Simulacrum

This chapter extrapolates Jean Baudrillard's notion of the simulacrum to re-examine the shifting nature of simulation as a museological paradigm. Revisiting the concept of the simulacrum specifically enables the reconceptualization of two distinct lineages in visualization and worldmaking for digital cultural heritage and museums. The first is the virtual museum, which is critiqued and compared to the metaverse or mirrorworld, as it exists entirely online.. An alternative conception is offered in an archeaology of the “meta-museum” and its subseuquent digital evolution. The second lineage is simulated cultural heritage worlds as fundamentally situated visualizations originating in longstanding cultures of illusionism and immersion, which are the basis of today's fully embodied and affective participatory systems of experimental museology. The convergence of the digital meta-museum with deep fake techniques and experimental museology approaches provides a foundation for a future framework combining computational museology, cybernetic theories, and systems thinking in a functional model of the situated-networked museological experience as a simulacrum.