Aura 2.0: Art in the age of its digital reproducibility

The loss of the aura

In 1936, Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher and writer, wrote The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility. An essay in which he argues that the mechanical and massive reproducibility of works, made possible by new technologies, would lead to the loss of their uniqueness and of thatsacred halo, called aura, that surrounds them. After all, abuse annihilates images and risks bringing them to boredom. Today we are surrounded by art replicas : songs from Spotify, TV series on platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime, video clips and photographs invading Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok feeds. Benjamin could not have imagined how and how much the future digital dimension would change the reproduction and perception of content. Today, everything can be produced and re-produced with disarming ease.

Accessibility

If in the analogue world there was still a subservient relationship between the original and its copies, in the digital dimension this no longer exists. Digital contents are in fact by their very nature replicable in identical forms: we all know what the original of Klimt’s The Kiss is, whereas asking what the original is in an MP3 no longer makes sense. Uniqueness and authenticity are replaced by exponentiality and accessibility, the strengths of all global digital services.

Fragmentation

Not only reproducibility. Content circulating online is fragmented into packages. This fragmentation has determined the dominant mode of use and distribution on the web: the flow. A concept that we are familiar with thanks to social media, where so many little pieces are activated when we slide our finger across the screen in an infinite mode. But what does this mean for the way we enjoy works of art today, and for the work of art itself?

Artists = users

With digitisation, artists have become users, and their works are the tiles we scroll our finger over on social message boards. On Instagram, my photos taken with my smartphone at sunset can appear next to Steve McCurry’s photos: all the content appears one after the other without any precise criteria. There are algorithms and likes that affect visibility, but in the end the artist has to compete in an arena where everyone is everyone’s competitor.

The myth of art

Today, people go to the Louvre to see the original Mona Lisa, known until then only through reproductions on posters, pictures in books, photos on the web, mugs or bookmarks. Many take selfies as if they have just seen a VIP. The fascination of the work of art no longer lies in the merits of the painting, but in being in front of the original of something known through copies, or through the influencer on duty. While it is true that seeing paintings reproduced everywhere has made them lose some of that aura described by Benjamin, it is equally true that it has created the myth of art.

A new aura

Technological directives are undoubtedly directing and changing artistic production, but after all, this has always been the case. What is truly revolutionary compared to previous historical eras is the significantly greater freedom of choice and interaction. The aura of works of art has not disappeared. It is readjusting itself to the current conditions of space and time: we can call it ‘aura 2.0’. “One thing is certain: thanks to technology, images are no longer things one admires, but more often things one uses” R. Falcinelli, Figure