Real Fake

As the title suggest ‘Real fake’ is an oxymoron, a pair of two words which mean if not opposite but starkly different a meaning. This pair of words struck me hard enough when I was bamboozled by a series of events happening around us which make us think for a while whether it is for real or not.

To give a clear and precise example is the software called as photoshop / 3d  and many others . Their penetration into our life has created a world of virtual illusion. A world where we question whether an object created is for real or fake. A photographer takes pride in his photographic skills, but we in our day to day life come across some amazing photographs which can definitely kill / hurt the photographer's talent. Many of the clicks which seem impossible are often refered to as ‘photoshopping’.  This is just a comment passed over by few, but it has a deeper meaning for us to decipher. The inevitable fact of not believing in what is real and what is fake is getting ingrained in us.

If the photographer would have clicked a supersonic snap around 10-15 years ago, when tools like photoshop were not popular, the photographer would have been a genius. The same doesn’t hold true in present scenario, an amazingly brilliant capture can be questioned thousands of times for its originality in terms of time of capture, framing, composition etc.

Same holds true for the skill of sketching perhaps. I have come across lot many instances where students of colleges and even professionals come up with this ‘smart’ idea of using filters in Photoshop which can turn an image into a hand drawn sketch. A sketch which could take hours together to make is now achieved by clicking on a photograph and converting the same into a sketch mode with the click of a button. Saving a lot of time is another issue, but the possibility of creating 'fake real' like objects is getting prominence.

Innumerable possibilities with this idea are doing the rounds – a fake insect to scare people, a fake material to create a real effect and so on. What the matter of concern is it then becomes increasingly difficult for people to decode the difference between real and unreal.

Use of fake currency, fake stamp papers are getting into routine in our lives. We now have to train our selves to identify what is fake and what is real. The essence of originality is diminishing and what we are left is nothing but doubts.

The real-fake concept, as it may called so, lead to the development of a concept called ‘cloning’. Creating another specie like a real one. For a concept and its execution, it is mindblowing, but then it can lead to several misuses. Like reports of Osama bin Laden having cloned himself into so many disguises, the real Saddam Hussain is still alive surface. There was this interesting photograph which made me wonder about this real fake idea, which showed ‘Prabhakaran’ watching the news of his own demise on the television. Funny it may sound, but a moment it definitely runs through a chill, doubting whether the intruder is still alive. And this chill is nothing but because of the teachings of portraying non real.

As smart human beings created this fakeness, the smarter humans re created devices for setting apart the distinction between the original and the duplicate.

The newer generation will have to live with this duality of understanding things in a much broader  perspective – real and ‘na-real’. As technological boundaries gets wider and wider, it is getting ‘clearly unclear’ to decode the puzzle we face from time and again called ‘real fake’.