virtualization of design and production a thesis - Bilkent University

“It is obvious that the new Citroen has fallen from the sky
inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object.
We must not forget that an object is the best messenger of a
world above that of nature: one can easily see an object at
once a perfection and an absence of origin, a closure and a
brilliance, a transformation of life into matter and in a word a
silence which belong to the realm of fairy-tales” (Barthes 88).
Advertising agency offers the products as if they were from a world of absence
rather than praxis. They generate legendary signs for the sole purpose of a
directed reading. The images of products created by advertisements promise
satisfaction for the reader which may be deceptive. As Baudrillard claims, the
representation generated by an advertisement perfectly matches with the idea of
sign-value for consumer products. These captive images transform our sense of
function and use into a sign-value. As he states:
“The image creates a void, indicates an absence, and it is in
this respect that it is ‘evocative’. It is deceptive, however. It
provokes a cathexis which it then short-circuits at the level of
reading. It focuses free-floating wishes upon an object which
it masks as much as it reveals. The image disappoints: its
function is at once to display and simultaneously disabuse.
Looking is based on a presumption of contact; the image and
its reading is based on a presumption of possession. Thus
advertising offers neither a hallucinated satisfaction nor a
practical mediation with the world. Rather, what it produces
is dashed hopes: unfinished actions, continual initiatives
followed by continual abandonments thereof, false drawings
of objects, false drawings of desires. A whole psychodrama
is quickly enacted when an image is read. In principle, this
enables the reader to assume his passive role and be
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