{"id":73,"date":"2016-09-01T08:36:02","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T08:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ulm.taddug.com\/?p=73"},"modified":"2016-09-08T08:36:17","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T08:36:17","slug":"my-work-in-the-age-of-the-virtual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ulm.taddug.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/01\/my-work-in-the-age-of-the-virtual\/","title":{"rendered":"My Work in the Age of the Virtual"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his 1988 interview with La Sept, Jean Baudrillard discussed the state of affairs of art in the continuing \u00a0age of reproduction since Walter Benjamin\u2019s pivotal essay, \u201cThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.\u201d Baudrillard chronicled a world nearly a half century later filled with screens, obsessed with communicating, and driven by society\u2019s consumerist pursuits. He described a climate hostile to traditional art and uninhabitable for the aura; where communication is paramount, yet, the ability to actually convey a message is rendered impossible due to the nature of the \u2018screen\u2019 medium — a network of ever changing, ever supplanted images without rest or opportunity for contemplation (150). Thirty years later, in a world most recently enamored with mixed reality [MR], I address how I position my current work in Baudrillard\u2019s age of mass reproduction and its successor, the non-physical.<\/span><\/p>\n

My latest pieces are based on digital-only techniques, sources, and presentation formats, but the content itself is representational, in the form of traditional portraiture and human sculpture. My subjects are virtual avatars only, crafted in an entirely digital world, and glimpsed occasionally via \u2018photographs\u2019 taken of them in their virtual world, or in one attempt at least, through an interactive encounter solely offered in the digital realm. Dealing with traditional forms, but without any \u2018first\u2019 or \u2018original\u2019 piece, and yet completely consumed by the need for an aura to bridge my work with its viewers, I find Baudrillard\u2019s discussion revealing but incomplete.<\/span><\/p>\n

Benjamin was optimistic in his 1936 essay, excited by the death of the aura which freed art from ritual and offered the political as its new function. He was enthusiastic about the rise of a novel form of perception for the masses: they would absorb art through distraction and bombardment rather than traditional contemplation which instead, forced the absorption of the viewer (18). Still he acknowledged potential negative consequences, and it was these perils which Baudrillard depicted as triumphant. Throughout the discussion, he confirmed Benjamin\u2019s foreshadowing — art\u2019s incompatibility with the reproducible medium, the increasing inaccessibility of reality by the masses, and the implications of the continued destruction of the aura. But for Baudrillard, they indicated the spread of capitalism, the indoctrination of the masses, and the death of art itself — a system he advocated thwarting (149).<\/span><\/p>\n

Baudrillard proffered two approaches to subversion — one, the nostalgic, traditional art path, the other, something akin to Pop Art, creating work that challenges the boundaries of the media and prevailing system, embracing it and then driving it so far as to \u201cperhaps not disrupt it, yet make it reversible\u201d (150). \u00a0He felt the traditional was probably an anachronistic and perhaps futile approach, yet remained uncertain of the potential for, or exact means of, success for the latter (148). In contemporary times, we find Communist Party China with nearly as many Fortune 500 companies as the United States and huge populations in remote villages and impoverished megacities across the globe skipping over years of development time to instantly adopt the latest technology — capitalistic ideology and the digital medium are omnipresent (Fortune 500). So Baudrillard\u2019s testimony of the inhospitable milieu facing traditional art remains particularly relevant and resonates with me as an artist today.<\/span>
\n<\/span> Baudrillard worried that traditional art and artist would have an origin and a message yet be unable to retain those qualities for an audience in the digital network. This included even those viewing an original painting on a gallery wall because the people themselves had become screens, fully integrated into a society obsessed with consuming and communicating (147). This stands as a perfect foreshadowing of our current global spending trends and incessant reliance on and adherence to social media. However, his rationale hinges on the viewer\u2019s loss of the ability to concentrate on a work due to the format of the media. He witnessed viewers being bombarded with image after image on the screen, much like Benjamin described film, and being dominated by the need to witness ever more images as a societal prerogative of consumption of art as banal commodity (Baudrillard 148; Benjamin 10). Still, as both he and Benjamin noted, viewers\u2019 perception changed — \u201cit\u2019s somewhat of an integrated man-machine circuit. And at the present the difference between man and machine is very difficult to determine.\u201d (Baudrillard 146).<\/span><\/p>\n

