What is hyperreality?

Hyperreality is an awkward and slippery concept. Wikipedia defines it as follows-

Hyperreality is used in semiotics and postmodern philosophy to describe a hypothetical inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced post-modern societies. Hyperreality is a way of characterizing what our consciousness defines as "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter an original event or experience.

Wikipedia cites the following examples to get you thinking (but please come up with your own!)

• A well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal).
• Any massively promoted versions of historical or present "facts" (e.g. "General Ignorance" from QI, where the questions have seemingly obvious answers, which are actually wrong).
• Professional sports athletes as super, invincible versions of the human beings.
• Many world cities and places which did not evolve as functional places with some basis in reality, as if they were creatio ex nihilo (literally 'creation out of nothing'): Disney World; Dubai; Celebration, Florida; and Las Vegas.
• TV and film in general (especially "reality" TV), due to its creation of a world of fantasy and its dependence that the viewer will engage with these fantasy worlds. The current trend is to glamorize the mundane using histrionics.
• A retail store that looks completely stocked and perfect due to facing, creating a world of endless identical products.
• A life which cannot be (e.g. the perfect facsimile of a celebrity's invented persona).
• A high end sex doll used as a simulacrum of an unattainable partner.
• A newly made building or item designed to look old, or to recreate or reproduce an older artifact, by simulating the feel of age or aging.
• Second Life The distinction becomes blurred when it becomes the platform for RL (Real Life) courses and conferences, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or leads to real world interactions behind the scenes.
• Weak virtual reality which is greater than any possible simulation of physical reality.

CTS Task: Hyperreality

TASK

Write a short analysis (300 words approx) of an aspect of our culture that is in some way Hyperreal. 

MY ANSWER

Figure One  Vintage Style Luggage Tags

Figure Two - Vintage Style Analogue Photography

Figure Three -Vintage Style Photography Digital

Write a short analysis (300 words approx) of an aspect of our culture that is in some way Hyperreal. 

MY ANSWER

Modern vintage style graphic design and photography is an example of hyper reality. As these pieces look like the vintage styles they were inspired by, it is hard to initially distinguish them from the real vintage pieces; this is simulacra. As technology has advanced, it has become easier to copy the old styles of graphic design. And so these images are made to look as if they are old and aging, when they are in fact modern. 

The first example are some vintage style label designs, which have been designed, stained and even have pencil drawn on to them to make them look like they are old, and have been well travelled, when in reality they are new. Our consciousness makes us think that these are genuine examples of vintage graphic design, because of how they look. Without the information provided that proves that they were newly created designs, it would not be clear when these were made. These images make us forget what is real, so what reality means changes, as ‘simulation threatens the difference between the “true” and the “false.”’ (Baudrillard, 1994)

The second example is a photograph from a Diana camera, a popular analogue camera at the moment that produces photographs that look as if they were taken in the 1960’s, when the camera first became available. This shows how commodity culture has caused alternative realities, which makes the original hard to distinguish. Commodities begin to have sign values, based on what it is they connote. For example, this type of camera is sold in shops such as Urban Outfitters, and so it is aimed generally at a younger audience who are ‘cool’ and aware of the latest trends. As consumers invest in these sign values, the culture becomes less dependent on reality. As Baudrillard says, it is the ‘social standing of the object’ that is expressed. (Baudrillard, 2001)

As technology has moved on, one step ahead of the Diana camera are Iphone apps, such as instagram, that edit your photos with the click of a button, to look as if they are vintage, and photoshop filters, that make it easy for you to change the colours and style of your photograph. People are using these filters more and more, rather than leaving the photographs as they initially were taken, as we invest in false realities. This style of photography is a simulacra of reality, and this hyper real state is ‘sheltered from any distinction between the real and imaginary’ (Baudrillard, 1994) as we end up not knowing what is what. This leaves the question: do we think they are vintage because we really believe they are of this style, or because we relate this style to what we have been told is vintage? 

We get lost in this world of copies from copies and repetition to the point where we find it hard to tell what is actually the original anymore. These are all examples of things that become ‘the absolute fake’ (Eco, 1986), as we end up struggling to tell the difference, as these imitations don’t just strive to reproduce what exists but to improve on it. This happens as new pieces of technology, such as photoshop filters that do the editing for you, come in to existence. It may be impossible to access the real again, as the copy has taken over reality, meaning ‘it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum’ (Baudrillard, 1994). It becomes easier to believe the myth, than to try and find the reality.

