User:Ruben/RWRM/8 - Digital Recombination

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

Artistic media are interfaces that structure the work of art and the aesthetic reception. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (Benjamin) describes an ontological change, a transformation of human experience, how mechanical reproduction has replaced 'cult value' with 'exhibition value'.

At the beginning of the 19th century mechanical reproduction became an artistic technique, after which it (due to photography and film) became the dominant cultural interface. Before, art's dominant type used to be characterized by uniqueness and singularity in time and space. It used to have an aura (a sense of distance), which made it an interface between the sensible (its materiality) and the supersensible (its meaning history). Auratic works of art can be conceived as 'symbol', due to which it can quickly become an object of magical or religious cult ('cult value').

According to Benjamin, in the age of mechanical reproduction [...] we experience a radical loss of aura as mechanical reproduction of images brings things closer, spatially and temporally. Uniqueness and permanence of the auratic object are being replaced by transitoriness and reproducibility. To such an extend that works of are are being designed for reproducibility. Trying to conserve the cult value, only confirms the loss of aura of the work itself. Cult value now gives way to 'exhibition value' (ie. celebrities are famous for being famous).

'Mechanical media' possess a fundamental democratic and even revolutionary potential.[...] it discloses the world in a new way.

When talking about 'digital recombination', we cannot simply equate it with mechanical reproduction as it has unique medium-specific characteristics. Understood as a medium, the computer is not one but many.

On their fundamentals new media art works share the basic characteristic of the multidimensional relational database: add, browse, change, delete (ABCD is CRUD in SQL). This constitutes the 'database ontology'. It is dynamic, because the data elements can be constantly combined, decombined, and recombined.

Databases often functions s 'material metaphors'. But when they create new meaning in/out of themselves - beyond their instrumental function - they function as a 'conceptual metaphor' which structures our experience of ourselves and of the world. They are onto-logical machines (Manovich) as they shape both our world and our world view. In the age of digital databases, everything [...] becomes an object for recombination and manipulation.

Both Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. and Kac's fluo rabbit raise the 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.

According to Benjamin in the age of mechanical reproduction is was already becoming difficult to distinguish between the artistinc and non-artistic functions of the reproduction [...] in the age of digital recombination, the distinction seems to get blurred altogether. In the age of digital recombination, the value of an object depends on the extend of its openness for manipulations. So we move from exhibition value to 'manipulation value'.

In the age of mechanical reproduction, politicians depended on their exhibition value. In the age of digital manipulation, politicians are becoming more and more dependent on their manipulation value

As the number of recombinations of a database is almost infinite, its brings about a return of the aura: it becomes an interface between the sensible and the supersensible again - this time between itself and its 'virtuality'. Because of their manipulability, digital objects seem to be inherently unstable, like the performing arts process rather than [an artistic] product. We can distinguish digitally recombined works of art from other digitally recombined objects because they have a reflective quality as well.

Over time, we will become aware of the inapproachability of the workings of a technology that we have invented. An we can reflect on its non-human and inhuman character. The technology will get over our heads insofar that we become the object of digital manipulation. We might be the first species that creates its own successors in the evolution of life and by doing so makes itself redundant.