Blog Assignment 6: Modern Vision

Authentic works of art these days are not seen in the manufactured world. People do not create an item once for one person as this is more effort for less profit which is what more artisans are focussing on now. Their is more of a sense of once you get an item that is mass produced, one must place their own authenticity on it by way of customising it. Their may well be a million sets of headphones like mine but if I paint my own design on them then their are none that look exactly like mine and I have now placed my own authenticity on that item. So where Walter Benjamin says “To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense.”* and "In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artefacts could always be imitated by man."* The key word here being imitated and not identical copies as we see today. While I agree that the authentic has changed and disappeared from the manufacturers hand I believe that we are entering an age where we become our own artisans for authenticity. That we take what has been mass produced and bought by millions and we make it our own and therefore make it authentic. So really I do believe that there is a role for the ‘authentic’ in an age of digital design and manufacture but it comes after this stage.