Hyperreality

Jean Baudrillard sees in today’s simulation the model ‘of a real but without origin or reality: a hyperreal’. With the hyperreal, the individual is unable to distinguish what is real and what is not. In this article, I argue how the pervasiveness of media, in the form of mobile phones, tablets with their applications and social networking sites, singularly or in unison create and sustain the existence of the hyperreal. They succeed at once through an imagined call for urgency and an implosion of meaning that cannot be contained. This type of media is a priori a form of simulation, and has not only erased the boundaries that exit between the real and the unreal but has also developed as a site accountable for continual deference of the being-in-theworld, forcing on the latter a perpetual existence in the hyperreal.

Starting from a discussion of Chris Marker's "La Jetée" and Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys", I introduce the problem of the truth-value accredited to photographic images known as the documentary paradigm. I maintain that the mainstream philosophy of photography has been able to build and defend that paradigm via the ideological exclusion of an enormous amount of possible photographs. The recent achievements of automated generative imaging oblige a retrospective comparative analysis. This essay introduces two new concepts: "digigraphy" and "photosimile." I propose to name digigraphy those digital pictures produced by a computer without the need of an optical apparatus – still necessary for digital photography – and characterized by the steadiness of production (comparable to the "shot"), reproduction, and diffusion. The creation of a digigraph does not imply the operations of an expert; rather, digigraphy is deemed to become a medium even more accessible and widespread than digital photography. I introduce the concept of photosimile to identify those digigraphs, which are, for the human eye, indistinguishable from a photograph or a digital photograph. I continue forecasting a split into the human use of photographic images: on the one hand, the documentary value will remain crucial for the automated operations of machine vision such as data mining, management, and control. On the other, the communicative and expressive values of photographic images will survive into the new form of digigraphy.

Film noir is a genre that is essentially conflicted: not only does it have both love and death at its essence, but it is also a story about impending failure enveloped in style, beauty and smoke. This contradictory core is also reflected in a number of ways in the paradoxes of one of the most prominent noir games of recent years, the appropriately titled L.A. Noire (Team Bondi and Rockstar Games, 2011): the seemingly open world contradicts the linear narrative and, while the gameworld is firmly rooted in a meticulously researched historical past, it is also heavily stylized and grounded in a cinematic legacy. This is also reflected in the music of the game: along with the original soundtrack composed by Andrew and Simon Hale (with additional songs written by The Real Tuesday Weld), borrowed music helps place the game both in a particular place and time and in a particular genre. In this article, I explore the multiple functions that music plays in L.A. Noire, acting as temporal signifier but also reflecting the themes and tropes of film noir. Finally, I argue that Baudrillard’s concept of the hyperreal can be used to better understand how appropriated music in video games relates to music history.

This paper explores the curious issue of crowd noise on "live" records.  What does it mean to call a recording "live"?  When we hear a crowd road through speakers, who is the performer and who is the audience?  Using Baudrillard's notion of hyperreality and Auerbach's juxtaposition of the mythic vs. the legendary, this paper posits a typology of crowd noise.

This paper will use the concept of hyperreality to compare the so-called ideal state described by ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi with the world of The Truman Show. The concept of hyperreality is defined by Jean Baudrillard as the generation by models of a real without origin or reality. A hyperreal world is a simulation, or kind of a copy without its original. It is generally accepted, and confirmed by Baudrillard himself, that the world of The Truman Show is hyperreal. In order to compare Laozi’s ideal state with the world of the film, this paper will give a hyperrealist interpretation of the former, which will be only hypothetical, without intending to substitute any other existing interpretations. Laozi imagines that people live simple lives, with few desires and without traveling to other places. If we accept that the ideal state is a hyperreal world, we can make comparison between the two worlds; find out their similarities, as well as differences.

