Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
46 Jamie Reid, 'Boredom'
graphic, as used on the
back cover of the Sex
Pistols 1976 7” single
Pretty Vacant
.
The negativity and even nihilism that Punk expressed was in direct
contrast to the optimism of the counter-culture, and was far more
believable for those for whom the present consisted of limited
possibilities and the future possibly worse. Punk was an aesthetic
response to the political and social disasters of the
s. It reflected
a world of industrial and social antagonism, urban decay and hope-
lessness, not just through the use of specific imagery, but through
the very methods of cut-up, montage and appropriation it em-
ployed, which visually articulated the dislocations in the coming
of post-industrial society. But Punk can be seen as not just a
response to the dislocations of its period, but also as an anticipa-
tion of the possibilities of technology then just emerging. Though
graphical computing, multimedia, hypertext and so on were not yet
widely available, they existed and their future ubiquity was already
being predicted. Furthermore the shift towards a post-industrial
society was predicated on the application of 'real-time' computer
systems and networks, which employed such technologies and ideas.
The Punk style, with its disruptions and disjunctures, its emphasis
on texts and its use of iconic graphics anticipates the coming
world of ubiquitous graphic computing. As shown above, the Punk
1970
