The Application of Technology to Art
being critiqued here? Can there be a universal
Production
Technology is a body of knowledge
devoted to creating tools, processing
actions and the extracting of
materials. The term ‘Technology” is
wide, and everyone has their way of
understanding its meaning. We use
technology to accomplish various tasks
in our daily lives, in brief; we can
describe technology as products and
processes used to simplify our daily
lives. We use technology to extend our
abilities, making people the most crucial
part of any technological system.
Benjamin (1935) “The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
In his essay, “The Work of Art In The Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin
discusses a shift in perception and its affects in
the wake of the advent of film and
photography in the twentieth century. He
writes of the sense changes within humanity’s
entire mode of existence; the way we look and
see the visual work of art has is different now
and its consequences remain to be determined.
How does human sense perception related to
history? Is it a universal perspective that is
As Benjamin continues, a tension between new
perspective in the first place?
Benjamin here attempts to mark something
specific about the modern age; of the effects of
modernity on the work of art in particular. Film
and photography point to this movement.
Benjamin writes of the loss of the aura through
the mechanical reproduction of art itself. The
aura for Benjamin represents the originality
and authenticity of a work of art that has not
been reproduced. A painting as an aura while a
photograph does not; the photograph is an
image of an image while the painting remains
utterly original.
The sense of the aura is lost on film and the
reproducible image itself demonstrates a
historical shift that we have to take account of
even if when we don’t necessarily notice it.
What does it mean when the aura is lost? How
does it function and how does it come about?
Benjamin writes of the loss of the aura as a
loss of a singular authority within the work of
art itself. But what comes through in this new
space left by the death to the aura? How does
the mechanically reproduced work of art
manage to make up for this void?
modes of perception and the aura arise. The
removal of authority within the original work of
art infers a loss of authority, however, in
regards to mass consumption, this liberation is
not necessarily contingent. The cameraman,
for example, intervenes with what we see in a
way which a painting can never do. It directs
the eye towards a specific place and a specific
story; at the same time it is radical and
revolutionary it is also totalitarian. It guides us
to a particular side of a story and leaves other
parts out. It dulls our perception towards the
work of art and introduces distraction as a
mode of reception. The location of anything we
might call the aura has to be moved into a
mythological space; into the cult of genius.
This cult of genius relates back to the cultish
characteristic of the aura itself; in its absence
there is a grabbling for a replacement. What
does it mean to place an aura on “someone” or
“something”? Is it even necessary to reclaim
the aura in the first place? The mystical cult of
the original in broken with the loss of the aura,
and now every one can go to a gallery, a
museum, the theater or the cinema. A whole
new appreciation of art is introduced while at
the same time, a whole new mode of deception
and distraction also enters.
For Benjamin, the aura is dead and it exists in
an improbable and mystical space. But in the
making of our own myths therein lies an
aesthetic interpretation of these reproducible
images; there is a temporal world that is there
for you, where you do not truly participate.
The object consumes man at the same time
man consumes it. Mass consumption revels in
this consequence of the loss of the aura. For
Benjamin, a distance from the aura is a good
thing. The loss of the aura has the potential to
open up the politicization of art, whether or not
that opening is detrimental or beneficial is yet
to be determined. However, it allows for us to
raise political questions in regards to the
reproducible image which can be used in one
way or another.
Yet Benjamin makes it clear that in this new
age of mechanical reproduction the
contemplation of a screen and the nature of
the film itself has changed in such a way that
the individual no longer contemplates the film
per say; the film contemplates them. A
constantly moving image in the disjunction of
the physical arrest of watching a moving image
move, changes the structure of perception
itself. Within the reproducibility of images
there is an increase of submission towards the
film itself. In and of itself this marks a
symptom and not a cause of something terrible
that is happening. How can we think of
subjectivity in the age of mechanical
reproduction? What does it mean to reflect
back onto ourselves after being absorbed by
these inauthentic and politicized images? What
does the aestheticization of the work of art
mean now when the aura is lost?
Key passages:
“During long periods of history, the mode of
human sense perception changes with
humanity’s entire mode of existence. The
manner in which human sense perception is
organized, the medium in which it is
accomplished, is determined not only by
nature but by historical circumstances as well”
(Benjamin, 222).
“The surgeon represents the polar opposite of
the magician. The magician heals a stick
person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon
cuts into the patient’s body. The magician
maintains the natural distance between the
patient and himself; though he reduces it very
slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly
increases it by virtue of his authority. The
surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly
diminishes the distance between himself and
the patient by penetrating into the patient’s
body, and increases it but little by the caution
with which his hand moves among the organs.
In short, in contrast to the magician—who is
still hidden in the medical practitioner—the
surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from
facing the patient man to man; rather , it is
through the operation that he penetrates into
him” (Benjamin, 233).
“The act of reaching for a lighter or a spoon is
familiar routine, yet we hardly know what
really goes on between hand and metal, not to
mention how this fluctuates with our moods.
Here the camera intervenes with the resources
of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions
and isolations, its extensions and
accelerations, its enlargements and reductions.
The camera introduces us to unconscious
optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious
impulses”(Benjamin, 237).
“Let us compare the screen on which a film
unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The
painting invites the spectator to contemplation;
before it the spectator can abandon himself to noticeably in all fields of art and is

his associations. Before the movie frame he symptomatic of profound changes in

cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a apperception, finds in the film its true means

scene than it is already changed. It cannot be of exercise”(Benjamin, 240).

arrested….The spectator’s process of

“Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object
association in the view of these images is
of contemplation for the Olympian gods, is now
indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden
one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached
change. This constitutes the shock effect of the
such a degree that it can experience its own
film, which, like all shocks, should be
destruction as aesthetic pleasure of the first
cushioned by heightened presence of mind. By
order. This is the situation of politics which
means of its technical structure, the film has
Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism
taken the physical shock effect out of the
responds by politicizing art”(Benjamin, 242).
wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were,

kept it inside the moral shock effect”

(Benjamin, 238).

“The distracted person too, can form habits.

More, the ability to master certain tasks in a

state of distraction proves that their solution

has become a matter of habit. Distraction is

provided by art presents a covert control of the

extent to which new tasks have become

soluble by apperception. Since, moreover,

individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks,

art will tackle the most difficult and most

important ones where it is able to mobilize the

masses. Today it does so in film. Reception in

a state of distraction, which is increasing