🎒 531: Computation Aesthetics is a class taught by Charlie Roberts.
Analysis & review based on Walter Benjamin’s essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Scott Snibbe’s article, Art Wants to be Ninety-Nine Cents
Reflection
Upon reading Walter Benjamin’s essay, I do not find myself in the position to speak on what he is saying due to my entrenched nature within a society that is nothing more than just a reproduction. I see where Benjamin approaches the dilemma of reproduction but I am biased and cannot deny the fact that reproduction is at a point where it is reproducing itself, ultimately reinvigorating a once lost aura (or possibly creating a new aura). As discussed in the essay, “The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life,” by Carl Matheson reproduction has now become a device for imbuing a medium with new meaning. We have transcended full thrown reproduction and replaced it with partial counterfeits. Frankenstiening is the modus operandi of modern day, and we as a public know no other means of production. We are a byproduct of our makings and what Hume once argued for, “a sense of taste” predicated upon the delicacy of a trained eye, cannot exist in our digital world. To concern oneself with taste would drive a man to grey hairs and bloodshot eyes. We are mere infants in our newly constructed empire and we follow the tickle of our fancy just as a child would seek new pleasures. I believe Benjamin might find a palpable absurdity in the 21st century but I do hope he would have the sense to put himself in our shoes and see how far reproduction has come. A gentle saunter with Scott Snibbe might shine light onto the evolved nature of interactive media and it’s relationship to reproduction. To cope with our decay in autonomy and time, aura has been transferred from the artwork to the seconds of experience separating the viewer from the piece. We have succumbed to the jaws of capitalism and we now sell these seconds. Though the appall for Walter Benjamin might be overwhelming, it is hard to argue that capital has ever been anything but the driving force for human potential. Aura has been reinvented and we know naught what to do with it as of yet.
Analysis
Preface: Karl Marx warned us that capitamism would exploit the proletariat so as to increase capitalism which would ultimatley lock us into the system of capitalism even further.
I: Replicas could always be made, however mechanical reporoduction is new. Paul Valery prediected that we “we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign”. It is critical, thus, to study the effects reproduction and film have had on traditional art.
II: Time & space are always lacking in a reproduction. One cannot simpley reproduce authenticity, lineage, or damage caused by time. Process/technical reproduction (photography / film / audio recording) is different from manual reproduction in that it can often capture what humans could not perceive and bring it to a new location. Mechincal reproduction kills the “aura” of the art. Reproduction shatters tradition. Film is the biggest culprit of this shattering of tradition.
III: Our senses change over time and how we organize our sense is a byproduct of historical circumstance. Aura is being destoryed by peoples want to bring things “closer” and by the acceptance of reproduction.
IV: Art’s uniquenss is imbedded in tradition. Originally art found it’s home in the cult, private worship. The ritualist view of art was followed by a secular pursuit of beauty. Art reacted with the turn of phrase, “Art for art’s sake.” Art which no longer is based on ritual is now based on politics.
V: Art is valued from the cult perspective, and the other is the economic perspective. For the cult, it was just meant to exist it did not need to be seen. Art has now evolved into forms that lend itself to exhibition (no more cave walls, or mosaics or frescos).
VI: Cult value has receeded but it still lives in such things as portraiture. But as the human is removed from the photo, the photo becomes ever more exhibitionary. The viewer is forced to thing with photos by artists like Atget. However at the same time, photos are now being captioned.
VII: The seperation of art from the cult resulted in its loss of autonomy. The function of art seemed to alude people ffor the entire ninteenth-century. People quickly asked whether photography was an art, not “has photography transformed art?”
VIII: The stage actor presents to the public in person, the screen actor presents to the public via the camera. With the camera, the actor is unable to adjust to the audience. In turn, the audience is able to critique the actor without having any contatct. The audience takes on the position of the camera.
IX: The actor must represent himself to the public viewing the camera. By acting just for the cmaera the actor looses part of himself. He is just a projection, he has no aura. The stage actor becomes almost like a prop, picked for his specific qualities, the actor becomes enmeshed with his role. In film, there are numerous seperate preformances. Art has left the realm of the “beatuiful semblance.”
X: The viewer is able to become somewhat of a self-proclaimed expert. Anybody becomes a writer.
XI: The painter distances himself from reality the cameraman pentrates reailty.
XII: Reactions of art have shifted from instantanious to progressive. The conventional is enjoyed and goes without criticism, the unconventional is stringently reviewed. Large public viewings ruin painting.
XIII: Films allow a representation of the environment, providing opportunity for deepr analysis that could not be preformed on paintings. And compared to stage acting, films can be isolated and scrutinized. This scientific functionality of of film wil be revolutionary. A different nature is caught by the camera than the one caught by the eye.
XIV: One of the foremost roles of art has been to capture that which could only be understood later.
XV: The masses define the perception of art. Qantity has replaced quality and people participate as bystandards to the work. Art demands conectration. The concentrated viewer enters the art, he is abosrbed by it. The passive viewer, absorbs the art. Architecture, interestnigly, is art for the mases, and it is the oldest art to date. Tactile appropriation and understanding is achieved by habit. Optical reception is achieved through incidental viewings. New forms of art can no olonger be understood through incidental viewings but rather from habit (tactile appropriation).
Epilogue: War is a a rebellion of technology to man. Art for arts sake (Fiat ars – pereat mundus).