journeys through hyperrealitynick hopper

ARC-30132

                          

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”Immanuel Kant

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Contents

Foreword 005

Counterfeit 007

I Stourhead: Experience 009

II Stourhead: History 013

III Stourhead: Analysis 017

Production 022IV Blackpool: Experience 024

V Blackpool: History 031

VI Blackpool: Analysis 037

Simulation 042

VII Dubai: Experience 044

VIII Dubai: History 048

IX Dubai: Analysis 056

Conclusion 060Bibliography 063

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“We are giving you the reproduction so that you will no longer feel any need for the original”. Jean Baudrillard

Illustration I

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Foreword

This dissertation explores the notion of hyper-reality in architecture, urban design and the built environment. It uses the work of the semiotic philosopher Jean Baudrillard to establish a definition of Hyper-reality and goes on to argue for the recognition of a historical trend in architectural and urban design for the existence of a pattern towards hyper-reality and the desire for fantasy realms that mirror “reality”, since the enlightenment. It illustrate this pattern by drawing on three key examples that take in Baudrillard’s three orders of appearance signalling the dominant means of expression of the hyper-real in the last three hundred years:-

Counterfeit is the dominant scheme of the “classical” period, from the renaissance to the industrial period;Production is the dominant scheme of the industrial era;Simulation is the reigning scheme of the current phase…..

Baudrillard, J., Simulations. (1983; pp.83)

The examples drawn upon to illustrate this trend are the landscaped park in Stourhead, Wiltshire begun in 1724; The Pleasure Beach and Tower at Blackpool, started in 1891; and the recent development of Dubai and its coastline. Despite the apparent contradictions in three seemingly disparate environments an investigation has been undertaken to consolidate a thread that interweaves the three in an effort to pinpoint and ascertain key notions of the hyper-real and the object/subject relationship between the real and the simulated. A brief historical overview of each of the key examples has been carried out along with investigation of relevant cultural and art historical writings appropriate to their contexts.

The nature of context in architectural design will be drawn upon with the ambition of realising its relevance in a world of brand dominated globalisation and the immediacy of seemingly disassociated realms through media saturation. A world that seemingly renders all things available to all people, all of the time.

The piece will offer further insight through historical and socio-cultural writings and observations from a broad cross section of sources and will also benefit from site visits by the author to the three locations mentioned above in an effort to ground the theory in a personal, experiential form. Different stylistic writing methods will be used to further accentuate these processes.

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It is anticipated a full understanding of Baudrillard’s writings on simulated realities will be realised along with a clear polemical discourse for the recognition of the hyper real as an appropriate tool for the development of urban and architectural environments in contemporary architectural design.

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Counterfeit

Illustration IIA counterfeit is an imitation that is made usually with the intent to deceptively represent its content or origins. 1

Wikipedia

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Illustration IIIThe fluid reality that spans the territory between the real and the fake, between simulations and the hyperreal, between the authentic and counterfeit, is the slippery territory where we all now live. There is something deeply disturbing about our inability to tell real from unreal... As the post-modernists maintain, sometimes the fake is so real, it becomes realer than real (hyperreal) and we come to prefer it. 2

Jean Baudrillard

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Illustration IVI hear you have been at Stourhead….and saw undelighted all delights tho’ you trod the enchanting paths of Paradise….3

Henry Hoare

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ITravelling up into Wiltshire on a cool October morning, we ring-road past the static missile of Salisbury cathedral, then across a misty plain where our map and directions lead us to a quiet ESSO service station on the A303. We stop and confirm our route before descending into a vale and are guided by the “culture brown” signs and familiar leaf motif of the National Trust to Stourhead. We shoot into an overspill car park following a group of elderly day trippers towards the information desk where we turn over our money and are handed a fold out, illustrated leaflet showing a suggested route. Instead we peel off towards the house before the rain comes.

       Once inside we try to walk towards the library but are accosted by a guide who tells us that the large painting over the fireplace is of “Henry the magnificent” the man who more than anyone single-handedly transformed the landscape into what we see today. We are told not to lean on the furniture as it’s an “original” Chippendale and has only been re-upholstered last year to the exact specifications of the 1750’s design and are pointed towards the information packs with illustrations of the paintings that hang in front of our eyes. In the library we are informed the collection is ranked as one of the most important in the UK, so much so that the leather bound tomes are separated from wandering hands by thin strands of almost invisible rope. Their

contents only imagined by way of their gold embossed titles.

 

A photograph of the last living descendent and sometimes resident of the house, standing next to a man who looks strangely like the pop star Sting sets us off on a mini argument; “It is him;” “It isn’t:”“It is.”“It could be;”And reminds me of a story of a friend who met Phil Collins in a hairdresser’s once and commented “It didn’t look very much like him though”. Back in the main hall we discover that a fire in 1901 gutted the building and that originally a large dome would have towered above our heads but was both structurally difficult to re-create and too costly. Instead a stucco ceiling elaborately decorated in the enlightenment style was deemed an appropriate replacement; What better material could be used than one that offers a conglomerate of the natural world, whitened and understood as a sign of the democracy of the classical.

      

Into the park now, we pick up the suggested route stopping between frames of turning leaves to photograph and record half witnessed temples, reached by winding paths that offer views out across the lake to our next point in time. We pose for photographs inside and outside the grotto; the sensitivities of the camera and its uncontrollable flash seemingly rendering the interiors light and airy, the feux marble statue’s details unable to cope with the blast of light turning them to blobs of vaguely Tiberean proportion. A water feature prompts a story from a fellow visitor of how they heard of someone mistaking the reflection of the ceiling in the pool to be the floor and strode in finding themselves knee high in freezing water, revealing the mirages true identity in an instant. At the Pantheon we find the door locked and instead stand on the steps looking out across the serene beauty of the artificial lake.

   

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The Palladian bridge appears to offer a way across the lake to the temple of Flora but on arrival is barricaded by an iron gate. The bridge’s perfect reflection of itself in the lake signals its own narcissistic death, too perfect to touch for fear of loosing its beauty, like some Wildean literary creation where its image betrays its lack of authenticity. Back to the visitors centre on the perimeter of the site we deliberate over eating a late lunch at the pub set in the context of a small English village or at the self service café across the courtyard. The choice is made; we sit down and consume our food before leaving, armed with photographs and booklets that will serve as our memories when the experience has faded.

   

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Chapter I

Footnotes1 www.wikipedia.org; Taken from definition of Counterfeit; October 20082 Independent website. (http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://kk.org/ct2); October 20083 Letter of 1753 From Henry Hoare II to his nephew;

“Whether at pleasure or business let us be in earnest and ever active to be outdone or exceeded by none, that is the way to thrive. I hear you have been at Stourhead without the Dame, and so saw undelighted all delight tho’ you trod the enchanting paths of Paradise, what is there in creation, those are the fruits of industry and application to business and shows what great things may be done by it, the envy of the indolent who have no claim to temples, grottos, bridges, rocks, exotic pines and ice in summer. When those are won by the industrious, they have the best claim to them provided their foundations is laid by the hand of prudence and supported by perseverance in well-doing and constant cautious watchfulness over the main chance. Without it proud Versailles thy glory falls and Nero’s terrasses desert their walls, so you could not go on your Via Charmgiana, it is a pattern of perfection”; discussing the latter’s recent visit to the estate. Referenced in Woodbridge, K., (2002). The Stourhead Landscape. London: The National . pp.17

IllustrationsI Andy Warhol; Campbells Soup Tin; 1964. Reproducible screen print [www.posterspoint.com/laminas/mcg/p/PF1196.jpg]II Photograph of Chinese factory workers employed in the re-production of masterpieces for sale to the western art market

[www.kk.org/.../12/original-hyper-fake-reproducti.php]III Nicolas Poussin; The Shepherds of Arcadia; 1638-40. The Louvre, Paris. [www.rlcresearch.com/.../11/arcadia_poussin.jpg]

Illustration V

...Why may not a whole estate be thrown into a kind of garden by frequent plantations that may turn as much to the profit as the pleasure of the owner? Fields of corn make a pleasant prospect, and if the walks were a little taken care of that lie between them, if the natural embroidery of the meadows were helped and improved by some small additions of art…. A man might make a pretty landskip of his own possessions. 4

Joseph Addison

IIIn 1448 Sir John Stourton, treasurer of the Royal Household to King Henry VI was granted a licence to enclose a thousand acres of pasture, meadow and woodlands “to impale and make thereof a park” (Woodbridge, K., The Stourhead Landscape. 2002. pp 5), alongside the existing family house. By 1725 a new house was nearing completion. Its inspiration had come from Leoni’s translation of Palladio’s “I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura” which had been in circulation in this country since 1715, and was only the second house (after Marble Hill House) in England to be designed in the “new” neo-Palladian style. Its architect, Colin Campbell, drew upon illustrations of Palladio’s Villa Emo (1559) 5 in the Veneto, and apart from the elongated wings and sloping entrance front, created an almost exact copy transposing the design into the English Landscape. In the same year that the house was completed its patron and owner Henry Hoare, a

wealthy merchant banker, died leaving the estate to his son “Henry the Magnificent”, who would go on to develop what is now considered to be one of the finest picturesque landscapes in the world.

