Academic literature on the topic 'Hyperreality'

This thesis chronicles an attempt to delve into the murky world of image and semblance, illusion and contrivance. The examination and especially the celebration of image and style--of simulation--throughout recent cultural debate is incisively expressed through the framework of popular culture. Walt Disney World, as a cultural artifact and profit-making commodity, is the consummate model of all the entangled processes of popular culture: a turbulent melange of aesthetic, ethical, and sociological concerns.<br>America is Disney World; borne of fantasy and ubiquitous iconism. Our cultural atlas reverberates with the energy of cinematic, pulsating and seductive imagery; restrained and unfulfilled by the voyeuristic stance of the pseudo-event.<br>This study registers a pilgrimage into the shadows of our own creative aspirations: how can we engage in exploring new possibilities for architectural making, addressing imaginatively and ethically the rupture of the fabric symbolically connecting the actor and the drama?

My Bachelor’s thesis is a comparative analysis between humans and machines in a science fiction novel (Neuromancer) and a movie (Matrix). I explored in these works how the machines used technologies to influence on the humans. I used examples of characters from the text and movie along with the references of other writers writing on the same topic to help convey my message. I explored mainly the identity and reality issues among characters. William Gibson in Neuromancer portrays that technology has become a part of human body. While in the Matrix we see how machines are taking control on humans. In my thesis I started with Neuromancer and write about identity and reality issues of characters and artificial intelligences. In the second part of the thesis I write the same with the characters of the movie Matrix but also I compared these characters with characters of Neuromancer. Some other discussions in my thesis are about hyperreality, simulation, simulacra with reference to mostly Baudrillard. Overall this thesis explores the issues of identity and reality to the characters in the works and also to the readers as well. Key Terms: Identity, Reality, Hyperreality, Simulation, Simulacra.

Television's role in American presidential politics is significant; sixty percent of the American people identify television as their sole soure of news. Thus, a presidential candidate must do his best to appear favorably in the media. Some scholars have suggested that this involves the creation of an "image" which appeals to the electorate, even to the exent of creating the appearance of a "reality" unsupported by known facts. <p> We continue to explore the creation of these televisual images with the assistance of some insights made by a controversial french social theorist, Jean Baudrillard. Applying his ideas of hyperreality, simulation, "will to spectacle," fate, and power to Bill Clinton's 1992 appearance on 60 Minutes (in which he denys allegations of an affair with Geniffer Flowers) and that year's Democratic National Convention film, The Man from Hope, we corroborate the "image making" aspects of theories purported by Tim Luke and Joanne Morreale. However, we also suggest that the televisual images generated by the presidential campaign satisfy more than the candidate's political aspirations, they also fulfill a social demand for reality's production. Furthermore, we find that difficulties determining an image's meaning suggest that its appeal to the electorate is based more on "sentiment" than its ability to construct a comprehensive, consistent representation of reality. These arguments are then summarily applied to Monica Lewinsky's introduction into political discourse in late January and early February 1998.<br>Master of Arts

There is a beauty to the absurdity of the moment at which there is almost no line between the real and the unreal. In such realm, an illusion, and yet the possibility, of a tower acts as a protagonist with which one can begin to let his imagination approve of the absurd, the too ambitious, the unlikely. The first nine towers are the outcome of my attempt to intertwine two arenas of photography and architecture. They investigate the possibility of compressing the reality of a place into a hyperreal image consisting of a photograph of the place, which acts as the site, and a fantastical addition. They also aim to document and express my memories of the places that I visited during my more than 15,000 miles of traveling over the past year. Each tower is an homage to the memory of its respective place.<br>Master of Architecture