Read at: https://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=92329

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, he tells the story of Nick Carraway and his relationships with the wealthy socialites of East and West Egg. The character Jay Gatsby as well as some of the other prominent characters exemplify one of the inherent tragedies that the American dream can produce. These characters proliferate the idea that success can be defined by monetary gains and material acquisition with the notion that one must pull oneself up by their own bootstraps through isolation and competition. Gatsby is the embodiment of this and has achieved this rags to riches dream. This paper focuses on Jay Gatsby in particular because in his quest to fulfill the American dream and accomplish his own goals, he projects a reality greater than himself.

Developments in materialism during the 19th century paved the way for atheism and a deconstruction of religion. However, the work of Ludwig Feuerbach whose theory of religion as a projection of human nature into an objectified form provided a basis for Marx & Engels’s materialism was largely contained from further study by their as well as Stirner’s criticism, which objected to the abstracted form that the concepts of religion and human nature assume in his work. I propose appropriating Baudrillard’s concept of simulation and hyperreality as a way of explaining the abstracted nature of these concepts while remaining committed to an empirical approach that focuses on the representational aspects of religion.

There is an elementary dichotomy that has been created as a result of an elementary date in American history. November 22, 1963 was a sunny day in Dallas before the crisp blue sky transformed into the sardonic backdrop for one of the American century’s most notorious incidents. The deadly shots fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade transformed the afternoon’s cheerful mood into a state of permanent national trauma and cultural disruption that has not only permeated the roots of the postmodern age, but has frequently been described as one of its founding pillars. In fact, the assassination of John F. Kennedy has elicited an “aberration in the heartland of the real” (DeLillo 15) as it challenged our perception of a coherent social and cultural reality, fragmenting in its wake the ideology of an apposite framework of historical cohesion and causality where we can no longer expect “the future to make as much sense as the past” (23).  As a result, a plethora of different versions of reality about the “seven seconds that broke the back of the American century” (181) have materialized. These span across conspiracy theories accusing the CIA, FBI, military-industrial complex, Cuban hit men, or the mafia, to the official historical reality laid down in the Warren Report blaming the Marxist “lone gunman” Lee Harvey Oswald and leaving us with a number of dichotomies that are similarly plain and clear as said November day’s skies, yet at the same time equivalent to an impenetrable web of secrets. However, as the novel Libra suggests, JFK’s assassination not only confronted our culture with the improbable task of selecting between the basic antinomies of contingency versus conspiracy and objective order versus secret manipulation. Conversely, through its narrative structure, characterization, and symbolism Don DeLillo’s Libra (1988) uncovers coincidence and randomness as the hidden intersection between the dubious official reality of the Kennedy assassination, and the vast dimension of supposedly fictional conspiracy surrounding this traumatic event.

This paper explores hyperreal spatial experiences produced through the dialectics of original and copy in terms of object, atmosphere, and public space. It focuses on two collaborative projects by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), namely Danish Expo Pavilion and Superkilen Urban Park; yet begins by unpacking the authenticity of Denmark’s national symbol, the Little Mermaid Statue - a continuous target of vandalism.

El concepto de “hiperrealidad sonora” fue acuñado per el neuro-científico y músico Daniel Levitin en 2006 para definir aquellas “impresiones sensoriales que nunca tendríamos verdaderamente en el mundo real". Desde la perspectiva propuesta por Levitin, la noción sonora de lo hiperreal se desmarca del concepto de hiperrealidad empleado en ocasiones por la semiótica post-estructuralista (Braudillart, Borgmann o Eco) y abre un camino hacia el análisis de las capacidades creativas de la producción sonora. Tal propuesta encuentra en teóricos como Simon Frith, Paul Théberge o Simon Zagosky-Thomas un claro antecedente para el estudio la tecnología como herramienta creativa capaz de generar sonoridades hiperreales que son aceptadas como naturales por el consumidor.
Sin embargo, des de la musicología no existen apenas aproximaciones que nos permitan una disección profunda de los elementos que a lo largo de los últimos sesenta años dibujan la evolución de la hiperrealidad sonora en el pop. La presente comunicación plantea un recorrido diacrónico a través de los procedimientos de producción de audio que han ido contribuyendo poco a poco a una conceptualización social del sonido hiperreal: desde los primeros overdubs experimentales de Les Paul y Mary Ford a las actuales texturas imposibles de Daft Punk, pasando por la progresiva aceptación de planos sonoros acústicamente inverosímiles a través de las técnicas de simulación espacial, panoramización, y compresión dinámica. A partir de este recorrido histórico se plantea una propuesta inicial para la clasificación de distintos tipos de hiperrealidad sonora en el marco de la música pop.

