![]() For the industrial simulacrum is not a counterfeit, but a product-since the image is fabricated, it has no referent in the world. The equivocations between truth and falsity or reality and appearance that had sustained the preindustrial simulacrum are absorbed by the liquidation of reality through the system of production, and with it, of reproduction. For the robot is regulated not by likeness but by equivalence it is not man’s analogue, conceived in his image, but his functional or “operative” adjunct. To the automaton the second order opposed the robot, a figure whose emergence is more than the signal of industrial connotations. The emblem of ressemblance was the automaton, conceived as the mechanical counterpart, the ideal figure, the “perfect double” of man. Nature underlies this configuration as the ultimate referent, and it was the aim of creating a parallel universe, echoing the natural world, that haunted the period, inspiring the great theatrical interiors and other examples of trompe l’oeil. Its structure corresponded to the classic sign, composed of signifier and signified, repeating its doubled arrangement in the substitution of reality’s image for the real. Thus the Renaissance counterfeit invoked the terms of the philosophy of representation, of the original, of ressemblance and faithful imitation. Most importantly, however, these changes mirror mutations in the structure of representation, which register the gradual loss of the real or objective world and with it of the notion of reference. The industrial simulacrum, however, diminishes on entry to our period, the postindustrial period, characterized by “simulacra of simulation” dominated by the code, the model, and the operational practices of the cybernetic world.Īs Baudrillard indicates, this shift from the stucco angel to computer graphics and synthetic hues is not fortuitous: it is historically determined, reflecting changes whose impact is felt in culture, politics, and economics. The avatar is not the crafted analogue of nature, singular in form, but the plural, reproducible forms of series-forms reflecting the growing importance of technique. In this second order, corresponding to the modern period, signs no longer refer to nature but to human production its models are the machine, energy, and the system of labor itself. ![]() Based on imitation, it was structured on the natural law of value with industrial development, it receded before the productivist order, patterned on market law. 2 The first, he writes, that of the counterfeit, was born with the Renaissance in a sign finding value in emulation of nature, posing the metaphysical question of reality against appearance. In the most extensive treatment of the subject to date, Jean Baudrillard distinguishes three orders of simulacra. Although the simulacrum’s dictionary definition stays constant as a “mere image, a specious imitation or likeness,” 1 the concept has shifted through time according to social relations and systems of power, and the signifying practices they imply. As phantasmatic phenomena, dispersed throughout contemporary culture and defining its allures, they suggest similarities to the shimmering masks of absence that go by the name of simulacra.įrom their conceptual origins, simulacra were instruments of illusion. These seductive, inherently spectacular forms are not, as before, glosses of meaning they do not hint at inner depths, silhouetting intent. ![]() “Sheer” images, “pure” surfaces emanate from the image mechanism, only to slither in the glamor of the void that constitutes consumer society, their external enchantments compensating for the loss of substantive matter. What was once the shaping power of thought, the purveyor of meaning, has become a kind of cybernetic machine, its overloaded circuits programmed to spew out scintillating visual forms. THE 20TH CENTURY HAS OBSERVED a striking reduction in the notion of the imagination. ![]()
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