The Internet As A Non-Auratic Work Of Art

Sally Bishai

Introduction

Where Benjamin’s aura—as defined in his landmark essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”—carries with it authority, authenticity, remnants of ritual, uniqueness in time and space, and the shimmering psychic lingerings of the artist’s work, the internet is wholly composed of untraceable traces, mere simulations of the physical world it represents. It is real life, digitized. We communicate through it, engage with it, but the only aura that emanates from it is the blue-green glow of the computer screen.

Together with the computer and the telephone before it, the internet—a product of these two inventions—is arguably one of the most far-reaching and useful inventions to emerge these past few centuries. One can use this linked network of HTML and phone lines to do research, meet new people, stay in touch, or exchange opinions with any number of friends or strangers. Some may lament that the rise of the internet—and, indeed, the age of wireless and digital things—has made the metaphysical nearly obsolete, that it resulted in a loss of the authentic; but just as the “death of God” allowed for a recreation of humankind, so, too, did the birth of the internet recreate the ways we work, communicate, live.

But is it art? When Benjamin wrote his Artwork essay—arguably the “single most often cited text by Benjamin or any other German writer on film”—film had taken up where photography left off, the Dadaists had already made their mark, and the notion of art involving paint was being challenged (Hansen 1987). People living in those days likely felt nostalgia for paintings—their familiarity, certainly, but perhaps also their singularity, stillness and “aura,” their largely unedited connection between subject and object (relative to film), and their place in tradition—even as they marveled at the technology that brought them moving pictures.

Despite the potential for a “fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment,” (Benjamin 234) there are those who found film distracting, such as Georges Duhamel, whom Benjamin cites as being unable to “think what I want to think,” since his “thoughts have been replaced by moving images” (238).

Today, people may look at dynamic works, like Wafaa Bilal’s projects Domestic Tension and Virtual Jihadi, or three-dimensional pieces, like Serrano’s Piss Christ—each of which invite the viewer to feel, draw conclusions or act—and know a similar nostalgia for simple film or photography, which have both, admittedly, remained popular despite the internet, or perhaps because of it.

As the definition of “art” expands to accommodate the ever-increasing forms of expression and the inventions of the age, it becomes apparent that the internet is not only a useful tool but an artwork; and while there is only one internet—complete with numerous access points, multiple authorship but devoid of aura-withering reproduction—the internet, worked on and through by tens of millions of users, does not contain the aura that Benjamin wrote about.

Admittedly, some scholars have expressed concern over the “difficulty” of Benjamin’s essay, his inconsistency on whether the aura has or hasn’t been lost (A. Benjamin 30), the question of whether the loss is permanent and unsalvageable, and whether Benjamin’s reaction regarding the loss is negative or positive (Buck-Morss 160).

In this paper, I will make a case as to why the internet—which the Artwork essay almost seemed to predict—is a work of art that lacks in Benjaminian aura.

Aura Defined

The Artwork essay very clearly sets out Benjamin’s definition of what aura is, how and why it came about, and why “mechanical” reproduction—more accurately translated as “technical” reproduction—did away with it (Kaufman 46).

Aura involves a work’s “presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be,” together with any “changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years” (W. Benjamin 220). Aura also involves the “presence of the original,” which is the “prerequisite to the concept of authenticity” (220). He explains that the “uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition” (223) due to the ritualistic beginnings of what later became artworks.

As Benjamin then points out, art moved from the ritual and cult over to the political, liberating people from religious ties. Increasingly accurate, low-cost and widespread forms of reproduction allowed technology to thrive, even as the aura withered.

Today, “modernism” seems to leave ever-diminishing space and consideration for the metaphysical, from the existence of the soul to the possibility of a higher power to the notion of aura. Nonetheless, I believe that aura can still be easily found in works that are made by methods begun or perfected before the introduction of photography. It is true that a painter or sculptor may use  technology to obtain measurements or to perfect proportions, but there is still the effort and concentration on creating the artwork, and an invisible bond between the artwork and the artist whose hands physically brought it into being. It is also true that countless copies can be made of these auratic works, but at least there is an original, and aura to be found in it, although Benjamin warns that “the situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated” (221).

