Digital Reproduction3.pdf

The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Thoughts on Benjamin in the Age of the Internet

In 1935, Walter Benjamin wrote an essay entitled ‘The ‘Work of Art in the Age of

Mechanical Reproduction’ detailing the manner in which new technology affected the

place of art in a society. To him, art that could be mechanically reproduced, like film or

photography, lost its aspect of place and time the “aura” which had heretofore

accompanied it. As he put it “the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced

object from the domain of tradition” (221). But Walter Benjamin had nothing on the

world of today. The dizzying growth in the power and accessibility of computer

technology over the last few decades is relegating the once revolutionary process of

mechanical reproduction to history. The value of traditional reproducible mediums like

photography and newsprint is now in their domain of tradition, their tangible authenticity,

their aura.

Benjamin acknowledges that the emergence of reproducibility in art has been a

gradual, fuzzy phenomenon. He opens the body of the text by saying that “In principle a

work of art has always been reproducible” (220). He describes the phenomenon of

mechanical reproduction as consisting of a series of steps: from woodcut blocks, to the

printing press, to lithography, to photography, to silent and then sound film. He notes that

“With lithography the technique of reproduction reached an essentially new stage,” but

that “only a few decades after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography”

(219). What’s striking is the successively greater cultural significance of each new

development, and the successively smaller time intervals separating them. This is a

picture of exponential growth; it means that changes are happening faster today than they

were in Benjamin’s time.*

The absence of time and place that for Benjamin characterized manual

reproduction was in fact only a diminution. “Cult” elements still exist in manually

reproduced pieces of art. This is made clear by contrasting the manual reproduction of his

day to the digital reproduction of ours. “From a photographic negative, for example, one

can make any number of prints; to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense” (224).

This is true, but the original photographic negative still exists, a tangible physical object

from which copies are derived. Someone had to develop and print the film. The negative

and each print have an associated place and time. Digital photographic reproduction is a

different case. To digitize something is essentially to de-materialize it, to reduce it to an

entirely quantifiable binary string. The art is quantified; it can be reproduced or viewed

This has the same kind of revolutionary impact on art that photography, at its inception,

must have had.

Benjamin observed that once easy reproduction of art becomes possible “To an

ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for

reproducibility” (224). When a work is digitized, it becomes infinitely reproducible.

Transmission and reproduction become one and the same. The “world wide web” of the

internet takes full advantage of this. With all computers connected to each other, anything

digitized has the potential to be an unlimited number of places at once. A digital work is

therefore its reproducible aspect.

While Benjamin saw that mechanical reproduction “enables the original to meet

the beholder halfway,” digital reproduction makes it unnecessary for the beholder to take

any action at all (220). A copy of anything anywhere on the Internet can be instantly and

effortlessly replicated on their computer.

Another implication of the transmission of raw, quantifiable data, is that the work

is essentially laid bare. One can make ones own changes to the picture, text, or other

work in question and proceed to distribute it. The idea of authorship or ownership is

obsolete, and Benjamin’s idea of “authenticity” is annihilated completely.

Benjamin says that in the absence of authenticity, art’s function becomes political.

For mechanical reproduction, this became the case, though not quite as he describes. He

sees mass produced art as supporting a fascistic society. However, this assumption is

grounded in centralized control of the media in question. He appears to be valid in the

idea that widely-distributed art confers power. What he didn’t see is that it confers power

to any group which controls it.

In the last half-century mechanical reproduction has been used extensively by

groups distinct from the government for the sake of securing loyalty and ultimately

economic gain. Advertising explodes. In some ways amplified when digital media comes

into the picture. All art is essentially free once it is digitized. Because distribution costs

nothing, there is no distributor. And without a distributor, there is no one to limit supply

and therefore make the sure creator of the media gets something for their time. The only

way to make digital media economically feasible is through advertisement.

The importance of digital reproduction is for the individual artist, the person

interested in expression and communication without monetary incentive. Today, any

person who can buy a computer has the power of reproduction that once belonged only to

governments and companies. Because distribution via computers is nearly free, art can

gain wide exposure without being linked to an institution. This leads to a popularization

of art and mass-production powerful enough to redefine its political implications.

“Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a

chance to express themselves” (241). This is not the case with digital reproduction,

because the expression is not happening in isolation. On the Internet the politicizing of art

is simultaneously a political discourse. Digital art’s medium, the Internet, brings with it a

broad political community, a chance for interaction and discussion. This nullifies

Benjamin’s observation “that the screen actor… is presented by the camera” as opposed

to presenting himself “to the public… in person” (228). Though one using the Internet as

a means of communication is “acting into a camera,” it is a camera that can provide

feedback. And this feedback is not limited by traditional geographic or political

boundaries. Anyone with the money to buy a computer and the time to use it leisure is a

potential contributor to the conversation. Reproduced art is no longer a tool of politics;

instead it brings its own politics to the table with it.

The speed at which things are changing now indicates that they will only continue

to change faster. The artist and the concept of authenticity will diminish even further.

From painting, to photography, to digital photography, the role of the artist has been

progressively removed from the work. The next big step in this process is already taking

place: digital generation of content, with the artist as a computer programmer, and

serving more as an editor than anything else. These are works of art entirely created by

computers. A human being creates the programs and chooses between generated pieces,

but everything in-between is done by the computer. As mentioned, this not a

hypothetical; there is work being done on it already. UCSC’s own David Cope has

pioneered computer-based techniques for analyzing and emulating the styles of great

composers. Benjamin’s technological de-personification of art becomes more pronounced

with every passing day.

All Numbered Citations:

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Schocken Books, 1969

David Cope: http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/

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