We are living in concurrently two different pictorial worlds. Both are different and alongside coexist in the same place; so it can be said in truth we have dwelt in one world. A world of animated things pictured one and we share this. We believe images of this world are real and so only it can debunk the mystery of existence. Images have appeared here ‘original’ even if the duplicity that we do not know how this ‘original’ come or who could be the progenitor of this. Another one can be care of as unreal and duplicate of that one which we think ‘real and original’ for us. Two in one with plenty similarity doesn’t deny facts both worlds are likely distinct if we consider the origin from where they are coming to existence.
Image Source: View from the Window at Le Gras by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1826; web courtesy: Wikipedia.org
… Meanwhile, the entire existential process so far collapsed after time. That’s why we should remember,—whatever the photograph is, the earliest one like ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’ or any contemporary one, all mirror the same incompleteness of our introspection about the ‘real and original’. Our consciousness about real things and their interactive images appeared fragile to the end.
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A world with duplicate images of original things means they are not so real, meantime we cannot deny this world as fake or unreal because of its physical presence in the real space! This means we are most likely living in a resemblance of two parallel worlds in the same place where both worlds mirrored each other. The world made of ‘original’ cannot be thinkable ‘real’ until its duplicates have said something on it. Likewise, a world of duplicate images cannot be negotiable without any presence of ‘real and original’. Successively, the world that we think real and that cannot deny as unreal, both have existed in the same place. This is because both worlds are identical despite their severalty.
We can say it the impossibility of denial. It confined us to stick with the world filled by both so-called real and duplicate images. Not likely this, we extort our minds to believe in a world where both real and duplicate can exist simultaneously. This is what the pioneer of heliographic photography Joseph Nicéphore Niépce once applied when he photographed the real images by using his self-invented photography technique in a pinhole camera. ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’ considered the second survived early day photograph and now preserved in the Texas University museum. Niépce saw himself succeeded to capture the landscape view of Chalons-sur-Saône (a city in Northern France) at the end of eight hours exposures. Fear occupied his mind to think that maybe he could not able to preserve the historic moment with enough caution.
History told Niépce overtly trembled with excitement when his invented technique finally photographed the landscape. He was aware of, this historic moment will remain even after when he is no more exist in this world or the landscape he took just right now. Chalons-sur-Saône still exists as a locality of Northern France Province; however, it does not reflect the landscape Niépce captured in his time a near two hundred years ago. If we are curious about how the city looked when he photographed it then we have no alternative except take a tour through the hazy picture that he took stand beside his house window.
Image Source: The earliest survived heliography by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce; Web Courtesy: Wikipedia.org
… Our consciousness and explanation about this world, for this reason, is false and filled with vague assumptions; likewise the early photograph of ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’;—hazy and blurred by the dotted pixel; a window-hole to get some ideas about the real world but we cannot certain about this that the world is really looked like!
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The original moment Niépce captured in his camera obscura has gone forever. The landscape he captured if we consider it as ‘original and real’ have vanished so far. What we think ‘a real reflection of original things’ is no more belonging here today except the place Chalons-sur-Saône! So how we can define certain Mr. Niépce and the alleys of Chalons-sur-Saône both have existed somehow even today? Better if we say, the place yet has its existence doesn’t mean what it was in hundred years before. However, what could we say about Mr. Niépce? Was there anybody with this name? None can recognize him until found the early day’s photography of ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’, which he took in the early nineteenth century and now preserved in the Texas University museum. Only this elementary photograph can tell something about the place and as well as the man who captured this on those early days of dark chamber photography. ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’ now appeared here as a clue that can recognize Mr. Niépce a man behind it who captured how the alleys of the city looked at his time.
