As a member of the “Mickey Mouse Club” generation, my childhood memories are filled with all that which was Disney. The Wonderful World of Disney, Davy Crockett, Uncle Scrooge comics, and of course, the jewel in the crown, the magic kingdom of Disneyland. Thinking back to our family car trips down from San Francisco, what sticks in my mind was our first sightings of the Matterhorn Mountain. After a 2 day trip from Santa Clara to Anaheim before the major freeways, you can imagine the excitement of seeing the top of the mountain jutting through the orange groves. It meant that we had finally reached our destination. The place where all our dreams came true.
Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the “real” country, all of the “real” America, which is Disneyland….Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle. Simulations by Jean Baudrillard
By simultaneously showing the video projection with the 3-D printed Matterhorn model I believe that this installation creates a true simulation. (note: the 3-D printed model must always be shown simultaneously with the large scale video projection.)
