Simulacrum
A simulacrum (pl.: simulacra or simulacrums, from Latin
Original Philosophy
Simulacra have long been of interest to philosophers. In his
French
Alain Badiou, in speaking with reference to Nazism about Evil, writes,[10] "fidelity to a simulacrum, unlike fidelity to an event, regulates its break with the situation not by the universality of the void, but by the closed particularity of an abstract set ... (the 'Germans' or the 'Aryans')".
According to the philosopher Florent Schoumacher,[11] in societies of hypermodernity, in the West, the social contract states that we are obliged to use “simulacra”. We are carried there by hubris (hubris). However, the contemporary notion of simulacrum assumes that we all have a biased relationship with the reality of the world, not because reality is not accessible, but because we wish not to see things as they appear. The philosopher nevertheless emphasizes that our capacity for aphairesis, our capacity for representing the world, does indeed exist.
Recreation
Recreational simulacra include
Caricature
An interesting example of simulacrum is caricature. When an artist produces a line drawing that closely approximates the facial features of a real person, the subject of the sketch cannot be easily identified by a random observer; it can be taken for a likeness of any individual. However, a caricaturist exaggerates prominent facial features, and a viewer will pick up on these features and be able to identify the subject, even though the caricature bears far less actual resemblance to the subject.
Iconography
Beer (1999: p. 11) employs the term "simulacrum" to denote the formation of a sign or iconographic image, whether
As artificial beings
Simulacra often appear in
- Automaton – A self-operating robot.
- Androids created to pass for human beings in several of Philip K. Dick's novels (called "simulacra" in We Can Build You, The Simulacra, Now Wait for Last Year, Clans of the Alphane Moon, The Penultimate Truth and "replicants" in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and its film adaptation Blade Runner).
- Avatar (computing) – A graphical representation of a user.
- Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio – A puppet that comes to life.
- Experience machine - A thought experiment put forward by Robert Nozick in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, in which any desirable experience can be simulated.
- Feathertop – A scarecrow created and brought to life by a witch.
- Frankenstein's Monster from Frankenstein – A creation of Victor Frankenstein made from various body parts. Frankenstein's Monster was also adapted in DC Comics and Marvel Comics.
- The Universal Pictures film Bride of Frankenstein featured the titular monster that was made by a collaboration of Henry Frankenstein and Doctor Septimus Pretorius.
- Fritz Lang's Metropolis – Featuring "Maria" the robotrix.
- Galatea from Metamorphoses – A statue of a female created by Pygmalion and brought to life by Aphrodite.
- Gargoyles – Statues sculpted to resemble monsters.
- Hatsune Miku and other Vocaloids.
- Holograms – Computerized images of anything.
- Homunculus – Small miniature humanoids created through alchemy.
- Jack Pumpkinhead - Princess Ozma's Tip form created him from a jack-o'-lantern and tree limbs.
- RUR – Originated the word robot.
- Neutrinos from Solaris – A race of creatures made from the memories of humans.
- Nomu – Creatures from My Hero Academia. Also known as "Artificial Humans", the Nomu are deceased humans whose bodies were altered and modified by Dr. Kyudai Garaki to hold more than one Quirk that was loaded into it by All For One. These mindless creations are used by the League of Villains and later its extended counterpart the Paranormal Liberation Front.
- Pintosmalto – A statue of a man-made from large amounts of sugar and sweet almonds, scented water, musk and amber, various jewels, gold thread, and above all a trough and a silver trowel who was brought to life by a Goddess of Love.
- Realm of the Mad God has several enemies stated to be simulacrums in-universe. Most notably, the incarnation of Oryx the Mad God that the player fights in Oryx's Chamber is explicitly stated by Oryx to not be his real form. In addition, the versions of various bosses fought in the "Mad God Mayhem" dungeon are all stated to be simulacrums, and the version of Dr. Terrible fought in the Mad Lab is stated to be a simulacrum in additional media.
- Robots
- Simulacrum Soldier – Robotic soldiers with human minds employed by both the IMC and Frontier Militia in the Titanfall universe. While they bear a superficial resemblance to the commonly-fielded BRD-01 Spectre, Simulacra are instead human minds uploaded into robotic bodies. A simulacrum can be considered a form of transhumanism.