Which we think ‘real and original’ are dissolved this way. Duplicate of this ‘real’ here just assists us to guess what remained there before the disappearance has happened. Sensing something is ‘original’ may sound problematic; none can prevent the inevitable decadence of things that we consider ‘original’ here. We have to remember this, no ‘things’ or images of ‘things’ exist so far in this visible world that can prevent depreciation of ‘things and images’ to the end! The life and resilience of ‘original’ depend on some links that pictured it through memes or imitation. Suppose the original moment that was dynamic through the images of Chalons-sur-Saône in two hundred years ago is already lost and cannot be restorable in today. Contrary, the past images of this city may yet negotiable because of its meme what Niépce captured in his dark chamber. ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’ and all other sources now playing as a reference to recognize how the city looked at that time; now think a while, if all reference obsolete somehow then it is very difficult to guess how the city looked with its urban landscape when Niépce was alive there!
The existence of things is nothing but the duplication that tried to capture the vivacious moment of things before they’ve gone in the ashtray. That means the existence of ‘things or whatever’ cannot sustain devoid of any link or source that can mirror them through memes and as well able to explain their reality with abstraction. This is what Baudrillard mentioned ‘Hyperreal’ by using the term ‘the second-order simulacrum’. The death of real things and images around it is inevitable but it can exist as a memorial through the medium which captured it when it was alive here as the part of worldly reality.
Image Source: Ultimate Paradox by Jean Baudrillard; Saint Clément (1987): Web: chateaushatto.com;
… That means reality is always a temporality and the picture it represents never could stay eternal. Pictures have appeared and vanished. Only memes may remain there for a little while that linked us to guess how they were at that particular time. Which we named ‘past’ is a temporal bubbling of images in the timeless ocean. As well, which we termed as ‘present and future’, they are none but the same bubbling in the same timeless ocean. Reality means everything gathered in a place for a moment to wipe soon in nowhere.
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Baudrillard’s photography exemplified how worldly things decayed over time, how they wiped out to the reality-surface, and then after nothing remains except the photography that can tell something about it. When the photographic imagery will wipe then nothing has left on the surface that can explain what the thing was when it alive and what at present. That means, when real images of things have died it can be restored through its duplication as hyperreal; however when the duplicate has gonna decadence then nothing left behind except the ‘vain’. He beautifully said by quoting Ecclesiastes, ‘The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none…The simulacrum is true.’ [See: Simulacra and Simulations by Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, 1988]
This is why Niépce’s heliographic photography despite its falsehood as ‘original’ appeared crucial here; if anybody wants to get the real picture of that time when he tried to capture this in his camera obscura. The meme image of the city Chalons-sur-Saône is more realistic than the real image that was already lost in vain. The reality in this way is nothing else the memes (whatever it is) of so-called images of images. Real events of life this why could be credited a reproduction of ‘links’. The function of these links here is to supply clues, so anybody in the future can guess something to explain how life was in the time that no more is exist anywhere. History of things, images, events all are none but the abstraction of what kinda relic a historian found later so he can extract it to make a newer version of reality.
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Sensing of worldly things reflects our concern about the things we have mummified in myriad ways. We imitate worldly events using our verbal and non-verbal communication skills, documented them in written form, images they might represent enframing them through photography and painting, recorded them in the movie camera and using the latest mediums we’ve invented so far in course of time. Duplication, therefore, represents how we sensitize real images to recognize the world where we exist as ‘being’ and overtly searching the reason why we are sentenced to bear the unbearable pain of existence! This pain reveals to what extent this world has appeared conscious to us. We have dwelt with the world where things are destined going to be spoiled, erased, and wiped likewise the sea-sand!
A duplicate world of things and their images appeared here as a source or link to negotiate the deformed world and this negotiation has made us viable to think about consciousness. Let repeat, if there is a duplication of worldly things then there is consciousness; otherwise, no way remains that can drive us to consciousness. The truth about the real world where images appear spontaneously and consequently vanish in time, they can only regain through their duplication, where the abstraction of this duplication can be meaningful to recognize what they were or how they act before lost in transition.