In regards to photography, film, and the computer-based arts—formats that require equipment (camera, video camera, computer, mouse, pen tablet) which keeps the hands of the artist at a distance from the actual media used (film stock, celluloid, pixels), that have no “original,” having been made for mass “reproduction” and distribution, and whose final “original” product exists, in some cases, in such a form as can never be touched—these cannot be said to have the Benjaminian aura, despite the sometimes high number of hours involved in their creation.

All in all, the decay of aura makes for a distancing of artist and work, despite the possibility of infinite copies depicting the work.

Art, Then and Now

In the Artwork essay, Benjamin writes about two specific matters of art: the effects of reproduction on art and the “art of the film” (220). He tells us that the “earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual—first the magical, then the religious kind,” (223) and that “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual” (224). Additionally, as previously mentioned, he tells of the liberation from ritual and religion, stating that art would instead be based upon politics (224).

He then raises an important question: “whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art” (227). I believe that, while it did not too much alter or obliterate the forms of art that were already popular, it made way for newer and more technologically-based art forms.

Benjamin goes on to make the following statement: “the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character” (232). While that statement originally referred to the written word, I feel that it also applies to art, since paints and cameras and musical instruments and other equipment are now available—widely and relatively cheaply—for the use of anyone who can make it to the store (or go shopping online) and pay for these things.

This brings up the question of whether paintings (whether Mona Lisa or Warhol’s Marilyn) could have gotten so well-known or valuable if art supplies and lessons were widely available centuries ago (if paintings were more commonly painted), or if photography had always existed. Today the point is moot, since we can’t go back in time. It is interesting to note, however, that photo printing services like Photofiddle provide online software to their customers, blurring the line between artist and public, allowing them to turn a snapshot into a Warhol-esque work of art in just a few minutes. It is, of course, important to remember that art created digitally or online is not the same as “traditional” art that has been shared or viewed or made popular by its posting online.

Another question that springs to mind is this: If authenticity no longer matters since aura has decayed and we are free from ritual function, then is anything potentially art, whether buildings or fountains or gardens or clothing or furniture? I say that it can, that anything designed or created could be considered art by virtue of the fact that it was designed or created.

The Internet

The internet has been instrumental in the exponential growth and popularity of both film and photography amongst amateurs or the untrained, likely because the ever-dropping costs and rising user-friendliness of equipment and online distribution services have made sharing visual memories or art so much simpler. This again calls to mind Benjamin’s point about “the distinction between author and public” (232) in the face of technology that had suddenly created the opportunity for a reader “to turn into a writer” (232).

This grows more true every day, as the internet daily gains thousands more citizen journalists, video bloggers, amateur film-makers, and contributors to personal photo sharing and stock photography sites, courtesy such services as Youtube, Google Video, Flickr, Photobucket and others. In addition, online resources abound for the budding photographer or video editor. And so, the internet has been useful in both providing assistance to the artist (whether by “how to” articles or online software that provides a service, like a .gif animator or banner generator) and allowing her or him to more easily reach a potentially wider audience than was previously possible. But facilitating art does not an artwork make; we must, for the sake of this argument, make the distinction between the facilitator and what it facilitates.

As previously mentioned, the internet is composed of digitized traces of the real world; we type out correspondence that can never be touched (unless printed), click on links that take us to and through sites that don’t physically exist anywhere or look anything like the programming languages that form them. One might say that this untouchability is the very nature of computers, though there is one glaring difference between work done on computers and work exchanged online—engagement with both other computers and other users.

When I type a report for my boss or use Photoshop to enhance or doctor a snapshot from my birthday dinner, I am using hardware and software to produce or edit something that may or may not ever be seen or touched by another human, and which may be transmitted as a file or as a printed copy of the work I am doing. If there are physical traces available for analysis, they would only apply to the copy in question. That is, a hundred people could print out my report or snapshot, each on a different printer, and laboratory analysis could only reveal information on the date and quality of printing, for example, and not the date the file was begun or every instance that the file was worked on. And so, work on a computer may be for an audience or not.