Links

http://c-griffin1013-cts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/jean-baudrillard-and-postmodernism.html

http://c-griffin1013-cts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/seminar-notes-baudrillard-and.html

http://c-griffin1013-cts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/what-is-hyperreality.html

Bibliography

1. Baudrillard, J. (2001), Selected Writings, 2nd Edition: Stanford, California
2. Baudrillard, J. (1994), Simulacra and Simulation, 2nd Edition: University of Michigan Press, USA [Online] < http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9Z9biHaoLZIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=baudrillard&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ootvT426LIuq8QP7xLS_DQ&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false >[Accessed 19 March 2012]
3. Lomography. (2012), Diana F Camera. [Online] Available at: < http://uk.shop.lomography.com/cameras/diana-f-cameras/diana-f-camera > [Accessed 19 March 2012]
4. Oberly, N. (2003), Reality, Hyperreality. [Online] Available at: < http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/realityhyperreality.htm > [Accessed 19 March 2012]
5. Tecca. (2011), Facebook plans to add Instagram-like photo filters. [Online] Available at: < http://www.tecca.com/news/2011/08/25/facebook-photo-filters > [Accessed 19 March 2012]
6. Transparency. (2011), Umberto Eco and His Travels in Hyperreality. [Online] Available at: < http://www.transparencynow.com/eco.htm> [Accessed 19 March 2012]
7. Vintage Me Oh My. (2012), Modern Vintage Style.  Available at: < http://vintagemeohmy.com/ > [Accessed 19 March 2012]
8. Wallace Design. (2012), Luggage Tags. [Online] Available at: < http://dribbble.com/shots/440220-Luggage-Tags > [Accessed 19 March 2012]

Seminar Notes: Baudrillard and Hyperreality

Baudrillard and Hyperreality

Plato's allegory of the cave




- A story that is a metaphor for how society operates
- In ancient greece, there was a cave where a load of prisoners were kept by slave masters, they were born in this cave and live there, ultimately stay at the bottom of the cave until they die
- The only thing the prisoners can see is shadowed cast on the walls of the caves cast by their captors and the fire - only two sources of light
- The prisoners take these images to be reality as it is all that they know
- One of the prisoners escapes as sees grass, sunlight, trees etc, tries to free other prisoners, but instead of being freed, they think he's gone mad and kill him
- The philosopher drags people from the image reality to actual reality
- Modern day interpretation - think of the shadows to be like television, news, advertising, mass media
- There is a real world out there, but there is also an image world we choose to take instruction from
- Unreality masks reality

Coke Branding



- Example: Haddon Sundblom was employed by Coca Cola in the 1930's to make its image appeal in the festive season. Wanted him to look western, happy, fun and wanted his outfit to fit in with the coca cola colours. They choose red and white and keep using this over and over again as the image that goes with their christmas campaigns, and now, this particular father christmas is the one that is known.
- This image has become the 'reality' of santa claus, as before he could have been eastern, worn green etc
- Origins in our culture are lost to be replaced by copies of copies of copies, to the point where it is almost impossible to trace the roots of these series of copies, we get lost in this world of copies and repetition
- Baudrillard is interested in how our investment in these images affect us as people, physically and emotionally
- Reality is replaced by images of reality which then make us forget about what the 'real' is, so these images change reality

Coke Vs. Pepsi

- Experiments with a brain scanner to see if people can tell the difference between pepsi and coke
- Results show we care more about the logo than the actual product, as your brain responds to the brand image
- People said they preferred coke, even when it wasn't actually coke coming out of the bottle
- Something unreal (brand) affecting real world (taste)
- Commercial brand image causes physical effects

Post-structuralism

- Baudrillard key influence: Guy Debord's theory of the spectacle is similar with Baudrillard theory of hyperreality.
- Society has become increasingly unreal, immense accumulation of spectacles
- A society that lives around spectacular images of life rather than a real life
- Spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images
- Trying to describe a society that places these 'spectacular' images as central to its existence
- People live through these things rather than their own life
- Effect of consumer culture on society - people are becoming increasingly distance from each other and investing in fake realities

Baudrillard

- Baudrillard is interested in how commodity culture (Capitalism) creates alternative realities, which make reality impossible to access

