can we overcome mechanical reproduction?
It might just be my interests leading me to creators, thinkers, and artists who read, analyze, and build upon Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” or maybe this essay is experiencing a renaissance thanks to generative AI becoming the next big advancement in mechanical reproduction. Either way, I had to read it after watching Final Girl Digital’s “The Supermodel Era is Gone Forever,” in which she uses Benjamin’s instruments to discern photography and film from painting and playacting to discuss the changes that the fashion and beauty industry have undergone since the ‘90s—from the traditional supermodel to the social media influencer and, eventually, the AI-generated model on magazine covers.
Walter Benjamin argues that an artwork’s “aura” and its ritual/exhibition value change when its uniqueness is endangered. “Aura” is the importance attached to an artwork that withers when its uniqueness does. A painting, given the effort required to make it and the fact that it cannot be mass-produced by hand by the same painter, has a higher aura than an analog photograph, which in turn has a higher aura than a photo snapped with a digicam or—worse—a phone camera. Because everyone has a phone and can snap pictures with it, the likelihood (in the Bayesian sense) of replicating photography this way is higher than with an analog camera, which requires special equipment and the skill to use it well. However, the final product (the photograph) can be copied many times, if not infinitely, which diminishes the photograph’s uniqueness regardless of the tool used to create it. This is much harder to do with paintings.
According to Benjamin, art is inherently rooted in ritual before it becomes an object for exhibition, with some works of art having more ritual than exhibition value. Ritual value lies in appreciating the process, with the end product being an afterthought, relatively speaking. On the other end of the spectrum, there is art made with an audience in mind, where this motive guides the creative process at every step and which have a higher exhibition value. Works of art that tend to have more exhibition than ritual value are an arena of mass politics. Because aura withers when uniqueness does and mechanical reproduction has steadily intensified in recent history, works of art that were low-aura, high-exhibition value four decades ago would climb up both scales to have a higher aura and ritual value today, relatively speaking. However, Final Girl Digital’s graphic has a caveat: in some rare cases, works of art can display both high exhibition and ritual value, something that the video essayist’s system of coordinates does not account for (which she is aware of).
What I took away from this essay is that cult value precedes exhibition value because art has meaning by virtue of its creation and existence before the final product is admired for its characteristics by others. Once the person in the depiction loses their metaphysical importance, the work of art becomes less spiritual and more exhibitive, meaning the art’s value lies in its cult first and the subject’s adoration second. Moreover, instead of the artist and the art being one on the stage, the detachment of artist and audience is supplemented by a personality cult outside the studio. Furthermore, the possibility of retakes and montage changes acting’s authenticity and makes it malleable to the director’s will, disempowering the actor in their expression. This means that anything can change contexts fluidly without the actor or the viewer knowing or noticing. This is where the aforementioned politics come to the fore and means that those who give out funds for producing film can also decide what ideas to promote through their funding choices, which, thanks to mechanical reproduction, carry much more weight than funding a painter or a group of painters for their projects. Thus, the difference lies in the scale.
Fast-forward to today, and we can see the discussion of art’s value and meaning unfold in the context of generative AI. Instead of handcrafting propaganda or even doing so digitally, a huge number of tailored clips and images, specific to the viewer, can bombard timelines with misinformation of all kinds—automated and responding to new events in almost real time. This new era of mechanical reproduction makes the once-frowned-upon image reproduction through the photograph of Walter Benjamin’s time seem desirable and even enviable. It becomes apparent that the scale that appeared unimaginably powerful in Benjamin’s time is manageable in today’s age, which leads me to believe that we will figure out a way to live with AI-generated slop flooding our everyday communication avenues. It might take a while and seem futile at first, but it is likely not impossible.