Hyperreality, is a term coined by Jean Baudrillard, defined as “the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably through another, reproductive medium, such as photography”. This idea basically revolves around the fact that reality is mediated by images, which I decided to explore through my remediation of ‘Deep Fakes’. This means that the real is perceived by audiences as a string of images – a form of spectacle and media images “slowly but surely start forming a reality of their own, independent from any underlying reality” (Mitew, 2020). The 4 phases are defined as
1 Reflection: represents a basic reality [a copy]
2 Mask: covers up a basic reality [perverted copy]
3 Illusion: substitutes the absence of a basic reality [pretending to be a copy]
4 Simulacrum: bears no relation to any reality
I’d like to home in on the idea of a ‘mask’. This means that there is an absence or cover up of basic reality, which is where deep fakes come in. Deep fakes are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s likeness (Sample, 2020). You can see how this easily links in to our topic of hyperreality. Deep fakes can be used to mediate the way we see media, especially if its used in a dangerous way. E.g. using Donald Trumps head to start wars or conflicts in other countries.
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