The Sacred Icon in the Age of the Work of Art and Mechanical Reproduction

2007 ◽  
pp. 171-215
Keyword(s):  
Work Of Art ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production

2009 ◽  
pp. 2325-2336
Author(s):  
Thomas B. Cavanaugh
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction ◽  
Artistic Collaboration ◽  
Electronic Distribution ◽  
Low Threshold

When Walter Benjamin wrote his famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he shone a light on the cultural changes inherent in technology’s ability to infinitely reproduce and distribute art. One of the important consequences of this development was the democratization of art’s availability, allowing the general population to experience artwork that they would otherwise be unable to access. Now technology has advanced to a point where not only is art’s reproduction available to anyone who wants it, its very production is now accessible to almost everyone, even if the prospective artist is utterly devoid of training, expertise, or even talent. With software-based artistic assistance and low-threshold electronic distribution mechanisms, we have achieved the promise of Benjamin’s blurred distinction between artist and audience. As a result, the process by which art is produced has now been democratized, resulting in legitimate questions regarding quality, taste, and the legitimacy of authorship in a human-technological artistic collaboration.

MacSong: Karaoke and the Academy

Prospects ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 627-638
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Gray
Keyword(s):  
Original Work ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
The Other ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Press ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Movie Star

When Walter Benjamin wrote this sentence in the 1930s, he had in mind both the new directions of the press, which was opening more and more spaces in which its readers could write, and the new films and newsreels, where “any man today can lay claim to being filmed” (“Work of Art,” 233) and where, rather than actors, “people … portray themselves” (234; emphasis Benjamin's). Benjamin's attitude toward this collapse of the distinction between author and public was ambivalent. Phrases such as “the phony spell of a commodity” (233), to describe the cult of the movie star, suggest his nostalgia for a time when the aura of the “original” work of art had not yet begun to decay. On the other hand, his idea that “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual” (226) pointed enthusiastically to the new technologies as part of a liberationist meta-narrative.

From Page to Stage to Screen: The Live Theatre Broadcast as a New Medium

Adaptation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Hitchman
Keyword(s):  
Work Of Art ◽  
Hybrid Form ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Physical Presence

AbstractThe live theatre broadcast has witnessed a phenomenal rise in both popularity and profile over the past decade. This article considers the live theatre broadcast as both a new medium and a form of adaptation. It examines how the medium is ontologically, economically, and culturally positioned between theatre and film, and the extent to which it is, as John Wyver puts it, a ‘hybrid form’. Analyzing the medium in terms of Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, I question how the live theatre broadcast challenges the ‘here’ and the ‘now’ that Benjamin sees as vital to the ‘aura’ of the work of art. I investigate how the live theatre broadcast’s lack of ‘here’ affects audience perception, and how liveness might be seen as a condition of perception rather than of transmission. Exploring Benjamin’s suggestion that film’s celebrization of the actor acts as compensation for the actor’s lack of physical presence, I ask how this concept might inform our understanding of actors in the live theatre broadcast. Finally, the article assesses the extent to which the live theatre broadcast directs the perception of the viewer, and how this direction removes the autonomy of viewing that theatre affords.

scholarly journals Metropolis and post-modern metropolis as a critical field of modern mimicry

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-254
Author(s):  
Nenad Stjepanović
Keyword(s):  
Critical Field ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Money Economy ◽  
Definition Of

Hegel's analysis and definition of the work of art in the Esthetic foretold transformation in visual communication and perception of arts in the advertising age. During the transformative period of economy into money economy fundamental social and cultural ruptures introduced new methods of transgression in forms expression and conception of meaning in arts, and by implication, in architecture. Aesthetic radically departed from the norms of figuration in the classical art into symbolic reading. These exigencies in style and conception reflected the new consciousness that was impinged on by the age of sciences and mechanical reproduction.

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