The term simulation is subject to a wide range of definitions,
many of which are contradictory. In everyday life, scientific
experimentation,professional practice, gaming cultures,and
artistic production, simulation serves as a crucial operative
mode. This workshop gathers speakers from different fields
to analyse and explore some of these approaches.
Simulation is frequently framed as “acting as if”, a mimetic
engagement with an external referent. By contrast, certain
strands in aesthetics and media theory describe simulation
as an auto-poietic process that generates realities without
reference to an external world. Such a position prompts the
question, how is a nonreferential simulation even possible,
and to what extent do practitioners in art, science, and design
actually reject or reinforce connections to the “real” world?
This begs the question as to whether these conceptualizations
address the same phenomenon at all — and, if so, how they
might be reconciled.
Building on recent debates in art history,media archaeology,
and digital aesthetics, our workshop examines whether the
process of simulation, beyond its role in test scenarios,
constitutes a critically and aesthetically productive mode in
its own right, and how it divers from related processes such
as fiction or reproduction. Finally, the workshop seeks to
address a fundamental question: where, conceptually and
practically, does simulation begin and end?