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This chapter explores the multiple levels of authenticity involved in son et lumière and projection mapping. Light shows are increasingly staged at historic sites, using monumental buildings as canvases. The use of light allows the buildings to communicate, giving them a performative, additional dimension, generating multiplicity, where the same architectural structure or place is encountered simultaneously in both its light and physical forms. The effect is hyperreal, transforming buildings into simulacra, versions of distorted reality, where no original exists. As the building appears to move, the mind simultaneously informs the viewer that it is static, evoking a co-created tourist experience. Light shows, arguably staged by “imagineers”, reflect the increasing move toward the spectacle essential for creative and experience economies.

Scholarship on language teacher knowledge and critical digital literacy. Using a grounded theory approach, semi-structured online presentations of students, classroom observations and their responses to multimedia tools such as movies and literature were analysed. As part of the study, 150 students pursuing undergraduate degree in engineering were assigned two assignments involving science fiction movies and hyperreal literature as part of an experiential strategy. A survey was conducted before and after the study to evaluate the change in students’ perception towards the use of technology and multimedia in language classrooms as well as their awareness of technological dependency in the postmodern world. The findings show that student cognition of AI and technological dependency is a complex and emergent system, and that, despite current literacy education scholarship stressing digital literacy as a social and critical praxis, technology is treated in a mostly functional, rather than a critical manner in a standard university language classroom. The results of this study suggest that the disadvantages of a realistic approach to teaching digital composition can be avoided by creating other forms of educational materials that adhere to critical digital literacies sense, such as posthuman literary works and science fiction film.

This study is primarily qualitative and empirical, focussing on the analysis of student responses to classroom assignments and semi-structured online presentations and responses to multimedia tools such as movies and online literature. A pilot study was performed among the engineering students of Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India, to better understand engineering students’ perceptions and attitudes towards teaching English as a second language using emerging technology, with the aim of improving language abilities, writing skills, imagination and overall personality. One hundred and fifty (150) students were assigned two assignments as part of an experiential strategy. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft Teams was used as the platform for assessment and observation. As part of their learning challenge, students were required to watch the movies “Her”, “Interstellar” and “Bandersnatch” and write a technical report outlining some of the major observations on technology and AI. Secondly, as part of their learning challenge, students were required to read Oliver Sacks’ “The Machine Stops” and comment on his perspectives on technological dependency. This was supplemented by assessment tests and assignments focussing on the digital nature of the global education system. Another survey was conducted at the end of the study to evaluate the change in students’ perception towards the use of technology and multimedia in language classrooms as well as their awareness of technological dependency in the postmodern world. Owing to the posthuman and hyperreal nature of the movies and texts, students were introduced to the theories of Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard to better understand the chosen works.

In the posthuman era, where digital technologies are at their peak, English language teachers select appropriate teaching resource materials based on the needs of the students and do their utmost to combine them with technology to make their teaching more engaging and efficient. Thanks to the current craze for Digital Humanities, not just English language teaching but also literature classroom teaching has experienced several paradigm shifts. This has raised the need for English teachers and professionals on the job market. Given this context, and in particular, to raise knowledge among engineering students of their critical position in the literary job sector, two tasks were assigned to students in the Language Classroom. These tasks included integrating technology into language studies and literature, instilling imagination, honing literary skills and facilitating the development of a comprehensive approach to life and potential endeavours.

As evident from the study and literature review, the introduction of emerging technology in Language Classrooms has grown in popularity, but it has yet to be incorporated into Language Classrooms that focus on the comprehensive development of students, especially in India. Furthermore, proof of interactions between digital learning and teaching practices and anticipated results, effects and impacts was gathered to make the Language Classroom more social, inspiring and engaging, but little more. As a result, we see a lot of potential for research in this field, particularly concerning the most recent language studies advancements about Digital Humanities.

This paper aims at establishing a new stream of academic study for virtual brands. It explains the concepts of protobrands and reverse product placement and explores some of the managerial and academic implications.

Starting from the most recent definition of the brand construct, the paper establishes that the brand concept may now be detached from physical embodiment. The extension of application of the branding domain to the fictional and computer‐synthesized worlds is extensively illustrated by examples of virtual brands from books, films, video games and other multi‐user virtual environments.

