{"id":119,"date":"2014-04-17T20:24:44","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T20:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/?page_id=119"},"modified":"2015-03-05T16:59:58","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T16:59:58","slug":"musics-reproducibility-and-our-reflected-reality","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/scott\/musics-reproducibility-and-our-reflected-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Music’s Reproducibility and Our Reflected Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most important through Benjamin\u2019s detailed theses on the \u201cWork of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility\u201d is his consideration of the unique temporal and contextual position of art, as every reproduction is lacking in \u201cthe here and now of the work of art-its unique existence in a particular place.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0Benjamin pinpoints the value of art in its authenticity- as it underlined its contextual place both \u2018here and now\u2019 at the time of its creation. Today recorded music is devoid of its mystical fundamental aura, as is all highly reproducible art; the instantaneous availability of modern recordings alienates the listener from the music as a physical production, created by humans to effectively showcase their manipulation and direction over variable tempos and time. Instead of retaining the original ambience and performance value of analog sound, records and digital sound files and other acousmatic sounds, (those without a defined sound source) are briskly erasing all remaining foundations of a use-value of music, performance and in our arts in general.<\/p>\n

Benjamin indicates in his essay, that \u201ctechnological reproductions is more independent of the original than is manual reproduction\u201d and \u201ctechnological reproduction can place the copy of the original in situations which the original itself cannot attain\u2026the cathedral leaves its site to be received in the studio of an art lover; the choral work performed in an auditorium or in the open air is enjoyed in a private room.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0As art is removed from its historic and cultural context, through technological reproduction, it loses its authentic value and is detached from its own sphere of tradition, where original motivation and content provided art viewers a sense of understanding and grounds to derive use-value. Technological reproduction erodes a work\u2019s unique place in time as it \u201csubstitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

When a work is copied, it\u2019s immediately devoid of all originality and its natural aura, but by the same token it becomes colossally more accessible to the masses, as individuals are able to acquire and display art in their own private dwellings. This has a twofold consequential effect; generally speaking, more people are granted access to the mystifying and awe-inspiring characteristics of art, however they are simultaneously both illumed by the work\u2019s stimulation of their senses, while having no means of properly and cogently comprehending the material. To the masses, proprietorship over high art gave individuals a new means of expressing their own tastes and venerations, but this soon blossomed into a ripened consumerist culture possessed by hoarding art purely for display purposes and accumulation. \u00a0Reproductions allow the viewer a chance to grow closer and more intimate with a work of art, thus enhancing their own experience with the piece. Benjamin mentions that as a result of the alienation of art and its aura, and imminent due to the way mass reproducibility erases individuality amongst art, \u201cthese two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past- a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0Examining historical proceedings with a Marxist lens, Benjamin links the developing reproducibility of art, with the history of human collectives and our ever-changing mode of perception.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way in which human perception is organized- the medium in which it occurs- is conditioned not only by nature but by history.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0As art became more easily reproducible, (achieving a greater sort of mass existence) human collectives coincidentally were evolving to better accommodate their numbers. Upon the further broadening of enlightenment throughout the world, in the course of the past four or five centuries, Aristocracies and the bourgeoisie were upset by mass upheavals and democratic revolutions, attempting to install more egalitarian systems in place of their authoritative regimes. As art substituted a unique existence for a mass one, human societies were essentially trying to achieve the same sort liberation and universal consistency. The increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life evolved alongside the desecration of the aura, as the \u201cstripping of the veil from the object, the destruction of the aura, is the signature of a perception whose \u201csense for sameness in the world\u201d has so increased that, by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0Similarly to our devaluation of the aura, our historically affected mode of perception is attempting to extract that same resemblance from amongst individuals in our own society. However, instead of stripping the uniqueness of individuals to generate mobilized masses driven towards a common good for their community, there is a necessity for humanity to recognize its own deterministic mode of perception in relation to its contemporary reality. A mentality that simultaneously recognizes the likeness of all human bodies, between one individual and another, while maintaining the notion that all people are individuals and the chief directorates of their own lives and modes of thinking. \u201cThe alignment of reality with the masses and of the masses with reality is a process of immeasurable importance for both thinking and perception.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0It is interesting to consider McLuhan\u2019s own essay \u201cThe Medium is the Message\u201d in relation to our evolving consciousness\u2019s as deterministic results of historical proceedings, and how integral our conditioning is to our modes of perception, as the facilities with which we have been taught to think both free and limit us in our capacity to understand life and the interconnectedness of universal forces. Our world is on the brink of an evolutionary transformation in human consciousness and organization; now, it is only a matter of relaying information through our globally connected consciousness, utilizing art and other aesthetic achievements of mankind to instruct and educate ourselves, in correlation with our historically (not naturally) produced modes of perception. Reality is what we make it to be, and if we collectively recognize the quandary of our own existence, a theme that almost all forms of art deal with in one way or another, we can reattribute the aura to its proper position as a legitimatizing force within our massively reproducible artistic sphere, and reconnect the lost link between art and it\u2019s inherent use-value.<\/p>\n

