Summary
- technological conditions can affect the collective consciousness
- technology trigger important changes in cultural development
- Walter Benjamin's essay 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' (1936) significantly evaluates the role of technology through photography as an instrument of change.
Task
- draw a doodle - original
- faithfully copy this - copy
- and again... - reproductions
- and again - reproductions
A reproductions can either be a work in its own right, or merely an image representation of the original.
The relationship between art, design and media is born from this scenario. Who is copying who?
The transformation between that is the relationship between art, media and design.
Machine Age; Modernism
Walter Benjamin and mechanical reproduction - wrote some critical essays but his work was never completed due to him committing suicide after the war.
- the age of technology of art
- parallel and specific to new developments; a duality expressing the zeitgeist
- dialectical due to the copy, reproductive nature and the role of the original
- the aura and uniqueness of art
On encountering an original work, there is an ora that is distinct from anything that is then reproduced or copied.
Photography is at the beginning of this technological relationship between art and design.
The camera eye is still one of fascination as it can come from a number of points - not just your perception or what you see, it can be used for multiple viewing points.
The camera eye has a variable gaze, and a new consciousness conveys and represents technological progress and the faith within it.
Photograms - the early experiments with technology and photography
Benjamins provokes two strands of thoughts which have then been explored by Freud and Marx
Marx brings about that an understanding of technology and how it is a work of art.
Once art and design enter modes of production and consumerism, the values of it can be changed.
A copy of something onto something can increase its value - up for reinterpretation.
Margo Lovejoy - photography has overturned a seat of art. Form of aesthetic. Technology moves something into a new context, therefore meaning the value of it becomes under question.
Freud - What the material aspect of how it can express our deepest unconscious.
Films can play with our subconscious and deepest desires. The material way at looking at the developments of technology.
Kineticism - the idea of capturing movement.
The pre curser of cinema photography. Exploring how we pursue space. The understanding of space and time begins a whole dialogue of de materialism of art and design.
Once you start to look at the moving image, it starts to move away from form and object. Once you move into just image, you can replicate and reform it. With photography becomes the de materialism of art and design.
Dadaism is clearly using technology to produce image. Instead, with photography and technology, images and objects are ordered and coded and styled. This is the beginning of the development of art and design merging together- how you code and replicate and style and order it can be resting in either the context of art or context or design or both. It is why you see design increasingly from this period within art.
Marx is associated with the term technological determinism. He believes there is a logical relationship between economical reproduction and social existence. He sees it as a role and tool for progress, and also a tool for alienation.
The main issues Marx discusses -
- technology drives history,
- technology and the division of labour,
- materialist view of history,
- technology and capitalism and production,
- social alienation of people from aspects of their human nature as a result of capitalism,
Electronic Age; Postmodernism
Post modern and post machine - as we move into it, many electronic works were still made with modern aesthetic, the emergence of information and conceptual based works, the computer has become a centre in both art and design, there is an openness to industrial techniques, and collaborations between art and science.
We consumer the technology, and in term develop new techniques - everything becomes that much more image and illusion based.
Boundaries are broken between different forms of medial and subjects.
Simulation and Simulacrum
- It is the reflection of a profound reality
- It masks and denatures a profound reality
- It masks the absence of a profound reality
- It has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is it's own pure simulacrum
- - Jean Baudrillard (1981)
Whats to say by reproducing an image doesn't make it a object/form in its own right? What do we call original and what do we call copy? It is a reflection of a profound reality, masks and absence of reality. Becomes a reality in it's own right. It's confusing, because it's all to do with what is virtual and what is not.
What is a reality and what isn't a reality?
The word of mouth masks the absence - we take it as real, we take it as factual because it's what we hear.
Nam June Paik
The illusion of power.
John Walker and art and mass media; Art in the age of mass media (2001)
- art uses mass media (1990 - 2000)
- Art in advertisements
- The artist as media celebrity
Digital Age
Margot Lovejoy; Digital Currents
- digital potential leads to multimedia productions
- technological reduction of all images so they are addressed by the computer
- new contexts
Multimedia work
- interactivity
- performance
- transdisciplinary
- time, space and motion explored in art and as art
- collaborations
- computer as a tool for integrating that media
Colclusion
- art comments on the ideology of every day life
- art can be expressive of progressive
- technological tools can blur the line between production of fine art works and commercial and design production