Evidence suggests that purely potential brands (protobrands) initiated in the virtual world may possess strong consumer‐based brand equity. The study shows that the equity of the protobrands may be leveraged in‐world (and can acquire legal protection) or through reverse product placement and the launch of the physical embodiment of the protobrand in the physical world (the HyperReal brand).

This is an initial conceptual paper on virtual and HyperReal brands. This study, which has no antecedents, highlights the need for further empirical inquiry. The reverse product placement phenomenon may result in academics and practitioners to revise the traditional models of building brands.

The paper introduces and defines virtual brands, both fictional and computer‐synthesized, HyperReal brands and the reverse product placement phenomenon.

Purpose: This paper examines a promotional exhibit for the Broadway musical Wicked, entitled “The World of Wicked,” to better understand the ways in which art marketers continue to hail new and existing consumers. Eco’s concept of hyperreality and its relationship to remediation and cultural sustainability are brought to bear upon this phenomenon. As producers utilize new media platforms to reach the consumer, they make the experience of their shows more immediate. Set in the context of a shopping mall, the hyperreality of the exhibit is unpacked and analyzed.

Design: This is an interpretive study using direct observation, participant observation, depth interviews, narrative analysis, and artifact analysis.

Findings: By facilitating embodiment, encouraging intense emotional arousal, and providing a sense of community, “The World of Wicked” is a metonym for Wicked itself. The hyperreal context of the shopping mall facilitates the consumption of fantasy as well as material goods.

Originality and value: The findings of this paper extend theories of hyperreality, adaptation, and remediation into the context of arts. This contribution is foundational to building a larger theory of cultural sustainability.

In recent research, two views of the possible postmodern consumer have emerged. One view, advanced by Firat and Venkatesh, postulates that the consumer has increased expressive flexibility and is therefore liberated from prior ideologically‐created restraints. A second view, provided by Thompson and Hirschman and based on an empirical study of bodily‐related consumption, is less sanguine and argues that “long‐standing cultural narratives” continue to inhibit the consumer. To further consider these two contrasting perspectives, this paper analyses downloaded, discussion texts which express the emic views of consumers who participate in NetGirl, a gender and relationship‐oriented, online forum. The results provide some evidence supportive of both perspectives, i.e. the Net is more a mental, “hyperreal” and therefore more flexible phenomenon than the body, yet it also manifests the long‐standing need of people to tangibilize online phenomena in “real” terms. Implications are drawn which reflect this finding, as well as the idea that online cyber‐narratives and offline, real life narratives tend to mirror and be inscribed in each other.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the persistent ambiguity of socialization practices in US and Swedish organizations, which promote a mature work identity while infantilizing their employees.

Application of the insights from modernist authors' analysis of modernity as experienced by a human subject within professional organizations (Gombrowicz and Musil) and as responsible for proliferation of layers of reality (Eco), to contemporary practices of socialization.

The conflict between the need to conform to the corporate culture and the temptation to subvert them for creative or destructive purposes results in production of a “person without qualities,” and in the rise of the contemporary form of hyperreal infantocracy, which requires sophisticated irony in order to deal with organizational practices.

Paying more attention to literary analysts of contemporary condition such as Gombrowicz, Musil, Eco, and Kundera will allow to understand paradoxes of contemporary organizing beyond the limits of traditional social sciences.

Combating apathy and disillusion among both employees and human resource management practitioners requires a reconceptualization of the programs of organizational socialization in terms of a sustainable and responsible corporate citizenship.

Few authors have managed to mine the humanist heritage in order to salvage insights, which might have practical implications for a more balanced, sustainable, and humane organizational reality.

This paper responds to the lack of visitor engagement in many culture-based World Heritage sites and conceptualises a “Cuteification-Value Nexus” for the discussion of the communication of heritage values through “cute” or aesthetically pleasing popular culture elements. It reflects on observations in Macao to argue for a greater engagement of culture-based World Heritage sites through a combination of popular culture inspired motifs and truthful heritage messages. Specifically, it identifies a form of “cuteified heritage” – a hyperreal cultural zone that happens away from the actual heritage sites, but which articulates the heritage significances of those sites. This draws on concepts on themed spaces and insights from postmodernistic hyperreality and tourism to examine how the “completely real” becomes identified with the “completely fake” in the staging, consumption and negotiation of experiences with World Heritage and their utility in the management of World Heritage tourism sites.