More perfect

My mom just sent me this. Go ahead, take a moment, watch it and come back.

Her timing couldn't be better as i was in the middle of a side job for a company that builds ranch style housing throughout the middle of the country. Let me put that another way for those of you who haven't been to Frontierland at Disneyland. These housing tracts are essentially gated communities where you actually live in a simulated old west environment. Fire pits and cattle and rodeos and hoe-downs and golf. (little known fact: cowboys were lovers of the links.)

Your next question is... what exactly were you doing for this company, which by the way is a multi multi million dollar company spreading all over those states that lie just inside california (AZ, ID, CO, NM... you know, where all the white people are headed)? Well, i too am trained in the arts of the video you see above. And not only do we take people and make them "pretty". We do the same with places. Now that everything is a pixel, and cameras take photos with a higher resolution than film, we have the power to adjust ever tiny part of a photo.

What this means is, even the photos of the simulation are just simulations. It's like the video above... Not only do we apply makeup to make her look like something other than she is, but then we take it to a whole nother level and put her image through the computer. We create a simulation of the Old West (that has absolutely nothing to do with the Old West) and then we put it through another step to make that even brighter and more "perfect".

And there it is... Perfect is no longer perfect enough. Now there is more perfect.

And since I've been doing nothing but thinking about HLIB's recent post since i read it last night, i can see that this is all just another part of the Network Culture. Our means of recording time go from film (modern) to digital (post) to digital composite/ computer generated (network).

And now when we see a movie or a commercial with special effects, we know it is all fake. everyone will turn to their friend and say, "that's photoshopped". Funny thing is, and anyone who works in digital effects will tell you, what you think is fake is only 1/100th of what actually is fake. Even in shows and ads and images that look like your everyday settings... nope. A Matrix inside a Matrix.

Fake is not fake enough anymore. Virtual is too real. Breaking News is old news. Information is dead and it took imagination with it. Fantasy finally is reality... boring ass reality.

(By the way... that billboard at the end of that video... that's fake. But they just had to get that image next to a used car lot to fit the movie just perfect... Yes, Dove, no wonder our perception is distorted...)