The reality of the worldly things and their images only remains through the link that Jorge Luis Borges finely depicted in his famous parable ‘On Exactitude in Science’. His allegory told the story of cartographers. They drew a detailed map of the overgrowing empire that covers the conquered territory its rulers once occupied by defeating enemies. However, change has come when this overgrowing empire declined and the map alongside begins frayed and tear out. The large territory that it covered once now ruined according to the decline of the empire. However, a few segments of the map finally survived but the large territory its cartographers portrayed now lost forever in the desert. From now, there is no empire remains; nor did the emperors who once occupied this large territory and the cartographers drew a map to praise it! A few slices of the map only exist today as a reminder of the overgrowing empire once rose around the territory of the desert. Means, nothing has remained now in the deserted landscape except the frayed pieces of the map that was also large likewise the declined empire!
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On Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Andrew Hurley
…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
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Quoting Jean Baudrillard we can say real or original images (as well as the truthfulness) here is ‘…rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil…’ and which he thinks might enough to create confusion about the real nature of things. It extorts our minds to raise the question over and again, ‘is there anything exist as real or the images of real?‘ The empire and emperors ruined here in course of time. The cartographers who ordained to draw the large map of the territory were wiped in vain. That means none remains there for the deposition that an ever-growing empire once raised around the deserted landscape. The possibility of a large empire now depends on the fragmented pieces of that frayed map. Its shreds are only the link that can tell something about the images of a ruined empire! The reality of that ruined empire now only active in the torn pieces of the map, as a sign of the precious memories! The map as well is none but an abstraction of the original empire; duplication of the clipped images, and that’s why a ‘discrete charm of second-order simulacra.’
Image Source: Illustration of the camera obscura principle; Web Courtesy: Wikipedia.org
… Duplication, therefore, represents how we sensitize real images to recognize the world where we exist as ‘being’ and overtly searching the reason why we are sentenced to bear the unbearable pain of existence! This pain reveals to what extent this world has appeared conscious to us. We have dwelt with the world where things are destined going to be spoiled, erased, and wiped likewise the sea-sand!
… … …
That means reality is always a temporality and the picture it represents never could stay eternal. Pictures have appeared and vanished. Only memes may remain there for a little while that linked us to guess how they were at that particular time. Which we named ‘past’ is a temporal bubbling of images in the timeless ocean. As well, which we termed as ‘present and future’, they are none but the same bubbling in the same timeless ocean. Reality means everything gathered in a place for a moment to wipe soon in nowhere. Because of this our consciousness about imagining something as ‘real, original or fundamental’ is deceitful.
The world (whatever it made by original or duplicate images) where nothing standalone with its singularity and vanished soon or later, such a world is in effect a prism that mirrors many things under the sunlight but a dark chamber where everything wipes like the black hole! Our consciousness and explanation about this world, for this reason, is false and filled with vague assumptions; likewise the early photograph of ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’;—hazy and blurred by the dotted pixel; a window-hole to get some ideas about the real world but we cannot certain about this that the world is really looked like!
We have looked to the world by taking two paths. One we think is Natural and unknown for us. Another is simulated and that’s why regarded a fake of the Natural. We are at first coming existence as Nature-born stuff. Nature duplicates the patterns so it can take images that are required to consider our existence as photographed beings of Nature. The process is mechanical where Nature’s fractals photographed us through the copy and restoration process. The real existence of anything depends on how Nature preserved the fractals through this mechanical process.
Image Source: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce; Web Courtesy: britannica.com;
… the world that we think real and that cannot deny as unreal, both have existed in the same place. This is because both worlds are identical despite their severalty. We can say it the impossibility of denial. It confined us to stick with the world filled by both so-called real and duplicate images…This is what the pioneer of heliographic photography Joseph Nicéphore Niépce once applied when he photographed the real images by using his self-invented photography technique in a pinhole camera.
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What we named ‘real’ is nothing but the fractals of things, copying of the patterns of patterns, where Nature acts as a device to preserve it so the stream of images can be continued. This called Natural Simulation and duplication of this simulation is not so far remote to the process it followed. Meanwhile, the entire existential process so far collapsed after time. That’s why we should remember,—whatever the photograph is, the earliest one like ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’ or any contemporary one, all mirror the same incompleteness of our introspection about the ‘real and original’. Our consciousness about real things and their interactive images appeared fragile to the end. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s earliest photography reminds the truth again.
Sohochari 