The Window to the Soul : Eyes in Art History
(from Painting to Photography / from Da Vinci to Korda) by Vladimir Alexander Smith​/ Abstract
According to scientists: “the eyes really are a window to the soul, patterns in the iris can give an indication of whether we are warm and trusting or neurotic and impulsive.” What about in Art? "what is of interest to us - said Pablo Picasso - is the drama of the man that lies behind the eyes." what is the Soul? it can refer to both the immaterial and material aspects of humanity.  Indeed, the word “soul” means “life” and the eagerness to sin. The many interpretations and experiences of the artist involve both the eye and the mind, imagination and reality. In other words, the optical is intimately related to the subconscious. The present paper is a compilation of “the eyes” in Art history.

A reading of gendered violence, body horror, "hyperreality," and postmodern cinematic nostalgia in Quentin Tarantino's 'Death Proof' through Jean Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulation' and 'America' as well as Gilles Deleuze's "Coldness and Cruelty" ('Masochism').

This thesis examines the ways in which political journalists in the USA and UK talk about issues of truth and power as it relates to journalism’s role as the Fourth Estate. The theoretical basis comes from a critique of the two major structures underpinning the Fourth Estate, that of epistemology (the study of truth) and ideology (broadly, the study of power and ideas). This involves unpacking and critically examining the ability of news media to convey ‘true’ information and the ideological formations in which the news media production practice is situated. The epistemological theories of Realism, Pragmatism, Antirealism and Hyperrealism will first be elucidated in an in-depth theoretical discussion, focusing on the contributions of Baudrillard. Four major theories of ideology, that of personal ideological bias, chaos, control, and ideology as fetishistic disavowal will be examined, this time focusing on the work of Žižek.
This theoretical discussion is complimented by an analysis of interview questions relating to epistemological concerns and to ideology. The empirical data consists of twenty interviews conducted with political correspondents in the USA and UK. A version of critical discourse analysis is used to examine the ways in which journalists talk about the issues raised by the questions, what is termed their ‘discursive strategies.’ The categories for analysis are grounded in the discursive strategies used by the journalists themselves, examined to elaborate not simply the explicit content, but the deeper implicit meanings inherent in the way they answer.
This provided both an original theoretical discussion and an original set of empirically-derived data. It also allows us to further understand the role of journalism as the Fourth Estate, the types of ‘truth’ it brings to us, the types of ideologies that underpin the news production process via news media professionals, and how the system is maintained despite its inherent contradictions.

The apolitical terrorism performed by fashion supermodels in Bret Easton Ellis’s novel Glamorama (1998) negotiates the epistemological and physical insecurities of a globalized world, and explores the hidden links between the systemic violence of a hyperreal empire of consumer culture and spectacular acts of symbolic, terrorist violence. As embodiments of the “society of spectacle,” the models’ bodies represent the locus where systemic and symbolic violence converge and where the belief system of politics is replaced by the market technologies of biopolitics. Constantly shifting between different levels of fictionality, Glamorama portrays the terrorist as a self that has become its own mediatized, violent Other in the self-destructive, total space of capitalism. Linking this logic to the writings of Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and Guy Debord, I argue that Glamorama paradoxically locates the terror of the Other deep in our own cultural scripts of a global risk society.

