Returning to Benjamin: art in the age of AI

Abstract

"Walter Benjamin's essay of cultural criticism 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' has become a 'classic' text, one which resonated through the twentieth century and beyond. In it, Benjamin suggested the mediums of photography and film had dissolved the auratic quality of art. Today, digital technology has dissolved the very category of 'medium' itself. In this pair of succinct and pointed essays, the artist and writer Victor Burgin rereads Benjamin's 1935 twice: first to consider the relation of art to digital reproduction, and second to reflect on the further implications of artificial intelligence. Completed by a conversation with media theorist Katrina Sluis, these texts offer a compelling engagement with the image today, arguing that the camera is now profoundly imbricated in that which is not visible." -- Back cover.

Contents

Returning to Benjamin -- Returning to Benjamin II : art in the age of AI -- Rethinking photography : an email exchange between Katrina Sluis and Victor Burgin.