Jean Baudrillard's stages of simulacra

Apropos of the ongoing discussion on Mastodon about how the quality of a recording influences our perception of it, our friend Dave Carter had this to say, which blew my mind a little bit:

I think about recordings, and the idea of fidelity more generally, in context of Jean Baudrillard's stages of simulacra:

1) a 'faithful' copy of the original / reflects a basic reailty

2) obscures or perverts an underlying reality

3) pretending to be a 'faithful' copy of a reality that doesn't exist (masks the absence of a basic reality)

4) bears no relation to any reality - pure simulacrum

Recordings are often copies without an original.

“Copies without an original.” Whhhooooaaaaaa 🤯

Thanks Dave — jamie