[eu-gene] Re: Re: Generative or not?

[Michael Gogins]

I don't get your point about Benjamin and authorship. I was certainly not talking about aura. For me, authorship is (a) the historical fact that an author is simply a person who produces _something_ and (b) in Benjamin's sense, the social fact that certain persons are authors, or have a status ascribed to them as authors. I was speaking in sense (a). I understand (b) but for me it is essentially irrelevant.

As for the thesis of Davis, as an elaboration of (b), I find it essentially irrelevant. I care about what works of art do to or for me, or others. I care about their authorship (in both senses) but only secondarily. When it comes to producing art however I care very much, however I care more about my responsibility for the quality of my work than I do for credit (though I also care about that).

Whether "authorship" (sense b) is obscured by mechanical replication or anonymity or mass permission to author or whatever, there still is an author in sense a, without whom none of this other stuff would happen at all.

Regards,
Mike

-----Original Message-----
>From: jonCates <joncates at criticalartware.net>
>Sent: May 10, 2006 11:49 AM
>To: generative art <eu-gene at generative.net>
>Subject: Re: [eu-gene] Re: Re: Generative or not?
>
>On May 10, 2006, at 10:17 AM, Michael Gogins wrote:
>> >Interesting. I always thought authorship rested in an object that  
>> the author produced
>
>perhaps you mean _aura_ rather than "authorship" as described by  
>Walter Benjamin in [1935/1936] in The Work of Art in the Age of  
>Mechanical Reproduction:
>
>http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/ 
>benjamin.htm
>
>which has spawned more responses such as:
>
>title: The Work of Art in the Age of Electronic (Re)Production
>dvr: Douglass H. Thomson
>date: 1998
>uri: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/work.html
>
>++
>
>title: The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction
>dvr: Douglas Davis
>date: 1995
>uri: http://cristine.org/borders/Davis_Essay.html
>
>++
>
>in the track The Work of Art in the Age of Cultural Overproduction by  
>Tim Hecker
>
>++ etc...
>
>// jonCates
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