On the other hand, one goes online with the express purpose of engagement: checking email, playing an online game, blogging, checking headlines—every one of these activities, as well as the countless others available to internet users, is a form of engagement. Emails may come to us as personal notes from friends or automatically-generated newsletters from an organization, headlines may reflect news of a town or region or nation, blogs may reach one or a million readers, and online games often allow us to compare scores with others or do battle with them. Even doing research online counts as engagement, even if it is merely with a webpage that we ourselves have not written. So while the level of personal connection may vary between the teenager who plays online video games with friends and the professional who relies upon webpages or archived messageboards, the threshold of engagement is crossed in both cases.

And with respect to art, as the computer helps us to create it, the internet can assist in creation and distribution; it is both art and a platform for it. Benjamin offers the following to help us understand the bifurcation of metaphysical functions: “a man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of art the way legend tells of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art” (239). In a way, the internet combines both, perhaps not always simultaneously; we are absorbed by things we read and watch and do online, and yet we can absorb these things as yet another uneventful or unimportant headline or photo or blog posting. We go online to do things which require concentration, but also to be distracted from our lives.

Benjamin Predicts Internet

With the recent surges in technology, it is easy to forget that the notions of interconnectivity were present in Benjamin’s time. In fact, the Artwork essay has several passages that both call for and predict something not unlike the internet. To begin with, he states that “just as lithography virtually implied the illustrated newspaper, so did photography foreshadow the sound film” (219). This is a very powerful statement which suggests that it was the invention that came before the plan to produce the eventual product it allowed. The statement could be revamped to reflect the way that phone lines and computers so naturally combined to imply and then create the internet.

He goes on to quote Valery, whose words seem to have inspired the Artwork essay, as having forecasted that “just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign” (219).  This statement—the end of which perfectly describes the action involved in using a mouse, though he could not have known it at the time—seems to connect beautifully with Benjamin’s later comment on “the desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly,” which is what the internet has done in restructuring the world so that it’s possible to, with a minimum of effort, both talk to someone at the other end of the planet, as well as order groceries that arrive the next morning (234). The internet, as film, also lets us leave our “prison-world,” as he calls “taverns and…metropolitan streets…offices and furnished rooms…railroad stations and…factories,” allowing us to “calmly and adventurously go traveling” (236).

Another point of Benjamin’s that seems to fit perfectly with the internet is the obliteration of the line separating artist and average citizen; he writes that the “newsreel offers everyone the opportunity to rise from the passer-by to movie extra” and that “any man today can lay claim to being filmed” (231). He then brings writing into it, claiming that “at any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer... the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character…the reader gains access to authorship” (232). This is very much like the opportunity that the internet has given anyone and everyone to be or become a journalist, filmmaker, writer, or pundit; the cult of the movie star has become the cult of the internet star, only movie stars actually did something that was widely seen and recognized as an act of talent, whereas people these days can become “stars” on video blogs, Myspace or personal websites (231).

The final point that seems to forecast the internet shows itself in the following passage, which provides a clear link between art and the newest technology:

One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form. (237)

The Internet As Art

The internet, today, is a tapestry—cobbled and stitched and serged together from tiny, “visually impoverished” home pages and million-hit-a-minute corporate sites; it brings together pagans and Muslims, liberals and conservatives of every imaginable orientation, all of whom interact via webcameras, microphones, keyboards of a thousand alphabets, pen tablets, podcasters, and the three-button scroll-wheeled mouse. The entries themselves differ as well; some post reprints of major articles or their own advice about any number of topics, others prefer to share journal entries, bad poetry, fansites for themselves or their favorite celebrities, podcasts, requests for donations, black and white photography of themselves (Photoshopped to the extreme), snapshots of their holiday in Aruba, or their own attempt at a cookbook and resource page for crock pots.

What makes this artwork fascinating isn’t the stunning diversity of entries, users and usage style, however. It’s not even the way these unplanned and (for the most part) unpoliced multiplicities have become part of one planned and programmed network. Rather, it’s the very fact that, for all the different locations the internet allows one to explore, and for all of the different locations its users live in, the internet itself neither exists, physically, nor resides in one area.

