Art, Rufo, and Baudrillard

Thanks to Ken Rufo for making Baudrillard's idea of simulation a little clearer to me. I especially liked his example of Universal Studio's ET ride.

My roommate is currently working on her senior studio art project. What she is doing is having people think of and then draw their most memorable dream. She then draws her own interpretation of her dream from the dreamer's depiction. After which she paints the dream somewhere on the person's body using both drawings as reference. In addition, she is also using other artist's depictions of dreams as reference. Finally, she will photograph the painting in order to display it in her exhibit. Through Rufo's description I thought that this could be related to Baudrillard's ideas when looking at the three steps of simulation.

1. Simulation stands in for or represents basic reality:
The dreamer's drawing captures or seems to represent the reality of what happened in the dream.

2. Simulation hides the absence of reality or misrepresents/distorts reality behind it:
The artist uses the drawing to create her own depiction of what the dream might have been like. Since she is
most often using drawings from 'non-artists' as reference, the artist is using an already distorted replica of
'reality'(or at least a sort of original, I understand calling a dream reality is problematic in itself but bear
with me please) and further distorts it by making it more aesthetically pleasing, almost romanticizing it.

3. Simulation produces it own reality/disguises the fact there is no corresponding reality underneath:
The artist produces painting on body by looking at images not only created by her and the dreamer but of
other artists' dream paintings as well. This further romanticizes it and hides the true 'reality' of the dream. It
hides the absence of original ( the dream) because it has been distorted so much it loses touch with the
original.

I hope this made some sense to you.

Over and out,
J.H.