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cra. Simulacra of the second order belong to the period of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution, according to Baudrillard, swept away the traditional signifiers. Work or capital were now the signs that people possessed and thus there was no need for counterfeit. The traditional signs were produced en-masse to be sold by the thousand and to be possessed by the masses to afford them some degree of the prestation that was usurped by their working life. The capitalist classes owned great works of art, the masses owned copies; the capitalists possessed treasures from the corners of the Empire, the workers produced and purchased copies for their own homes. This is the era where the law of symbolic exchange value meant that to own a piano was to be seen as an indication of decency and afforded prestation, but to own a relic from the renaissance was seen as pointless7. This era was the epitome of modernity. It was this era about which modernists, such as Marx and Gramsci, theorised and it is this era which Baudrillard argues has gone forever. 3.5. Third order simulacra. The current epoch is, according to Baudrillard, postmodernity and is dominated by simulacra of the third order, the most powerful of all simulacra. Third order simulacra consist of simulation controlled by the code. Third order simulacra are the alchemists, they turn lead to gold using the power of the code, a concept which encapsulates, "Cybernetic control, generation from a model, differential modulation, feedback, question/answer etc." (Baudrillard,1983:103). What I believe Baudrillard is describing in this phrase is the network of relations, interrelations, actions, interactions and the interpretations and meanings that people attach to these. However, the code is subject to the law of symbolic exchange value. It is this that determines how we interpret an answer or question and it is this that we use to generate meaning from a model. It is the law of symbolic exchange value that we use to construct our reality. As an example of discourse and exchange value let us look at an interview with Siouxsie Sioux of the punk band Siouxsie And The Banshees8 concerning the controversy over the wearing of swastika armbands. Now, it is well known that the swastika was the symbol which embodied all that was wrong about the Nazi party, however, when asked why she wore the armband Siouxsie replied that it was part of 'what punk was about'. It was a statement of individuality and affiliation to a subcultural identity. This answer was accepted without further questioning. However, at the time when punk was popular the wearing of a swastika armband was greeted with horror by mainstream society and its symbolic exchange value was less than zero. Its wearers were marginalised and looked upon with derision by mainstream society. The salient question here is did the interviewer expect Siouxsie to answer that she was sympathetic to the Nazi party because she wore the armband? In the late 1970s and according to interaction between the discourses that surrounded both punk and Nazism, one would have to answer yes. This conclusion would have to be reached because according to Baudrillard, all we can know is what discourse/simulation let us know. 3.6. Hyper-reality. Hyper-reality refers to the precession of simulacra, the barrage of simulations which make up our perception of reality. The chief architect of hyper-reality is television. Indeed, an elderly relative of mine was hear