What is imitation theory?

The Reverse Realization of Imitation Poetics

Before the emergence of computer virtual reality, art was the biggest source of virtual images. The relationship between virtual and reality, that is, the relationship between artificial image and prototype, has been a key poetic issue since ancient Greece. Plato believes that poetry and art are imitations of real things, and real things are the brilliance of the highest truth idea, so artistic images, as "shadows of shadows", are double distances from truth. [1] Aristotle's Poetics holds that poetry and art are not only imitations, but also should reflect (express) the perceived reality according to the laws of inevitability and possibility. [2] Plotinus in ancient Rome believed that art can directly imitate the conceptual world in addition to imitating the perceptual world. Since then, the theory of imitation has developed along two paths: some scholars in the Middle Ages denied the objective material factors of the ancient Greek imitation theory, and St. Thomas believed that artists imitated nature through their hearts, because both mind and nature were created by God; Horace, from the perspective of "free art", thinks that imitation should not be limited to form, but should allow imagination and fictional creation. In summing up his painting experience, Leonardo da Vinci said: "A painter should study the universal nature, think more about what his eyes see, and make use of the beautiful parts that make up all kinds of things. In this way, his heart will truly reflect everything in front of him like a mirror, and it will become like second nature. " [3] This is a modern reconciliation of two ancient imitation views. /kloc-after the 0/7th century, neoclassicism required poets to study and obey nature. To achieve realistic results, art must imitate what is "universal reason" in nature: on the one hand, the object of imitation is court civilization and the lives of great people, on the other hand, "imitating the ancients means imitating nature". Obsessed with the relationship between nature and man-made, imitation theory is at the end of the road, but its power still exists.

It was not until the German classical aesthetics period that Goethe changed the traditional imitation theory from the ancient emphasis on * * * to the modern emphasis on individuality, resulting in Wordsworth's romantic expression that "poetry is a natural expression of strong emotions". Abrams, a contemporary American scholar, used the metaphor of "mirror and lamp" to explain this development process, and appropriately pointed out: "From imitation to expression, from mirror to spring, to lamp, to other related metaphors, this change is not an isolated phenomenon, but an integral part of the corresponding change in general epistemology." [4] The so-called "epistemological change" here is a modern subjective philosophy represented by Descartes dualism and Kant's rational criticism. Kant initiated a philosophical Copernican Revolution in Critique of Pure Reason, which brought "nature" back to the phenomenon level from the ontological level, thus establishing the absolute dominance of rational subject over perceptual object in epistemology. In Critique of Judgment, Kant even has a meaningful sentence: "Imagination (as a cognitive function of production) is a powerful way to create natural similarities from materials provided by real nature ... but this substance has been transformed into something completely different by us, that is, something superior to nature." [5] The relationship between artistic fiction and imitation of natural things seems to have undergone a fundamental reversal here. However, Kant did not dispel the ghost of imitation theory, but only revived it in the form of expressionism. External nature and internal mind are two sides of the same coin, so art is just a matter of changing owners: a new ruler has appeared in the virtual world of art-in Eagleton's words, it is "more terrible authority", [6] and that is the abstract rationality of aesthetic subject. In front of it, artistic fiction is just a colonial form, maintaining the rule of reason over physical impulse and aesthetic appearance. Kant's famous saying "Beauty is a symbol of morality" reveals the climb to another infinity-transcendental subjectivity.