Hoare the younger familiarised himself with an extensive range of art, cultural and architectural references and influences during his two and half years abroad in Italy and Northern Europe on what is commonly referred to as the Grand Tour. 6 Returning with a hoard of booty including paintings by Poussin and Claude Lorrain amongst others, he set about filling the house and transforming the immediate environment into an English pastoral ideal, an Arcadian fantasy world derived from collective imaginings he had seen and admired. In the first English translation of Leone Battista Alberti’s “Ten Books of Architecture” (published 1726) the author suggests a country house should sit in a landscape of eye-catching natural beauty and should include features such as;

grottoes, caverns and springs……the remains [of] Antiquity, on which we cannot turn our eyes without considering the various revolution of men and things, and being filled with wonder and admiration……and where there are a good number of them strewn up and down the country they afford a most beautiful prospect;

Alberti, Leoni Battista Ten Books of Architecture. (1987 ed.pp.128).

The classical architectural and literary language of Rome became therefore the embodiment of what Hoare described as the “pursuit of that knowledge which distinguishes only the gentleman from the vulgar.” 7. To know of antiquity and to travel across the continent acquiring artifacts and knowledge therefore became a signal of the new English, bourgeois elite. In contrast, according to Watkin, to the “un-natural” and false artificiality of the baroque, synonymous of the old Stuart monarchy. 8

Hoare II’s transformation of the landscape at Stourhead began after the death of his wife in 1743, starting with the Temple of Flora, designed by Henry Flitcroft a friend and close associate of Lord Burlington and William

Kent. The temple, built from Chilmark limestone has a single room with a portico of four Doric columns and a Latin inscription that further reinforces Hoare’s sense of elitism, “begone, you who are uninitiated, begone” 9.

The lake was already under construction by 1744 and used lined shelving stones also to Flitcroft’s designs. The dam that contained the water according to Pocock’s letter was not completed until 1754 and consisted of “two large pieces of water which are to be made into one and much enlarged for which a head is making at great expense” 10.

This was followed by the Obelisk 1747-50 a stone pinnacle later struck by lightning and replaced in 1815; the stone Palladian bridge, an exact copy taken from Leoni’s translation of “The Architecture of Palladio” (1721)11

and completed in 1749-50; and the Pantheon, originally referred to as the Temple of Hercules12. It consists of a portico of six Corinthian columns, closed bays, screens a heated interior and a domed rotunda, echoing and recalling its Roman prototype and intended as the focal point and resting place for the entire composition; . Flitcroft’s Temple of Apollo was built in 1765 and is a version of the round temple illustrated in Robert Wood’s “Ruins of Balbec”, (Wood, R., Ruins of Balbec: Otherwise Heliopolis in Coelosyria. (1757 ed. Pp 154)) a copy of which exists in the present day Stourhead library. Woodbridge argues the temple was “…more probably [inspired] by Sir William Chambers Temple of the Sun at Kew from 1761” (Woodbridge, K., The Stourhead landscape (2002. pp.5)). It also bears some resemblance to the Apollonian temple in Claude Lorrain’s “Apollo and the Muses” (1682; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.). Further literary references are in evidence at the Grotto, where an inscription from the Aenead “Intus aquae dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo, Nympharum domus” 13 greets the visitor, together with a domed ceiling and gushing water features that cascade around the white marble statues of the nymphs and Tiber. It is unclear as to the exact date of the grotto, but it is indicated on Pipers 1779 plans of Stourhead and at least one of the statues was commissioned in 1751. According to Piper’s plans a gothic cottage was also added in 1774 to provide a resting place and shelter from inclement weather.

Chapter II

Footnotes4 The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison. J. Addison;. Publ. Henry G Bohn. 1856 pp 346; Writing of French

landscape gardens he had witnessed on travels to the continent in 1712; “The grounds were covered over with an agreeable mixture of garden and forest, more entertaining to the fancy than the neatness and elegancy of our English equivalents. It might

be unprofitable to private persons, to alienate so much ground from pasturage and the plow. But why may not a whole estate be thrown into a kind of garden by frequent plantations that may turn as much to profit as the pleasure of the owner? Fields of corn make a pleasant prospect, and if the walks were a little taken care of that lie between them, if the natural embroidery of meadows were helped and improved by some small additions of art… a man might make a pretty landskip of his own possessions”..

5 Palladio’s Villa Emo is considered as one of the most accomplished of the architects Venetian villas, and expresses a geometrical proportion devised from the Golden section, in both plan and elevation.

6 The phrase was first termed by Richard Lassels (1603-1668) in “The Voyage of Italy” published in Paris in 1670. The Tour was described as representing four areas in which “the accomplished, consumate traveller” was provided for; these being, the intellectual, the social, the ethical and the political.

7 Taken from a letter from Mr. Henry Hoare II to his nephew in 1748.8 Watkin in English Architecture differentiates between the elaborate decorative style of the Baroque and its Monarchic, German,

Hanoverian connotations and the new English bourgeois preference for paired down classicism as epitomised by the neo-palladianism of Campbell, Kent and Lord Burlington. Watkin, D.,(1990) English Architecture . London: Thames and Hudson

9 Taken from Inscription on tablet on Temple of Flora and originated from verse from Virgil’s Aeniad describing the hero’s descent into the underworld before his emphatic return to Rome.

10 Taken from a letter from Dr Richard Pocock to Henry Hoare II in summer of 1754 and referenced in Woodbridge, K.,(2002). The Stourhead Landscape. London: The National Trust. pp 17

11 The Palladian bridge at Stourhead is an exact reproduction of a print from Leoni’s English translation of “The Architecture of Palladio” Book III plate xii. Palladio, A.,(1977 ed.). The Four Books of Architecture. London: Dover Publications.

12 Originally referred to as The Temple of Hercules as it was constructed to house statues commissioned from Rysbrack in 1751. These included sculptures of Hercules as well as Bacchus, Venus, Diana, St Susanna, Cupid and Psyche.

13 “Within fresh water and seats in the living rock, the home of the nymphs”; Translation of inscription taken from cave entrance to the Grotto at Stourhead and originating from The Aeniad, Virgil.

IllustrationsV A Classical landscape: Andrea Locatelli (1783); Auckland Art Gallery. [www.collection.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/collect]

Illustration VIThere can be, I believe, such a thing as a dominant art form; this was what literature had become in Europe by the 17th century. […]Now, when it happens that a single art is given the dominant role, it becomes the prototype of all art: the others try to shed their proper characters and imitate its effects…… not only could painting imitate sculpture, and sculpture, painting, but both could attempt to reproduce the effects of literature. And it was for the effects of literature that 17th and 18th

century painting strained most of all.14

Clement Greenberg

IIIThis chapter provides an analytical study of the relationship between literature, art and the English Landscape movement, particularly at Stourhead. It questions the correlation between object and subject and the decontextualisation of Hoare’s ambition in order to understand the notion of the hyper-real and its embryonic starting point at the turn of the 18th century in what Baudrillard terms the “counterfeit”. 15

Williams, cites Aristotle, as considering art “……primarily as a representation of some hitherto-existing reality. The artist imitates this, and by his imitation, which is akin to our first process of learning, we gather the meaning of the thing that is imitated” (Williams, R., The Long Revolution.1961.pp.21). So by taking the objective reality, the artist in their imitative act is able to shed light through subjective interpretation of the universal truth

of that reality, that which would not have otherwise been apparent. The artist becomes the revealer of certain truths through the very act of creativity. This of course relies on the very notion of universal truth and is dependent on a priori knowledge to begin with. The park uses sign, suggestion and metaphor distinctly related to pastoral notions of the Arcadian ideal 16 in what Baudrillard describes in “Simulations” as “..Simulacra - not only a game played with signs, they imply social rapports and social power” (Baudrillard, J., Simulations. (1983 pp.83.). Hoare’s vision was clearly an appeal to an elitist pro-Whig intelligentsia familiar with the cultural references on display and had little to do with universality. What is interesting about Aristotle’s ponderings however is the object/subject relationship it intimates.

There are frequent literary references throughout the landscape at Stourhead many of which derive from Virgil’s Aeneid. That the book was an inspiration to Hoare cannot be questioned; there are numerous citations around the park that quote directly from it. The book follows Aeneas the Trojan warrior and his epic return to Rome. The subject of the book was used to justify in the minds of its citizens, the lineage of the contemporary Roman, Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes and gods of Rome and Troy. (“Apollo, grant us a home of our own. We are weary. Give us a walled city which shall endure and a lineage of our blood” (Virgil. Transl. West, D., The Aeneid. 2003 ed. pp 145 )). In the Aristotolean sense we have here an objective “reality” being imitated and presented as subjective interpretation. The poem therefore seeks to reflect that which is “real” in order to reveal to us the objective truth by means of a mirror image, an illusion of reality. As Baudrillard argues;

…there is nothing to stop illusion, for its part, taking on an objective turn….[as]….the real is something we must not consent to. It has been given to us as a simulacrum, and the worst thing is to believe in it for want of anything else ….

Baudrillard, J., The Perfect Crime (1996. pp 11).

