Sims

 

 

 

 

“Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real.”

Jean Baudrillard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1985. Is this real?

 

 

 

 

 

Free the Robots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are losing our centers, when Microsoft word fixes a word for you and you don’t even know how to spell it anymore… it’s like the writing is no longer yours. The external world fixes it for you, and suddenly the outside starts to replace the functions of your inside. We begin to depend on the outside for solutions, we assume that solutions can be bought or given an app for, so much that we can hardly tell the outside from ourselves. Our desktops begin to reveal our personality and our deepest secrets are recorded into files and messages which end up forming a labyrinth of your mind almost more real than your mind itself. Your memories become your photos, your interests become categorized by the tumblrs you follow and the history of your google searches could tell the narrative of your academic, social and private life. Our subjectivity has been replaced by objects.

 

 

 

 

Rather than coming from within, our knowledge is filtered through a network of sources to the point that the information isn’t so pure; there may be so much of it that none of it means much at all. Information has saturated the world so that it begins to replace the world, so that we can no longer distinguish what is mediated from what is not, where to draw the line between myself and the rest of the world. The public leaks into the private. The world of simulation diminishes the world of affect, of touch. The individual has melded with the collective.

 

 

 

 

 

What is at risk is the complete, unmediated subject, one that doesn’t formlessly mold into whatever cultural container.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Hachiko Square near Shibuya Station has four enormous monitors and hundreds of advertisement boards filled with commercial and mass media images that continuously pour into the surrounding urban space. This urban situation creates a
reversed reality of individual perception. Here what is unreal has become hyper-real, even more so than the reality of the surrounding physical space. Within the context of an environment generated by a mass media oriented urban-scape, the behavioral cognition of the urban becomes drastically differentiated from the traditional modes of physical community…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Urban space in Tokyo has emerged into a kind of 'masquerade' utilizing various forms of communication to convey a constructed reality much in the same way role-playing computer games such as Multi User Dungeons (MUD) allow
participants to establish and change synthetic or false
personalities.”

Noriyuki Tajima

 

 

 

 

David Cooley

 

 

 

 

 

(this image has been circulating the internet but im curious as to how many people know that its actually a real sculpture by Ferruccio Laviani, not just a glitchy photo)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world is no longer a dream.”

William Butler Yeats

 

 

 

 

 

related sources: Simulacra and Simulation, http://kenmat.tumblr.com/, Shlohmo’s anti-design, http://simsgonewrong.tumblr.com/

world in motion

 

 

 

 

Good vibes. “Indi Groove”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[http://dvdp.tumblr.com/]

 

 

 

 

Click for Toys

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and, world asleep

Flight and Ocean Views

Phase III by Nosaj Thing.

 

 

 

 

“Once you have tasted flight,

 

 

you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,

 

 

for there you have been,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and there you will always long to return.”
Leonardo Da Vinci

 

 

 

 

 

 

”The rapid growth of aviation during the interwar period was mercurial, dramatically reshaping perception of the world and of space. There were daring fights of aviators challenging the breath of oceans and deserts, the heights of Everest, the length of Africa, the uncharted terrain of the North and South Poles.

 

 

The polar opposite to the microscope, which visually explored the realm of the infinitely small, the aerial view revealed space so vast that its comprehension could not be absorbed in a single glance.

 

 

It revealed the constant struggle man had made against nature until he had finally subdued the space of the world and turned it into a gigantic geometric representation.

 

 

Le Corbusier claimed the aerial view enabled
man to see ‘that which hitherto was only seen by the spirit…the eye of a bird transplanted into the head of a man.’

 

 

The aerial view appeared to make national boundaries obsolete:

The sun became a dictator and the meander of rivers a law…

 

 

Did the aviatorʼs humility in front of natureʼs forces, and the awareness of the cultural diversity of the world, hold out the ideal of a new peaceful community of nations?

 

 

It seemed to prove…that a revolution of perception and visual interpretation was at hand, that a new world order was imminent.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is an image of the sunset at the North Pole. Thanks to cold-braving explorers of the past, the technologies of aviation and photography, this is a place, a breathtaking phenomenon that we can now see.

 

Featured: Matthew Cusick, Lea Melia, Michael Cina, hurricane photos by NASA; excerpts from Aviation and the Aerial View: Le Corbusier's Spatial Transformations in the 1930s and 1940s by Christine Boyer; http://penabranca.tumblr.com/