In this study Disneyland is analysed as a model for the creation of an aesthetic of Postmodern consumer culture, hyperreality and semiotic content. It explores Postmodern society and its visual art preferences, whilst revealing an ubiquitous aesthetic for Postmodern spectator-consumers as actors on the proverbial Postmodern stage. The various manifestations of 'Disneyfied' consumerism, hyperreality and semiotic content collectively reveal a society saturated with mass media produced imagery and messages. In this milieu, this study explores the responsibilities as well as opportunities that are presented to the artist via a Disneyland aesthetic. These include the awareness of stereotypic information in the mass media, the exercise of responsible choice over complacent spectatorship, the celebration of newly acquired imagery, as well as the discovery of richer semiotic essences that assist a society in redefining itself. The central fear of an Orwellian 'Big Brother' syndrome and entertainment or mass media bombardment, indicates a central problem in Postmodern society. In this connection, spectator-consumers are saturated with American cultural goods via imagery, mass media messages, and fabricated 'hyperrealities' which are regarded as master narratives. The final emphasis is placed on responsible choice and meditated comprehension of personal spectatorship, as well as the manifestation of the latent power of mass media in the Information Revolution era.<br>AFRIKAANS : Hierdie studie ondersoek Disneyland as 'n model vir 'n estetiek van Postmoderne verbruikerskultuur, hiperrealiteit en semiotiese inhoude. Dit stel ondersoek in na die Postmoderne gemeenskap se spesifieke visuele kuns voorkeure, terwyl dit 'n onvermydelike estetika vir die Postmoderne toeskouer-verbruiker as protagonis in die Postmoderne milieu bied. Die onderskeie manifestasies van 'Disneyland-tipe' verbruik, hiperrealiteit en semiotiese inhoude skets 'n gemeenskap wat gelei word deur beeldmateriaal en boodskappe wat in die massa media voorkom. Hierdie arena bied vir die visuele kunstenaar sekere verantwoordelikhede en moontlikhede. Die studie weerspieel die wyse waarop die kunstenaar bewus moet bly van stereotipiese data wat in die massa media tentoongestel word, verantwoordelike keuses in plaas van blote passiewe toeskouerskap moet beoefen en nuwe jukstaplasings van beelde moet aanmoedig sodat waardevolle semiotiese essensies nuutgevonde definisie aan 'n gemeenskap kan gee. Die sentrale vrees vir Amerikaans-georienteerde media en vermaaklikheids oorheersing bly kommerwekkend in die Postmoderne gemeenskap. Toeskouer-verbruikers word deurgaans oorval met Amerikaanse kulturele goedere in die vorm van beelde, massa media boodskappe en nagemaakte hiperrealiteite. Die studie ondersteun die belangrikheid van verantwoordelike keuse en 'n begrip vir die manifestasie van die magsbeheer van die massa media in die era van die Inligtings Omwenteling.<br>Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 1996.<br>Visual Arts<br>Unrestricted

Who are we? Why do we do the things we do? These questions are constantly under scrutiny, forever unable to provide us with adequate answers, it seems. Yet, with the continuing rise in popularity of digital media, we are able to situate these questions in a different sphere and see aspects of the self that we were unable to perceive before. Digital media forms have provided us with the capacity to explore whole new worlds, as well as allowing for new and innovative methods of communication. These changes make a huge impact on the daily lives of individuals. This thesis presents a theoretical contribution to both psychoanalytic thinking and to the rapidly expanding field of games studies, with especial reference to avatar-based games. It considers the status of the bond formed between the individual at play (known here as the ‘user’) and the game itself. Furthermore, it presents this as a model which identifies the user’s relation to the game dynamic through an understanding of the key components of a video game, including aspects such as the control mechanism. Elements which cross the boundary between the user/game realities are also considered with relation to hyperreality, thus forming a more complete imagining of this framework. This also allows for an application of this dynamic to what we define as violent (and associated) acts within games. In turn, this allows for a more complete understanding of the game situation, and can be applied to our understanding of the user as well. This thesis provides a standalone framework which can also be utilised in other types of investigation in future.

This work takes up urban historian Lewis Mumford's concern for the phenomena of planned and imposed ordering of human life and societies. Mumford (and others) suggests the problem consists in the use of external plans, technologies (and media) to manipulate, dominate, and even coerce forms of life. It is seen at its worst in war, and even forced systems like Nazism and Stalinism. But these phenomena also take more attractive and seemingly enriching forms. We will focus (along with Daniel Boorstin and Umberto Eco in their own way) on forms which have massively developed in 20th and 21st century society: market and consumer saturation, shaped by dominating mass electronic media. This situation is developed imaginatively, and inventively, yet problematically, in Jean Baudrillard's theory of Hyperreality –a critique of the Western hyper-consumer and media saturated world. But his methods and pictures are not followed here. We take up a very different approach and diagnosis; This approach has become increasingly multidisciplinary: phenomenological, praxeological, anthropological, and philological. We build it up in a reading of human lifeworlds in philosophers Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and anthropologist Tim Ingold. This work does not go in for a picture of language (and cinema) as a system of signification, but as Ludwig Wittgenstein describes it, as tools always already involved in forms of life. We also offer a unique characterization of corporeal imagining and the imaginative creation of lifeworlds, paving the way for what is described as philological resistance: this resistance is seen in the development of a certain praxeological philology and fully realized in the 20th century author J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic concerns. We focus particularly on what we call the double- transfer: the cyclic structure between human artistry and life-world building, each shaped by the other. We endeavor, along with Mumford and others, to counter colonization and find various less manipulated and un-coerced forms of life, and their informal organizing structures. We examine in detail Tolkien's literary and philological project; and the 20th and 21st century's first art form –cinema. Through the philosophical exploration of cinematic craft in Gilles Deleuze, and in the craft of Terrence Malick we see, and are taken up in, the inextricable relationship between how we make, what we make and how we live everyday life.