What does going to a live music show constitute? Where previously it there was a clear delineation between the performance and the performer, such differences are no longer so clear. When we live in a world where people can see videos of past performances remade into holograms to do a “live” performance, where do we draw the line in the sand separating what is real and what is hyperreal.
Jean Baudrillard uses the concepts of simulation and hyperrealism to explain how previously we existed in a modernist world which was based on producing real things. When things are produced and reproduced, we no longer have that reference to the original ‘real thing’. If you have seen a film, and your friend has seen the same film, it isn’t the case that you actually saw the same physical item, but saw what was on those two different copies. You both have seen the simulation of the film. This representation of the film constitutes the hyperreal instead of the real.
When we look at some modern performances of musicians we realize that these are just that, performances. One does not go to see the actual individuals, but the performance put forth by the individuals. In this sense, does it matter at Cochella 2012 Tupac performed a show with Snoop Dogg in 2012, six years after he died? When we have the ability to digitally create something that couldn’t exist, the separation between the real and the hyper real becomes complete.
Storey, J. (2012). Postmodernism. In Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction (6nd
ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education.
2 Comments
I think that looking at music performance is a really interesting way of exploring ideas of mediation and reality. Your post brought to mind Bolter and Grusin’s idea of Hypermediacy, where the medium – in this case, the concert – openly acknowledges itself as an act of representation rather than “reality” and the consumer/concertgoer can derive pleasure from the spectacle while simultaneously acknowledging its artificiality.
In past decades or even today in certain musical genres, the idea of immediacy, i.e. non-mediation, is a marker of the music’s/performer’s authenticity or cultural value. But it would seem that in the music scene inhabited by the musicians playing the main stage at Coachella, views have shifted such that the hypermediate and the hyperreal have value.