Key terms

• intertextuality – one media text referring to another

• parody – mocking something in an original way

• pastiche – a stylistic mask, a form of self-conscious imitation

• homage – imitation from a respectful standpoint

• bricolage – mixing up and using different genres and styles

• simulacra – simulations or copies that are replacing ‘real’ artefacts

• hyperreality – a situation where images cease to be rooted in reality

• fragmentation – used frequently to describe most aspects of society, often in relation to identity

George Ritzer 1996

George Ritzer (1996) suggested that postmodernism usually refers to a cultural movement – postmodernist cultural products such as architecture, art, music, films, TV, adverts etc.

Ritzer also suggested that postmodern culture is signified by the following:

• The breakdown of the distinction between high culture and mass culture. Think: drama about Dame Margot Fonteyn, a famous prima ballerina, on BBC4.

• The breakdown of barriers between genres and styles. Think: Shaun of the Dead a rom-com-zom.

• Mixing up of time, space and narrative. Think Pulp Fiction or The Mighty Boosh.

• Emphasis on style rather than content. Think: Girls Aloud.

• The blurring of the distinction between representation and reality. Think, Katie Price or Celebrity Big Brother.

Postmodern music, easter activity

Apply as many of Kramer's rules (in your own words) to five pieces of music. Embed a clip of each piece in your blog.

Timbaland

Stockhausen

Alvin Lucier

LED ZEPPLIN

Rihanna

Karlheinz, Stockhausen and Alvin Lucier.

karlheinz stockhausen

- 1928 - 2007

- German composer

- Most important & controversial composers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries

- Work includes electronic music, aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition, and musical spatialization.

Helicopter String Quartet

- Best-known pieces

- Most complex to perform

- String quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians

- First performed and recorded in 1995

Alvin Lucier

- 1931 - present day

- American composer of experimental music

- Professor at Wesleyan University

- Most of his work is influenced by science

I am sitting in a room

"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but, more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."

- 1969

- Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the recording back into the room, re-recording it, and then repeated

- Certain frequencies are emphasized, until the words become unrecognisable, replaced by the harmonies and tones of the room itself.

Jonathan Kramer - postmodern music theory

"the idea that postmodernism is less a surface style or historical period than an attitude". Kramer says there are 16 characteristics of postmodern music:

1. Is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension

2. Is ironic

3. Blurs boundaries between past and present

4. Challenges style barriers, including 'high' and 'low'

5. Shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity

6. Questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values

7. Avoids totalizing forms

8. Considers music as relevant to cultural, social, and political

9. Includes music of many cultures and traditions

10. Considers technology as a way to distribute music and enhance production

11. Accepts contradictions

12. Questions binary opposites

13. Includes fragments and breaks or gaps

14. Encloses plural and multiple sources

15. Has multiple meanings

16. Locates meaning and structure to listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

Postmodern Artist

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CD Mixtape

I have chosen a picture of me and Jordan at Dot to Dot festival last year, the picture next to it is of me, my mum, step dad and little brother at my brothers christening a few weeks ago and below a picture of me and my 18 closest friends at V festival last year.

The choice of these pictures taken over the last year are because I wanted the CD to be relevant to my life as of April 2011, as all the songs are my favourite by artists I have seen live over the last year.

All songs are in alphabetical order except Ellie Goulding - The End, for obvious reasons.