Hoare was equally familiar with the work of the French classicists most notably Claude Lorrain, Gasper Dughet and Poussin (as can be witnessed from the original art collection at Stourhead) . All of which drew upon the classical literary canon for inspiration. The French classicists presented the world of antiquity as a lost Arcadian utopia, providing pictorial narratives that act almost as illustrative representations of classical epic verse. One such example from the National Gallery collection, Hoare was familiar with; “Landscape with

Aeneas at Delos” 167217; shows the protagonists in the presence of a stone Palladian bridge of five arches, a domed Pantheon-style structure and a porticoed Florian temple all of which in appearance and relationship to each other bear striking similarities to those built at Stourhead.These illustrative settings seem remote but the themes to which they relate did and still have contemporary significance. That we are able to empathise with the themes of these subjects consequently suggests the realisation of their settings could also be achievable. These paintings and the literature they stem from are necessarily subjective in their depiction of a world that never existed. What they offer us is a blueprint of possibility, an attainable reality that simulates a perceived notion of antiquity, and through its realisation and objectification the reality and authenticity of that which it seeks to emulate, is lost. Context becomes burdened with subjective interpretation. The buildings at Stourhead are primarily dysfunctional objects that pull us along a fixed route. We need to understand the complex meta-narratives of the park, the journey of Aeneas across the Mediterranean and his adventures with various mythical creations and the image of the Arcadian pastoral ideal, in order to fully contextualize the reason why the structures exist, and the forms they take. By imposing a fantasy of Rome onto the landscape, the architects of Stourhead in league with French neo-classical painters presented a counterfeit which invalidated and stripped bear the authentic reality of Antiquity; This is what Baudrillard would call “…… a radical disillusioning of the real” . (Baudrillard, J., The Perfect Crime (1996. pp 104).

Williams in The long Revolution continues “To succeed in art is to convey an experience to others in such a form that the experience is actively recreated” (Williams, R., The Long Revolution.1961.pp.51). . By recreating an objective reality from a literary subject i.e. The Aenead as “real” experience brought to Wiltshire, we are able to draw parallels with the modern day theme parks of the likes of Disney World and modern media extravaganza’s. Hence the decontextualisation of the subject made available as superficial experienced object. Hoare’s vision for Stourhead was indelibly associated with his perception of himself and his family as somehow representative of those classical figures he witnessed and read in the art and literature of ancient Rome and the French classical painters. There are frequent references to Hercules; both in the collection of paintings in the house and in the park, for example, Poussin’s “Hercules Decision of vice or virtue of 1682 hangs in the house, along with Rysbrack’s statues which used prize fighter Jack Broughton as their model. Hercules’ association with sacred gardens and his mastery of virtue over vice perhaps provided Hoare with a metaphor for his own life. Baudrillard states;

Acting out. Ridding yourself of your phantasies by having them pass into reality- and yet for all that, they do not actually become real: The acting out merely expresses the impossibility of the phantasy remaining a phantasy;

Baudrillard, J., The Perfect Crime (1996. pp 35).

It can be argued that Hoare’s subjective interpretation of these associations therefore provided the foundations for the establishment of an objective “reality” being created at Stourhead;

Reality itself founders in hyperrealism, the meticulous reduplication of the real from medium to medium, the real is volatized, becoming an allegory of death. It becomes reality for its own sake, the fetishism of the lost object: no longer the object of representation, but the ecstasy of denial and of its own ritual extermination;

Baudrillard, J., Essay on Hyper-Reality; (1976. pp 1051).

Baudrillard would suggest the objectification or realisation of these subjects (The ruins of antiquity, the classical literary poetry of Virgil, the Arcadian fantasy of French neo-classicism and the copy books of Palladio), point towards the first flowerings of what he would term the “hyper-real.”

Chapter III

Footnotes14 Taken from Clement Greenberg’s “Towards a Newer Laocoon”; Essay written in August 1940; Ed C.Harrison and P. Wood (1999) Art In

Theory 1900-1990, An Anthology of Changing Ideas. . MA, USA Blackwood. pp 556.

15 As indicated in the foreword Jean Baudrillard in “Simulations” points to three eras of simulation since the enlightenment; “Counterfeit is the dominant scheme of the “classical” period, from the renaissance to the industrial period; Production is the dominant scheme of the industrial era; Simulation is the reigning scheme of the current phase…..”. see footnote 1.

16 The Utopian notion of Arcadia can be traced back to early classical Greek writing, starting with Hesiod’s Works and Days of the 7th century BC, where a depiction of a Golden Age, a vanished era of Kronos’ reign, was lamented. When according to Hesiod, men “lived as if they were gods, their hearts free from all sorrow, and without hard work or pain; when the fruitful earth yielded its abundant harvest to them of its own accord, and they lived in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things”.

17 In a letter to William Graffham of 1746, Hoare makes reference to this and other paintings he has witnessed in the collection of the Ellis family. This painting was part of the Ellis’ bequest to the National Gallery in 1876.

IllustrationsVI Landscape with Aeneas at Delos: Claude Lorrian (1682). National Gallery Coll. [http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk]

Production

Illustration VII

Time and Tide wait for no man;18

Anon

Illustration VIII

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass;19

Karl Marx

Illustration IX Illustration X

Whether the visitor is young or old, I beg that he will not fail to spend an hour or two on the South Shore Pleasure Beach. If he is young, it will be his very element. If he is old it will take him back to those days when he was not yet old and will, for a time at any rate, give him back his youth. There is I vow, every bit as great a thrill in ten minutes on the Big Dipper as there ever was on a climb of the Matterhorn. 20

Blackpool Promotional Literature

IVThis is the last week of the illuminations and the clocks have just gone back. Nothing has really changed since my last trip here with my grandparents 24 years ago. This time, my son and I, play the same game today as I did then, as we dip and rise over the sloping hills outside the town, of “spot the tower”; Until predictably it appears, a half submerged beacon of anticipated fun, then vanishes again as we descend into a vale. On a good day you can see it from Barrow, 30 miles to the north. We arrive along the main strip at about 2:15 in the afternoon. There’s already a sense of impending darkness, highlighted by

flickering bulbs on the otherwise shabby casino facades. Slowing to town-speed we clock on our left the Irish Sea battering a wind assisted full tide against the shear walls of Blackpool’s concrete sea defences. On our right we tick off places of interest, “The Pirates Cove”, “The Hall of Mirrors”, “The Dr Who Musuem”, “Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks” “The South Pier”, “The Central Pier”, “The North Pier”, a sign for the “The Pleasure Beach”, “The Winter Gardens” and “The Tower Experience”; A Golden Mile corridored between the sublime and the ridiculous.

The Cliff’s Hotel on the north beach of the town is our temporary home. A bizarre hybrid of Victorian castellated exterior and once updated and restyled Art Deco interior, vast ceilings, massive staircase and echoing spaces; the ebb and flow over time of success and failure etched into the fading paintwork. The room is small however and the walls shake like a 70’s BBC sit-com set when we tread too heavily around it. The dubious identity of the Cliff’s becomes increasingly unclear the further we venture inside. After a short time we exit out the absurdly heavy front door and back onto the street where we are assaulted by the blasting wind and hail down a tram. Travelling back along the strip the way we came eventually arriving outside

the Tower, we find it shut due to high winds. My son watches the sea where the giant hands of 60 off shore wind turbines generate the power for the lights that are now pulsing before us.

First on our tick list is the “Dr Who Museum”, signalled by a floating illuminated darlic over the entrance and made up of a series of tired mannequins adorned with old costumes from half remembered episodes of the programme from my childhood. The lifeless poses seem a universe away from the drama and excitement they once evoked. Behind a glass cabinet the sad tear-drop eyes of the robotised cybermen offer a warning of a future, almost here. My son speaks into a machine that converts his voice into that of a darlic. He offers some amusing one-liners precluded with the archetypal “Exterminate! Exterminate!”, before we exit via the shop.

A hop over tram lines and a short walk brings us to “Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks”. We recognise nearly everyone here and take photo’s of us standing next to Lewis Hamilton, Kylie Minogue, Brad Pitt, a seated Micheal Jackson, Robbie Williams, the cast of Coronation Street, three James Bond’s, King Kong, The Queen, President Mitterand, Princess Diana, David Seaman, David and Victoria Beckham and Gordon Ramsey; They stand thematically arranged, each untouchable figure fixed and preserved until a time when they might no longer be recognised against their doppelganger’s reality. Except for one man who my son can’t decide is a “real” waxwork or “just a man” standing very still. He opts not to have his photograph taken next to him just in case he isn’t a waxwork, “I don’t recognise him so it isn’t worth it anyway” he rationalises. Soon the intrigue of the wax starts to wane and we edge slowly towards the Hall of Mirrors which precludes our exit route. The illusion of our multiple reflections seems strangely real compared with the make believe images of the wax. Our smiles and laughter bounce back at us from the surrounding glass and we pretend not to be able to find the way out so we can watch ourselves for a little while longer.

