The Aura of the Digital Object
February 28, 2012 Leave a comment
From todays talk on the aura of the art object in relation to Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, I have been thinking more on what constitues the ‘aura’ for the digital object. From the discussion we came to the conclusion that the aura was something that was given to the object through our own values or through the importance we assign to it, I think this method of thinking adapts perfectly to digital or new media projects, this as opposed to placing high significance on the original which runs into difficulty when faced with the copy/paste abilities of digital technology.
I’ve thought about this in reference to digital paintings, where the whole idea of copy and paste, opposed to the idea of the orignal is quite prominent. Unlike an image created with oil paints on canvas, what is the ‘original’ of the digital painting? Could it be the original psd file it was created on? (if the work was created on photoshop) From this, many copies can be printed out, all of the same quality and size as the other, or easily changed if needed, showing us the same image. But is the first one printed the original if all the others are the same quality and dimensions and if so, what makes this one the original? Is the psd the original asset of the works creation when it can be duplicated and reworked on a different machine, or is the computer that created the truly original aspect of the work as it functioned as the ‘canvas’ so to speak. Maybe the combination of all of these aspects make the digital painting original.
Answering these questions is not easy as everyone has their different opinions of what constitues the original and what constitues the aura of a work. I’ve asked more questions where I meant to answer others, one thing is certain that the concept of the aura of an artwork in the digital era either has to be re contextualised or will inevitably becoming void or a non issue when discussing digital artworks. Whether it is a good or bad thing is anybody’s guess