Elective Reflective Writing on Chapter 4: Reproduction and Visual Technologies

This is space to do an elective reflective writing on chapter 4. This is optional and can be a place to reiterate the ideas in the text or more about your thoughts and responses that progress from the text.

Chapter Four Thoughts:

I appreciated that this chapter got me thinking specifically about how technology has changed the meaning and value of the image. There seems to be a constant play between cultural significant of an image and history. For example how the authors brought up that new images being made to look old, to provoke a sense of classical “value” and “taste”, and in contrast to this, the Egyptians refusal to use perspective, though it was readily understood, because it held to direct cultural significance. Throughout history the use of images directly reflects cultural change and significance.

The image of Hitler reading: “ He swallows gold and spits out tin plate”, relates directly to popular culture being sensitive to messages of false power, and/or, the recognition of media as power. I consider the Marlboro man cowboy adds (as the authors noted), in juxtaposition to a man shown attempting to smoke a limp cigarette, suggesting something as: “medical studies suggest that smoking is a leading cause for male impotence…”

I liked the theory of phenomenology, which is the belief that all knowledge and truth derives from subjective human experience and not solely from things themselves. In this, perception, memory, and imagination are the key concerns of investigation when considering phenomenology. Husserl, a philosopher who’s ideas reflect this theory, rebelled against scientific inquiry, believing that experience cannot be an objective sense… these ideas made me think of the direct challenge that is posed between the mind and body dualism…(which was later expanded by Descartes).

The thoughts that were brought about by the discussion on political activism through ambiguous imagery or sayings, I thought proved productive, such as the aids “awareness” pink triangle that was tagged on big city side walks, reading: Silence=Death. The end of the chapter addressed direct ideas of multiplication as means.

here is one of my favorite quotes from this chapter...

“…Recognize and consider (your) passivity precisely because it is an omnipresent symbol.”

ashley lieber

Ok, this is what I thought about the chapter.

For one, I think it's great that art is becoming more and more accessible to "everyday" people who whouldn't normally have access to it, what with the advent of photography and, more recently, digital media. I've just come to the realization, about myself as an artist, that I really don't believe in keeping art in this little elitist, white-walled gallery type institution setting, and more and more artists nowadays are going against that whole deal. This is helped a LOT by the mass production of famous pieces of art, like The Scream and the Mona Lisa, the examples given by the text.

There is a good point, however, that because of all of this "newfangled" digital technology, famous works of art are losing a little of their mysterious value, and the images can so easily be taken out of context. But who's to say that the context we give these paintings and drawings and etc is the meaning the artist was actually trying to get across in the first place? It's an interesting argument. Maybe Munch WANTED his Scream painting totally mass produced to be more accessible to the peoples of the world. Who can tell?

Manda PeePee

This chapter brought up interesting issues about the uniqueness, reality and authenticity of a piece of art or image in regard to new technologies. According to Benjamon, a piece of art is unique because it has a "presence in time and space", it is a physical, material object which is ruled by the laws of mathematical space defined by Descartes. The example of the Mona Lisa or Scream touched upon this idea. Both of the pieces have been mass produced in different variations, but the physical painting exists in a museum. we can hypothetically touch it so it is the only one in existence, it is unique.
Especially when dealing with digital medium, this idea of a physical existence is not a quality which defines it as unique. Can a digital image be unique? The value then maybe comes from the fact that it can be mass produced and distributed. Mass produced, digital images on the web, then, seem to lose the sense of authorship and authenticity, they are up for grabs. or perhaps they gain value by printing up a set number and then destroying the file, making them maybe almost impossible to recreate.
Virtual space cannot be realized in the physical laws set up by descartes. on the other hand, new rapid prototyping machines are making these "spaces" become realized. the computer does calculate the object by cartesian rules, and then renders and object occordingly, sometimes even rendering object impossible to make in the physical space outside the computer. It seems that now there are complete dimensions of art that are opened up by these new technologies, just as they have throughout history.

jon chambers

so this seemed to me to be about the history of images and how through time this thier meaning has changed due to our preconcieved notions.
the acessibilty of images has changed.

i found it interesting to think about if the increased information we have avaliable to us has made us more or less free? (although the word free can mean many things)

i think both in many different ways.

also what effect does an increase in informatin have on us? (and how we always want to look even if we think its bad)

i was thinking about this after looking at photographs by (forgotton his name, will find it soon). the photos were for newspapers taken in south america i think (sorry bad details).
anyway they were increabily graphic and disturbing to look at. i wondered how much that must have changed him and thought about how images can haunt us for so long.
well.....that's just what i was thinking about.

amanda