The excerpt discusses the implications of technology as a tool in producing (or, reproducing) art, and explores how this may alter, even damage the aura and authenticity of art arguing how advancements in technology (namely film) lead to a decay in artistic value.
Interestingly, aura is described very similarly to the living language: it can be communicated, it is dependant on culture, context; it is changeable. Does this not mean that technology can become part of the scope of aura, as it evolves over time? Perhaps what worries Benjamin, is not only the influx of machines and technology, but that society is not mature enough to make technology its organ (Benjamin, Jennings, Doherty, Levin, & Jephcott, 2008). This may ring true in 1935, but maybe what truly underlies this statement, and still seems true today, is that societies are never mature enough for innovation- for the act of change itself is what initiates evolution.
— Chung, Wing Sze Cecilia (3035742487)
The society’s relationship to technology as Benjamin questioned in 1935 might still ring true to date. Benjamin’s essay revolves around the suspicion toward technology and modernisation. Benjamin begins with dialectic inquiry upon “the basic conditions of capitalist production” (p.19) and later on elaborates on how “the technological reproducibility of the artwork changes the relation of the masses to art” (p.36). It is useful to read and question back: what about technology is so worrisome to Benjamin? What might it invoke, in his view?