User:Yoana Buzova/R&W/Jos de Mul

Jos de Mul's text takes Walter Benjamin's "The work of art in the age of mechanics reproduction" as a departure point to talk about art in different periods, and the way it's value shifted from' cult' to 'exhibition value' and later to 'manipulation value'.

The 'cult value' of an artwork is characterized by uniqueness in time and space. Together with originality and authenticity they constitute the 'aura' of the artwork. However the magic of 'aura' started to vanish with the very fast spread of photography and film, in other words, the massive mechanical reproduction. That is when 'cult value' was taken over by 'exhibition value', where value was accumulated by exposure. Quantity overrides quality. That applies for politcs as well for art.

The computer as a medium is a tool for production of 'new media art'. It takes advantage of the four basic operations of computing Add, Browse, Change, Destroy, which give room for endless operations (tweaks) of databases. At this point comes 'manipulation value' and Jos de Mul introduces the idea of the reappearance of the 'aura' in the uniqueness of recombination of data. Though in this context, now we suffer a blur of artistic and non-artistic functions of reproduction. Art gets easily politicised and vice versa (politics get aestheticised).

In the end naturally comes the question will we, people, become the ultimate object of digital manipulation in a merry-go round feedback loop.