But Does It Have Aura?

As we’ve discovered, the requirements for art and those for aura differ a great deal. The description of what art is changed with the removal of its role within ritual, while aura has never faltered from Benjamin’s definition of originality, authenticity, authorship, historicity, uniqueness. As I’ve already explicated why I feel the internet is a work of art, I will now explain why I feel it lacks aura.

First and foremost, the internet does belong in the domain of ritual. It’s not a magical or religious ritual, but a modern one. It’s not standardized by time spent online or by a prescribed order of visiting websites, but users (in rich countries, anyway) often have a certain time set aside to “go online.” They email and perhaps check the latest news via internet. Many feel that their online activities are just as important as eating and breathing, and report to feeling bereft or unbalanced if they go too long without checking their mail or chatting online with their friends or family. It’s not clear whether the addiction is to the human connection or to the possibility of going anywhere in the “world” (or worldwide web). While belonging to ritual should logically mean that the internet is auratic, it should be noted that, unlike magic and religion, there are no rules to this modern ritual. There are no icons (except, perhaps “Microsoft” or “Macintosh”) or instruments (possibly a mouse or keyboard) or incantations (“Where do you want to go today?”) or, as previously mentioned, standards governing usage. So while our treatment of the internet could be called a ritual, it is a ritual that lacks in metaphysics.

Next, we have no access to the original network which has undoubtedly grown in sheer size and number of users, as well as matured and evolved, with respect to services offered, site suffixes available, or types of work posted, for example. This does not mean that the network we connect to every day is a fake internet, only that it has greatly changed since its inception, and thus misses out on Benjamin’s requirement of originality. Furthermore, not only is the current version not the first to appear, but it carries with it no documentable historicity, as we don’t have a “track changes” function on the network, so we can’t see what the previous version looked like and learn what has changed. That is, the “changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years” (220) are lost to us. Additionally, the previous version—and, as the internet is a continuous and continuously-changing stream of information, there isn’t actually a discrete measurement or place of demarcation that could differentiate versions 1.0 from 2.0 or any “versions” in between—may have had a different background color, different layout, different content altogether, or merely a misspelled name that nobody may take notice of. We are also deprived of the physical changes in the network, but would not be able to see them in any case, as the network does not exist physically; most importantly, the internet does not reside in one place (on one server), despite the fact that we call it by a singular name.

 The last reason why the internet has no Benjaminian aura is the fact that the internet has many access points and, thus, as many authors as can be called users; this is because the network is somehow modified at every one of those access points. The internet itself is, as earlier mentioned, malleable and changes from one moment to the next. It is used differently by different users, changed in varying degrees; some users hardly change a single thing, choosing only to read headlines or emails, perhaps deleting SPAM (though even those who make no direct changes nonetheless alter the network by using up bandwidth), while others write page after page or upload dozens of photos. This makes a case for the internet as a work of art with many artists, as previously discussed, but also negates the possibility of an auratic internet, since the network’s plethora of modifying-users does away with the notion of single authorship, as the internet then becomes a never-ending work in progress with millions of “authors.”

All in all, the internet is many things to many people. It is useful, addicting, informative, social, varied, beautiful and vital, but contains no aura, at least not the type that Walter Benjamin wrote about.

This doesn’t, however, mean it’s impossible to feel something very special emanating from it, into us, and through the farthest reaches of cyberspace.

Works Cited

        Benjamin, Andrew. “The Decline of Art: Benjamin's Aura.” Oxford Art Journal 9.2 (1986): 30-35.

         Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations, Essays, Reflections. ed. H. Arendt.            trans.                          Harry           Zohn.     New York: Schocken Books, 1968. 217-243.

        Buck-Morss, Susan. The Origin of Negative Dialectics. New York: Free Press, 1979.

        Hansen, Miriam. “Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology.” New German Critique 40 (1987): 179-224.

        Kaufman, Robert. “Aura, Still.” October 99 (2002): 45-80.