Benjamin ascribes that formerly \u201cthe uniqueness of art is identical to its embeddedness in the context of tradition. Of course, this tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0Cultures and social systems incessantly fluctuate, as is natural to human institutions, but that doesn\u2019t mean that art must be displaced and decontextualized every time society develops in a divergent manner. Art, especially music, embodies the ephemeral qualities of human life, and thus serves as an effective tool for artists and their audiences to augment their self-conscious reflection and recontextualize their own placement in the grand scheme of the Cosmos. \u00a0\u201cThe unique value of the \u201cauthentic\u201d work of art has its basis in ritual, the source of its original use-value.\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0It is through these social and sacred proceedings that art emerges with actual use-value, through ritualistic devotion or contempt as traditionally practiced. \u201cTechnological reproducibility emancipates the work of art from its parasitic subservience to ritual\u2026but as soon as the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production, the whole social function of art is revolutionized. Instead of being founded on ritual, it is based on a different practice: politics.\u201d[10]<\/a>\u00a0Our present conditions show that art, especially the mass use to which music is implemented in society, has removed the auratic presence of art and created the theology of\u00a0l\u2019art pour l\u2019art<\/i>, which subsequently spawned the idea that there is such a thing of \u201cpure\u201d art, \u201cwhich rejects not only any social function but any definition in terms of a representational content.\u201d[11]<\/a>\u00a0Music is exhibiting itself as a more and more abstract form of art, yet it is still a direct product of the human mind in response to mankind\u2019s environment and surroundings. With proper guidance, a revitalization of the aura is possible, if we recognize the transient characteristics of both our traditions and our lives. Music is proving to be an exemplary force to challenge the idea of\u00a0l\u2019art pour l\u2019art<\/i>; although technological reproducibility has been a liberating respite for freeing art from its \u2018parasitic subservience to ritual\u2019 it has instantaneously revolutionized our conceptions of authenticity, and has placed us in a situation in which we must reconsider our notions of use-value. Perhaps music will be the formal key to regenerating a newly enlightened and instructive discourse on how to understand art contextually, and reinvigorate an illumed artistic body to be the forerunners of new modes of human perception, and instruments of the implementation of a new human reality.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a>\u00a0Benjamin, Walter. “Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility”p. 253<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]<\/a>\u00a0254<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]<\/a>\u00a0254<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4]<\/a>\u00a0254<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5]<\/a>\u00a0255<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[6]<\/a>\u00a0256<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[7]<\/a>\u00a0256<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[8]<\/a>\u00a0256<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[9]<\/a>\u00a0256<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[10]<\/a>\u00a0256-7<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[11]<\/a>\u00a0256<\/p>\n

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Most important through Benjamin\u2019s detailed theses on the \u201cWork of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility\u201d is his consideration of the unique temporal and contextual position of art, as every reproduction is lacking in \u201cthe here and now of the work of art-its unique existence in a particular \u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":397,"featured_media":0,"parent":34,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-119","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/119\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/musicresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}