" In other words, given the constant flux in how our experience of the world is mediated, we require the ability to map and give shape to the environments our media create, so that we are best able to optimize our interface with them at both the individual and collective levels.
It was clear for McLuhan that essential for psychic and social survival in the contemporary age would be the successful navigation of the continuously accelerating bully-blow of technological change, what economist Joseph Schumpeter (1966) characterizes as advanced capitalism's extraordinary powers of " creative destruction. In his groundbreaking book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan (1964/1994) notes that we will eventually have to recognize education as " civil defense against media fallout " (p. This adaptive response consisted of a vast effort to recreate and reidentify themselves, by way of a recon-figuration of both their artistic and commercial technological extensions, in an exis-tential struggle to maintain an ongoing sense of authenticity. This article explores the response of the British rock group Radiohead to the almost fatal creative paralysis that resulted from the enormous success and critical attention generated by their 1997 landmark recording Ok Computer. Applying an array of critiques of the style, I consider whether and the extent to which Ok Computer and Kid A embody or defy these critiques, and whether postmodernism had a positive impact upon the artistic development of Radiohead. In the final phase of the investigation, I construct a critical analysis of the successes and failures of Radiohead’s embrace of postmodernism. In the face of its obscure intellectual, artistic and musical character, I attempt to identify the existence of a decipherable underlying narrative and to classify it stylistically with more precision. Investigating its embrace of poststructuralist thinking, bricolage aesthetics and anti-aesthetics, I explain that while Postmodernist, Kid A is an extremely contrasting interpretation of the style to its predecessor. I then begin an exploration of Ok Computer’s successor, Kid A. I proceed by exploring the album’s aesthetic presentation, identifying the utilisation of a bricolage approach to aesthetics and the use of intertextuality in the construction of narrative and composition. Having defined the distinct differences between ‘postmodernism’ and ‘postmodernity’, I first explore the album’s narrative and consider whether Yorke portrays a postmodernist ideological standpoint on its themes. Using this definition as an initial framework for my investigation, I then begin my analysis of Radiohead’s third album, Ok Computer. I begin by attempting to define the intricate intellectual character of postmodernism, defining its historical origin and initial artistic emergence in the late 20th Century. In this investigation, I define the manifestation of postmodernism in these two albums, analysing their highly contrasting interpretations of the style and critically analysing the negative and positive effects of Radiohead’s embrace of the postmodernist aesthetic. However, these albums also mark the beginning of Radiohead’s embrace of the intellectual aesthetic that defines contemporary culture postmodernism. These two albums represent a distinct boundary point in Radiohead’s career between the derivative, alternative rock style of their formative years and the intellectually complex, experimental and eclectic artistic identity of their latter. Ok Computer and Kid A are the two most significant albums in the discography of Radiohead.
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