That is to say that simulation as per Jean Baudrillard becomes the essence of mediation. The hyperreal is the world of simulation and simulacra The hyperreal is that which is “always already reproduced. Simulation, as per the Oxford English Dictionary, is dead. This is the level of the clone, not equivalent to man, but rather a hyperreal variant. It is no longer possible to tell the difference between what is real and it’s simulation.
What is present in this order is the ultimate collapse between reality and the imaginary. This is the level of the robot, more real than the automaton, but not quite human.ģ) The third order of simulacra rests on ultimate simulation. Signs refer to the differentiation between the represented signifieds, not to reality. In this order signs become repetitive and begin to make individuals the same. This is the realm of the automaton, the obvious fake that plays with reality.Ģ) The second order of simulacra is dominated by production of these false images. That is to say that the focus is placed on the sign rather than on what it is intended to represent. Instead the sign becomes more important than the physical.
In this level, signs cease to have obligatory meanings. In this instance the sign no longer refers to that which it is obligated to refer to, but rather to produced signifieds.
Baudrillard’s orders of simulacra exist as follows:ġ) The first order of simulacra focuses on counterfeits and false images. These simulations exist to fool us into thinking that an identifiable reality exists. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.Īccording to Baudrillard the world, as we know it now, is constructed on the representation of representations. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers’ lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, “hyperreal” terms. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. Baudrillard calls this the “order of sorcery”, a regime of semantic algebra where all human meaning is conjured artificially to appear as a reference to the (increasingly) hermetic truth.Ĥ) The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.ģ) The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. “Simulacra and Simulation” breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:ġ) The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct, that a sign is a “reflection of a profound reality” (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called “the sacramental order”.Ģ) The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we come to believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which “masks and denatures” reality as an “evil appearance-it is of the order of maleficence”.
This is a historical process.Īccording to Baudriallard, the world is constructed on the representation of representations. Ultimately the simulacra is indistinguishable from the real. They are orders of simulation that progress until the difference between the true and false has collapsed. In effect the orders of simulacra functions as a process whereby total simulacra is achieved. The orders of simulacra increase as it becomes less and less possible to trace the origins of the simulations.
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