- Was a Marxist analysing commodity culture

- Marx wrote that commodity is essential to society as everything has a use value and an exchange value

- Exchange value is usual greater than use value as workers are exploited

- Baudrillard agreed, but thought that things have a sign value, which is the gap between the two

- Sign value has become the ascendent factor in our lives

- The sign value is all the different various things that something connotes: e.g. Rolex watch connotes success, riches - makes someone prepared to pay for it

- Advertising companies try to add sign value in their products

- Consumers invest in this sign value

- This culture is more and more fantastical and less real, more dependent on images of things rather than the reality

Simulacra and Simulation

- Theory of simulacra: copy of something that almost supersedes the original, or makes it difficult to tell the original from the copy

- Coca cola santa is a simulacra of santa - stands in for him, replaces him, a copy of something that already exists

- When a copy of something becomes so detailed that its hard to differentiate from the original, how does this effect us?

- The hyper real - condition where it is impossible to access the real again, the copy takes control over reality

- Copies and produced by copies, and simulacra effects reality, as society gets more and more developed

- Simulacra has distinct stages, becomes more difficult to tell, real fades away

Disney Land


 

- Walt Disney took inspiration, when doing the drawings for sleeping beauties castle, from a real castle in Prague. It is a real place, and a real style (bohemian) of architecture. He saw this, and made drawings (simulacra), adding an extra aesthetic, a fairy tale, western version. In Disney Land there is a built version, a hyper real castle. These simulacra's are spread around the world. 

- The copy takes over, as people recognise the logo and the disney castle over the castle in Prague, as tourists visit this castle because it has inspired the disney castle

Christmas Markets

- The christmas markets in the UK started 13 years ago. They started because Germany was targeting people in the UK to come over to make more money. They have a german christmas market in Frankfurt. The markets were a simulacra of the German markets, but they added a bit of silliness and humour to make it seem more charming, such as with the fair grounds. These markets got really popular so now every city has a version of these christmas markets, so this is a copy of the copy in Manchester that began. The market in Birmingham has got so big that it is three times as big as the market in Frankfurt that it copied. The copy has got bigger than the original and more popular. The reality of it being a german market has been lost, it doesn't work in making you want to go to Frankfurt. 

- If you did go to Frankfurt you may be disappointed with the reality as it is not the same as the fiction, you would compare

- All of our lives are lived through images of things

- Our lives are meaningless cycles of fake sign value that we invest in 

New York City

- Do you think the manhattan skyline is romantic because you really think it is, or because you relate it to the films you have watched with romance in them?

- All films are simulacra's of reality

- Approaching the city through the copies of it

- Always think about what you know through images about a place

- Can we get an original idea of New York for ourselves or are we living through the myths

Ribena

- The flavour of Ribena is an artificial, sweet flavour that we have come to know as black currant, but if you taste a black currant it actually tastes nothing like this

- The copy has replaced reality

- This effects everything, from the way you think about the world

- We'd rather believe in the myth than try and find the reality

- The reality may be more bankrupt that the security of the image world

More examples

- Free Deirdre from Corrie, people got really upset about it even though it wasn't even real

- Spinal Tap, copy of already existing films in the real world, became a real band from copying others

- The spectacle of american disaster movies creates a situation where images replace reality and cause actual realities (hyper real)

- If you accept that nothing is real then what is the point? No answer to the question of hyper reality...

Jean Baudrillard and Postmodernism

Lecture 8 Notes


These are my lectures notes with added research and notes from the online handout and this was quite a difficult lecture to grasp the concept.

Objectives:

- Baudrillard's positions developed out of a Marxist critique of capitalism

- Baudrillard's analysis of advertising led him to argue that consumer's engagements with commodities had begun to function like a language

- Baudrillard extended this analyse into a fully blown theory of postmodernism

Notes:

- Throughout the late 1960s Jean Baudillard examined how the increased productive capacity of western nations in the post war era, and the rise of corresponding industries of marketing and advertising transformed the structure of consumer experience. 
- With the rise of consumer society, promotion and advertising began to take on a primary role in determining the commodity's value, and the consumer's disposition towards it. 

- B analysed the rise of mass media and thought our engagement with material reality had been superseded by a system of representations that saturate perceptions

- B's version of postmodernism was a hyper real world where what we call reality was embedded in simulacra


[Simulacrum (plural: simulacra) means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original.]

