Synopsis II

Jos de Mul- The work of art in the age of digital recombination.

In “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination,” Dutch philosopher Joe de Mul discusses Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and through this work of Benjamin de Mul looks at its relevancy in our daily lives. As we spend a lot of time in front of our computers, de Mul analyzes that the interface of our computers structures and changes our aesthetic experiences. Nowadays it’s better to look at the manipulative value of a certain than at the value of exhibiting a work of art. He claims that the authenticity no longer resides in the history of a work but in it the virtual quality of a work. The databases of today, he believes allows us to make infinite searches, (re-)combinations and through this constant transformation it could be considered as a work of art. As our lives seem to move from our houses to cyberspace. According to this huge changes de Mul points out that it is necessary that we also change our way we look at art and the way we critique art along with the digital evolution in order to keep up and understand art.

Remixing and Remixability- Lev Manovich The article identifies the word “remix” in consideration to the statues of law through the 21st century point of view. Technology today enables people to remix all sorts of data. Information got speed up by the use of Internet, because none of these paths of information are one-way roads. This information can come from all from all kinds of sources. All these different types of information creates different types of media which can be imported into our computers for editing.

The internet is the best “place” for this transformative process remixing is. A space where our heaps of data and media can be organized and shared and recombined and rebuilt . This information gets remixed and made it available to others on a common information platform You could say that you have a few elements that can be used together and find ways of incorporating them into your work. In his article Malovich points out how everything relates to one other and is used together. According to Manovich remixing and remixability is so much more, all cultures, art forms, religions and even historical events have all in some way been remixed. Therefore remixing and remixability is a form of a built-in feature of digital networked media universe.