By the time we reach the South Pier, darkness has properly set in. The chaotic circling and thumping lights of the dodgems are reflected by the swirling ocean beneath us and theatrical screams that rise and fall from the nearby waltzer. To be on the edge of the shore line is to experience life on the edge; the pier as provider of controlled fear, a flashed exposure of the sublime, a momentary escape from mundanity for the masses. The illuminations light our journey back along the strip as our time is measured by the distance between flickering layers of light and dark. The tide has turned as the tram winds its way north back up the slope to our hotel.

The following day at the Pleasure Beach we are whisked through the turnstiles of Geoffrey Thompson’s modernist entrance building, lured over to the racing camels by a microphoned host and asked where we come from?

“Bognor Regis”; I reply.“Well what are you doing here…… from the seaside to the seaside?”“It’s a bit different here”

“Yeap, it’s not as posh as Bognor Regis!” he retorts mimicking our “soft” southern accents.

The Big Dipper is our next point of call. Its old fashioned wooden tracks and carriages seem a gentle introduction to the towering skeletal, spines of the Pepsi Max Big One or the Irn Bru Revolution that rear up around us. The rhythmic click, click as we ascend up the first slope belies a real danger as we soon realise, plummeting down the other side. The real fear of wondering if this thing is safe reduces the fun of the sensation of fear that the Big Dipper was first designed to induce. The commodification of fear is never able to compete with the real thing. The stark contrast of the smoothness of some of the other more modern roller coasters becomes evident the further the day goes on. Later we sweep serenely up, over, down and around the park on the Avalanche; “Britain’s only true bobsleigh ride” 21

whose alpine style chalet entrance with cuckoo clocks and oompah music renders a trip to Austria no longer necessary. We hang, locked into position from the Infusion ride, and as the floor drops away we accelerate, dangling from the massive steel structure that predicts our path before us. At the peak of the ascent we see the whole of Blackpool, until the image is whisked away by the blur of motion as we career back to earth. My son’s face drained of life, as when walking away, we finally recover our balance.

Soon we are treading cautiously over a plastic moat and into the darkness of Valhalla. Inside a cavernous polystyrene montage of water, fire and bustling queues, we don our £2 plastic macs, mount a mechanical powered boat and have our senses systematically bombarded in some fantastical delusion of Viking life. We are blasted by furnaces, travel through a 20 second dry-ice age and are squirted by water jets just as our Scandinavian

brethren on their journey to the underworld, must have been all those years ago!

On our drive back down the M6 we are held up for 2 hours in Staffordshire until we eventually creep past a seven car pile up surrounded by emergency services, the mangled remains of roof –cut cars and shards of shattered glass. Trying not to look, I notice a limp blanket stretched over one portion of the road with a small group in silent company. I turn the radio up, accelerate quickly away and talk about something else.

Chapter IVFootnotes

18 Anonymous quote whose origin is believed to stem from St Marher, 1225; "And te tide and te time þat tu iboren were, schal beon iblescet."19 Taken from Das Capital: A Critique of Political Economy; Karl Marx; Kroner Publ. USA 2004 pp 437.20 Taken from Blackpool Corporation holiday guide of 1928; Blackpool: Britain’s Playground. Blackpool, 1928. pp31. 21 Taken from Blackpool Pleasure Beach website, a deeply concerning description of The Avalanche.

http://www.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com/rides/avalanche/7/1/

IllustrationsVII Landscape with Aeneas at Delos: Claude Lorrain (1682). National Gallery coll. [http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk] VIII Rollercoaster (2008). Photograph by the author.IX Snow Storm- Steam Boat off a Harbours Mouth (1842). Tate Gallery coll.[http://www.tate.org.uk/britain]X October morning; Blackpool promenade (2008). Photograph by the author.

Illustration XI

Paris, the centre of gaiety, had its Tower: Blackpool must have one too, Chicago built a Great Wheel, Blackpool followed suit, If there is anything in the world worth seeing and having you can rest assured that Blackpool will be amongst the first, if not the first, to have it. 22

Blackpool Gazette

VIn August of 1889 Blackpool Mayor Ron Bickerstaffe returned from the Exposition Universalle in Paris where he had witnessed the opening of the Eiffel Tower that celebrated the 100 th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution. At the time of its construction the tower was the tallest building in the world and attracted over 2 million visitors in the 5 months the exposition was open for, quickly recouping its construction cost. The idea of a tower as profitable attraction quickly took hold in England, where it was perceived as a vertical version of the pier, offering views and contact with the forces of nature whilst containing other entertainment

facilities on lower levels. The first British response was led by Sir Edwin Watkins who founded the Tower Construction Company in 1889 to build a Tower taller than its French equivalent. It was intended to be the centre of a vast outdoor amusement park at Wembley, taking its shape and construction methods directly from its Paris precedent; (Gustave Eiffel himself was asked to design it, but turned down the offer). It took five years for the Wembley Tower to reach the height of 155 ft, after which time the money ran out; its remains being demolished in 1907.

Similarly in Brighton, The Brighton ‘Eiffel’ Tower and Winter Gardens Limited, an incorporated company established in 1891, had parallel ambitions but was wound up 5 months later through insufficient investment.

Within two years of Bickerstaffe’s return from Paris he had formed with the investment of £2,000 of his own money alongside that of other local investors, the Blackpool Tower Company Limited. By September 1891 the first foundation stones of the new Blackpool Tower were laid. Its architects James Maxwell and Charles Tukes, two little known Lancashire designers based its construction and appearance on Gustave Eiffel’s Parisian creation under the guidance of Bickerstaffe and the Tower first opened its doors to paying visitors on the 14 th

May 1894. Maxwell & Tuke fitted the circus inside the Tower legs on the ground and first floors, located shops around much of the perimeter of the site, and filled the three-to-four-storey bulk of the building with an aquarium, menagerie, restaurant, Grand Pavilion (later ballroom) and a winter garden on the roof. Its lower level department store aesthetic (an almost neo-gothic St Pancras style with red brick and terracotta facings) belied an inner world of sumptuous decoration and detail, including ceramic Art Nouveau murals by Neatby of Dalton, turquoise low reliefs from the Yorkshire based Burmantoft factory (modelled by E.C.Spruce) and elaborately gilded, scalloped mouldings wrapping the Tower’s footings and forming the backdrop to the gallery. The tower was an instant commercial success and quickly overtook the Winter Gardens as the town’s premier attraction up to that point and sparked further interest from seaside developers to produce their own version of Eiffel’s creation.

In New Brighton, Liverpool Member of Parliament R.B Houston formed the New Brighton Tower and Recreation Company in 1895, employing Maxwell and Tuke to reproduce Blackpool’s success further down the coast. Despite local protestations the New Brighton Tower was completed and opened its doors on Whitsun 1898. This version was a bigger and more expansive design that that at Blackpool with a 567 foot Tower, a 3,000 seat theatre, a ballroom, concert hall, billiard saloon, menagerie, restaurant and winter garden (see illustration). As at Blackpool the lower levels were faced in red brick and terracotta in a vaguely neo-gothic

style. In all examples the towers themselves in visual appearance and construction techniques employed, were literal reproductions of their Paris equivalent. Blackpool had by this point already established itself as a viable tourist resort for a burgeoning new and relatively prosperous working class that was steadily gaining pace on its doorsteps of Manchester, Liverpool and the Lancashire mill towns. Blackpool’s resources; a long stretch of sandy coastline and its proximity to large centres of urban growth coupled with the fashionable exercise of sea bathing as a cure for ailments made the resort a natural choice as early as the late 1770’s. With the building of a road and stage coach route from Halifax and Manchester in 1781 and the establishment of holiday cottages in 1819 in the Lane Ends district of the town the population grew from 473 in the 1801 census to over two and half thousand by 1851. This was significantly helped by the building of the Preston and Wyre Joint Railway in 1846 allowing for an influx of day trippers to the town that had previously been excluded by time and financial constraints (For the first time the town could be accessed from Manchester in under an hour and for less than an average mill workers daily wage). By the 1850’s a steady and reliable stream of visitors were coming to the town, serviced by increasingly bolder developments of boarding houses and amusements. A short poem from the period illustrates the image of fun and accessibility Blackpool was building for itself;

I’m living in a Sayport, whereIts always breet an’ shiney;I keep a little boardin’-heawseAt Blackpool on the briney.Come up an see, you’re quite agreeIt’s natty, neat an cleverAn’ if you’ll spend a week wi meYo’ll want to stop forever.

Fitton, S.,. Gradely Lancashire. (1929 pp.41)

Between the 1860’s and 1890’s the town had around two million annual visitors most of which came from within a 50 mile proximity of the town and visiting during the wakes weeks from their respective mill towns. The wakes holiday originating from religious breaks during the pre-industrial period had developed into a semi-official holiday when individual mill towns closed their factories for annual servicing and maintenance. Each town chose a different week for this operation ensuring a constant flow of equally spaced visitors to Blackpool

during the summer months. The town’s response to this surge in popularity was to develop a range of attractions including the Winter Gardens, the Tower, the Alhambra, the Grand theatre, an extended promenade, the Raikes Hall Pleasure Gardens and three piers, along with a large number of smaller operations such as palmists, peep shows, dancing platforms and re-creations of famous battles on the sands. Walton points out in “Riding on Rainbows” that from this combination there emerged in Blackpool;

…the first working class consumer society, a novel phenomenon which expressed itself through commercial popular music, dance halls, the music hall and theatre, the early development of professional sport, the development of popular retailing and fashion goods and the rise of fast foods in the form of fish and chips, pies and cheap confectionary.

