Derived from Latin “Simulacrum‘‘, the word means likeness or similarity. You can also describe it as representation or imitation of a person or thing.1 First records of the word was in the English language in the late 16th century, where it was used to describe a representation such as a statue or a painting (mostly of a god).2 Furthermore, by the late 19th century, it has been used in association of inferiority, such as an image without the substance or qualities of the original. Fredric Jameson, where he mentioned photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum. There, a painting is sometimes created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real.3 Simulacra has been used in literature, film and television, especially it makes frequent appearances in speculative fiction. One of the examples of simulacra in the sense of artificial or supernaturally created life forms is Pygmalion‘s ivory statue from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”. Ovid tells how Pygmalion, an artist from Cyprus, disgusted with the licentious sexual conduct of the Propoetides, created a statue of a most beautiful woman and fell in love with it. After Venus granted his wish to bring the statue to life, Pygmalion and his maiden had a child named Paphos and lived happily.4
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SIMU LACRA
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fig.[004]_theDREAM
Cyberspaces are cool, they are fun. But what when we start bringing cyberspaces into the real world? What happens when we start simulating cyberspaces in the real world, in order to make the cyberspace also physically accessible? Then we would start to imitate, represent the real world in another dimension. But, is not Cyberspace already a simulation of the real world? Cyberspace is meant for the virtual and virtual is already defined as a representation of the real world. So in order to proceed with the melting of these two dimensions, we have to start to understand another thing first. That is why this chapter is called Simulacra, because we could not get past it without any interference, while talking about simulations/representations.