Seminar Notes:
Relating to Lecture 2: Technology will liberate us
- Original - copy -
- Technology makes reproduction easier
- Philosophical debate - if exactly the same how is the original effected?
- The way in which technology creates situations where the authority of something can be questioned
- Challenges the authority of art
Task
We then got into groups of three and analysed a section of Walter Benjamin's essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. We looked at section two.
- No reproduction is unique
- Reproductions lose value
- Original is authentic
- Authenticity is history
- 'Aura' disappears when reproduced
- Original can be put into different situations, so a unique piece of art creates a unique piece of art (this could potentially be a good thing?), allows you to be more creative
- Seem to be pro's and con's in this argument, doesn't make it clear whether reproduction is good thing or bad
- Tradition shattering because art is reproduces in a different time that its unique style
- Starts to not relate to original
- Reproduction is never appreciated as fully as the original, even if a perfect copy exists
- Copy is not valued as much art wise and money wise
- The reproduction means that the original is not as valued either. As the image becomes more accessible it changes the relationship. Reaching wider audience. Bringing into modern times. Different experience.
- There is no creativity in an exact copy
- Technology enhances, e.g. you can restore old photos, and zoom in and see things you couldn't see, etc.
Preface
- Capitalism creates its own gravediggers. 1% get what they want, 99% are working for someone else. - Conditions (a space) mean that mechanical reproduction. Could possibly abolish capitalism.
- Base: relations between different classes, the range of machinery available
- Superstructure: way you think about the world, culture, religion, law
- Societies are rapidly advancing but art is moving more slowly
- Interested in what happens to art in todays reproductions
I
- Woodcut (birth of graphic design), lithography, photography
- The original reigns with status
- The copy starts to achieve a certain power of its own
- Knowledge became available to everyone with this technology
II
- What Benjamin is saying is relevant now with the internet: it is easy to access art and culture
- Mona Lisa is an example. Makes the original less special as everyone has seen it before.
- Concept of 'aura' - making art seem more important than it actually is
- With mechanical reproduction the aura begins to seem less and less special
- Not just art: this is a way of thinking about the world
- Takes you away from traditional ways. There are traditional ways to think about art. Copies are detached from this
- Gives the reproduced a new aura: re-contextualises how the owner wants it. Rewrites what the place means.
- New technology, works of art are made from them, can utterly destroy traditional culture
IV
- Tradition is inseparable from works of art. Uniqueness
- Cult - a group with shared ideology
- Aura and ritual go together
- Art is 'the cult of beauty'
- In an art gallery and in church there is similar behaviour. You change how you act, are are respectful. You are expected to feel a certain emotion. (e.g. Rothko room in tate)
- Traditional art - cult value
- Exhibition value - when you take art out of the gallery and put it on the internet, it loses that ritualistic power.
- The more something can be reproduced, the less aura it has
XIV
- Film as art form born out of mechanical reproduction
- Public can have more of an option on it because they can see it in their own way
- Most people don't go to art galleries because they're made to feel stupid if they don't understand it. No expertise. Where at the cinema it is easier to get a judgement on whether it is good or bad. The process of creating meaning is more democratic.
- Film - exhibition value vs. art gallery - cult value
- Forms of art that can be experienced collectively, some forms that can't. With a collective experience, the people have a greater confidence to judge.
- Way of making us think - a weapon against culture
- Fine artists still think their work has this 'aura', as they don't want to be understood. Politically on opposite sides.
- The same mode of thinking that makes fascism possible if we think art is 'genius' if we buy into cult stuff
- Benjamin is writing about democracy, creating own meaning, reaching out to the masses, communism
Graphic design is a medium born out of mechanical reproduction. Can have this aura - limited edition prints become more special. Sells for more because of cult value. Re-introdction to handmade elements also takes in back to aura.
Aura (outmoded concept). These things become the 'aura'.
- Creativity - Genius - Eternal value - Mystery - Authentic - Original - Presence - Tradition
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