In the present essay we will try to convey weather Baudrillard theories of simulacra and hyperreality, as exposed in the article Disneyworld Company , remain valid when consuming Disney products by comparing them with one of the latest Disney blockbusters, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

In " The Crying of Lot 49 " (1966), Thomas Pynchon depicts a world in which numerous messages are recurrently generated via simulations and the proliferation of signs increases so incessantly that the original aim of their production is eventually overlooked. The protagonist of the novel is constantly bombarded by an ever-increasing excess of information that makes her life chaotic, seeing that the more she attempts to find out answers to the puzzling questions raised in her mind, the more she gets lost in a net of seemingly associated but actually unrelated data. Suffering from the consequent uncertainty and perplexity, she gradually reaches a state of indifference which is considered in this article an entropic and hence apocalyptic state. Moreover it is discussed here that by exposing the fictional, hyper-real replications of catastrophic historical events of the twentieth century in his novel, Pynchon deviates from the traditional view of history as a linear movement, and envisages an approaching apocalypse for the world. These points are discussed in this article with regard to Baudrillard's theories of " Simulacra and Simulation " and " The End of History " to attest " The Crying of Lot 49 " as an apocalyptic text.

Today a new trend is clearly discernable, that of ‘hyper-real religions’. These are innovative religions and spiritualities that mix elements of religious traditions with popular culture. If we imagine a spectrum of intensity of the merging of popular culture with religion, we might find, at one end, groups practicing Jediism appropriated from the Star Wars movies, Matrixism from the Matrix trilogy, and neo-pagan rites based on stories from The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series. At the other end of the spectrum, members of mainstream religions, such as Christianity can be influenced or inspired by, for example, The Da Vinci Code. Through various case studies, this book studies the on- and off-line religious/spiritual consumption of these narratives through a social scientific approach.

If there were a philosopher who could perfectly fit Black Mirror's writer's room, it would undoubtedly be Jean Baudrillard. His postmodern interpretation of the world-especially his concern about the media and high-tech phenomena-makes him the perfect theorist to understand the television series Black Mirror. Baudrillard presents a myriad of concepts to explain how modernity has changed the way we conceive the world and modified the illusion of our existence. For its theme and approached, Charlie Brooker's drama offers a fruitful field of exploration of all the concepts that Baudrillard dealt with and the social behaviors that, in a certain way, he forecast. Black Mirror not only allows for the exploration of Baudrillard's theories -it also provides a methodological approach to the production, proving that Baudrillard's thinking has a direct application to current societal practices.

Chapter from "Handbook of Hyper-real Religions" on Matrixism.

Edited by Adam Possamai, University of Western Sydney
In this essay I draw upon the proposal of Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe regarding the significance of myth in understanding new religions, coupled with the work of other scholars who suggest that science fiction is an especially significant source of mythic inspiration for our time. Then I consider how science fiction mythic narratives provide new religions like Matrixism with the imaginative tools necessary to engage in practices similar to more traditional religions. By drawing upon Jennifer Porter’s exploration of fan participation at Star Trek conventions as a form of pilgrimage in fulfillment of an embodied ideal, combined with the thesis of Roger Aden on participation in imaginative narratives of alternative worlds that allow adherents to transcend and critique the habitus of daily life as well as grand narratives of culture, I will suggest that the symbolic pilgrimage of Matrixism parallels pilgrimage as found in more traditional religions, yet also differs in that they take place primarily in the realm of the sacred imagination.

In The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Thomas Pynchon depicts a world in which numerous messages are recurrently generated via simulations and the proliferation of signs increases so incessantly that the original aim of their production is eventually overlooked. The protagonist of the novel is constantly bombarded by an ever-increasing excess of information that makes her life chaotic, seeing that the more she attempts to find out answers to the puzzling questions raised in her mind, the more she gets lost in a net of seemingly associated but actually unrelated data. Suffering from the consequent uncertainty and perplexity, she gradually reaches a state of indifference which is considered in this article an entropic and hence apocalyptic state. Moreover it is discussed here that by exposing the fictional, hyper-real replications of catastrophic historical events of the twentieth century in his novel, Pynchon deviates from the traditional view of history as a linear movement, and envisages an approaching apocalypse for the world. These points are discussed in this article with regard to Baudrillard’s theories of “Simulacra and Simulation” and “The End of History” to attest The Crying of Lot 49 as an apocalyptic text.

