The creation of art in a post-digital world

Flaxton, Terry

Abstract

Until now, appreciation of the nature of art has been derived from archaic and classical values. As far back as the introduction of the Greek myths – and specifically that of Echo and Narcissus, where Echo is Sound and Narcissus is image, the idea that the identity of the meaning of art is revealed through the act of interpretation. In his ‘Poetics’, Aristotle posited that diegesis is the reporting or narration of events, contrasted with mimesis which is the imitative representation of them: the distinction is often cast as that between ‘showing’ and ‘telling’. Together with discrimination and comprehension, both of these functions are part of the mechanism of interpretation. When Gutenburg created the printing press which enabled the beginnings of the mass production of text, the concept of reading and interpreting gained even greater historical purchase due to the encoding of meaning in actual objects: books. ‗Interpretation‘ was given even greater power within the rise of modernism with the intervention of the Frankfurt School, which fore-grounded the idea of the ‗interpretation‘ of art as meaningful and significant. Walter Benjamin reframed and reinterpreted the medieval belief of the power of the relic of the Saint in his famous question: Can the aura of the original be found within its replica? This question is even more pertinent now when art is created within the digital realm and must be reframed once again: Can the aura of the original exist at all, given there is no difference between the original and its copies? By examining new ideas of ‗entrainment‘, where immersivity, resonance, synchronicity and direct response become the factors that reveal the potency of art, I wish to re-examine how art or media events can function without dependence on the idea of interpretation.

Citation

Flaxton, T. (2011, May). The creation of art in a post-digital world. Paper presented at 8th Annual International Conference on Communication and Mass Media, Athens, Greece

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: 8th Annual International Conference on Communication and Mass Media
• Conference Location: Athens, Greece
• Start Date: May 16, 2011
• End Date: May 19, 2011
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: media
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/968206
• Publisher URL: http://www.atiner.gr/media.htm
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : 8th Annual International Conference on Communication and Mass Media