The Tao of Postmodernism

138-139). I might add here that postmodern critics also question the validity of historical linear
progression of aesthetic styles.

24. V. Sobchack, ScreeningSpace: The American
ScienceFictionFilm (New York: Ungar, 1987) pp.
241, 278.

3. H. Spencer, ed. Readingsin Art History:TheRenaissanceto thePresent,Vol. 2 (New York:Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1976).

25. Jameson, F., "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism", New Left Review,No. 146 (uly-August 1984) p. 57.

4. A. Solomon-Godeau, "Photography after Art
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26. V. Sobchack [24] p. 223.

1984) p. 76.

28. D. Cox, "Using the Supercomputer to Visualize Higher Dimensions: An Artist's Contribution
to ScientificVisualization", Leonardo21(1988) pp.
233-242.

5. M. Rosier, "Lookers, Buyers, Dealers, andMakers:Thoughts on Audience", in ArtafterModerism, M. Tucker, ed. (Boston: David R. Godine,
Publisher, Inc., 1984) pp. 311-339.
M.
6. H. Foster, "Re:post", in ArtAfterModernism,
Tucker, ed. (Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher,Inc., 1984) p. 190.
7. B. Newhall, Historyof Photography(New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1982) p. 167.
8. L. Furlong and G. Youngblood, SIGGRAPH'83,
Exhibitionof ComputerArt
Catalogue(Detroit: ACM,
1983).
9. C. Giloth,J. Veeder, "The Paint Problem", InstituteofElectricaland ElectronicsEngineersComputer
Graphicsand Applications5, 66-74 (1985).
10. A. Hoy, Fabrications (New York: Abbeville
Press, 1987).
11. Solomon-Godeau [4] p. 76.
12. Solomon-Godeau [4] p. 80.
13. M. Krueger, 'VIDEOPLACE:A Report fromthe Artificial Reality Laboratory", Leonardo18,
145-151 (1985).
14. S. Wilson, Using Computersto CreateArt (New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1986) pp. 261, 341344.
15. P. D. Prince, 'The Aesthetics of Exhibition: A
Discussion of Recent American Computer Art
Shows", Leonardo,Electronic Art, Supplemental
Issue (1988) pp. 81-88.
16. SIGGRAPHis the Association for Computing
Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer
Graphics.
17. P. D. Prince, "Artistsand Computers: A Retrospective", IEEE ComputerGraphicsand Applications6, No. 8, 8-11 (IEEE Computer Society Publications,July 1986).
18. P. D. Prince, "1900 SIGGRAPH Art Show, A
Review", IEEEComputerGraphicsand Applications
6, No. 8, 15-24 (IEEE Computer Society Publications, September 1988).
19. M. Kelly, "Re-viewingModernist Criticism",in
ArtAfterModernism,M. Tucker, ed. (Boston: David
R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., 1984) p. 91.
20. J. Walker, ArtSincePop (London: Thames andHudson Ltd, 1975) p. 50.
21. E. Lucie-Smith, Art in the Seventies(London:
Phaidon Press Ltd, 1980) pp. 11-121.
22. D. Crimp, "Pictures",in Art AfterModernism,
M. Tucker, ed. (Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., 1984) p. 176.
23. D. Carrier, "The Era of Post-Historical Art",
Leonardo20, No. 3, 271 (1987).

27. V. Sobchack [24] pp. 223-299.

29. D. Cox, "Renaissance Teams and Scientific
Visualization:A Convergence of Art and Science",
Collaborationin ComputerGraphicsEducationCourse#29, (ACM/SIGGRAPH,July 1988) pp. 81-104.
30. V. Sobchack [24] p. 236.
31. V. F. Turchin, ThePhenomenonof Science(NewYork:Columbia University Press, 1977) pp. 4,315.
The author is a physicist who outlines the way
humans model reality in this book on the cybernetic approach to human evolution.
32. V. F. Turchin [31] p. 95. Language-seen as
an extension of thought-comprises a system ormodel. Larger metasystems such as art, science,and philosophy are also viewed as systems or models that people create through thought and language. Language is not only a continuation ofeach individual brain but also a general, unitarycontinuation of the brains of all members of society. It is a collective model of reality on whoserefinement all members of society are working,one that stores the experience of preceding
generations.

33. V. F. Turchin [31] p. 92. Turchin notes that
art is not a formalized linguistic language, likescience; however, art does have a complex organization of concepts and objects that form cultural
systems and subsystems, that are linguistically demarked, and that provide contextual models.
34. T. de Chardin, ThePhenomenonof Man (London: Wm. Collins Sons & Co., Ltd, 1959). Matterand life have constantly moved toward greater
complexity, and it is this observation that characterizes our biosphere.
35. V. F. Turchin [31] p. 98.
36. C. Ronan, Science:Its Historyand Development
AmongtheWorld'sCultures(New York:Hamlin Publishing, 1982) pp. 489, 135.
in B.
37. A. Gramsci, quote from PrisonNotebooks
H. D. Buchloh, "Figuresof Authority, Ciphers of
M. Tucker, ed.
Regression", in ArtAfterModernism,(Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., 1984)
p. 107.
38. B. H. D. Buchloh, "Figures of Authority,
Ciphers of Regression", in ArtAfterModernism,M.
Tucker, ed. (Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher,Inc., 1984) p. 117.
39. L. Sickman and A. Soper, TheArtand Architectureof China (New York:Penguin Books, 1971) p.
268; quote fromJohn E. Lodge, "Ch'enJunig'sPicture of Nine Dragons", Bulletin of the Museum ofFine Arts,Boston,15 (December 1917) pp. 67-73.