Realism as an artistic pursuit has long been a contentious issue. From the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School to thinkers such as Baudrillard, Jameson and McLuhan, the advent of XR technologies was foreseen and critiqued. However the lack of distance that current technologies by definition entail, make them both a theoretical and pragmatic concern for artists working with high-fidelity or immersive media. Which version of the simulacrum do we now take for the ‘real’? How has this reconfigured our sense of, and relationship to, the real? What consequences does that have for both the artist and audience? For example, how does the online representation of one’s oeuvre affect one’s practice? Further, how can we distinguish the voice of the artist in practices which increasingly activate non-human realities, or does ‘the artist’ no longer exist in the conventional sense?