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The work of art in the age of digital recombination (2008)
Jos de Mul


annotated at 17-02-2015

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== introduction ==

MEDIA (in this text): ‘means for presenting information’

"Media are interfaces that mediate not only between us and our world (designation), but also between us and our fellow man (communication), and between us and ourselves (self-understanding)."

'''aim of essay''': analyzing the way the computer interface constitutes and structures aesthetic experience
* in the age of digital recombination, the database constitutes the ontological model of the work of art
* in this transformation the exhibition value is being replaced by what we might call manipulation value


== Cult value vs. Exhibition value ==

===cult value===
Benjamin: 
* it was because "photography and film that mechanical reproduction became the dominant cultural interface."
* work of art over time --> physical condition + ownership
* aura --> magical of religious cult 

"the auratic work of art acts as an interface between the *sensible* and the *supersensible*, that is: between the physical materiality of the work of art and its meaningful history."

"the material signifier and the spiritual meaning, are inseparably
linked with one another"

'''aesthetics''': "The relevance of the beautiful in connection with a short but illuminating discussion of Benjamin’s essay, can be conceived of as a symbol."

"One might say that mechanical reproduction of images brings things closer, spatially and temporally."

"Actually, in the media of mechanical reproduction the whole distinction between original and copy loses its meaning. No copy of a photo or a movie is more original than the others."

"According to Benjamin, together with the aura, the cult value of artworks will gradually vanish. For emotional or economical reasons one can, of course, try to conserve the cult value."

=== exhibition value ===

"which is precisely situated in the endless reproduction of the co-
pies"

examples: 
* Paris Hilton --> famous for being famous
* politician --> mediagenic = succes
* president Reagan --> B-film actor

'''ambivalence of Benjamin''': 
* the human itself as losing its aura
* fundamental democratic and even revolutionary potential 

--> new oppertunities, and new dangers

"We should keep this fundamental ambiguity of the development of media in mind when we turn our attention to digital recombination."

== Database ontology ==

new medium = new possibilities + dangers

"Although the computer can simulate all kinds of classical mechanical machines and media (...) it has some unique medium-specific characteristics that justify the claim that it represents a new stage in the development of media."


"Understood as a medium, the computer is not one but many."


database ontology:
* ABCD --> add, browse, change, destroy
* ISUD --> insert, select, update, delete


"With the four basic operations all possible combinations of records can be retrieved in principle."

"Relational databases are extremely flexible, because they enable the users to define queries that were not anticipated by the database designers."


databases:
* hierarchal --> 1950s
* network --> 1960s
* relational --> 1970s


"In addition, databases may create a surplus of meaning, on top of their instrumental function (cf. Van den Boomen, in preparation). In that case the database functions as a conceptual metaphor which structures our experience of ourselves and of the world."

"The psychologist Maslov once noticed that for those who only have a hammer, everything appears to be a nail. In a world in which the computer has become the dominant technology – worldwide more than 50 billion processors are doing their job – everything is becoming a database."

"In the age of digital databases, everything – nature and culture alike – becomes an object for recombination and manipulation."


examples: 
* mouse with ear
* green rabbit


"question of whether they are a work of art since they both employ a new, seemingly non-artistic medium of production as a means for artistic expression, questioning the very distinction between artistic and non-artistic objects."

== Database aesthetics and politics ==

Benjamin: "the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental’ (Benjamin 1969)."

"in the age of digital recombination, the distinction seems to get blurred altogether." (between art and not-art)

'''example:'''
W4 (WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE) --> interface designed to enable the visitors to display the collection. Every visitor of the museum becomes a curator, able to create her own exhibitions.

=== manipulation value ===

"In the age of digital recombination, the value of an object depends on the extent of its openness for manipulation." 

"For a contemporary scholar, a ‘databased’ version of the collected works of a philosopher is of much greater value than a traditional paper edition, because it enables her to execute all kinds of sophisticated searches, to investigate implicit relationships between the texts, and to make new recombinations of existing texts (De Mul, 2008). 

'''aesthetics''': 
"The aesthetic quality of a work strongly depends on the elegance of the structure of the database and its user interface."

"It becomes an interface between the sensible and the supersensible again, now no longer located in the history of the work, but in its virtuality, that is: the intangible totality of possible recombinations."

"Power, political power included, is becoming increasingly dependent on the ability to manipulate information."

'''examples''':
"We could think of Bush’s intended manipulation of computer-mediated elections, or the rhetorically motivated recombination of images in Geert Wilders’s propaganda movie Fitna, but also of the non-criminal everyday recombination of data in order to create, control and evaluate financial, economical and social policies."

=== art and being political ===

--> reflective quality

"Works of art are not political because they manipulate politics, but because they reflect (on) the politics of manipulation."

"Gradually, we become aware of the inapproachability of the workings of a technology that we have invented."

"Or on the possibility that it will gradually outstrip our skills to add, browse, change and destroy. And that we might become the ultimate object of digital manipulation."


(why concluding with this pessimistic tone?)

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