Punk & the Digital Aesthetic

with the economic climate folding into a similar pattern as 20 years or so ago. i intend to look at the ways in which graphic design and design practice have responded to the changing social and cultural forces over a certain time period. i decided to look at the the late seventies through to the eighties where punk became a major factor of design during that period and helped witht the advent of new technologies went on to help create pop art and radical modernism and new wave.

the punk aesthetic was the emergence of a musical genre and an aesthetic style, which in Britain popular culture and pop music was, at the time, one of the principle means of political expression for young people. this time produced some of the best pop music ever made (as well as a lot of the worst). It was a fully articulated subculture, with a new visual style involving a range of elements such as fetish clothing, teddy-boy gear, ripped and torn items and, unfortunately, nazi uniforms. It also developed, partly through necessity, a distinctive graphic design style, which found expression in record sleeves, publicity and in signs, the xeroxed and collaged publications which were one of the most distinctive developments coming out of punk. the ideologies of punk were about opposing capitalism as an economic system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are privately owned and controlled rather than commonly, publicly, or state-owned and controlled. through capitalism, the land, labor, and capital are owned, operated, and traded by private individuals or corporations, and investments, distribution, income, production, pricing and supply of goods, commodities and services are determined by voluntary private decision in a market economy. as defined by wikipedia thankfully. ultimately this advent of punk and computer technology gave rise to sharing of information and mass media. i think this could be quite interesting with some interesting work to look at. sex pistol's sid vicious and many other punk bands should be a starting point.