Reading Response

 

The article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” written in 1936, by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1942)  www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.html 

The YouTube video seen below is a discussion of the above-mentioned article by Dr. Ellie Anderson:

After reading an watching the video we can relate to his ideas (Walter Benjamin) regarding: What is art? and How art can influence in our state of being or our perception? It is by our understanding of how the development of technological devices and tools have influenced each generation throughout our human civilization’s history. It is by the adoption of these technologic devices as tools to create art that will enhance and help us in our human creativity.

Each human generation has been confronted with geopolitical, social, educational, health-related/spiritual and economic issues to solve that have influenced our creativity and the way art is expressed, conveyed, and distributed to the public. It is by our learning and understanding (through art history) of how past generations had solved problems/themes/topics/issues that were presented to them, historical solutions that we are somewhat continuously revising as a way to find, so call, “new solutions.”

Within our generation we have members of different generations, who are still alive, whose approaches to “new solutions” use digital technological devices and tools that are available. It has become the global conversation or communication, among different members of society, that today is possible by digital social media. Digital artists’ creativity and work is done using digital/electronic devices: computers, iPad, iPhone, digital cameras, etc. and software: Adobe (Photoshop, Photoshop sketch, Illustrator, Illustrator Draw, InDesign), Astropad Studio, Affinity designer, etc.

Charlene Lewis, https://artincontext.org/what-is-digital-art/ (Art in context), wrote an article which is titled “What is digital art? A look at the exciting Digital Art Movement,” where she not only explains its definition but the development and evolution of digital art. She mentions the use of the computer Amiga (1985-1994) by Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) to draw and paint in 1985 that can be seen in a video: The invisible photographer II, 2014, https://www.artforum.com/video/the-invisible-photograph-part-ii-trapped-2014-46773