russet a medium reddish brown with a hint of yellow, it came into use in middle England where it was taken, from Old French rousset, from rous, red, from Latin russus. It is often used to describe a coarse reddish-brown to brown homespun cloth or winter apples with dark reddish brown skin.
Simulacra-a term generated by Jean Baudrillard to explain the world we currently inhabit where are reality has become pure simulation, where the visual world has no relation to reality whatsoever. We deal soley with signs and representations which are ordered by or relate in an infinite web of other signs an representations allowing only a complex web of false reality constructs to immerge. This process is mapped in his book Simulacra and Simulations a summary of which is avaliable on wikipedia:
1) The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct that, a sign is a “reflection of a profound reality” (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called “the sacramental order”.
2) The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which “masks and denatures” reality as an “evil appearance-it is of the order of maleficence”. Here, signs and images do not faithfully show us reality, but can hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
3) The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the “order of sorcery”.
4) The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims.
Action half life photographic series
This project by AES+F group ran from 2003-2005
Here is the concept text for reference:
‘What is the heroism in our times, when war, exploits, and pathos are just a part of a virtual show endlessly dissipating into mass circulation? Our show is total- starting from its well structured 3D computer games, it’s powerful Hollywood effects so wonderfully spent on saving private Ryan, it’s gala parade of Maximus’ triumph in the Coliseum and ending with it’s especially selected TV reports from uknown and faraway places with exotic names.
Our heros are teenagers – emerging from the most heroic of life’s phases. The teenage moment is the moment when a young shepherd can take heart and gain victory over a hulking giant and when an abandoned child can find the inner unction to extract the magic sword out of a rock to become king, vanquishing all enemies. All of our young heros are conquerors in the virtual world. Their enemy is absent, and ppain and suffering are forbidden by the very nature of the game. They are so alienated that nothing, not even their common virtual battlefield, inhibits their giving themselves over to pure personal expolit, to securing victory over an enemy that does not exist. The driving concept behind our art is our perpetual attempt to precipitate the genome of heroism out of today’s world of glimmer reality.’ http://www.aes-group.org/hl3.asp