Walton, J., Riding on Rainbows, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and its Place in British Popular Culture. (2007.pp.2-3)

Blackpool therefore became a counterpoint to the toil of countless thousands of visitors who saw a trip to the seaside as an opportunity to let off steam and indulge in a brief sojourn on the fringes of their normal everyday existence. The availability of these experiences was made possible on such a large scale to a mass audience due to developments in both technology and production, the beginnings of a designated leisure time and a previously undreamt of disposable income for the factory workers of Lancashire.Blackpool’s roots as a place of fun and entertainment had been established in the tradition of the travelling fairgrounds that annually visited the town from the 1830’s onwards. A large itinerant gypsy community was prevalent during the summer months which brought a carnival atmosphere to the town and offered an alternative view of life away from the drudgery of the factory floor.

The Raikes Hall Pleasure Gardens constructed in 1872, half a mile inland from the beach, offered many of the attributes of the gypsy fairground experience but within a specially controlled and manicured environment. A permanent dancing platform, a drinks licence, featured acrobats and firework displays could be experienced all within the confines of a designated space and was the precursor to the more advanced technological offerings of the next two decades. By 1876 Raikes Hall came within the auspices of the recently formed local borough council ensuring a more sanitised version of fun that fed back into the coffers of local interest, marking a desire

for participation and respectability amongst the towns-folk that had perhaps been lacking up to that point. As Walton goes on to illustrate “The development of a disreputable district of shows and stalls, including freaks, monsters and thinly disguised fortune telling by “phrenologists” and assorted occult practitioners, not to mention contraceptive advice” [had until then been] grudgingly accepted along what was becoming the Golden Mile.” (Walton, J., Riding on Rainbows, Blackpool Pleasure beach and its Place in British Popular Culture. 2007.pp.19)

The borough council from this time forward devoted itself to the promotion of the town as a leisure resort culminating in 1879 with a pioneering mass advertisement campaign in local press and bill boards that helped to establish Blackpool as the premier resort ahead of its neighbouring competition. In September of the same year the council in an effort to extend the season beyond its usual summer ending introduced electric lighting to the streets of the golden mile (one year after the same thing had been trialled in the Portuguese resort of Cascais) and in a precursor to the enormously successful illuminations that became an annual fixture from 1912 onwards. This was also pioneered at the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893 where electric street lights powered by alternating current motors were employed for the first time. By 1896 Blackpool had acquired its own version of Chicago’s giant Ferris Wheel on a location close to the Beaux Arts inspired Winter Gardens, which was steadily establishing itself as the premier pleasure palace of the entire resort. Where the Worlds Fair set the standards for leisure architecture and planning in parkland settings and for its innovative use of technological advances in rides and attractions, Blackpool followed suit. Where Blackpool differed up to this point was in the assimilation of these offerings within an established urban context, for example images of the era show the Giant Wheel looming over terraced houses and shops (see illustration XI). The one exception to this was the Pleasure Beach which came into being on the South Shore outside the town in the late 1890’s and which borrowed a number of recent innovations in thrill seeking and park planning from the Transatlantic pace setters of both Coney Island and Chicago. Its original mutation as a semi-permanent variant on the travelling gypsy fairground that had been shunted to the perimeter of the town by concerned councillors, was reinforced and built upon over successive seasons to a point where it became the dominant attraction of the entire town. Unrestricted by planning and bureaucracy the Pleasure Beach had the opportunity to stay ahead of technological advances in amusement rides and was therefore able to reinvent its appearance and experiences in a way that the fixed permanence of the Tower and Winter Garden buildings were not.

These structures’ experiences became redundant over time leaving buildings as representative icons of the town, an image over substance, whereas the Pleasure Beach was able to offer dynamic change dependent on market requirements for thrills and entertainment. Realising its capital potential inevitably lead the Pleasure Beach to be incorporated under the auspices of town control by 1905 but the cultural basis for innovative development

had been set and continued after this date. These included rides and entertainment such as the Bicycle railway of 1901, The Flying Machine of 1902, Sir Hiram Maxim Flying Machine 1904, The Helter Skelter tower of 1905, The Scenic Railway of 1907 (Blackpool’s first wooden roller coaster) and The Velvet coaster of 1909. The parks ability to quickly recognise and incorporate technology and stylistic architectural reference kept it modern and relevant to its thrill seeking audience. This can best be illustrated by Thompson’s remodelling of the entrance front and canopy over The Big Dipper which has striking similarities to Lubetkin’s Penguin pool at Regents Park of the 1920’s. What Blackpool was able to do better than any of its seaside leisure competitors was to borrow extensively from existing contexts and reproduce both experiences and actual structures that replicated these contexts and presented them as entertainment for the working class masses of Lancashire.

Chapter V

Footnotes22 A description of the town’s ability to acquire the latest technological advances in leisure facilities from The Blackpool Gazette 13 May 1902.

IllustrationsXI Photograph of the “Giant Wheel” looming over terraced houses and shops and located next to the Winter Gardens as part of that facility’s new

attractions for the 1896 summer season. [www.edwardianemporium.co.uk/postcards/blackpool.o.uk]

Illustration XII

With modernity we enter the age of the production of the other. The aim is no longer to kill the other, devour it, seduce it, vie with it, love it or hate it, but first, to produce it. It is no longer an object of passion; it is an object of production. 23

Jean Baudrillard

VIThis chapter provides an analytical study of the relationship between the original and the reproduced in the context of the development of Blackpool’s leisure industry in the latter half of the 19 th century. It illustrates Baudrillard’s theory in what he would term the second phase of the hyper-real, “production”.

Baudrillard argues “A possible definition of the real is: that for which it is possible to provide an equivalent representation”; 24 meaning that the actual process or act of reproduction has the ability to render the objectification of a subject in order that it becomes “real” to all who experience it. This process can be helped further through the decontextualisation of the reproduction away from its origins thus creating a new context, that of the hyper-real. Kant sheds light on and clarifies this theme when he argues;

All our judgments are at first merely judgments of perception; they hold good only for us (i.e. for our subject), and we do not till afterwards give them a new reference (to an object) and want that they should always hold good for us and in the same way for everybody else; for if a judgment agrees with an object, all judgments concerning the same object must likewise agree with one another, and thus the objective validity of the judgment of experience signifies nothing else than its necessary universal validity;

Kant, I., Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.(1990 ed. pp 935).

Bickerstaffe in his vision for an Eiffel Tower in Blackpool along with Watkin at Wembley and Houston at New Brighton therefore contrived to provide a working class equivalent reality to a subjective Parisian ideal. Much of what would have been seen at the Exposition Universalle was itself the product of this very same sequence. For example the reincarnation of the Bastille away from its original location and devoid of its basic structure and ground plan gave visitors a version of a Bastille-experience, 100 years after the original storming by French revolutionaries. One of the highlights and most visited attractions of the exposition was the “Negro Village” a caged enclosure of ethnographic specimens allegedly demonstrating Darwinian links from apes to ethnic Africans to modern Europeans and “which for the first time brings vividly to the appreciation of the Frenchmen that they are masters of lands beyond the sea”(Engineering Journal; May 1889). Villard and Cotard’s “Great Model of the Earth” offered the world as exhibit and followed Wyld’s efforts in the same department at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, a notion that has been revisited many times since and is being explored as liveable reality in modern Dubai.

What Bickerstaffe and other Blackpool developers were able to recognise from Paris was the facility for technological advancements in production and manufacturing to make available any perceivable reality in any context. Alongside this was a societal shift in modes of production to the point where a Marxist dialect of work vs. leisure became a prevalent norm particularly in the rigid work patterns of the Lancashire cotton mills. What Blackpool achieved in assimilating the edgy characteristics of the gypsy fairground into a controlled and socially acceptable environment was to use the available technology to replicate and reproduce environments

that were as rigidly controlled as the mills from which its visitors had escaped from. Leisure and its management by social institutions thus became as powerful as those in the workplace. Nowadays we talk about a work-life balance as though the two are mutually exclusive, this perhaps has its precedent with Marx, who might argue that Blackpool introduced an antithesis to the ethic of labour within the Victorian working classes, that of non-labour. If labour was at the will of the productive forces of autonomisation then so must be non-labour, resulting in the commodification of all things produced, including leisure. After all as Marx clarifies, if value is definable by its capacity for exchange then “Nothing can have value without being an object of utility” (Marx, K., Das Kapital. ed 2007. pp 145) . And as Baudrillard continues;

This logic of material production, this dialectic of modes of production, always returns beyond history to a generic definition of man as a dialectical being; a notion intelligible only through the process of the objectification of nature. In effect the sphere of play is defined as the fulfilment of human rationality, the dialectical culmination of mans activity of incessant objectification of nature and control of his exchanges with it.

