REALFAKE: Versioning

Here, the Titanic example is reduced to an abstract form by considering the event, the movie, the wax sculpture, the signifier, and the souvenir. To define these terms re: the Titanic example: The event is the historical event (1912); the movie is James Cameron’s 1997 epic adaption from Twentieth Century-Fox; The wax sculpture is Madame Tussaud’s tribute to the movie; the signifier is an action/object/expression that recalls the signified, and the souvenir is an artifact of the signified ‘thing.’What has happened to the original (”A”)? What happens to it each time it changes? What are those changes? What endures?

Each transformation depicts a different “version.” Each version is both true and false at the same time. “Fake,” then, is a blanket expression that inaccurately describes relationships between versions.

Moving to a different point, this linear evolution depicts how signs (or versions) morph and adapt from an original. However, this is not the way in which signs change over time. For example, the Titanic movie changes people’s understanding of the event of the Titanic, and in doing it makes the notion of ‘Titanic’ the aggregate of all of the Titanic ‘things’ that have come before it. All signs coexist, each one being a version of reality that is both true and false.