Date: Wed, 26 Jul 1995 13:51:47 -0400
Subject: Re: end of critique recast


bbogard  writes:
 today everything begins from its extremity (its end, model, program, screen,
hologram).  baudrillard has been trying to struggle with this problem
(the end of things, the implosion of linear time, the hyper-finalities of
excresent capital) for awhile now.  the question for me is where
baudrillard's challenge to all this is directed.  my guess is to certain
kind of "imaginary" (the imaginary of the
"screen" and 4th order simulation.

sp:
I like this description however, isn't it the Fifth level of simulation
that we are searching for? Doesn't Baud define all four levels in
SIMULATIONS?  Also, I think there is a huge agreement in the idea above re:
beginning with extremes in Paul Virilio's recent _The Vision Machine_.
There scientific visualiation becomes its own object--the Form-Image.  

As an architect who must face nihilism and address it, as it IS context, we
might think about the role that the built environment (that is getting more
digital by the day) plays in any new affirmation.  I have been exploring
the impications of Form-Images that we have invented toward this and have
them posted here if your surf the www: http://mmol.mediamatic.nl
or http://www.mediamatic.nl/WhoisWho/Perrella/StephenPerrella.html

Any thoughts or reactions would be most appreciated...it is precisely new
forms of engagement vis-a-vis interpretation of radical form-images
(constructed interactively in the context of Praxis) that I believe could
be the fifth level of simulation.  Virilio's writing seems to point to
that. And of course, Deleuze+Guattari seem to go further hampered only by
their anti-semiotic materialism.

sp



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