User:Grrrreat/research/notes-16-01-12

Annotation Jos de Mul, "The work of art in the age of digital recombination"

Artists have always used media in the sense of 'means for presenting information'. Media are interfaces that can mediate between us and the external world (designation), our fellow man (communication) and ourselves (self-understanding).

Walter Benjamin says: Cult value is (was) being replaced by exhibition value of the work of art.

Nowadays the database constitutes the ontological model of the work of art. Here the exhibition value is being replaced with the so-called 'manipulation value'. This manipulation value is not limited to the realms of art or aesthetics. In the 'age of informatization' it can also be applied to the digital manipulation of nature and culture.

Cult value vs. exhibition value

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After mechanical reproduction became a major artistic technique (engraving, etching, lithography) it took until the invention of photography to make it the 'dominant cultural interface'. Before that uniqueness and singularity were major aspects to a work of art, but also easily achieved since there was no major art practice around that was inherently lacking these two factors. Therefore an 'aura' after Benjamin was easily found in many works of art. This 'aura' consisting of the historicity and authenticity of the art piece itself was prone to give the object a cult value. The auratic work of art "acts as an interface between the physical materiality of the work of art and its meaningful history". This aura is not necessarily always linked to a work of art, but can also be found in natural objects like stones, trees etc.

In times of mechanic reproduction the distinction between original and copy loses its meaning. Things are being produced in focus of their reproduction. Therefore the cult value is vanishing. It can still be restored by, for instance, printing limited, signed editions of photographs. But this practice, by trying to restore something that was not inherent of the actual work, only confirms the loss of the aura of the work itself.

Therefore the exhibition value of objects and symbols got more and more important. This exhibition value is precisely situated in the endless reproduction of the copies and rises with them.

Benjamin mourns the loss of the aura but at the same time he sees revolutionary potential in the 'mechanical media'. Jos de Mul reflects this and says that this potential imagined by Benjamin has not been realized to an extent that would make a difference nowadays. He says that mechanical reproduction is an ambiguous matter that opened a new path bringing along new opportunities as well as new dangers.

Database Ontology

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The computer has to be regarded as a new stage in the development of media despite its qualities to mimic other, more traditional media (typewriter, sound recorder etc.). It combines uncountable individual forms of media in one machine. Even though it does that Jos de Mul's thesis is that all media art works sahre some basic characteristics, based on the four basic operations of persistent storage, Add, Browse, Change and Destroy (or in SQL: Insert, Select, Update and Delete) utilized by every single modern workstation computer. They constitute the dynamic elements of what might be called a database ontology.

In a basic sense the word database can be applied to any collection of items that is ordered in one way or another. "Database ontology is dynamic because the data elements can be constantly combined, decombined and recombined." This flexibility may, in reality not adhere to every database, but the trend is definitely towards a database being built more and more flexibly structured.

Databases are not limited to the virtual realm. They can function as a 'conceptual metaphor' which structures our experience of ourselves and the world. They shape our world and our world view. Therefore everything - nature and culture alike - becomes an object for recombination and manipulation.

Everything is becoming a database. They are the dominant cultural form of the computer age after Manovich. This inevitably raises new questions, for example can works derived from these databases be called works of art.

Database aesthetics and politics

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Since there is no absolute answer to the question what can be regarded as art and what not, it becomes more and more difficult through first mechanical reproduction and now digital recombination to determine the value of a work. Therefore the idea of 'manipulation value is introduced'. "In the age of digital recombination, the value of an object depends on the extent of its openness for manipulation". "As soon as the database play becomes a goal in itself, the database becomes an autonomous work of art."

Due to these circumstances the aura, the ritual dimension returns. But not in its original form. Because they are so manipulable these digital objects "seem to be inherently unstable". Their auratic element is no longer based on the history of the work but in their virtuality, their "intangible totality of possible recombinations".

"Gradually we become aware of the inapproachability of the workings of a technology that we have invented." In the end the technology may outrun us in our capability to Add, Browse, Change and Destroy which would make us the ultimate object of digital manipulation.