Baudrillard, J. The Illusion of the End. (1994. pp 25)We see this objectification of nature in the Victorian leisure industry at Blackpool and in the contemporary setting of the Pleasure Beach and its many rides. The experiences are necessarily controlled and automatised (the roller coaster is not directed by the will of its occupants but rather by a fixed track) and through the re-creation of a point in time and specificity of place (for example the Austrian Tyrol as exemplified by the Avalanche ride). Thus through the organisation of this re-creation into leisure and entertainment we as consumers of these perpetually reproduced experiences are forced to objectify our relationship with them. Their aim is to allow a mass audience to experience an objective equivalence of climbing the Matterhorn or being shipwrecked or lost in the Arctic. This is entertainment without hidden meaning, available and accessible for all to understand; its references are loose, vague and unimportant and rely solely on sensation. They are a manifestation of notions of the sublime; mechanised, commodified and reproduced. The development of entertainment originally fit for an age that craved respite from the automatisation of life only to find that the sensations they yearned for were as manufactured, controlled and produced as the material of their realities.

The original Tower was in essence an engineered product in that it could be placed anywhere; (originally Eiffel designed it for Barcelona for that city’s Universal Exposition of 1888). Its efficiency of structure allows its relatively cheap and easy replication. It has a transparent quality both literally and figuratively in that light and air pass through it and that it is largely functionless other than as a symbol, initially of the event it commemorates; and since that time as an archetypal image of Paris. It has no other reference point in time or place and therefore begins “…..the pure form of production, it takes itself…as its own teleological value” (Baudrillard, J. The Critique of Originality. 1976. pp 1053), that of reproducible product.

Efforts at the duplication of the Tower in Blackpool, New Brighton, Wembley, Brighton and Morecambe further enhances this objective truth of the sign of the Tower ultimately rendering the original an abstract and non-figurative form, allowing for its further replication as symbol and code (see illustration XI). The seaside resort context of Victorian England with its demand for novelty and other-worldliness became a natural host to the replication of experiences and structures, presenting them as objectified realities of their original.

The case of the Tower and of the town’s development in the latter half of the 19 th century offers an illuminating insight into Baudrillard’s concept of “production” as the second phase of the “hyper-real”.

Chapter VI

Footnotes23 Baudrillard, J., Transl. Turner, C., (1996) The Perfect Crime .London: Verso. pp11524 Baudrillard, J., (1976) Essay: The Critique of Originality; from: Ed. Harrison, C., and Wood, P,.(1992). Art In Theory 1900-1990; An

Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell Press. pp 1050.

IllustrationsXII A Souvenir from the Eiffel Tower. [www.frenchpresents.com]

Simulation

Illustration XIII

Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.25

Emile M Cioran

Illustration XIV

For men will not be content to manufacture life: they will want to improve on it26

J.D.Bernal

Illustration XV

Don't you sometimes feel that this is the kind of life we were meant to live on this earth? Everything we need, everything, right here, right at our fingertips. You know, if only people could have all this and be satisfied, I don't think there'd be any real problems in the world.27

Johann David Wyss

VII

I have arrived early at the terminal and positioned myself in a chair in front of the screen.Google is my home. I am searching for The World. 320,000 results available to view after 0.27 seconds. One left click on the first option and I arrive. A slow fade-up; coral blue sea merges into sky with no definable horizon; Caption: “A Vision made real”. An invitation: “Explore The World”. Left click, fade up to a satellite image of The World, new window opens with three video options, choose “Explore Further”; Maybe come back to the others later. Six options now in new window. Left click on “The World” that has a graphic of a helicopter on it. Video window opens and calming, turning slightly epic, music starts. Shot of fading sun over city. Logo appears everywhere; a blurred, mercurial version of the earlier satellite image. Deep resonant voice-over starts “In a city like no other city…………where the remarkable is becoming the new reality”.

Flying over Burj Dubai hotel now. “Tallest”, “Largest”, “The only….”.Seven stars of ultimate luxury,Fade out and Fade in, swooping over a series of sand bars backgrounded by the city. Sun reflected off the sea burns the screen white.

Logo appears, branded through the light like a haloed guide and again on the fuselage of the seraphim helicopter that descends from heaven…….

The creation of the new world is complete. Bright, white sand converted to green oasis. Boats weaving through azure, between islands of occupance. Constant light searing through the retina, everything for everyone, all of the time. Descending to almost water level, towards the hub. “An ideal mix of sand, sea and sky”; Ideal.

Left click back to World-Home on toolbar.Back, Back to Video Gallery. Then skimming rural Chinese roof-tops: Ocean-cruiser motor launches out front. Palm fronds on white sand in-back, “All within a boats ride away from Jumeirah”.Spinning east to Santorini architecture; Blue domes, terraces, immaculate white- washed walls, on “Shanghai Island”, populated by men in Dishdash boarding river taxis and talking on mobiles, just purchased by Dr Bin Shu, prominent Chinese businessman. This is the world.“A Destination that captures the imagination and doesn’t let go”. Like nothing else, Nowhere else. An alternative definition for More, who wouldn’t have expected less.If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream. 28

This is a simulation, a model evolved from daily excursions into hyperspace and compiled by imagining a sequence of events within a pre-defined and controlled environment. Descriptions and quotes have been borrowed from witnessed fly-throughs or promotional videos mostly courtesy of Nakheel Developments. The object world of the internet almost turned descriptive subject.

Chapter VII

Footnotes25 Cioran, E, M., (1975). A Short History of Decay. London: Viking Press. pp 11026 Bernal, J, D,. (1949 ed.). The Freedom of Necessity. London. Routledge and Kegan. pp 5627 Wyss, J, D,. (1993 ed.). The Swiss Family Robinson. London. Wordsworth Editions. pp 102 28 Morris,W., (1986 ed) ed.Briggs, A. News from Nowhere, and selected writings and essays. London: Penguin classics. pp 301

IllustrationsXIII Suicide; Andy Warhol (1962) Screen print on Paper. [www.warholprints.com/.../artwork/full/FS-I.2.jpg]XIV Still photograph from “Sim-City: Dubai” PC game. [www.samurai-sam.com]XV Arial view of “The World”. [www.estatesdubai.com]

Illustration XVI

If you know one of their cities, you know them all, for they are exactly alike, except where geography itself makes a difference. So I’ll describe one of them and no matter which. 29

Thomas More

VIIIIn “Dubai, The Vulnerability of Success”, Christopher Davidson notes;

In the 19th and early 20th centuries the tiny settlement of Dubai metamorphosed from little more than a fishing and pearl diving base into a fully fledged sheikhdom with political stability, an established ruling dynasty, and a key role to play in a strategically significant region;

Since the middle of the 18th century a small village had existed at the mouth of the main water inlet into the Persian Gulf and was occupied by a collection of palm frond barasti huts. The area fell under the jurisdiction of the Bani Yas, a tribal conglomeration with influence over areas including Abu Dhabi. By the 1790’s this group had fallen into local conflict with the Omani Qawasin or Al-Qasami clan whose pirates were conversely wreaking havoc on the waterways of the Gulf on the shipping of Britain’s East India Company. Thus a convenient alliance between the Bani Yas and Britain was formed. This alliance culminated in the attack by 7,000 Royal navy marines on a Qawasin held fort in 1820 which ultimately secured the area now geographically referred to as Dubai ensuring British influence in the area was maintained and upheld right up until 1971. Despite internal wranglings amongst the Bani Yas by 1833 the area had a population of around 1,200 citizens and had a firmly established leader in Maktoum bin Buti, the first of the Maktoum dynasty that still heads the country.

With the discovery of oil in the region in 1966 came a massive influx of migrant workers, mainly from India and Pakistan with a subsequent population increase of over 300% by 1975. In 1971 British influence in the area was finally curtailed with the formation of the United Arab Emirates, a collection of seven nation states with a common currency and loose taxation restrictions on foreign workers further exacerbating the population growth, particularly in Dubai. Although the economy was originally founded on oil and natural gas reserves, they now account for less than 6% of the country’s GDP. 30 Dubai has become synonymous in the last 5 years for its innovative real estate business, and geographical importance for large western corporations as a hub to developing

eastern markets. Dubai’s current ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s vision for the country coupled with its huge capital reserves have allowed Dubai to realise some of the most imaginative and extravagant construction projects of the 21st century. In “Delirious New York”, author Rem Koolhaas offers solutions to Manhattan’s urban development in a series of appendices, one of which entitled “The City of the Captive Globe (1972)” argues for a block of the city to be given over to a re-constructed version of the World, an artificial conception in which manifests “A theory that works, A mania that sticks, A lie that has become a truth, A dream from which there is no waking up”. (Koolhaas, R., Delirious New York. 1994.ed. pp 294).

On the first of October 2008 the formation of over 300 man-made islands was completed 4 kilometres off the coast of Dubai. Measuring 7 x 4 kilometres and made using specially manufactured Dutch dredging equipment, crushed shell and sand was lifted from the sea bed and terra-formed to create an off-shore “map” of the globe. These islands available for real estate development are collectively known and marketed as “The World”. Each island takes its name from the country, city or location appropriate to its place on the map sometimes in a hybridized merging of real boundaries. Canals separate countries and continents where state borders would normally mark territorial differentials. This gives “The World” its distinctive shape and its immediately recognisable image as a replication of the world. It also provides a pseudo-context in that distinct vernacular replication becomes a possibility on individual islands. For example on “Venice” it might be deemed appropriate to fashion a Venetian-style aesthetic. The entire development is protected by a 6 km long break water that accentuates its flattened globe appearance.

