Name: Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
ISBN: 9780359046393

Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin discusses whether art is diminished by the modern culture of mass replication, arriving at the conclusion that the aura or soul of an artwork is indeed removed by duplication. In an essay critical of modern fashion and manufacture, Benjamin decries how new technology affects art. The notion of fine arts is threatened by an absence of scarcity; an affair which diminishes the authenticity and essence of the artist's work. Though the process of art replication dates to classical antiquity, only the modern era allows for a mass quantity of prints or mass production. Given that the unique aura of an artist's work, and the reaction it provokes in those who see it, is diminished, Benjamin posits that artwork is much more political in significance. The style of modern propaganda, of the use of art for the purpose of generating raw emotion or arousing belief, is likely to become more prevalent versus the old-fashioned production of simpler beauty or meaning in a cultural or religious context.

What Hacker News says

clockdivMay 2026

I wonder about the social aspect. People growing up with listening exclusively to their own AI-generated music will never dance together and scream to the same old songs, even if it just became “bad taste”. Its such a huge part of our culture that they will just miss. Same goes of course to all other parts of arts and culture. A good start to read is „ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction“ by Walter Benjamin.

thread

soapdogJul 2023

As someone who graduated from an art school, let me be another voice here to say that you're absolutely wrong. Art is about intentionality and process. Duchamp and Wahrol are prime mainstream examples of that. The intervention in urban equipment is art. Making it yours, sharing it with the world, the dialectical dialogue between the mural and the surrounding cityscape, there is so much to unpack here.

Also, comic books are art as well. Sequential art has been recognised by everyone with an ounce of heart and one of the main mediums for storytelling. Some even been calling it the ninth art just like cinema is the seventh. It is a medium unlike painting, cinema, or photography, one in which you can do things you can't in any other medium.

I recommend checking out the following books if you want to move past your misconceptions:

- The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin. - Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud. - Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner.

All those books are quite approachable and engaging reads.

thread

thenthenthenMar 2023

Reminds me of the "Camera Restricta" [1].

I encourage everyone interested in tech and photography to check out Villem Flusser's Towards A Philosophy of Photography [2] and of course Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [3].

[1] https://hackaday.com/2017/01/28/camera-restricta-ensures-ori... [2] (1984) PDF http://imagineallthepeople.info/Flusser_TowardsAPhilosophyof... [3] (1932) PDF https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf

thread

lasagnaphilFeb 2021

The fatal problem is literally: "who cares". Real "authenticity" doesn't comes from math and comes instead from culture. Using the "if a tree falls in a forest" philosophy meme: if the blockchain claims that you have the Nyan Cat image but nobody cares about it, then do you really "own" the image?

More about the history of authenticity: Religion supplied this culture of "authenticity" for some time, but after the Industrial revolution the widespread duplicate production of commodities, along with the invention of photos and videos, has been eroding away the value of the authentic "the one and only" irrelevant for some time. Walter Benjamin has a nice essay about this change of culture in his famous essay - " The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". And the Internet seems to further accelerate the notion of communal art, where memes only have value if they are shared freely and not when someone hangs it in a museum. My gripe with NFTs has nothing to do with the technicalities of crypto and everything to do with everything else (primarily, politics and culture in relation to technology).

thread

pampaDec 2020

This topic has been explored since the advent of photography and cinema. When advances in technology allowed to produce indistinguishable copies.

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), by Walter Benjamin [1] is a good starting point on this topic. He was the first to ask what actually constitutes a work of art, if you can cheaply mass produce copies of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...

thread

bvanderveenSep 2020

User 'potamic' made most of the point I would have made, so I'll address this:

> I get to keep tabs on friends without actively having to reach out. So people don't become strangers over time.

This is a fundamental perversion of the notion of social interaction. It proposes an argument whose form and frame substitutes people and relationships for a passive consumption of images of people and relationships. Instead of people becoming strangers over time (which is normal and healthy), everyone is transformed into simulacra of acquaintances or friends instantly; you are implicitly, automatically estranged from the beginning. Your Facebook-mediated relationships last longer than they would have without Facebook precisely because of its impersonal and inauthentic character which absolves you of the real effort otherwise required to have an authentic relationship.

To use it is to delegate an always-increasing portion of your social existence to the black-box of the Zuckertron, with all of the political, ideological, and economic implications, caveats, and perturbances that come with it. To wit: you've already accepted the argument, and you're here defending it with evidence amounting to 'everyone else plugged into the Borg cube is plugged into the Borg cube, together we all cube the Borg cube'.

Needless to say, I am skeptical that the niche Facebook has carved out for itself as the arbiter of who-and-what-I-see-and-how and who-and-what-sees-me-and-how is likely to work out in my favor.

Recommended reading: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf

thread