Jean Baudrillard“ Simulation is no longer a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyper- reality” Jean Beaudrillard

• Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a controversial Philosopher who conducted a series of main ideas and concepts to understand the effect of living in a Postmodern environment on our perceptions of reality. He had two main theories: Simulations and Simulacra Hyper-reality.

Hyper-reality:• A world of simulacra where nothing is unmediated (i.e.-without meaning

without intermediary mass media)

• Jean Baudrillard suggested that the media could create such idealistic representations of reality that out perform actual reality. He also said that this lead the audience to feel depressed and sad as they're own life doesn't live up to artificial reality.

• Baudrillard wrote an article called ‘The Gulf War Did Not Exist’ which caused controversy as he suggested that the media set the agenda on the narrative of the war – the war we saw on TV did not match real events.

Simulations:• The active process of replacement of the real

• Today, reality has been replaced by sign systems that recodify and supplant the real. Mass media shapes these symbols as agents of representation, not communication. Mass media creates a new culture of signs, images and codes without referential simulations, replications of reality value, and are exchangeable. Contemporary society consumes these empty signs of status and identity having lost he ability to make sense of the distinction of between the natural and simulation.

• Simulation is a 4 step process of destabilizing and replacing reality:

1) Faithful – The image reflects a profound reality (Portrait)2) Perversion – The image masks and denatures a profound reality (Icon)3) Pretence – The image masks the absence of a profound reality

(Disneyland)4) Pure – The image has no relation to any reality whatsoever, it is it’s own pure simulacrum (“The ultimate Matrix”)