Blog 9

The article “Why the Digital Computer is Dead” examined the bare elements of the computer. The process of how a computer works and the difference between analogue and digital were dissected and examples were applied to illustrate future transcendence and use. “When people look at supposedly 'digital' images they can't easily distinguish them from other images. These images are different because they have been invoked from memory to a screen, and not layered onto a surface like paint, projected through celluloid, or played back from videotape. The difference does not mean they are 'digital' in the philosophical sense. This mistake leaves many people confused about the wider distinction between 'digital' and 'analogue',” (Chester, 2002). The philosophy digital and anologue use shows that one is not necessarily better than another, but they depend on each other to evolve. The way that we use the computer to project an image or find the information we are looking for, combines both digital codes and anologue substrates. Through this partnership between analogue and digital the way we get information from a computer has changed without most people even being conscious of the shift in accessibility. This process gowns even further as digital transcends to invocational media. “Invocational media, by contrast with reductive rationalist digital computers, have pragmatic and material histories drawing together technology, language and magic. But computers were always invocational, and invocation to artefacts long predates computers. Invocational media can be situated in a tradition of technologies that make the material world perform as language,” (Chester, 2002). Invocation media ceases to be about the actual medium, the computer, instead it is about the process of asking for content or memory from medium. This is assuming that the groundwork and structure has been established to be able to invoke this content from an accessible platform.

I found this article a little hard to follow. I understood the exploration of different technologies and their applications and transcendence to the new philosophy of invocational media. However, I feel like I have missed some important nuances in how invocational media can be achieved and how one can use past examples to illustrate how invocational media has occurred already. I feel like after some debate and though exploring some examples, I might have a more grounded understanding of the article and concept.

Invocational media has implications for how people use and process media, which is what I am working on for my paper. The theory behind invocational media could provide some illustration about future direction and use of media in my paper.

Study questions:
Are there any invocational mediums that currently exist? If so talk what is an example of one?
What are future implications for use of transcending invocational technologies?
How has this transcendence already taken place using past examples of access and mediums?

The article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” looks at how the evolution of media itself influences the production of art over space and time and through different mediums. The ideas behind how “new art” is produced, such as film, and how this and “old art” such as sculpture, can be reproduced, has many consequences around authenticity. Reproduction has affects on the “aura” of a piece. “The conditions for an analogous insight are more favorable in the present. And if changes in the medium of contemporary perception can be comprehended as decay of the aura, it is possible to show its social causes,” (Benjamin, 1936). The reproduction of art has different implications for quality based on the medium and content. The way art is produced and consumed today in mediums like film does not require the consumer to think and process the art and its details because the images are already in the mind of the beholder based on the nature of the art and its consumption. “Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention” (Benjamin, 1936).

I found the ideas in the article very interesting, but I am not sure that I really understood or followed the entire debate of the writer’s argument. Is it really fair to say that people do not appreciate art anymore as they used to. Or that film has stolen some of the consumer’s exploration of art away because film overloads your mind with the entire picture not giving the consumer a chance to think about what they are seeing? If this is what the author is saying I will disagree. Having taken an entire semester examining a single director and his movies, I can see that there is so much more to good film then first meets the eye or the brain. I think that education on how to break down these films and look for the genius – just as you would when examining a phenomenal painting, are the same. You just have to make the effort and have the will to do so. However, with so much content and debate in the article I am not sure that I am hearing the writer correctly.

This article related to my paper in terms of how people process and access art. The idea that access and reproduction affects how people comprehend art has implications as well. For example, if someone will never get to see a great work of art in person, but can access its image through the internet does that mean that the quality for that person will be diminished? Is it better to not see the work of art at all or to have some access to see it in some form? Yes, the quality might not be the same, but isn’t it better to be able to have some connection with the art then none at all? Does the way that people access this art over space and time have implications for how they process and search for things online?

Questions:
Does reproduction of art or availability of art online diminish its quality? Is there less of an impact?
Does the production of art through new technology take away from traditional art forms?