[DSDN 171] Blog Assignment #6

“To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense.” - Walter Benjamin 

Do you agree or disagree? Do you think there is a role for the ‘authentic’ in an age of digital design and manufacture?

When consumers purchase a product, they want to be able to tell their friends that it’s the real thing. To be able to say it’s the original, instantly gives value to the product. In my perspective, authenticity itself is the aura. I, as a firm believer of authentic value, stand by the importance of originality and uniqueness; authenticity is known as ‘real’ or ‘original’ where as a replica is generally known as a ‘copy’ or even more, a ‘fake’. Before industrialization, the time to create produce something, consumed a lot of time in comparison to now and our technologies.

Essayist Benjamin Walter (1892 - 1940), stated “That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art”. In agreement to Benjamin's statement, a manufactured or copied product is losing its ‘presence’ in comparison to an original especially speaking from a historic perspective where mechanical reproduction had not yet been introduced. Understanding the idea of mechanical re-production and being able to reproduce on an enormous scale in such short time is the reason why I agree with Benjamin's loss of aura in mechanically reproduced products. The process that manufactured products are put though and the fact they are of little manual effort compared to 'hand-made' creations also enforce my alliance with Benjamin's statement.

fig. 1. Mona Lisa (c. 1503 -1519)

However, I am hesitant to have a distinct opinion on Benjamin's second argument: “To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense”. I believe authenticity has evolved as much as techonology has. If a friend were to tell you that the Mona Lisa painting (fig. 1) right before you was a print (a copy) you would assume that your reaction would be the opposite of surprise or shock. Although, if you were told it was the original, immediately there is an aura in your presence – it’s the idea of knowing the real Leonardo Da Vinci created this exact painting, knowing that he, touched it. You wouldn't want a print, you would want the original. However, another example from another perspective, if we take a modern digital photograph, the idea that it can be spread around the world in an instant via internet, that itself becomes the ‘aura’. Our 21st century society has become a case of whether or not you essentially have seen it or not.


In our day and age, industrialization can be called the ‘life’ to our technologic world. I believe that it depends on what has been reproduced and also which day in history the 'original' or 'first' had been created: the comparison between the historic Mona Lisa to a modern image.

------------------------------


Reference list:


Benjamin, W. (1992) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (pp. 211-244 ) in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn. London: Fontana.


Image Sourced From:
http://smarthistory.org/leonardo-mona-lisa.html