Week 2

As someone who frequently uses Twitter as a method of disseminating information, it was intriguing to read Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on the reproducibility of the work of art. I should begin by saying I have virtually no background in traditional art (whether it’s creating it or studying it). So, despite strong suspicions that directly comparing tweets to art in an attempt to understand the concept is likely going to be problematic for some people, I’m going to do it anyway.

Benjamin in his second section mentions how the authenticity of a single original work is compromised by technological reproduction — in fact, the underlying authenticity is the single foil of complete reproducibility. This “here and now” of art, as he calls it, refers to the unique history that the original physical piece of art has singly endured. While the concept of the “here and now” of the work of art is not necessarily new, it’s also not something I’ve really considered before in the context of technological reproduction.

As I understand it, a retweet on Twitter is a form of technological reproduction of the original work of art. When someone tweets something — be it a statement, question, picture, or anything else — they’re creating a product inspired by its own unique historical context to be displayed on their Twitter profile, their own collection of tweets. When someone retweets that tweet, its content is reproduced and relocated to the that new person’s personal digital curation of tweets. Yet, that reproduced content is not a copy; rather, the action of retweeting was just another experience added to the history of the original content. In this case, the reproduction of that “work of art” is embedded in the original piece’s unique history, one now accessible from two locations rather than one.

This proposes two possible difficulties with Benjamin’s critique of digital production: 1) that because the “here and now” of the tweet is in this case preserved, it hasn’t actually been “reproduced” per that definition, or 2) that the incompatibility of authenticity and reproduction doesn’t apply in the digital era.

Of course the latter isn’t necessarily to say that Benjamin’s commentary is irrelevant in our digital era. While we now have the technology to make reproduction including authenticity possible, it’s certainly not the case for all forms of art that are disseminated digitally. I look forward to exploring further the drawbacks of reproduction and whether or not our technology is actually (efficiently) solving these issues. (Are they even “issues” to be “solved” at all?)