When I hear someone use the word aura, naturally I assume a characteristic emitted by an individual which either defines the individual who emits it, or the characteristic being emitted is defined by the source (person who emits it). However; Aura is not always unique, just because an individual might have an aura of bravery or wisdom, does not mean that he or she is the only brave or wise individual left on the planet. It is possible to have certain degrees of Aura where one person’s aura of courage is stronger than another person’s aura of courage or discouragement, ultimately enhancing or overlapping, even cancelling each other out. I don’t exactly know where, but I remember reading that apparently when two individuals with bipolar disorder are placed together in a relationship, they seem to function well. Often times when one partner wasn’t feeling so great and had an aura of negativity around him, it was cancelled out by the positive feelings emitted by the other, ultimately leading them to revolve around each other like particles of atoms, emitting a neutral aura and maintaining stability in a rather unstable world of theirs.
According to a reliable dictionary available online; Aura is a distinctive air or quality considered to be characteristic of a person or thing, any invisible emanation, such as a scent or odor or strange sensations, such as noises in the ears or flashes of light, that immediately precede an attack, especially of epilepsy. So an aura is basically something usually invisible which triggers reaction within the human brain, ultimately making us judge that event or feeling in a certain way. (This paragraph was a copy and paste from dictionary.com)
Walter Benjamin talks about aura in the book called Illuminations (1955) several times, especially through page 220 through 230 and beyond. According to him, aura is the impact created on audience right when a piece of art or acting is created. As time passes by, and more copies are made, aura reduces along with it too and disappears rather quickly. Cyberaura is an example of this phenomenon, when a video is being posted online or on a blog, it’s intensity or aura cannot be experienced on TV or a newspapers, unless one were to witness it as it was going on, he/she will always experience a diminished form. I agree with this to a certain extent. Even though yes we cannot exactly experience Shakespeare if we were to be present at the real plays back in history, we can still experience it in a different way. Who knows, maybe it was really hot back then and people were sweaty and possibly dealing with issues such as malaria when they were outside? I feel that one aura can diminish, but it can also give birth to another new aura. People back then did not experience Shakespeare in a comfortable chair sipping on orange juice; it’s a whole new experience if you ask me.
According to Theodor Adorno (Dialectic of Enlightenment – 2002), Culture Industry is basically the need to produce mass amounts of art or entertainment with standardized elements, ultimately resulting in sameness and loss of diversity. Cyber Industry is another form of it where basically internet, photographs and videos are mass producing art, lacking any uniqueness to them. Due to quality control people are not willing to test new things as much as they would have in the past, because in the end it’s all about views and advertisement. Even though I like disagreeing with writers and usually I expect them to have an over the top explanation for something rather simple; ultimately making it hard for the readers to understand, I completely agree with Adorno here, he could not be any more right. I feel like computers, and the internet in particular is slowly taking over our lives, and it puts us in a culture where it’s okay to spend hours and hours on our laptops, killing our empathy towards art and bombarding ourselves with literally the same type of content with different titles all day long. According to Adorno and other writers like him, Culture Industry is basically responsible for reducing the original aura present in any type of art that is being created right now, Cyber Industry further speeds up this process. But unlike culture industry, Cyber Industry allows far more writers and directors to produce materials at a cheap cost, indirectly supporting creative thinking and the creation of original aura; at a rather low rate.
Sources:-
1- "Aura." Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. 04 Oct. 2010.
2- Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations: Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Ardent. New York: Shocken Books,1968
3- Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002
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