merci Jean Baudrillard!

The post-modern French philosopher and social theorist Jean Baudrillard died recently on March 6, 2007 but his ideas continue to be most relevant to our digital culture in general, and Second Life in particular.

One of the few skills I've learned so far in SL is the simple creation of a sphere that can be programmed to say a phrase when an avatar comes nearby, then offer another phrase if touched. I created two objects I called 'blather balls' or 'curiosity generators' that I programmed to ask "Is this reality?" and then "Where is Jean Baudrillard?" I was hoping that I could find a way to invite him into Second Life to discuss his theory of ''hyperreality".

Though I'd read snippets of Baudrillard's philosophy in grad school, my most memorable early encounter was in the indy film The Snowflake Crusade
directed by Megan Holley. This fabulous first film is shot in Richmond, VA and centers on the identity struggles of Clive Barclay, the clone of a childless Nobel scientist whose accomplishment and judgment loom over Clive. While watching a bar-full of people enchanted by a TV show about clones called "Scion Hearted", Clive berates them for wasting their lives on a show that is essentially about a series of simulacra or a collection of copies with no original noting that Baudrillard would be "laughing hyperreal tears of delirious joy" that would duplicate and reduplicate endlessly until we were drowning in simulation with no clear hold on reality.

Though Baudrillard is most recently known for a connection to The Matrix, he has commented that the film misunderstands his theory, though it shows a shot of his classic text Simulacra and Simulations hollowed out to hide pirated software containing recorded scenes from other people's experiences - a dense web of simulations.

reality and the hyperreal

One of the things i've figured out how to do is 'make'
objects that greet avatars and then follow up with some other kind of message or statement. Ever since i've been in SL, i've been thinking about Jean Baudrillard the French post-modern theorist/philosopher most famous for his book Simulacra and Simulations that explores the nature of reality in a world full of copies or simulacra.

So, i decided to make what i first called a "blather ball" but which i've come to re-name a "curiosity generator." It's basically a sphere of tie-dye colors that is supposed to ask "Is this reality?" when it appears and then "Where is Jean Baudrillard?" when it is 'touched' by an avatar.

My idea was to drop them throughout SL in the hopes that Baudrillard might actually show up - or at least an avatar that claims to be him...ultimately we cannot know for certain who is on the keyboard, but the avatar and name give us a confidence that we do.

So, why Baudrillard? If you've taken a peak at that excerpt from Simulacra it seems that Second Life instantiates many of his observations about the nature of reality in the context of a typhoon of copies....do we lose touch with 'reality' when we make so many copies of it? How or why does the copy become more authoritative than the original?

What is reality anyway? If you check the Oxford English Dictionary, you'll note that the first definition of "real" has to do with money, the second with power connecting 'royal' with 'real'....and it isn't until the third definition that "real" refers to the everyday world of physical objects.

In some way "reality" is defined by those with money and power...the worldview of 'royalty' (money & power) shapes and literally defines us and our world.

But then again, Blake might remind us that these are only "mind forg'd manacles" which we are free to escape - if we have the will.