So for this week, we were to read “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin and comment on it. First off, this is just another “why this program rules” point, in that I was arguing about this subject with a friend about two weeks before starting at ITP, and now here I am again. I think the subject is of extreme relevance to our current learnings — how can you determine what’s “original” and “copied” in the digital realm, where in theory everything can be perfectly reproduced by 1’s and 0’s, reducing the old concept of duplication useless. The web is every bit as much the same as film — we can be confined to our jobs, apartments and such, and then the internet/digital entertaintment/pretty much everything gives us this sudden way into another world. Here again, where photography was once wondered to be a proper art, but instead the question that should have been asked is “how does this change art” we find ourslelves trying to redefine the things we don’t know by the terms of what we do. It’s a system that simply can’t work.
The sad thing is that I agree with the epilogue (and the intro, for that matter) in the discussion of the exploitation of the proletariat leading to war — and that I think this is a scary relation to current events. I’m not sure I can draw direct lines from art and duplication to exploitation and war, but maybe that’s something I just missed in the reading. I’m eager to hear everyone else’s take on the article.
Part II: Altered Images — find any images (web/magazine/newspaper/whatever) that have been manipulated.
The first thing that came to mind was a picture that had been nearly beaten into our heads at SCILS (School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies at Rutgers, for those curious — also home of the Journalism department, though we’ve never been given the name) of O.J. Simpson’s mugshot. The Newsweek cover (left) is pretty much how it was, the TIME cover (right) is clearly darkened — and in the mind of most people surveyed shortly after the printing, it changed their opinion of O.J., based on the altering done by TIME. It’s a classic case of the power of journalism, but also of the need for journalists to report, and not to opine and influence — and for the media outlets to define their stance as either entertainers or purveyors of news. For the former, this sort of thing is tacky, but within their range. For the latter, it’s just unacceptable.
Next up is one of my favorite albums of, well, ever — The Eels’ “Beautiful Freak” album cover. I had no idea what Photoshop was in high school, and when I first got my mitts on this album, the cover freaked me the hell out. The whole album insert is filled with images of bug-eyed people (including the band members) and I just remember spending hours trying to figure out how the hell they did it.
Something that came to mind because I happened to be listening to it when writing this is the latest Royksopp album — the cover is clearly tweaked, and to a very cool effect. The few isolated images on the very barren background end up providing a really cool result, and it fits the album very well (in my humble opinion).
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