Functionally, “The World” has been masterplanned into a number of distinct developmental areas and relies entirely on marine transportation routed through hubs at strategically located points to limit travel time to the main land and between islands. Low density islands are located on the outer perimeter of the development, with medium to high density multi-purpose and residential development closer to the centre. Resort islands are located close to marinas with commercial retail islands situated alongside those transportation hubs. Promotional literature offers a more poetic take on the subject;

A master plan as richly imagined as The World requires a mix of aesthetic beauty and seamless functionality. From the width of the canals, the convenience of strategically placed transportation

hubs and marinas to world-class commercial centres and the stunning halo-effect of the islands;

www.theworld.ae (2008)

Detailed below are the seven “guiding principles” which have allegedly directed the concept behind the development;

The first of its kind, the tale is told through seven guiding principles, principles that define what the development means today and in the future, and how the ideas and initiative of a select few will architect a destination whose allure will attract the attention of millions.

1. Bespoke – In an era of multiplicity and me-too it’s hard to stand out. But in times like these it is still possible to be the sun in your universe. Welcome to your very own blank canvas in the Azure waters of the Arabian Gulf. Where orchestrating your own version of paradise- whether it is a resort hotel or condominium communities- is a much needed inoculation against the ordinary, and where you’ll discover the world really can revolve around you.

2. Grand – Grand isn’t just about being big. It’s about daring to measure dreams against reality, actions against words, and going ahead despite the obstacles. It’s about shifting common perception on its head to architect streets from water and a city from sand. It’s about creating something profound yet universal. Something that captures the imagination of the planet, and doesn’t let go.

3. Rare – for a few of us unique isn’t so unique any more. Somewhere along the way the very concept of rarity has become a shell of its former shelf. Imitators are everywhere, but innovators can still be found, if you know where to look. Innovators that create singular destinations in singular cities, so uncommon that they pull at the heart, captivate the mind and take up residence in the soul.

4. Visceral- The thrill is back. And this time its here to stay. Your pulse races, your heart pounds. A once in a life-time experience has begun. A whirlwind of sights, sounds and emotions that leave you weak in the knees and casts life in a brilliant new light. You may have discovered the perfect soul mate. Sand, sea, sky, yours.

5. Intelligent- Beauty means nothing without brains. The kind of brains that answer the big questions, like how do we navigate this brave new world? How do we create paradise from just sea and sand? How does the romance of privacy and day to day simplicity go hand in hand? This is the kind of simplicity that blurs the line between art and science, the intellect and the psyche. Because despite its good looks it’s smarts that make the world go round.

6. Magical- There is nothing more illusive than magic- a mysterious marriage between circumstance and chance that takes us back to the enchantment of childhood. But every once in a while the stars align and the opportunity avails to experience the unexpected, giving our inner child a much needed wake-up call. Because there’s more than a little magic left in The World.

7. Legacy – Some destinations tell a great story. Singular but not single minded, they evolve beyond concrete, glass and steel to shape experiences that will be treasured by generations to come. Layered with meaning and taking inspiration from all corners of the globe, here is where all the good things come together in a luminous display of humanity and community, progress and momentum. Nowhere but a place like this can the world be so richly re-imagined.

www.theworld.ae (2008)

The concept for The World follows in the footsteps of the commercially successful Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali and Palm Deira31 developments, all of which in concept and technique follow the same basic principles. Essentially, off-shore land reclamation through dredging in order to create a sequence of islands as literal representations of a recognisable object or shape. These developments accredited as the personal brainchild of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum have been implemented with increasing levels of commercial success since

2001 and represent the culmination of a trend in increasingly fantastical ventures in the built environment in Dubai in the last decade. As he states; “To dream of the future is one of the most beautiful things in life”; (Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoun. Speech made to congress of UAE in May 2008). Statistics have indicated that up to 24% of the world’s crane stock is currently involved in construction projects in Dubai (Gulf News: Dubai has 30,000 Construction Cranes, May 2008), so to offer a comprehensive overview of these developments would be outside the scope of this work. However, some of the more prominent and relevant projects are worthy of mention.

Since 2001 Dubai planners have systematically zoned its on-shore commercial, retail and residential development into a series of “cities”. These include Dubai Internet City (an information technology park with over 1.5 million square feet of development space), Dubai Media City (a network television and broadcast zone), Dubai Knowledge Village (A Higher and Further Education zone), Dubai International Finance Centre (the business district), Dubai Healthcare City (populated by hospitals and healthcare services) and Dubai Maritime City (with its academic quarter, marine district, harbour residences, marina district and industrial precinct). All of these developmental areas use the high rise skyscraper as a dominant building type. Over 85 towers of 45 storeys or more are currently under construction (January 2009), utilising a number of stylistic themes and patterns borrowed from already established “western” contexts and predominantly designed by North American and western European architects.The blank canvas nature of the original context has allowed for an “anything goes” ethos within rigidly defined thematic boundaries or zones. These boundaries are set, controlled and monopolised by the state, for example, the Internet city has a single internet service provider, (the state owned du) which has the power to regulate and control content that might be seen as subverting moral or ethical issues as well as setting and fixing prices. All property rents are also government controlled and collected.

Dubailand, a designated theme park is currently under construction with the first of four phases opened in January 2008. The park will eventually be bigger than Disneyworld and house six zones or worlds; Experience World which will include The Global village, a conglomeration of instantly recognisable buildings, features and cultural episodes; Children’s City, a miniaturised fun world in the vein of Coney Island’s Lilliputia of one hundred years earlier; Giants world, a reversed schism of the latter; and the Dubai Snowdome, a covered indoor arena of artificial snow surreally juxtaposed with views of duned desert and the searing heat of 50 degree temperatures to be experienced outside its enormous glass façade. In similar vein Eco-Tourism and Vacation Worlds offer Desert Safari world, the Sand Dune Hotel, Women’s World and the Andalusian Resort and Spa. The mall of Arabia, will

be the largest shopping mall on the planet, incorporating the Asia-Asia Hotel which with 6,500 rooms will be the largest hotel ever built along with other themed hotels including an American Wild West Hotel. Finishing with Retail World, Sports World and Downtown World which ironically will include a 185 metre Giant Ferris Wheel. The massive nature of this entire development means completion is expected around 2015.

Another of the more noteworthy developments undergoing initial construction is the Falcon City of Wonders. When viewed from above it has the rather arbitrary shape of a falcon and is described in an internet promotional production as “Beyond history”; the project aims to build life size replicas of the Seven Wonders of the World along with duplicates of other recognisable, more contemporary structures. The Dubai Eiffel Tower will offer residential and commercial space by filling in what would have been the space between the structure with glazed storeys of rentable flats and offices. The void thus becoming tangible. The Tower will be situated in the Venice district of Falcon City. The Dubai Pyramids (which claim to be the largest pyramids in the world) will serve as luxury terraced residential units. The Leaning Tower of Pisa will be offered as an “engineering marvel” (presumably because unlike its original counterpart it will be built to lean) and located in the area of Falcon city known as Rome. It will sit in front of the Taj Mahal, a reproduction of the original, in the guise of a new 5 star luxury hotel. This in turn has vistas to the eco-town residences of Dubai Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Pharos of Alexandria (a leisure complex), The Great Wall of China (a 1700 metre buffer between Falcon City and reality) and a series of skyscrapers that help to enclose a replication of New York’s Central Park mark this development as exemplary material for any discussion on the hyperreal in contemporary architectural design.

“The Universe” is the fifth proposed off-shore land reclaimed development and will use the same technology in dredging equipment as the previous four. It takes the form of a blazing sun that appears to rise from the horizon / breakwater of “The World” and includes a number of circular planetary islands, some with orbiting moons and rings, as well as a galactic wheel shaped island wrapped around the eastern edge of “The World”. The development announced in January 2008 is still in its planning stages.

Dubai has seen unprecedented growth in construction, development and financial terms over the last decade as a result of its cash rich economy and its proximity to emerging markets. Coupled with its willingness to embrace the fantastical and its combination of year round sunshine and relaxed immigration control, the country has set ground breaking precedents in the development of its built environment. That it has depended so heavily on the symbols, images and signs of the western economic model and seeked to replicate contexts in order to establish this growth makes it an exemplar for Baudrillard’s third means of expression of the hyperreal: Simulation.

