Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

How do the ideas from Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" apply to contemporary digital media?

When reading Walter Benjamin's, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" the main idea which is portrayed to the reader is the idea of "aura" of art suggesting that when a piece of artwork is reproduced, the aura is lost. This relates highly to contemporary digital media as one is exposed to art which has lost its aura on a daily basis. Whether someone is reading a magazine, driving past billboards on the way to work or reading their daily newspaper, they are viewing art which has been reproduced with contemporary digital media technologies. It can almost be said that EVERY advert seen has in someone been constructed and the viewer is not seeing the original picture. With many programs such as photo shop, it is extremely easy to edit a picture and make it look however the artist wants. It is fair to say that Walter Benjamin's theories still apply today.

To the left is a picture of Victoria and David Beckham when they graced the cover of W magazine. This is a piece of art, a photographer took the picture, chose the way they were sitting and the themes, however this has lost its aura due to the airbrushing of the couples skin to make them look flawless.


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"?

As mentioned above, these days computer programs such as photo shop are available to anyone. Anything can be created digitally in the modern day, so the main question is, what does this mean for art? Art will still be art. Photography still has artistic value (see the caption next to the picture of the Beckhams), paintings still have an original lying around somewhere and video still has some kind of artistic sense however one may suggest that no matter what these pieces of art can be reproduced and therefore what this means for art is that the original copy will probably be worth a hell of a lot of money.


Is a photoshopped image "authentic"?

There are different situations where one may say that a photoshopped image is and is not authentic. A photoshopped image could be considered authentic if the point of the art was to use photoshop, for example my friend did a year 12 assessment task where she took photographs then used photoshop to turn these photographs into comic strips. I believe photoshopped images are not authentic when they are used to alter an appearance and then present the appearance as a reality.




Do digital "things" have an "aura" (in Benjamin's terms)?

Yes digital things have an aura in Benjamins terms as no matter what it is all a type of "art" and that sense of losing an "aura" is still experienced viewing this type of art.