Portfolio Task 3 - Essay Idea and Reading List

The idea that I am going to take forward for the essay is the idea of comparing hyperreality to contemporary society and then more specifically towards Star Trek. Hyperreality plays a huge part in todays hugely digital era and this could have a lot of adverse effects on the 'real' real, although I doubt I would be qualified to make those predictions. Instead I will research into where Hyperreality can be found in contemporary society and to what extent. I will then focus specifically on Star Trek, as it has a huge cult following which takes the tv programme beyond the original intended air time and into the real world where it manifests in costumes and conventions and to a certain extent in genuine technology.

I have found that these books are available from the Library which could help with research for the essay:

• Storey, J., 2000. Cultural Theory and popular Culture: An introduction. 3rd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall 
• Baudrillard, J., 1994. Simulation and Simulacra. Translated from French by S. Glaser. Michigan: University of Michigan Press
• Debord, G., 1984. Society of the Spectacle. Michigan: Black & Red Publishing.
• Baudrillard, J., 2002. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Indiana: Indiana University Press
• Woolley, B., 1993. Virtual Worlds: A Journey in Hype and Hyperreality. London: Penguin Books

Essay ideas

These are a couple of starting points that I have come up with for ideas for the essay.

1. The Gaze - Advertising and moral concerns
The Gaze lecture and seminar have taught me that media and advertising have a very different effect to usual social interaction and can force a change in behaviour and lifestyle. Advertising is a really common form of design and can be seen everywhere. Each piece of advertising design has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of people, so the designer has a responsibility to their work and to the public consumers.
 "Good: An introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design" by Lucienne Roberts has a really interesting section on the history of design and how a designers responsibility for their own work is a relatively new concept which came as a result of secularisation, industrialisation and consumer culture.
I would like to explore the idea of responsibility to the masses through design and what kind of moral struggle a designer should put themselves through when considering advertising for certain causes.

2. Hyperreality - Video Games
This could be pretty interesting as a topic for the essay. Video games are hugely played worldwide but more specifically in the western world which is considered to be a superiorly developed culture. Gamers span every age group to a degree and hundreds of hours are spent in virtual worlds rather than the real world. This is obviously because there are loads of things that you can do in video games that can't be recreated in the real world as they break laws, endanger lives or feature things that just don't exist .
Games often recreate or simulate scenes from reality in relatively accurate detail making them simulacra. As technology develops (graphics, speed, interactivity) the games keep getting closer and closer to perfect simulacra of reality (Cartographer analogy).
On another route, there are many hugely interactive games that simulate the world and represent things from reality but have gone so far that they have no real representation of reality making them hyperreality (E.g. World of Warcraft, Call of Duty).
People spend huge portions of their lives on these games and it would be interesting to look at the effects of games getting more and more realistic and more accessible to online gameplay where entire new hyperrealities are created. Does it make the western world less developed?