User:ThomasW/Walter synopsis

Synopsis Walter Benjamin

When the mechanical took over from the handmade, the mass production took away the aura from the “item” but with mechanical reproduction it have given people more access to the “item”, democratised. Kittel used the aura to illustrated the add sedimental value to art. Authenticity is based on rituals, mechanical reproduction freed the artwork from the parasitic dependency of the ritual.

Bill Nichols - The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems (1988)

Woodcut graphic opened the door to mechanical reproduced information on larger scale then hand written/drawn information. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work art lacking in one element, its present in time and space” Even that a reproduction my be identical in any present, the fact that it has not exist over time and have made its self a history of existing. The aura is an interface, it bring us closer to the work. Mechanical reproduced does make things closer to use, but on the sacrifice of no aura on the basis of reproducibility. The machine reproduction my make the aura go away, but it gives people access to it. A computer is nothing more special in the world of mechanical reproduced as a typewriter or a photo-camera. Its is just is new form. Database is a structured collection of data or information in physical or data form. Phonebook, Databases in a modern world mainframes like software, search engines, wikis, spreadsheets.

The act of mechanically reproducing our environment as well as representations of our world gives us a new look at the world, beyond ritual. This practice of reproducing our world to give us new perspectives of it, creates a sense of mystique among objects without aura. In the preset world the computer chip is the 'soulless' mediator of expression. The illusion of possessing the potential of cybernetic systems etch social aspects in a more preset situation as he fetischization of data (?) reaches the real. (...) The Zoo or botanical garden can be seen as an early example of constructing a representative reality around a perception of the real world. The cybernetic system extended upon this through the logical prediction of environmental changes and increasingly complex simulations of reality.