“The Map Is Not the Territory”

Originally coined by Alfred Korzybski, the term highlights the difference between the mind or brain or thought, and reality.

This same dynamic, the question between what we perceive and what is real, has been taken up by postmodernist theorists to look at how we are interacting with reality and technology.

The same query has been taken up by Baudrillard, in his 1981 treatise Simulacra and Simulacrum. In this Baudrillard writes about how reality can be replicated by medias to the point that the reality which has been replicated no longer exists, and all we are left with is the replication.

The Frankfurt School look at the same dynamic but through popular culture and media outlets (but they are not so much images). They are worried that the propaganda spread by the medias will dumb us down, and will take over our imaginative, agentic capacities.

I took this image at a gig, and you can see the photographer darting in front of the crowd to get their images. At the same gig, I saw two people at the front (pictured front-right), use their phone cameras to take exactly the same images, simultaneously. In both cases, the lived experience of the audience and the performer were placed at the bottom of the pile of importance. I see this privileging of digital images over lived experience frequently at gigs.

Is this what Baudrillard and the Frankfurt School warned us against?