The obsession with realism is not something new. Those bland hyperrealistic 3D images may be relatively recent, but most people have always been obsessed with the possibility of representing physical reality so accurately that it’s impossible to distinguish the original from the copy. Today's media are not to blame for that. Hyperrealism is there, yes, but not because they have invented it.
The advent of photography in the mid-19th century coincided with a loss of interest in realistic representation in other visual fields, such as painting. This simultaneity was not random, with a new tool capable of achieving instant realism it made no sense to keep copying reality using pens and brushes.
However, in the 1960s, realism made a strong comeback. After a long period in which artists seemed more concerned about light, colour, and movement, the hyperrealist trend arrived. More real than the real, as Baudrillard would say.
Hyperrealist painting has a lot to do with the obsession with realism that the media industry is currently suffering. 8k images, deepfakes, virtual reality… The aim is to represent reality with so many details that it’s impossible to distinguish the original from the copy. But there’s nothing artistic about that, it’s simply technical expertise. Maybe you can paint a perfect Ryan Gosling using just a ballpoint pen or Photoshop, so what? I may admire your patience and your skill, but that’s all.
The funny thing is that this kind of hyperrealistic simulation is not really about imitating reality, it’s about imitating the codes of photography and film. That’s why it’s also called photorealism. You’re not copying reality, you’re copying the small portion of reality that a camera can see and how it sees it.
Years ago, I took a film course in which the teacher showed some films that didn't fit within the parameters of traditional narrative cinema. They weren't weird or abstract films, they simply didn't follow a linear narrative and dealt with uncomfortable topics. One of the students didn't understand why this kind of cinema existed and made a series of remarks to which the teacher responded: “Some filmmakers are not interested in reality”. At the time, I realised that I’m one of those filmmakers. However, later I understood that the issue is not that I’m not interested in reality, but that most people think about reality in a reductionist hyperrealistic way.
If you want to show reality, you can't show it like like your eyes or your camera see it. Reality goes far beyond what we see with the naked eye. To show reality, you can’t trust your eyes, you have to create other languages, other codes…
What we feel and hear, our desires and fears, are as real as the keyboard on which I’m writing this text. An image that addresses the invisible is much more powerful than a hyperrealistic one. I don't need to draw a perfect keyboard to understand what a keyboard is. I might find it useful if I were a keyboard designer, or if I were in a culture where keyboards don’t exist and I had to explain to someone what they are. In art, it would make more sense to approach observation and representation from a perspective that is not constrained by hyperrealism.
The piece of art most often cited to talk about representation is Magritte's pipe. The title of that painting is quite self-explanatory: The Treachery of Images. Perhaps Magritte's reflection is, as Foucault said, directed against the syntax of concepts rather than the syntax of forms. In any case, it’s still a good example to think about what we mean by realism because whatever we represent will never be the real thing.
Another work in the same vein would be Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs, which includes a chair, a photo of a chair, and the definition of “chair”. Which of these chairs is the most real? All three are equally real, even if only one is used for sitting. A photo, a drawing or a film of a chair, no matter how realistic they may be, are not suitable for sitting.
As in the case of Magritte's pipe, maybe these chairs have more to do with linguistics than with realism, but they still reflect on what’s real.
When it comes down to it, realism is a heteropatriarchal construct related to the idea of possessing and dominating what surrounds you and bowing to tradition. I don't want to possess reality, I want to see the invisible and the absent, what slips through the cracks.
Fuck realism. Realism never tells the truth.
Some readings
This week I’m going to recommend you 2 articles and a book related to digital content and algorithms:
The Age of Algorithmic Anxiety: Interacting online today means being besieged by system-generated recommendations. Do we want what the machines tell us we want?
Delivering People: Media make audiences.
Content: A concise introduction to content and the content industry, from the early internet to the Instagram egg.
I’m not sure if I’ll send the newsletter during the next couple of weeks because I’ll be on holiday to see my family and I'm not taking my computer with me. Maybe it’ll be a good moment to think about what I want to do with my life because I’m really tired of my day job. I know that I’m not the only one, burnout is the new black.
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I hope that you have a nice week wherever you are. See you soon!