Chapter VIII

Footnotes29 More, T., (1991 ed.). Utopia. Camb. Cambridge Univ.Press. pp 4530 Davidson, C., (2008). The Vulnerability of Success. London: C.Hurst & co. Ltd. pp.1431 Palm Jumeirah: The Jumeirah Palm Island is primarily a retreat and residential area for living, relaxation, and leisure. It contains

themed boutique hotels, three types of villas (Signature Villas, Garden Homes, and Town Homes), and shoreline apartments. Construction began on this island in June 2001 and completed in 2005.Palm Jebel Ali: The Palm Jebel Ali is an entertainment destination and caters to both residents and tourists. The island is 50% larger than The Palm Jumeirah, and includes six marinas, a 'Sea Village', a water theme park and water homes built on stilts between the fronds and the crescent. Construction began on this island in October 2002 and was completed in 2007.Palm Deira: The Palm Deira will be the largest of the three palm islands covering 14km (8.4 miles) in length and 8.5km (5.1 miles) in width. It will consist of residential property, marinas, shopping malls, sports facilities, and clubs. The residential area will be located on the 41 fronds and will contain 8,000 two-storey villas/town houses in three distinct styles - Premier Villas, Grand Villas and Vista Town Homes. [www.nakheel.ae (2008)].

IllustrationsXVI Binary code. The pure language of information, non-figurative, unchallengeable objectivity [www.thinkgeek com]

Illustration XVII

There will always be more reality, because it is produced and reproduced by simulation, and is itself merely a model of simulation. The proliferation of reality, it’s spreading like an animal species whose natural predators have been eliminated, is our true catastrophe... This is the inevitable fact of an objective world; 32

Jean Baudrillard

IXWhat is impossible at the cosmic level (that the night should disappear by the simultaneous perception of the light of all the stars) or in the sphere of memory and time (that all the past should be perpetually present, and that events should no longer fade into the mists of time) is possible today in the technical universe of information. The info-technological threat is the threat of an eradication of the night, of that precious difference between night and day, by a total illumination of all moments. Today we are threatened with lethal sunstroke, with a blinding profusion, by the ceaseless feedback of all information to all points of the globe.

Baudrillard, J., The Perfect Crime (1996, pp. 42)

What we see in Dubai at the turn of the 21st century is an effort to bring to life these technical proficiencies that Baudrillard alludes to and make real that which was previously the domain of computer generated simulations or console games. The fly-through together with computer generated 3-D modelling has become a critical part in the promotion of developments and a crucial part of the architect’s toolbox. They are dependent on visual representation only; meaning our realities can only be matched against them in perceptual singularity, that of the image.

The duplication of the image becomes achievable through built form and is necessarily objective in its content. After all, one Leaning Tower of Pisa, replicated and made real, will always look like the first, as long as we begin with the first as our point of reference; we will always be able to label and catagorise all future Leaning Towers as simulations of the first, even after the original’s demise. By doing so we establish an objective and necessarily visual truth about the Leaning Tower of Pisa that disregards individual experiential, perceptual relationships with the original. Time and place become inconsequential and so if experience forms the basis of remembered happenings then this sequence becomes akin to a wiping of memory through the process of simulation as the visual becomes the dominant means of our interrelationship with the hyperreal. Baudrillard asks “Where can it come from, this compulsion to be rid of the world by realizing it, by forcing material objectivity upon it”. (Baudrillard, J., The Perfect Crime 1996, pp. 42)

“The World” is therefore a hyper-real, the product of a synthesis of combinatory references in a hyperspace without atmosphere. Off –shore Dubai is its logical setting, created from the crushed remains of sea-creatures brought back to the surface and remoulded in an instantaneous geological process of reproduction and re-manipulation. It does away with time as a spatial entity and like the Falcon City of Wonders becomes liveable theme-park where the theme is perpetual existence, a real-life video game of eternal constancy where references blur into indefinable conglomerates.

The flat, featureless context offers a starting point without narrative and therefore suggests perfect conditions for the creation of a dual world. A controlled and better version of the external world, a utopian counterpoint in which perpetual sunshine and sand and notions of the ideal combine with a merging of culturally diverse occupants who are presented with a simulation of their other world; “No imaginary co-extensivity: rather generic miniaturisation is the dimension of simulation” (Baudrillard, J., Simulations 1983, pp. 3).

Rather than time or place constraints, Dubai as a whole is reliant on data as its governing context. For example, the reduplication of Central Park at Falcon City of Wonders is an exact scale version of the original except that its boundaries are predefined by its square foot area. It is squeezed into a boundary of number data with any nod to Olmstead’s vision nothing more than a visual comparative. As Lyotard points out “Science has always been in conflict with narratives”; (Lyotard, J-F., Introduction to the Post-Modern Condition 1984, pp998-999); by excluding narrative context in favour of scientifically produced data, Dubai and developments such as “The World” deny their precursors history, context and content.

In “The World”, the world is rendered necessarily two-dimensional and by doing so makes good, all previously held medieval hypotheses that the globe is flat. It offers us a version of the reality of the map; it’s promotional literature obsessing with what it looks like from space and its satellite image, rather than its phenomenological existence. The origins of the map or globe as a sign to denote the physical nature of our planet is broken as “The World” takes that sign and renders it as external, literal, objective, reality. In the Nakheel promotional video there is little distinction between the graphic brand of “The World” and the actual development itself. The two literally blend together as the film progresses. The sign has come full circle; it is no longer representational or metaphorical but absolute and non-interpretive. It is in other words its own value, or to put it another way its own objective, superficial truth; Warhol offers the following in response to the idea of the sign as truth; “….because

the more you look at the exact same thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel;” (Warhol, A., POPism: the Warhol 60’s. 1980. pp 340).

In its desire to offer a re-constructed version of the world and its objectification of its subject “The World” is a manifestation of Koolhaas’ prediction of The City of the Captive Globe. and offers the ultimate expression of what he calls “…the capital of Ego, where science, art, poetry and forms of madness compete under ideal conditions to invent, destroy and restore the world of phenomenal Reality”. (Koolhaas, R., Delirious New York. 1994.ed. pp 294).

What the recent developments in Dubai have shown is the willingness for an attempt at rendering physical this idea that experiences are no longer limited to narrow parameters of context and appropriateness. Information technology has made through day-to-day internet use all things available in two visual dimensions. In a global city that is responsive to global needs and requirements, where the predominant geographical features are flat sandy desert or flat featureless ocean and where only 25% of its population are indigenous there is no context or subject. By providing the simulation of freedom through the diversification of symbols and references that paraphrase western models, the government of Dubai is conversely able to exact a very particular kind of control over its citizens and workforce. As Cioran notes;

What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free.

(Cioran, E, MA Short History of Decay. 1975. pp 65)

Chapter IX

IllustrationsXVI Debanjan Roy: India Shining I (Gandhi and the Laptop; 2007); Aluminium cast paint [http://www.aicongallery.com/artists/debanjan-roy]

There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.Paul Valery

Conclusion

The piece has illustrated through the use of three apparently disassociated contexts notions of the Hyperreal; from the early days of the enlightenment taking in the Industrial revolution and continuing with the contemporary setting of Dubai. The Hyperreal as a philosophical discourse offers a useful analysis of these architectural and social developments. However, does it deserve recognition as an appropriate tool for the development of contemporary architectural design?

There is clearly no reversal in our current thirst for information relayed and routed through the media of technology. We are at will to choose our virtual destinations and references from infinite sources at the click of a mouse. That designers of the built environment are now choosing to mirror and emulate this multiplicity of source, brings the media of technology and our physical reality in closer contact than ever before, to the extent where in places such as Dubai, they become virtually indistinguishable. OMA’s recent proposal for the Dubai Media centre of an enormous dome that replicates the Death Star from Star Wars provides a cast-iron example. The culture of the instantaneous availability of everything on a virtual domain transposes itself across to the medium of reality, just as Stourhead’s mutation from literature to painting to its idealised fruition did in the 17 th

and 18th centuries.

In that the established context is disregarded in the three examples suggests instead they are visionary rather than rooted in time and place. The visionary nature of the hyper-real is therefore neccassarily utopian in its conceit and in its duplicity of merging mediums. The physical realisation of visions consequently have a singularity of purpose and by their very nature disregard externality which might prove conflictorial. For example at Stourhead an artificial lake is constructed and provides the reason for the building of a bridge whose visual appearance ultimately marries it with a painting of a never-realised Arcadian paradise. Context is always meaningless in a place whose Latin translation means “nowhere”.

All three examples are thematic in their choice of form and at the same time representative of the medium from which they originate. In this respect they are the synthesis of a duplicate of an existing external reference and the fantastical dreams of their inventors. They are fashioned for the appreciation of a pre-conceived audience, their thematic predispositions contrived in order to offer notions of leisure, fun or thrill seeking and are the antithesis of the dialectic of work and toil, from which their real –world counterparts belong.

The hyperreal can then illuminate and pass comment on society’s relationship with other mediums. If we argue that in an increasingly globalised world, local context is becoming increasingly meaningless then again, an understanding of the hypereal will produce results that recognise this trend.

There is a clear statement of intent in each of the three examples which explicitly states “The real world is not good enough” and that from it an objective, rational equilibrious world can be created and enjoyed. A world which borrows and replicates from the pre-existing domain in order to condemn the reality and replace with the superficial. It is a continuation of rational man’s relationship with nature and his determination to clarify, categorise and objectify the existing world. The disintegration of the authenticity of place, history, narrative and even time as a spatial constraint, becomes alarmingly apparent in these circumstances.

This is hyperrelity’s most disturbing aspect and for this reason can be viewed as a warning against what could happen, rather than a beacon to what we would wish for.

NH January 2009

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