The outset of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2004) presents the global annihilation of the whole human race, with the survival of only one human and some “dehumanized” humans created by a young scientist. Then the pre-apocalyptic world of the novel is depicted through recollections of that survived human – a globalized community dominated by multinational corporations whose thirst for profit seems inexhaustible, thus employ several scientists to invent new technological products to bring in more returns for them. These scientists manipulate reality by engendering lab-made creatures that are produced via bioengineering. Besides their fabrication of “hyper-reality,” the mass media perpetually provoke various desires in people by advertizing the products of those scientists, so that more revenue could be obtained for those corporations and their power could be upheld. Everything seems to be available by the means of technology in this illusive, consuming world manipulated by scientists and mass media. The writers of this article present a Baudrillardian reading of Atwood’s speculative fiction to illustrate how the “simulation” of reality by scientists and media at the service of capitalists might bring about the extinction of humankind – presented by Atwood as the probable end of a world ruled by capitalism.

Within the technological terrain we now inhabit, the idea of the subject began to disappear. The subject, as “he” and “she” has been reduced to a consumer and an object who has a deep nostalgia for the past as s/he cannot grapple with the organization of his/her coherent existence in the postmodern consumer society since technological systems have come to regulate almost the whole of their existence. This nostalgia is an escape from the postmodern loop since it closes the subject’s end. In the twenty-first century, as a post-industrial society, many postmodernist theorists and critics point out that contact with reality or the real has been disconnected and lost. The dominant consumerism and proliferation of simulacra have come to define reality or the real. Contemporary American writer Don DeLillo’s White Noise explores how the Americans have resorted to an unreal life to consumption and how they relentlessly pursue a quasi-salvation in the supermarkets as quasi-sacred places, and how they are erased in these environments. Baudrillard, McLuhan, and Zygmunt Bauman will constitute the theoretical backbone of the paper.

Key-words: Don DeLillo, hyperreality, simulacra, techno-culture, consumer society.

In this paper, I extend Malonfalean’s close reading by focusing on how Boku and Watashi struggle against the entropy around them brought about by hyper-reality. I highlight this struggle in two ways, both of which will explain how Boku and Watashi succeed in their struggles by becoming “asymptotically immortal.” The first way is by focusing on their experiences in the third space described by Malonfalean, with emphasis on the role of memories in preserving fragments of the self. The second way is by focusing on Murakami’s narrative structure of the novel, namely, the juxtaposition of the plot of Hard-boiled Wonderland with the plot of End of the World.  Here, I argue that the novel is a postmodern rendition of the Japanese monogatari (tale), a traditional literary form in Japanese literature that was born from the quiet struggles of the lower social classes in Heian-period society.

In this article, I aim to showcase the emergence of the so-called Ancient Astronaut Discourse (AAD) out of religious discourse as well as its continued religious functions despite all differences and pretensions to the contrary (i.e., the concerted effort to resemble legitimate or even superior science, specifically historiography and archaeology). In a second step, I sketch a concise literary history of this emergence itself, as well as the continuous mutual influence between the AAD and the realm of popular culture. This complex intertwinement is exemplified via the rather spectacular case of the "Stargate" science fiction franchise which adapted popular themes and theories from the AAD (in particular its Egyptian front focusing on the pyramids) in the mid-90s. With the success of the movie and the subsequent television shows, the direction of the influence then became strangely reversed: The eponymous Stargate device became integrated into AAD narratives, its fictional origins being silently dropped or explained away by conspiracy theories. I try to account for this development by a methodical approach in the vein of recent studies on fiction-based religions as well as Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality and simulacra. Throughout all these observations, we encounter an imaginary Egypt as providing both the primary building blocks and the general backdrop of ancient mystery from and upon which the AAD's flying pyramids are built.

