Dave Young - Annotation: The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination

Jos de Mul's text The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination outlines an adaptation of Benjamin's theories of mechanical reproduction, in relation to 21st century information culture. De Mul's central argument is that another paradigm-shift in how we experience media has occurred: the increasing mutability of information as a result of the digital interface. The text begins by providing an overview of the themes in Benjamin's original essay, specifically the auratic element of an artwork – it's singularity, its physical occupancy of one space in time. Describing the possibilities presented by Middle Ages' printing techniques and the eventual emergence of photography and film as “the dominant cultural interface” (96), the author retraces Benjamin's thesis that the cult status of an object diminishes (with the aura) through reproduction. While Benjamin argues that this phenomenon had the potential to mobilise a revolution, De Mul, with the benefit of hindsight, suggests that the 'mechanical media' instead mobilised consumerist desires.

While De Mul recognises the contemporary relevance of Benjamin's arguments in The Work of Art, he makes a clear distinction between mechanical and digital reproducibility – the distinguishing factors being the ability to “Add, Browse, Change, and Destroy.” (99-100) These features amount to a new level of informational mutability, and according to De Mul, are utilised within database structures as part of computer software and networked applications. Quoting Manovich: “databases have become the dominant form of the computer age.” (101) In the information age, “everything – nature and culture alike – becomes an object for recombination and manipulation.” (101)

The “manipulation value” is an important facet of database aesthetics, and further blurs the divisions between what Benjamin described as the aestheticisation of politics and the politicisation of art. By giving the example of the installation W4 by Dutch artist Geert Mul consisting of a publicly-curatable database of 80,000 images via a human-computer interface, the author argues that the database itself can become an autonomous work of art. The user's ability to query this database and form “recombinations” of images illustrates the mutability – or the “manipulation value” - of the database structure. [also interesting relation to archive thematic proj - SR]

The manipulability of the database is an increasingly political act, as it involves the moderating of information, states De Mul. He references the political campaigns of George Bush and Geert Wilders as examples of digital recombinations and mediated displays of information. I think this point is perhaps even more visible in the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama, where the political battleground shifted further towards the feedback systems of web 2.0, and his cultivated image of ultra-hip liberal hero personality was only fractured by his admission that he owned Microsoft's dismal media player, the Zune.[1]

De Mul concludes on a tentative note, warning that Benjamin's anxious imaginings of an alienated society caused by mechanical reproduction can be transposed to contemporary information culture. What is potentially at stake, according to the author, is not only the alienation of society as Benjamin feared, but also an evolutionary threat to the human race itself: “Gradually, we become aware of the inapproachability of the workings of a technology that we have invented. And we might even start to reflect on the non-human and maybe even inhuman character of the new medium.” (104)

[1] "Barack Obama Uses a Zune" http://gizmodo.com/5101522/barack-obama-uses-a-zune