- In the matrix reality has been reduced to a blank white expanse. Neo questions the reality of the world he lives in.

- Simulacra - pure constructions relate to no reality outside themselves

- Post modern consumers sense the world around them is shaped by simulacra

- B's early writings were grounded in Marxism
- For Marx labour is our involvement with the world

- Labour is a concept which encompasses how we shape our environment through our industry

- Labour is the interaction between man and nature

- Man's relationship with his environment determines the character of his consciousness
- Industry generates products
- When products can become exchanged they are commodities

- Exchange value - each commodity weighed against other, based on quantity not qualitative value

- Expressed through abstraction of use value, one use value is the same as another, to which it is determined equivalent

- Once we have money our contact with the physical world becomes transformed

- Our relationship to the world becomes indirect

- Under capitalism a workers labour becomes a commodity that they must sell in order to live

- The labour you do you have to exchange for money, your salary, so we have to sell our selves in order to survive

- Alienates the worker from the product of his labour, separates

- His work becomes an object and it exists outside of him

- This disconnects the worker from the product

- The labour is valued not by its usefulness but by its ability to generate exchange

- A simple object becomes a commodity, changing into a thing which changes beyond its physical existence

- The transformation of production and consumption can be rooted in

- We could make production more efficient by making assembly lines

- Henry Ford car assembly line - mass production - individual tasks allotted to individual workers, involved cooperation of multiple workers who each contributed to the production of each car.

- The idea that workers have leisure time to consume the products of mass production - consuming the things we are now manufacturing

- Post-war boom in manufacturing lasted until early 1970's

- Demand needed to be made consistent, as so many of each product were being produced, so publicity and advertising were new industries creating adverts to sell these products

- Individual competing adverts sitting alongside one another, acting on the consumer as a system

- A language in itself which is always used to make the same proposal - to propose we transform our selves and our lives by buying something more. Every advert is saying the same thing to us. (John Berger - Ways of seeing chapter 7)

- Advertisements seek to address consumer desires and aspirations, rather than showing how the products might be useful to us

- The idea that a car can take on human characteristics - "no shrinking violet" - by buying the product we expect to place this characteristic on to the product
- The product is given a humanly symbolic exchange value

- Commodities are made equatable to desires and aspirations
- We think this is how we will find fulfilment

- The system of objects - B claimed that advertising codes products in a way that determines the consumers relationship with them

- Fitting object in to series - its meaning is transferred to the customer

- Focus groups such as in mad men [watch youtube video] were a common aspect of planning advertising campaigns - trying to construct your adverts by who you are trying to sell it too. Two rooms: interview room where the secretaries are made to feel relaxed, even lied to, so they will give honest opinions and another room behind one way glass are a team of advertising creatives who are looking at the consumers feelings in relation to the issues and products they are trying to address and how they might construct adverts around them

- Advertisers find ways to convince consumers that their products will make them happy

- Codified emotional connections generated by advertising props

- The act of buying is not a free form of exchange - two irreducible systems confront one another

- Constant demand for consumer goods as factories are making thousands, so people need to be convinced to keep buying the same things

- The advertising messages take on the character of a language
- Objects have social standings

- Needs disappear in to products

- Advertising is almost forcing needs to cohere very closely with products

- The department store - primary landscape of richness - products are arranged so the consumer distinguishes the differences in terms of needs, desires or fantasies

- The display window, manufacturer and brand name play a role in the collective vision

- Linguistic signs are made up of two parts - sound made with the vocal chords when speaking and the graphic marks that configure a word. Inseparable from the signifier is the signified.

- Consumers psychological attachments with the product are a collective system of signs
- B developed full theory of postmodernism

- In hyper reality images take on lives of their own and become templates for new realities
- Experience has become saturated by media imagery

- Disneyland prime examples of hyper real landscape

- Play of delusions, overtly fantastical environment within the park distracts attention from the environment outside of it
- The twin towers architectural designs ignored that of those buildings around them. They were free of reference to any reality outside of themselves.
- The explosions of 9/11 were strangely reminiscent of hollywood movie explosions
- B believes progress has come to a standstill

- American psycho quantity of product placements - so many products to generate his own identity [watch youtube video]
- His values are constructed through marketing
- The rise of the advertising industry shaped and regulated customer demand
- Advertisements re-iterate the prospect of happiness through consumption

- Replication of social reality has brought history to a standstill