Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed
barn in America. We drove twenty-two miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides—pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

"No one sees the barn," he said finally.

A long silence followed.

"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others.

"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who
were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism." 

Another silence ensued.

"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.

He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the
rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.

"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now."

Basic set up:

When he takes his colleague Jack to see "THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA," college professor Murray Jay Siskind explains that no one goes to see the barn itself anymore. The draw nowadays is the ever-growing collection of photographs that people take of the barn.

White Noise is heavy on the themes of simulation and hyperreality, and this scene is a simple and effective way of explaining how these processes work—and to what effect.

The real barn may still be standing, but no one notices it anymore. It's as though it has vanished and been replaced by images, or what Jean Baudrillard would call simulacrum. An image no longer enhances or serves as an add-on to the original but instead has taken it over; and there's no real sense of past or future—just what Baudrillard called "a perpetual present of signs."

Of course, the tourists aren't let down by this hubbub of simulation—it's why they've made the visit to begin with. Murray even describes it as almost "religious experience...like all tourism." It's described as a collective event that, as with other forms of mass simulation, has taken on a life of its own and been elevated to religious status.

Did you notice that DeLillo doesn't describe the barn itself? Instead, he describes the signs, tourists, and most of all, the camera equipment and tourist merchandise. As Murray points out, "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn." No one could describe the barn even if they wanted to, as no one can "get outside the aura." It's only fitting, then, that the real barn is as much a mystery to us as it is to the people in the story.