Metadesign: towards a postmodernism of reconstruction

Youngblood, G. Metadesign: Toward a Postmodernism of Re-construction in Ars Electronica Catalog (Linz,

Austria: Linzer Veranstaltungsgesellschaft) 1986, Online em
<http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=9210>

Gene Youngblood

ABSTRACT

The concept "orbital age" evokes the myth of a communications revolution, a myth as old as television.
According to this myth, new telecommunication technologies can and will invert the structure and function
of mass media (a) from centralized output to decentralized input, (b) from hierarchy to heterarchy, (c) from
mass audience to special audience, (d) from communication to conversation, (e) from commerce to
community, (f) from nationstate to global village.

In other words, according to this myth the cultural imperialism of the mass media would be replaced by
autonomous "reality-communities"—social groups of politically significant magnitude realized as
communities through telecommunication networks and defined, therefore, not by geography but by
consciousness, ideology and desire. Constituents of these electronic communities, empowered with tools for
simulation and conversation, might both produce models of possible realities (art) and control the cultural
context within which those models were published and perceived (politics)—the communications revolution
is synonymous with cultural revolution.

The communications revolution remains both mythological and politically imperative, for only through a
radical inversion of dominant communication structures can we begin to create at the same scale as we can
destroy: the counterforce to the scale of destruction is the scale of communication.

The role of art in the communications revolution is highly problematic, for as everyone knows, the theories
and practices of the fine arts tradition are almost totally irrelevant to contemporary technocultural and
sociopolitical reality.

In any culturally and politically relevant sense, art as we have known it is dead. The "postmodernism of
resistance" represents a failure of imagination: it does not enable us to create at the same scale as we can
destroy. Appropriate strategies are now extra-aesthetic and super-cultural—accessible only OUTSIDE the
fine arts tradition. The only relevant strategy now is METADESIGN—the creation of context rather than
content. Telecommunication networks, computer programs and interactive disc technologies are examples of
metadesign. They are metasystems, environments in which others may control the context of their cultural
productions.

The concept of an avantgarde, disavowed by postmodern theory, is actually more relevant today than ever
before, but it has nothing to do with aesthetics. Only social situations, not artworks, qualify as avantgarde.
We need access to alternative experience, not merely new ideas, for we know more about our being than we
have being for what we know. Today only metadesign satisfies the original criteria for avantgarde practice:
(a) it represents the only new frontier: electronic virtual space and the art and politics of simulation.
(b) it alone can subvert the status-quo: the rise of autonomous reality-communities is synonymous with
cultural revolution.
(c) it involves a redefinition of the institution of art: a utilitarian and instrumental practice, concerned with
context rather than content.

Metadesign reconciles art and politics: it empowers art to be politically effective. Metadesigners work with
cultural context, not political issues. They work not to exclaim a political idea but to establish situations in
which any idea may become politicized merely by its presence in that context. Their goal is to empower
rather than propagandize. Empowering electronic communities to control meaning and context is a
revolutionary act. Whereas the postmodernism of DEconstruction posits ideological subversion as an
absolute value in ART, the postmodernism of REconstruction posits ideological autonomy as an absolute
value in LIFE.