Simulations and Reality

Julia Weiss – Blog post #3 Response on Baudrillard – Simulation

      Throughout reading the first 15 pages of this technical piece I kept coming back to one thought. This entire article is talking about the rhetoric of simulation and what’s behind it. This piece was harder to read and interpret so in order to figure out my own thoughts about the message I had to highlight and write constant notes on the print-out. I’ll admit that it took me about a half an hour to break down the first 3/4ths of the introductory page. I found that as I read further and further there were recurrent themes and I was able to pick up the message and the style of writing became easier to read

     The first page I broke down by first figuring out what it was talking about, which was simulacra, reality, and the hyperreal. The ideology that territory no longer precedes the map nor survives it. My mind linked this to digital abstraction.  During The Desert of the Real Itself paragraph I began to understand societal views on reality and how we use representation to invoke a reality or simulation of our own truth. The dimensions of simulation are vast, especially in the digital world (which is heavily linked with our cultural and current world). As we saw in the previous article on Already New there were complications (original build vs. representation of an artifact) between the credibility and ‘reality’ of history based representation of the internet.  Through programs and systematic means, we have created an artificial resurrection through systems and signs. For example, Imagery is a representation of the past, produced simulation or faking the presence of something or someone who is not actually there. 

     So, then what is real or not real? Who’s to say? This is where rhetoric comes into play.

“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth – it is the truth which conceals that there is none. Simulacrum is true.”

     I completely understand what this quote is saying, and I wholeheartedly believe it does not make any sense. It is a contradiction of itself. Everyone has an opinion, creating their own reality and own truth. This quote assumes if you have your own beliefs about anything that your truth tries to over-power/conceal the truth of others. Thus saying there is no truth, but then it says simulacrum is true, but that in itself is an opinion, creating a truth trying to overpower the opposing truth; making simulacrum and the statement that it is true an attempt to conceal another truth (mine) that it is not true. My conclusion is that is that simulacrum does not exist because it is a truth itself.

On another note, I found the concept of unconscious work production to be quite fascinating. Imagine if we could understand the process of which we dream and harness unconscious production of work, like doing homework, making discoveries in our sleep/dreams. In an unconscious state we could realize portals of discovery.

     The objective truth becomes a topic of discussion, leading back to imaginary representation, faked or frozen in time? Evanescence becomes key in images of visible theology. Does divinity remain when it becomes an icon? I think it depends on the viewer, and each individual view. In all honesty, you could probably argue that visible divinity is false in representation, and that they don’t exist. You could also argue that it is the objective truth and very much accurate, it is also dependent on the rhetoric of the encoder, decoder and the noise/static throughout the message.  We live in a reality or simulation where signs have meaning and only when they are not connected will this whole system become weightless, then the understanding of reality will be based on the principle of equivalence. This will never happen, because are conscious is constantly learning and forming understandings/opinions/truths about life.

     This quote made a point that I personally agree with. “We need a past, a visible continuum, a visible myth of origin to reassure us as to our ends, since ultimately we have never believed in them”.
 Are society is based off development and self-image. We must look back in order to move forward, but is everything we look back at a simulation? The answer is maybe.  Disneyland is just another great example of this. A simulated reality within the reality that we live in. Either way it is what it is, you can call into the question of existence, or you could focus on what I find important. Figuring out whether the truths you believe in were brought to you through manipulation or deliberation.

My final thought is this, I feel as people, we all have a puzzle called life. We put together the pieces to create a picture (reality) that makes the most sense to us.  We each have an attempt at reality, and we make it our own, colliding with the reality of others, all together simulating a world of impossible possibilities.