Study Task 2 - Triangulation Start

2. Read them
3. Makes notes
4. Identify common themes
5. Summarise
6. Context
What are they saying about the overarching theme?
7. Link to this title

• Analogue is coming back into fashion
• Analogue has certain qualities that can’t be got elsewhere
• The past is starting to repeat itself
• People have seen them as radically different
• Machine and handmade are radically different
• This is much more complex than the title suggest
• Analogue is the soul

Walter Benjamin research

https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/walter-benjamin- art-aura- authenticity/

Marxist fashion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin

5 July 1892 – 26 September 1940

Combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction

• Written at a time when Adolf Hitler was already Chancellor of Germany, it was produced, Benjamin wrote, in the effort to describe a theory of art that would be useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art.
• He argued that, in the absence of any traditional, ritualistic value, art in the age of mechanical reproduction would inherently be based on the practice of politics
• One of a key group of European intellectuals of the time
• He looks at the changes in societies values over time, the manner in which human sense perception is organised, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well

• Benjamin’s main points were that art had a uniqueness, an aura that can never be reproduced.
• He believed there were some advantages to reproduction but mainly that the original was the key, the source, the most important thing. So digital would have been awful for him!
• John Berger drew on ideas from the essay for Ways of Seeing. Bergers point, which he made far more explicitly than did Benjamin, was that the modern means of production have destroyed the authority of art: For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free.
• Benjamin was concerned by the mechanisation of art but Berger went one step further and said that photography changed the nature of art altogether. It’s to do with time manner and place. You don’t need to go to see art. Art is everywhere. And it is uncontrolled, varied. If it comes through certain media like TV or film then the addition of sound can also manipulate how you feel about things.
• Ironically we are suing reproductions- photos- 0f the original to try to get people to come and see the originals.

John Berger research

Ways of seeing 1972

https://demeliou.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/a-quick- analysis-of- john-bergers- ways-

of-seeing/

• Between 1500-1900 the oil painting was main medium of visual art, from 1900 onwards the photograph became the main medium of visual art.
• In parts of the book Berger addresses the way the portrayal of a women’s body in art (painting and photographs) has changed over time from the Renaissance onwards.
•  Men look at women, while women watch themselves being looked at.
• Pretty much what Berger is getting at is the historical objectification of women by men.

http://culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/john-berger- ways-of- seeing-summary- 3.html

• Analyses the manner in which men and women are culturally represented, and the subsequent results these representations have on their conduct and self as well and mutual perception.

1. Historical representation of women by men allows for the objectification of women.
Men make images of women. Women are to be looked at.

2. Also Berger was really interested in how photography changed the meaning of
art…..(this is important for you cos it links into the analogue, digital argument)



David Douglas

• He says analogue has become very versatile due to digital. Replicas are very clever and there are so many ways of editing things. It’s difficult to make a distinction now as to whether something is analogue or not analogue. He goes on to say that if something is repeated it’s repeated but he compares this to a wave so even if waves are breaking they break slightly differently each time. Douglas questions Benjamin’s whole idea of aura. 
• He asks the question is aura only attained in the original or do we feel it each time we personally see something new ‘here is where the aura resides not in the things itself….revise’
• Referring to digital he talks about quality. You can make as many different versions as you want but you don’t lose quality. Douglas payed on Benjamin’s title- he clearly wanted to converse with Benjamin. He was triangulating himself…he was questioning himself through Benjamin

Phil Taylor

• Believes everyone can be an artist. Nowadays you can create good quality things at home. We are all impatient and digital is fast so that’s why people like it
• arts really easy to access, to find cos of technology and doesn’t need to be an event, a visit anymore. This links closely to Berger’s view .For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free

Common themes from all 4

Authenticity and aura All 4 concerned with this in their different ways
and are all concerned about the easiness of mechanization and digital- they seem to appreciate this less than the qualities of the original- whatever the original is. They don’t all agree on the meaning of original. E.g. Douglas says original is the first time you come across something. So for Douglas the first time you see something might be a time when you see its aura. The aura is present because it’s your first time. He argues against Benjamin and says ‘what begins to emerge in the 1st digital decade is a fine grained sensitivity to the unique qualities of every copy’. This is directly in opposition to Benjamin. 
Benjamin believes the location of a piece of arts original use value makes it authentic and
when it’s separated it has a different function. Berger says that digital can distort the
original. It can have had so much done to it that it changes the way you think about it. It is
different to when you see its analogue in its original ‘home’. Taylor says that digital is fast
and that it is easier to find art digitally and that this might discourage us from seeing the
originals in ‘their home’, or as Berger might call it their location. Berger believes ‘the days of
pilgrimage’ to art venues are over. Taylor is arguing however that it’s a good thing that art
is everywhere and can be seen and accessed by everyone whereas Berger argues this has
changed the way we see art and that somehow we have lost something.



Analogue has become popular again because of vintage authentic desire, especially with

young people,

‘there is undoubtedly a draw toward the more intimate and perhaps authentic relationship

an artist can have with….

The alchemy of analogue is more unpredictable and therefore more

alluring

context date, time of writing, summary of text

x 4

then a paragraph that summarises main points and refers one of these people to another

x4

then another joining section where they are all talking to each other

then link to title