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techniques" and has thus given a precise description of the television and video screen,
the principle of transmission, transfer and storage of technological images, the work of
art in the era of tele-presence:
Reproduction and communication of the works will undoubtedly be the first [...] to
be affected. [...] The works will achieve some kind of omnipresence. At our command,
they will obediently be present anytime, anywhere, or recreate themselves anew. No longer
will they simply exist in themselves - they will all be wherever there is an individual. 8
- "and the appropriate equipment", he adds. Contemporaneous with Benjamin, the
German Dadaists declared: "Art is dead / Long live the new machine art of TATLIN"; and
indeed, media art now is no more than art by the grace of technological grammar, in contrast
to the concept of an also literally autonomous art (that is, art that is not defined by
the dash).
Aura and Authenticity
The authorisation of the original is considered both the genitivus subjectivus and the genitivus
objectivus: It is the discourse that styles the object an original (since, viewed discretely,
every reproduction is a unique object). Underlying it is not a metaphysical aesthetics,
no pure love for the object, but a discourse on power: the will for a right, the
proof of a right, just as for a long time, archives were not built up primarily for historical
research (indeed, that would be a misuse of the archive), but to prove the legality of a
state's claims. In this sense, the term Urkunde (title deed) corresponds with that of the
archaeological original (and after all, the German "Urkunde" is pretty much a literal translation
of "archaeoilogy"). But it is not just in the sense of the discourse that the original
has a special quality: with technological media, the equipment helps define the original
if the term is understood as a piece of information. "The proliferation and prospects of
digital media have drawn our attention to the question of how the authority of informa-
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tion can and cannot be established in a new medium."
And thus it is no longer simply the physical reality that authenticates the representation,
where signs of age and disintegration induce historicity - analogous to the
changes in a work of art "that it has suffered over time in its physical structure". So, what
does authorise the original as opposed to the reproduction? According to Benjamin, it is
tradition and the notion of authenticity, physically endorsed in the form of a chemical patina
or - analogous - through the archival proof of provenance:
The authenticity of an object is the sum and substance of all that can be traced
back to its origin, from its material duration to its historical testimony. [...] and thus the
historical testimony of the object begins to falter [...] in the reproduction. [...] but it is the
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authority of the object, its traditional importance that is thus faltering.
Benjamin sees authenticity as a characteristic of the object, yet it is impossible to
"determine an essence of that which is authentic." Like Benjamin's concept of the aura,
the aesthetic category of authenticity is, in fact, oriented on both subjective experience
and the ontic nature of the (art) work. Let us shift the question from that of authenticity
to that of discourse strategies that define what is to be considered genuine. By analogy,
we can say:
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