LECTURE 2 - TECHNOLOGY WILL LIBERATE US

4 books:

digital currents
art in the age of mechanical reproduction
art in the age of mass media
simulacra and simulation

charting the path of art and technology.

- technology conditions can affect the collective consciousness
- technology triggers important changes in cultural development
- walter benjamins 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
faithfully copy this
and again...
and again.

insert scan here

Walter Benjamin argue that a copy becomes a work in its own right, or merely an image representing the original.

Some artists deliberately use the act of copying and reproduction to create work.

MACHINE AGE; MODERNISM:

Walter Benjamin and mechanical reproduction.

- The age of technology and art
- Parallel and specific to new developments, a duality expressing the zeitgeist.
- Dialectical due to copy, reproductive nature and the role of the original.
- The aura and uniqueness of art.

Before the emergence of technology we did not need to consider the original. These days we do need to consider what is the original; on encountering the original there is an aura which keeps it unique from any copy, for example re-makes of films.

Photography is at the beginning of this technological relationship with art. It can be used to create multiple viewing points for one view of the eye.

Dziga Vertov - man with a movie camera

The camera eye represents technological progress.

PHOTOGRAMS - early experiments with photographical technology

Benjamin and two parallels - Freud and Marx - Photography had overturned the judgement seat of art - a fact which the discourse of modernism found hard to repress.

Whilst the original is valuable in itself, copies add value. Labour leads to a greater consumption of art and design.

It is the material way of studying the developments of technology.

ettiene jules marey - Kineticism - the pre-cursor to cinematography.

with photography comes the dematerialisation of art and design. we dont have to deal with an object.

Richard Hamilton - photographs, reproductions, duplications. massively exploiting technology to create image.

our images and objects become coded ordered and styled. the beginnings of art and design merging together.

Karl Marx and Technology:

- associated with the term 'technological determinism'. How technology determines economical production factors and affects social conditions,.

- the relationship of technological enterprise to other aspects of human activity.

DIALECTICAL ISSUES SLIDE HERE.

and the next slide.