I would suggest it has in fact evolved. We talk of children of the digital-age, able to not only subconsciously absorb an outpouring of media as Benjamin posits, but actually able to negotiate and process the network of communication in an effective manner (18). No longer do we look at film or digital images as a new medium, challenging to process. Current generations are well versed since childhood, and so once again, contemplation is possible. As our acceptance and familiarity grow with a system, our ability to leverage it for our messages and our capacity to decipher said messages also increases. Thus, in revisiting the style of traditional portraiture paintings and sculptures, I feel secure in demanding that my viewers contemplate the work, become absorbed by the work, be drawn in not by nostalgia but by message — because they are digitally literate.<\/span><\/p>\n

What of art as commodity? Well to this point, as Baudrillard suggested, and Benjamin channelling Marx, prophesied, I hope to embrace the system as one created by capitalism that might yet provide the only means to overcome itself. Though they were unsure how in the age of reproduction, society could continue to value the \u2018original,\u2019 the \u2018authentic,\u2019 and the \u2018unique,\u2019 \u00a0the answer lies in capitalism itself (Baudrillard 149; Benjamin 12). The scarcity principle guarantees that the market will find a way to posit value on any commodity, including reproducible art work. Onc may look to the digital-only distribution of games. We continue to develop the means to secure a sense of the authentic: piracy is punished and director\u2019s cuts are coveted. If there is no physical version to exploit, simply base uniqueness on the lifespan and propagation of the copy: subscription plans for access, built-in encryption after trial-periods, and limited edition downloadable content. Thus I embrace the purely digital, crafting my paintings and busts in bits and bytes while promising a rare glimpse, a personalized experience, a coveted commodity even if self-aggrandized as such, much like the contemporary myth surrounding diamonds.<\/span><\/p>\n

What of the death of the aura of which Baudrillard speaks? \u201c If there is an aesthetic pleasure or aesthetic relationship there it must arise from this species of sublime moment which is a moment of immobility, of contemplation . . . But then for the media none of this works\u201d (147). As we address questions of authenticity and scarcity\/rarity in the digital age, I propose that we may reintroduce the aura effectively. For me, the aura is what is termed immersion in this day and age: that sense of closeness; that possibility for the work to look back at us; that suggestion, rooted in its etymology, of it emitting breath — all definitions of immersion in games where we look to build atmosphere and bridge the uncanny valley (Yong). In my work, I look to reinforce the feeling of an intelligent creator to the viewer and elicit the sense of aura through interaction — what would you be interacting with if not another? The message though, can remain subtle, absorbed by the viewer as the experience of the work absorbs them simultaneously, the way Benjamin describes humans\u2019 interaction with architecture. (18) My latest collection thus embraces traditional content\u2019s requirement for contemplation, the cutting edge of new media forms, and the return of the aura; I believe the messages already exist in the viewer, my art attempts to elicit the ones I most want to access.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\f<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Reproduction.” Illuminations. New York: Schocken, 1986.<\/span><\/p>\n

benajamin_walter_WAAMR.pdf.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortune 500<\/span><\/i>. The Global Fortune 500, 2016, fortune.com\/global500. Accessed Aug.<\/span><\/p>\n

2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gane, Mike. <\/span>Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews<\/span><\/i>. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. monoskop.org\/images\/f\/f3\/Gane_Mike_Baudrillard_Live_Selected_Interviews_1993.pdf.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yong, Mike. \u201cAura.\u201d <\/span>The University of Chicago\u2019s Theories of Media Keyword Glossary<\/span><\/i>, Aug.<\/span><\/p>\n

2016, csmt.uchicago.edu\/glossary2004\/aura.htm.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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