User:Lbattich/Notes on Jos de Mul

Media: ‘means for presenting information’.

Mideia mediate between:

• us and the world (designation)
• us and our fellow man (communication)
• us and ourselves (self-understanding)

De Mul’s thesis in this paper:

1) “In the age of digital recombinations, the database constitutes the ontological model of the work of art.

2) The exhibition value is being replaced by what he terms “manipulation value."

Page 2 onward de Mul engages in an exegesis of Benjamin’s famous essay.

Before mechanical reproduction: work of art was characterised by its unique singular presence in time / space. Here. Now.

Aura: designates the material and historical authenticity and authority of the unique work of art.

Auratic work: an interface between the sensible and the super sensible: "between the physical materiality of the work of art and its meaningful history."

In the aura tic work the sensible and supersentible, the material and symbolic (spiritual) meaning, are inseparable.

To destroy aura = destroy the presence (in terms of distance) of history.

Destroys the symbolic aspics of the work, in relation to its super sensible (historically-based) aspects. To flatten. Erewhon.

In age of mechanical reproduction: the aura fades; the cult value fades too.

Yet de Mul notices: “For emotional or economical resins one can, of course, try to conserve the cult value.” This is an important caveat, which is implicit yet not clear in Benjamin’s text. It suggests that, even though Benjamin’s verdict is the aura has faded, cult value been destroyed in favour of exhibition value, he seems to ignore the uncanny afterlife that cult value has achieved after mechanical reproduction: when reproductions themselves commodified in such a manner that they are effectively object of cult. Their cult value has been re-adopted by the logic of the market.

Similarly artists themselves have sought to contain the potential revolutionary (and democratic) aspects which Benjamin detects in the practice of reproduction – the power to reach a wide audience and mobilise them into action – by, for example, issuing limited editions of the reproducible work.

Thus de Mul:

“By now we know that mass media can indeed mobilise masses, though more often in the direction of the shopping mall than in the direction of the government building."

Capitalist industry has cooped the potential that Benjamin saw in film.

Database ontology:

Four basic operations of persistent storage:

Add, Browse, Change, Destroy

or

Insert, Select, Update, Delete

Definition of database:

“Any collection of items ordered in one way or another. In computing, a database = a structured collection of data records that is stored in a computer, so that a software program can consult it to answer questions."

Different database models:

• 1950s: hierachical model.

• 196s: network model

• 1970s: relational model: multidimensional: multiple tables consisting each of a flat database of rows and columns. Allow users to use queries not pre-defined by the

database designers.

De Mul’s thesis: "In the age of digital databases, everything - nature and culture alike - becomes an object for recombination and manipulation."

With digital recombination: no distinction btw artistic and non-artistic functions of reproduction.

cult value gives way to exhibition value (Benjamin. This in turn gives way to “manipulation value” (de Mul). Value of object = extent of its openness for manipulation.

When database is a goal in itself, becomes autonomous work of art.

Return of the aura: each recombination is unique. And there being an incredible (near infinite) number of possible recombinations, this gives aura to a particular unique existing combination.

Aura returns with a twist: it’s no longer located in history, but rather in its virtuality = the intangible totality of possible recombinations.

“Because of their manipulability, digital objects seem to be inherently unstable.” Process rather than product.

Database ontology shows a post-historical tendency = everything, even dinosaurs, becomes a future possibility.

(Something which both Wittgenstein and Sartre would agree with, each in their own way, I suppose. Digital database only shows and makes this more patent)

Politics:

“Political power is becoming increasingly dependent on the ability to manipulate information."

According to de Mul, we now become aware of “the inapproachability of the workings of a technology that we have invented."

What are the human and non-human characters of this medium? Can it outstrip our own abilities to add, browse, change and destroy (ABCD)?

For instance, de Mul writes, “the computer does not ‘understand’ the mages, it just applies pixel statistics.” It is certainly true that the computer operates on a level that has become unapproachable to us, yet it is dangerous and unwarranted to make a leap of language: “the computer understands” might be a useful metaphor in come cases, yet the use of this sort of language does not mean that computer media have their own logic, their own ABCD way of seeing the world. Is de Mul then courting the danger of furnishing the computer with consciousness or, rather, with a will, an intention?