The Work of Art in the Age of Metaverse Reproduction

This second essay in the series dives into the changing sites and formats of reproduction that digital imaging processes afford. A change in materiality allows greater flexibility, imagination and even automation within applied creativity and sees its technological culmination in the form of generative AI tools. As such, the impact of contemporary (screen-based and digital) technologies on exhibition and creation must be explored.

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The core message of the essay – both in original and remediated form – is one of frustration. Frustration in terms of art’s worth versus its value, commodification of art and the knock-on effect experienced by the creator economy – themselves a new ‘proletariat’ of artistic creators. Framed against the goals of the World Economic Forum, a de-valuation of art and creativity seems inevitable, unless it can be applied in a commercial context. This connects to the first instance of a ‘Big Other’ occupying a surveillance position and its ongoing role in content-led imagined publics; the very spaces this creator economy inhabits in the digital domain. The susceptibility of these spaces to media effects, algorithmic bias and potential manipulation makes the exploitation of the working artist ever easier for corporations as a result.

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Welcome to this podcast, a critical re-mediation of Walter Benjamin's seminal set of essays, 'The Work of art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', edited and rewritten with contemporary arts, artists, examples, thinkers and technologies to re-position his work for a contemporary audience.

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