Lecture:
The internet is a huge factor in people’s lives in this technological generation. Students are looking online to research essays and using it social network with friends. But the issue with looking up information online is the faulty websites and online encyclopaedias. Wikipedia is an example of an online encyclopaedia that presents faulty information. Anyone can go online and change information, whether it is true or false. Information can be posted on any topic, and who ever has access to a computer can change and add information to this website. The lies and the lack of references that are made on Wikipedia make it a source that isn’t credible for academic work. But when refereeing to an article or a topic, it’s a good area to get a summary of what you are researching.
Tutorial:
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Walter Benjamin
How do the ideas from Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" apply to contemporary digital media?
In Walter Benjamin’s article, he presents the idea of when looking at an actor normally you see one thing. But when looking through the lens of a video camera you see something completely different. This article was written in the 1930’s, before the invention of computers which didn’t occur in that time. Walter talked about the different views within the eye of a camera. While in today’s society, nothing is as it appears. The advancement of the computers and airbrushing really change the whole idea and view of what’s on the screen; you never see the real person.
There was a time when "Art" was made by artists who were skilled professionals. Now that anyone with a computer can create things digitally (music, images, videos, etc), what does that mean for "art"?
Art has changed over time. Computers have taken over our lives and have become a huge part. We are a digital time period and everything is based on the computer. Artists still make hard copies of their work, but the digital age has changed everything. People are changing everything over to the digital. They are being replaced by computers.
Is a photo-shopped image "authentic"? Do digital "things" have an "aura" (in Benjamin's terms)?
Photoshop is not authentic because it’s not the original. It has been changed to please the eye of the viewer. You don’t see the original piece anymore and it changes your perspective and view of the art work.
It loses its authenticity. Every time is has changed it loses its original meaning and you wouldn’t fly to Paris to see a mini version of the art.
Readings:
Jorge Luis Borges: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940) (http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/Borges_-_Tlon,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius.html)
The reading is a complicated and confusing article. I struggled to understand parts of the reading, but I got parts of the information. There are multiple articles within this one reading. In the first article, two acquaintances meet for dinner one night and are discussing mirrors. They have an in-depth detail discussion on this topic and they start discussing a place. The one gentleman had previously read about this place in an encyclopedia. After the two gentleman go to a library to research this location with no luck of discovering the place mentioned in the encyclopedia. The book had been brought from a sale, so anyone could have added those pages and made up this location. It has a similar structure of Wikipedia. Anyone can add to the website whether it’s real or not. The other articles are complex like the first article, but I enjoyed this one because it linked to the ideas of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia
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