User:Grrrreat/research/notes-16-01-12
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 sez: 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
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".