Before taking this course, I had no
idea the idea and the magnitude that the modern and the Post-Modern have on the
world around us. I was under the assumption
that we were still only in the beginning stages of the modern, but I couldn’t tell
what that meant.
Upon embarking on this week’s
readings by Ferdinand De Saussure, Pierre Macherey, and Roland Barthes I realized
my perception of the world around me was like looking through a key hole. I never realized how much I truly enjoy
trying to understand the complex thoughts these philosophers are trying to tell
us. For myself, the idea that the modern
or post-modern effects almost everything around us from the way we communicate
with languages, to the way we design and use the world around us.
Being a
visual learner, it is often hard to understand complex theories about the Modern
or Post-Modern. But one thing that we have looked at so far in this course have
helped me understand what the modern and the postmodern is. Architecture for me is a way to look at how
these frames of thought are captured into a living space. For example, by looking at Fallingwater
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a modern design. And the Sydney Opera House, a postmodern
design helped me understand some of the words explaining the semantic
differences between the modern and postmodern.
It allowed me to see how just over a century have and still are going
through a major culture shift.
We are changing the way we are
thinking, at least I think we are, the shift is happening all around us. I still do not fully understand the theories
about the modern and postmodern but I do now have an idea about them. I look forward to diving deeper into what
these frameworks are and how they affect us.
Hi Danny,
ReplyDeleteI also had a hard time understanding the complex concepts and theories at the start because I myself am a visual learner. I never understood the heavy importance the modern and post-modern have on our society. When speaking of architecture, it is a way that thoughts, values, and societal views are portrayed. When looking at Falling Water by Frank Lloyd Wright it stood out as something different that made individuals stop and think, "what was the purpose" and "why is there so much visibility into the home?" Although, a house in the woods typically looks a certain way because of traditional ideals, Wright made the impact of breaking the norms of traditionalism and entering into modernism with architecture however, this could have inspired others to question traditional ways of life further than architecture. This example helped me immensely when understanding modernism. Generally, concepts become easier to grasp when we gave real life examples about it.
For example, when we spoke about symbolism and the importance it has on a society we spoke about the fish symbol as an example. Although, it is just a fish we as a society have attached meaning to it as something embedding Christianity. I never realized the impact of symbolism and how a meaning could be widespread to that amount. It makes me question on how we assign meaning to an object and that through word of mouth and media, these meanings could be spread nationally. Another example I have been thinking about is the concept of money and how we assign value to it. In all, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper/material that in all has no value if we did not assign so. We base our whole system off the value of the dollar and this value has been spread internationally with other currencies. When pondering about the importance of value, it makes me eager to fully understand the other concepts we mentioned about last week during class.
Although, it may be hard for me to fully understand at first what in all Post-Modernism and Modernism means entirely, the more we apply it to our lives and bring out examples in class makes it easier to comprehend.