In a word, imitation theory, as a powerful poetic tradition, has been guiding artistic activities for a long time and has almost become an eternal golden rule. No matter what kind of variation appears, imitation theory insists on the binary opposition between prototype and replication: prototype is true and comes first; Replica is the imitation and reproduction of the real prototype, so it is subordinate and secondary. The relationship between image and reality leads to obvious distance and difference because of imitation-image is not truth itself, but represents some absent truth. According to Jameson's explanation of Plato, the latter expelled the artist from his utopia because he was afraid that art would become a "simulacrum" with the fake as the real. If the mind is surrounded by all kinds of fictional simulacra, it is like being in a room full of mirrors, and losing the judgment of truth in the self-mapping with infinite feedback. Jameson said: "No matter how Plato interprets it, I think postmodern culture has this feature. Images, photographs, photography, mechanical reproduction, commodity reproduction and mass production are all simulacra. Therefore, at least culturally, our world has no sense of reality, because we are not sure where reality begins or ends. " [7] For contemporary culture, due to the general exchange of aesthetic representations in daily life, a large number of imitations have gradually infiltrated and even replaced the physical image, making the copying relationship and aesthetic distance in imitation increasingly eroded, deconstructed and even reversed. Although Jameson, Baudrillard and others are full of worries about this "surrealism" full of virtual images, Plato can be said to be the first thinker to oppose these: he opposes artists' paintings and descriptions, and of course opposes all forms of reproduction such as photography, movies and television, not to mention the digital simulation of contemporary computer multimedia and virtual reality in cyberspace. So, how does virtual reality subvert or even reverse the ancient poetic imitation principle?

Baudrillard tried to solve this big mystery with the key of "symbol exchange". In Symbol Exchange and Death, he developed Marx's theory of spiritual production and commodity exchange into the theory of "symbol exchange", pointing out that things in the life world are both objects and symbols, cultural values are determined by symbols, and social activities are actually a kind of symbol exchange. Imitation of things and symbols is imitation, and copying is imitation Y. In traditional feudal society, symbols are associated with aristocratic privileges, and there is no fashion and social mobility, only social distribution. In such a society, symbols are protected by prohibitions. [8] But during the Renaissance, with the disintegration of feudal order, there was open competition on the level of symbol possession-symbols began to be simulated, natural science contributed to the "disenchantment" of symbols, and people began to imitate things that were once forbidden to own (such as idols). With the advent of the industrial revolution, a new generation of goods appeared. The symbols contained in these commodities are not traditional, and there is no distinction between true and false. They are just imitations of each other, but their value can be measured by the reputation and social power they symbolize. At present, we are in a new era of simulation: with the development of computer technology, simulation no longer just means imitating the prototype, but develops into a replica without the prototype-"simulacrum". At this time, the imitation is completely derived from the symbol model, and its value no longer depends on the fidelity of the imitation or the exchange value of the product, but on the association and replacement (operation) between the symbol code and the code. According to Baudrillard's paradigm, since the Renaissance, human cultural values have gone through three stages of "simulation": (1) the classical period from the Renaissance to the industrial revolution, in which the dominant form is "imitation"; (2) In the era of industrialization, its dominant form is "production"; (3) At the present stage, the dominant form of information code is "simulation" (narrow sense). The image production under the three cultural orders follows the laws of natural value, commodity value and structural value respectively. [9] Obviously, in Baudrillard's view, due to the large-scale appearance, typology and serialization of simulacra and simulacra, truth and prototype were replaced by them, and the world became simulacra.

It is an enlightening perspective to look at the relationship between computer virtual reality and art imitation theory from the perspective of iconicity. Symbolic exchange theory reveals a kind of imitation to people->; Copy-> virtual logic chain, eventually destroyed art and even the real world itself-the real world itself has become an outstanding artistic fiction. In The Perfect Crime, Baudrillard reveals the whole story of the murder of the real world by the virtual world: the relationship between symbols and reality is increasingly alienated, and imitation is increasingly replacing the real thing, which is more real than the real thing. The external world that people once believed in was independent of people's will and suddenly became illegible. The relationship between man and reality has become suspicious, and the virtual world is so surreal that it has become a perfect crime-"A perfect crime is to unconditionally realize the crime in this world by making all the data real and changing all our behaviors and pure information events-in short, the ultimate solution is to decompose the world in advance by cloning reality and destroying the real things with replicas of reality." [10] In the universal symbol production and symbol exchange, images can no longer make people imagine reality because they are reality; Images can no longer make people fantasize about real things, because that is its virtual reality. "It's like these things greedily look in the mirror, thinking that they have become transparent, and they are all in place in their own bodies, and they have been ruthlessly copied in real time under sufficient light." [1 1] The ancient imitation theory has been reversed here. The definition of virtual image is no longer lower than the definition of what it represents: "The highest definition of information corresponds to the lowest definition of events-the highest definition of sex (erotic painting and calligraphy) corresponds to the lowest definition of sexual desire-the highest definition of language corresponds to the lowest definition of thought (in digital coding) ..." [12] If "virtual" is a murder of the material world from the spatial appearance, Then "real-time" means erasing the spiritual world from historical memory: "Just like the illusion of images disappears in virtual reality, the illusion of the body disappears in its genetic description, the illusion of the world disappears in its technical illusion, and what disappears in artificial intelligence is the (super) natural intelligence of the world, such as games, tricks, plots and crimes, rather than logical mechanisms or reflex control. [ 13]