- Revenant – An example from its spinoff, Apex Legends, a playable Legend who possesses a mind of a former human hitman.
- Ash - Also an example, present in both Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends.
- Simulacrum Spell – An illusion spell from Dungeons & Dragons that creates a partially real duplicate of someone, though it only has half the power and abilities of the original.
- Snegurochka – A little girl made of snow.
- Mephisto and programmed by the Power Elite so that Phil Coulsoncan have them be a United States-sponsored superhero team.
- Terracotta Army – Terracotta sculptures of the armies of Qin Shi Huang.
- The Gingerbread Man – A gingerbread man that came to life.
- The character John Dough was also a gingerbread man that came to life.
- The Golem of Jewish folklore – A creation of a rabbi made from clay that was harvested from the banks of the Vltava.
- Thumbelina – A small girl created by a witch.
- Ushabti – Egyptian figurines.
- Vasilisa the Beautiful – A doll that came to life.
- Wirehead (science fiction) - A hypothetical futuristic application of brain stimulation reward where pleasure is artificially induced.
Also, the illusions of absent loved ones created by an alien life form in
Architecture
Architecture is a special form of simulacrum.
In his book Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard describes the Beaubourg effect in which the Pompidou Centre functions as a monument of a mass simulation that absorbs and devours all the cultural energy from its surrounding areas. According to Baudrillard, the Centre Pompidou is "a machine for making emptiness".[16]
An everyday use of the simulacrum are the false facades, used during renovations to hide and imitate the real architecture underneath it.
A Potemkin village is a simulation: a facade meant to fool the viewer into thinking that he or she is seeing the real thing. The concept is used in the Russian-speaking world as well as in English and in other languages. Potemkin village belongs to a genus of phenomena that proliferated in post-Soviet space. Those phenomena describe gaps between external appearances and underlying realities.[17]
Disneyland – Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulacra. [...] Play of illusions and phantasms.[18]
Las Vegas – the absolute advertising city (of the 1950s, of the crazy years of advertising, which has retained the charm of that era.)[19]
See also
- Memetics
- Simulacra and Simulation
- Simulated reality
- Metaverse
References
- ^ "Word of the Day". dictionary.com. 1 May 2003. Archived from the original on 17 February 2007. Retrieved 2 May 2007.
- ^ "simulacrum" The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 1993
- ^ a b Massumi, Brian. "Realer than Real: The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari." Archived 23 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 2 May 2007
- ^ Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulations. transl. Sheila Faria Glaser. "XI. Holograms." Archived 27 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 5 May 2010
- ^ Plato. The Sophist. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Archived from the original on 30 December 2005. Retrieved 2 May 2007.
- ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich (1888). "Reason in Philosophy". Twilight of the Idols. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. Archived from the original on 26 April 2007. Retrieved 2 May 2007.
- ^ Baudrillard Simulacra retrieved 2 May 2007. Archived 9 February 2004 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Deleuze, Gilles (1968). Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. Columbia: Columbia University Press. p. 69.
- ^ p. 299.
- ^ Badiou, Alain (2001). Ethics - An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Translated by Peter Hallward. London: Verso. p. 74.
- ^ Schoumacher, Florent (2024). Eîdolon: Simulacre et hypermodernité. Paris: Balland.
- ^ Baudrillard, Jean. transl. Francois Debrix. Liberation. 4 March 1996. "Disneyworld Company." Archived 27 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 5 May 2010.
- ^ Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. Reproduced in relevant portion at "The City of Robots" Archived 12 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 2 May 2007
- ^ Cypher, Jennifer and Eric Higgs. "Colonizing the Imagination: Disney's Wilderness Lodge". Archived 4 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 2 May 2007
- ISBN 978-1-57062-416-2.
- ^ Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. University of Michigan Press. p. 43. ISBN 9780472065219.
- ISBN 978-1-107-05417-2, retrieved 5 May 2022
- ^ Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. University of Michigan Press. p. 10. ISBN 9780472065219.
- ^ Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. University of Michigan Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780472065219.