Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 11:57:18 -0400
Subject: Re: art/capital
From: "Robert Janiga" <rjaniga-AT-yorku.ca>


Hello,


>you seem to be dragging in a lot of other questions
>
>why should art be simulation in the first place? 
>take a typical computer graphics demo, it's usually pure geometrical
>forms, constant transformation etc... nothing to do with simulating
>whatsoever, it's the ever newly presentable before it could even have
>been conceived
>why should it be necessarily related to things like spontaneity
>(!??!?), creativity and novelty? art can be repetitive, meaningless,
>mechanical, empty, simply remixing 

I'm not sure the kind of "simulation" being discussed here actually
simulates some tangible reality.  If I understand the contours of this
discourse, it would seem that "simulation" is a Baudrillardian-inspired term
dealing with copies that have no original.  "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."  Computer graphics, then,
have everything to do with simulation.  That is, if sign value is take into
consideration, it could make sense to articulate that computer graphics do
not refer, within a milieux of meaning, to anything except themselves (i.e.
self-referential).  Again, Baudrillard argues that simulation "is the
generation by models of a real without origin or reality."  Thus the
"geometrical forms" mentioned, according to this understanding of
simulation, are simply models without and use or exchange value.  Anyhow, is
this how some of you have been understanding the term "simulation"?

Cheers,

Robert