The key theorists which I have based all of my contextual and conceptual research on for the essay, Baudrillard and Jameson, both agree that the utilisation of
devices such as imitation, duplication and pastiche contribute to the implosion
of meaning, the loss of referentials, and ultimately the manifestation of
hyperreality. For hundreds of years, new visual styles have infiltrated the
collective consciousness of the creative industries through aesthetic upheavals
lead by radical creative thinkers and makers. In order to progress from the place
that it currently resides, visual culture must experience a rebirth to prevent
itself from becoming its own total simulacrum, devoid of definitive style and
originality.
There is a current trend in some visual communication (graphic design and illustration) to make blatant and deliberate references to contemporary and past 'cultural items'. These cultural items include computer software, such as out dated web browsers and word editing programmes, mouse and pointer icons, computers themselves, old fashioned digital typefaces, patterns associated with the 80s and 90s and so on. These are obvious manifestations of pastiche, parody and simulation.
The French sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard concludes in his 1981 text ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ that “everywhere the Hyperrealism of simulation is translated by the hallucinatory resemblance of the real to itself”. Baudrillard made this rather radical observation in the later part of the 20th century, when mass media and more importantly, the Internet, had no influence over our creative industries. If he was feeling that way then and making those specific comments/predictions, I struggle to imagine how he would feel today if he were still alive.
I am an avid user of Tumblr and Pinterest, and throughout the course I have been saving a bank of visual work that I have come across online which to me, proves that are beginning to arrive at a stage of simulacrum within visual culture. I have come across a number of very interesting pieces of work which contain blatant use of pastiche and parody as well as sophisticated representations of simulations such as digital word documents and cursors from computer monitors. Below are a selection of the best images I came across, which directly link to the issues discussed in my COP2 essay:
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