How do the ideas from Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" apply to contemporary digital media?
Benjamin argues that art has always been able to be replicated, and the new digital media has increased this likely hood, as well the fact that now art can be modified. Yet this recreation of art through the computer (slow motion and other effects), cant that be considered another or further form of art rather than a remodification of a different piece of art. Benjamin also talks about the prescene of time and space in art. With new contemporary digital media, this makes this lack of existence even more so. A piece of art can be stored on a computer for years and not change, so who is to say who or when it was created? However dosn't this new age digital media not show a time and prescene not found in past artworks. Is digital and computer modifed art not a representation of the time we are currently in?
There was a time when "Art" was made by artists who were skilled professionals. Now that anyone with a computer can create things digitally (music, images, videos, etc), what does that mean for "art"?
This can be viewed as a postive or a negtive thing for art depending on where you stand. If you were someone with true artistic ability it could benefit you by helping to broaden your artistic oppourtunites but this is the same for the case of people with basic artistic abilities. Therefore this would make it harder for real artists to get noticed and it would also enhance the risk of people copying your art and modifying it to take it as there own. It gives art a broader meaning with less direction. New applications such as garageband, photoshop and imovie make it possible to achieve new wave advancments, but it makes it possible to everyday people with no artistic backgroud. However i still think that real artists should be able to be so good compared to the everyday people that there work is far more advanced and set aside from the work of others. yet it would also be hard to tell what really is art if it were made on the computer. a person could take a photo and modify it using photoshop but who is to say that is art? do we not still have the same critics and definition for art that people can tell what is really art, be it digital and what is not art but a persons attempts to make something artistic using the computer.
Is a photoshopped image "authentic"?
This depends on the image that is being made. If someone where to take a photo or image that is not theres and change it using photoshop then it would not be authentic. Whereas if someone were to make a design from photoshop using there own images accompanied by the tools of photoshop i think this would be authentic.
Do digital "things" have an "aura" (in Benjamin's terms)?
Benjamin argues that digital things do not have an "aura" as they are detached from significance behind the art. That the risk and reality of reproduction makes for a destruction of tradition and creativity that takes away a piece of arts "aura".
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