When the virtual is more real than the real, the real becomes the shadow of the virtual. Baudrillard put forward his "postmodern metaphysics" in The Strategy of Destiny. In his view, western traditional metaphysics always advocates that the subject takes precedence over the object. However, with the arrival of the post-modern society based on symbol consumption, as the "object" of the public, information, media and commodities, a simulation has evolved into the control of the subject, constantly transcending the boundaries and "tempting" the subject to "innovation" and "simulation". He extremely pessimistically pointed out that in the new high-tech society, the object replaced the position of the subject and dominated the unfortunate subject. The only way out for the subject is to surrender to the object world, learn the strategy and tactics of the object, and completely give up the domination of the object. [14] This object image, which is based on the real world but more real than the real world, makes the structural principle of society no longer "production", but computing, information processing, media and social organizations formed according to simulacra codes and models, which are completely dominated and controlled by it. The symbol itself is no longer just the symbol itself, but also has its own life and has built a new social order. In such a parody society, people's experience is completely constructed by models and symbols, so that the difference between models and reality is eroded. He used McLuhan's concept of implosion to declare that now the boundary between simulacra and reality has imploded, people's previous experience of "reality" and the foundation of reality have disappeared, data model has become the decisive factor in creating reality, and the boundary between surrealism and daily life has been smoothed out. Baudrillard said in his famous American Travels: Disneyland is more real than the real American society, and American society is more and more like Disneyland. [15] In this way, contemporary life has become a completely symbolic illusion-movies, advertisements, soap operas, fashion magazines and various life guides not only do not need to imitate reality, but also can produce reality: they have shaped our aesthetic taste, diet and clothing habits and even the whole lifestyle. The concepts of "reality", "essence" and "truth" set in traditional ontology have been fundamentally subverted, and daily life has become a process of imitating models: from architecture, clothing, home to secret sexual life, it is increasingly designed by "idealized" technical models. In the contemporary world picture composed of digital virtual and real-time feedback, the imitation relationship between virtual and reality has been completely reversed.

-

[1] Plato's Literary Dialogue, translated by Zhu Guangqian, People's Literature Publishing House 1983, p. 2 1.

[2] Aristotle's Poetics, translated by Luo Niansheng, People's Literature Publishing House 1982, p. 92.

[3] Selected Western Literary Theories, edited by Wu Yifu and Hu Jingzhi, Volume I, Peking University Publishing House, 1985, the first 16 1 page.

[4] abrams's Mirror and Lamp, Peking University Publishing House 1989, the first 8 1 page.

[5] Kant's Critique of Judgment (I), p. 160.

[6] Eagleton's Aesthetic Thought, translated by Wang Jie, p. 133.

[7] Jameson's Postmodernism and Cultural Theory, Shaanxi Normal University Press 1986, p. 200.

[8] Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death, Wang Min 'an's Philosophical Discourse of Post-modernity, Zhejiang People's Publishing House, 2000, p. 3 17.

[9] ibid., p 328.

[10] Baudrillard's The Perfect Crime, p. 28.

[1 1] same as on page 8.

[12] same as above.

[13] ibid., p. 37.

[14] Cerna, The Best Postmodern Theory, Central Compilation Press 1999, p. 89.

[15] Xu Chenliang, who is afraid of jean baudrillard, China reading newspaper,1999,65438+February 22nd.