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VOICE OVER SIMULATION: Please click here - Aspiring Self & Simulacrum Life

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“The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction….The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: That is the hyperreal…which is entirely in simulation.”

Jean Baudrillard (1983)

[note to self & some fragmented philosophical memories]

I wish I could remember the philosophical discussions over the period of becoming postmodernism, post structuralism and deconstruction during 1980s. There were only my fragmented knowledge how architectural design have revolved from the modernism to contemporary architecture. Don’t reference my words, though!

[discussion background & the left over]

Digging out from my long lost long-term memories during the 90s, one of the influential changes in thinking (even though there are many), is from a german own Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), Heidegger proposes to understand being itself, ” ‘Being’ is not something like a being.” He claims it is “what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood.” Heidegger seems not to believe that whom we are today are that original.

The next are Metaphysics of Gilled Deleuze (Identity and differences) and Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things (1966). Foucault discusses ”all periods of history have possessed specific underlying conditions of truth that constituted what could be expressed as discourse.” He argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, in major and relatively sudden shifts, from one period’s episteme to another. Then comes Jacques Derrida interpretation of “there is nothing outside context” which influenced an avanguard architect, like Peter Eisenman to capture some of these essences and the paradigm shift (and of course a lot deeper than I could understand) and twist his design to become one of the major periods of the deconstruction architecture.  Can anyone correct me if I pieced all these incorrectly?

[identity]

This week readings started of with quite interesting notes, first from Sherryl Turkle’s “Identity in the age of the internet.” From her research of “how a nascent of simulation is affecting our ideas about mind, body, self, and machine.” to the boundaries of ourselves are being eroded and blurred between what real or what virtual. Through her experience of the Multi-Users Dungeon (MUD) in cyberspace back in the ancient days, I see the connection of how the cyberspace have developed from the IRC and AOL days to modern days’ second life, avartar, facebook, farmvilles, chat, SMS, sexting etc.

In spite of all terms in Zhao studies, such as “true-self”, “ideal-self”, “possible self or “hoped-for possible self,” I would argue we, in fact, live in with one identity, aka. the “aspiring-self.”  We combine many out-there selves and incorporate to whom we are aspiring to be (or not to be). We portray our own aspiring identity according to the contexts we are [encountering]. So, to survive, we adjust our own identity to fit situation and that is what we learn by experiences. While reading Zhao’s in the Facebook identity exaggeration issues, I was thinking….what about our “resume” or “CV” representing ourselves in the real world? Are they entitled to the exaggeration identity definition, according to Zhao (because of the emphasizing too much on the accomplishment)?” So, to me, Identity is a survival tool, both on and off line.

[design]

Identity also has a place in the  ”design” world. Identity is a key and supposedly should match users’. So, the mass productions are generally garbage as there is no identity [but somehow necessary]. Luckily, we have media mediated that mass productions saying there are great and cool and they should be replicated and reproduced, though they are not real nor original. The best design object needs to be in a specific context identified according to whom the user is (including place and time).

[so...?]

I’m just wondering whether in fact, we live in a simulated life of others over time?

[images credits: philosophers from wikipedia & Facebook Sorachai self-profile]

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In the mean time, whilst discovering my own aspiring self, I put the as i am identity into transaction. Anyone,?

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