Monday, September 27, 2010

What is Aura and Cyber Industry?

When I first saw the word aura, actually I had no idea what it means. I looked up it in the dictionary and it said "aura is a distinctive and pervasive quality or character; air; atmosphere or a subtly pervasive quality seen as emanating for a person, place, or thing." (Dictionary.com) So I guess that aura is special but much more influential. In Walter Benjamin's book Illuminations, he defined the meaning of aura and talked it a lot especially in the page 220 to page 230. In his view, aura is the feeling created on audiences by art works. (Benjamin 220) However, by the original art is reducing, aura is disappearing gradually.

According to Theodor Adorno, cyber industry is mass creating of art and entertainment based on new technology. It contains several elements like Internet, video or photograph that lack of original aura. Cyber industry is fast and convenient. We can just admire Picasso's art works online rather than spending time on the way to MOMA. But on the contrary, we cannot feel the aura of Picasso by just facing to the laptop.

Cyber industry is developing in an amazing speed and it does really affects daily life. It could not replace the aura which is the real and original because sometimes we expect more than connivence and speed.


Works Cited:
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Print.

Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

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