The postmodern era marks a trajectory of disenchantment and skepticism towards Western meta-narratives and pre-established truths. Various tenets of Enlightenment rationality, such as the existence of objective realities and absolute truth, were exceptionally questioned by the postmodern philosophy. The latter seeks to assert that knowledge and truth are the product of social, cultural, and political systems, and as such, they are merely contextual and vary in many degrees. Postmodern philosophers, such as the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard, sought to explain that living in the postmodern age does not involve talking about such things as the self (under siege) or reality, because such subjects no longer exist. Baudrillard, however, does not deny the existence of the self or reality, but he asserts that those two things have been replaced and undermined by technology and an excess of information. The intentions of this paper is to aptly explicate Baudrillard’s theories of ‘reality’ (what he calls hyperreality) and simulation, and to show in what way Jean Baudrillard traces the trajectory of the postmodern.

"On Sunday mornings from 25 January 1987 to 31 July 1988 between eighty and one hundred million Indians watched Ramayan, a 78-episode television series directed by Ramanand Sagar (Kumar 2006, 38). This was a realisation of the Ramayana, one of India’s most loved stories, an epic regarded as smrti (“that which is recollected”) scripture, and was shown on Doordarshan (the national broadcaster, founded in 1959). Though derided by critics for its gaudy costumes, extremely slow narrative pace, and low-quality special effects (Lutgendorf 1990, 144-147) Ramayan evoked spontaneous outbursts of popular piety and became an important focus of devotion, with viewers performing purification rituals before the programme began and adorning television sets with flowers and incense, consecrating them as altars (Mitchell 2005, 2).

This chapter argues that Ramayan concretised a religious and aesthetic vision that was deeply imbricated with Hindu nationalism, and that its enthusiastic viewers received it religiously in their daily lives. Watching television became for many a religious act, and personal devotion to the actors playing the gods emerged as a form of popular piety. Ritual and practice marked out Ramayan-watching as an act of worship. It is argued that the cinematic and televisual media were peculiarly appropriate vehicles for the experience of the divine within the Indian religious context. This is partly because Hinduism lacks explicit distinctions between this world and the otherworld, and between the gods and human beings. First, the development of the genre of mythological films in India is sketched and the Sagar Ramayan is contextualised within this genre. Then the ways in which Ramayan represents a source of popular-culture mediated religion are examined, and these new devotional forms are linked back to traditional Hindu understandings of darśan (seeing the divine) and bhakti (loving devotion). Finally, the imbrication of this televisual piety with Hindu nationalist politics is reviewed. The chapter concludes that the hyper-reality of this religious form was only imperfectly realized, in that the popular cultural rituals supplemented rather than disestablished traditional ritual."

دراسة لمفهوم الواقع الفائق Hyperreality ، لدى الفيلسوف الفرنسي جان بودريار، وهو محاولة لبيان التأثير الأيديولوجي لوسائل الإعلام والاتصال الحديثة، وخاصة للصورة
تتناول الدراسة الوظائف الأيديولوجية لعصر الصورة، وتوضح نقد الفيلسوف الفرنسي جان بودريار للتأثير المزيف الذي تمارسه وسائل الاتصال الحديثة، إذ تعمل هذه الوسائل على صنع واقع افتراضي يتصف بظهوره على أنه أكثر واقعية من الواقع الحقيقي، أي "واقع فائق" Hyper-reality. وتعد هذه النظرية استمراراً لنقد ماركس لصنمية السلع Fetishism of Commodities، لكن الصنمية في عصر الصورة هي صنمية الصورة ذاتها، باعتبارها بديلاً عن الواقع الحقيقي الذي يحل محله بالكامل.

All framing devices have the effect of sharply demarcating the boundaries of the representational space by ensuring both the island-like structure of pictures and the beholder’s awareness of being in front of ‘nothing but images.’ It is precisely this separateness, and, with it, the equation of representation with depiction, that is being more and more challenged by hyperrealistic, immersive, and interactive virtual environments that blur the threshold between image and reality, thus eliciting in the experiencer a strong feeling of being incorporated into quasi-real worlds. Drawing on phenomenology, media philosophy, visual culture studies and techno-aesthetics, this book introduces (and critically examines) the notion of 'unframing' as a key to understanding this radically new iconoscape.