Essay

What Is Hyper Reality? – And How Does It Affect Modern Societies Through Technology?

This essay will aim to look at and analyse the theory of hyper reality and how it affects modern cultural conditions. It will focus on productivity and consumerism looking at the developing technologies in the modern world to analyse and create a critical body of work

Hyper reality is a term that was heavily investigated by post modernist philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord.

It is often used to explain something that has become indistinguishable in the conscious mind from reality and a fantasy of a particular thing, whether it is an object, emotion or situation.

Hyper reality is very much a product of the modern day society in which we now live, where we consume and produce things at a very fast pace. Very often these objects are not essential items that we need to live such as food, but items that we think we need to have to reflect our egos and personalities upon the rest of the world, such as cloths, mobile phones and sports cars.

Baudrillard wrote, “Today, we are everywhere surrounded by the remarkable conspicuousness of consumption and affluence established by the multiplication of objects, services and material goods.” (Baudrillard, J, Selected writings, 1988)

It is also derived from Modern Humans constant need to create illusions for themselves to either escape their reality or to enhance it in certain ways.

“When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality;, of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity.” (Baudrillard, J, Simulations, 1983)

For instance buying a top of the range sports car gives you more than just a fast car. There are many things that come with obtaining the object such as status and a distorted perception of how much it is actually worth. The driver will become immersed in illusions that they are somehow a famous racing driver and because of these carefully created fantasies and illusions the car will be now worth more than parts it is made out of. People are not succumbing to the car as an object, but are surrendering to the dreams and simulations it can create for them.

This is evident in Baudrillard’s writings, “While objects are neither flora nor fauna, they give the impression of being a proliferating vegetation; a jungle where the new savage of modern times has trouble finding the reflexes of civilization.” (Baudrillard, J, Selected Writings, 1988)

According to Jean Baudrillard any object has its own ‘object value’. This value was categorised in four parts. The first, being the objects functional value. This was what ever the object was designed to do. E.g. a mobile phone is designed to make and receive phone calls. The second was its exchange value, how much the object was worth to the person exchanging it for something else. The third being its symbolic value to the owner and the forth being its sign value. Did the object give the owner status? Or style? Was it an iPhone appose to an old Nokia?

Baudrillard writes “Of the same order as the impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real, is the impossibility of staging an illusion. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible. It is the whole political problem of the parody, of hypersimulation or offensive simulation, which is posed here.” (Baudrillard, J, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981.)

In today’s society we are constantly bombarded with the hyper real. However hyper reality is not something that exists, or something that does not exist, it can only be used as a word to describe the matter of consciousness.

Hyperreality can be described as a simulation of reality. A close resemblance to the real, yet something that masks the truth. For example television shop windows often display dozens of the same T.V, displaying the same thing, creating the illusion that there is endless supply of the same identical product.

“It is a hyper real, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.” (Baudrillard, J, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981.)

Our day-to-day routines are constantly changed by the hyper real, whether it be through the hundreds of adverts we see on the way to work that tell us we need a new pair of Levis, or the music we listen to on our iPods that places us centre stage in front of thousands of people at Glastonbury festival.

The theory is very much post modernist. A product of mass consumerism and production that is commonplace in developed countries such as the U.K and the U.S.A. and less commonplace in developing parts of the world like Africa.

In the westernised world hyper reality is something that most people pursue, Jean Baudrillard argued that even though people may not realise it, they are constantly looking to replace reality with signs and symbols to create their own version of real.

“It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.” (Baudrillard, J, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981.)

As well as pursuing these simulations of the real, we have them thrust upon us in everyday life. The information that we receive through the radio, T.V and Internet is subject to the hyper real. It is a copy of a reality that has either become condensed, stretched or changed. There are infinite ways in which we can mutate this information but they will all still be copies, simulations of the reality from which the information came.

Baudrillard writes, “When looked at from a structural perspective, what we consume is signs (messages, images) rather than commodities.” (baudrillard, J, The Cosumer society: myths and stuctures, 1998.)

Popular culture such as music, films, fashion, and technology are all riddled with different aspects of hyper reality that prevent us from carrying out our lives in the real. When listening to music we constantly compare artists to previous artists that we have heard before, so bearing this in mind, can we ever experience something that is totally real? Or will everything we do in a society like ours, somehow get masked by the simulacra and simulations, as we are smothered by hyper reality?

As the population grows and becomes more advanced it is only logical to assume that the extent of hyper reality will undoubtedly have more and more of an influence in our society.

Jean Baudrillard argued that as technology develops, the way in which we become stimulated would get easier, as the technologies would be new and more readily available. However, the depths of which we fall into hyper reality will greatly increase and the happiness that was attained will quickly turn into panic, as gap between finding something new and getting bored of it is diminished more and more each time.

Baudrillard writes “ We have reached a point where “consumption” has grasoed the whole of life, where all activities are sequenced in the same combinatorial mode” (Baudrillard, J, Selected Writings, 1988)

As society advances, so with it does the technology that we use to attain that happiness. The virtual escapism that everyone has become such a massive part of will only serve to keep us entertained until the next new gimmick is released. Thus masking and distorting that which actually makes us happy.

Recently 3.D televisions have been introduced to the market of mass consumerism. These fantastic machines enable us to see an image that has been shot in the real, cut up, edited and then regurgitated back to us in a somewhat vague representation of what had been shot in the first place, but this time with a different view of the subject. We have now come to expect that 3.D cinema is a marvellous technological creation that enables us to see the world through a different perspective, that Ironically, pulls us further and further away from the real.

Baudrillard states, “The truth about consumption is that it is a function of production and not a function of pleasure, and therefore, like material production, is not an individual function but one that is directly and totally collective.” (Baudrillard, J, Selected Writings, 1988)

This can also be said about games consoles. These machines have rapidly developed over the past 20 years, with the goal of engaging the player as much as possible so that they are totally engulfed by the game. The game that is pretending to be an alternate reality. A simulation of a group of peoples Ideas of an their alternate reality through the eyes of their customers. Today people can immerse themselves totally in second life games on these entertainment consoles and draw the thin line between having fun for a few hours and escapism.

Jean Baudrillard also argued that the objects attained by the successful or rich have also changed. He argues that in the past men who were of money were surrounded by people, making them powerful. It was a personal affair and all conversation was carried out face to face.

In the world that we live in today, the people have been replaced by technology. Conference calls are carried out over the phone between many parties who will potentially be all over different parts of the world. They do not interact with people, but rather with machines delivering messages for people. A pretence of the machine that has been created by man to do mans bidding. A technology that alienates man from himself and invites the hyper real to further mask his perception.

“Their daily exchange is no longer with their fellows, but rather, statistically as a function of some ascending curve, with the acquisition and manipulation of goods and images.” (Baudrillard, J, Selected Writings, 1988)

From my research I have discovered that hyper reality is a product of mans own inhibition to make life easier for him. This goes hand in hand with technology as that is technology’s purpose. It will also be something that will engulf man further as time and his technology progress.

Everything in the modern world is becoming linked with one another making human interaction less necessary. Rather, people will be fed information that isn’t directly from the source making the hyper real more prominent.

Bibliography

1. Baudrillard, J (1998). The Consumer Society Myths and Structures. U.K Trowbridge: Redwood Books Ltd.

2. Baudrillard, J (1988). Jean Baudrillard Selected Writings. 2nd ed. Oxford, U.K:

3. Baudrillard, J (1981). Simulacra and Simulations. U.S.A: The University of Michigan Press.

4. Baudrillard, J (1983). simulations. U.S.A: Semiotext[e].