Asya: response to Walter Benjamin and Lessig talk

I agree with Walter Benjamin that the authority of a piece is lost when it is copied, but I argue that the replicated piece, if it is a good one, can withstand this. The process of replication, the act of appropriation touts authority. I believe the authenticity of a copied piece can be retained as long as the replication has some kind of message. This message can be a comment on the original piece or on society, but something about the replicated piece needs to change so that it can still be called a work of art. Benjamin would argue that replicas intrinsically are changed, because their creation takes place in a different time period than the original piece, and I would tentatively agree. For example, if I took a photograph of a painting from 1900, my photograph would be intrinsically different from the painting because the setting of the photograph has changed. Once a piece changes context, an original piece is born.

I liked the idea of using a copy as a medium by which laypeople can access the original piece, but I also agree there is a downside to mass production of art. I feel that the copies we made allowed us to be "absorbed" by the piece, as Benjamin put it, because we spent hours staring at a masterwork and figuring out the exact contour placement of such - and such- line; in short, we ruminated over the piece and became extremely familiar with all of its parts. I think this kind of exercise is valuable, wherein the copy serves as a way for a student to access the original, such as when a person remixes a song. However, if such a copy was produced on a large scale, I imagine Benjamin is right in that the masses would absorb the copy, and by proxy, the original. This is because replication to the point of distraction is neither beautiful, nor can it teach us about the original in a meaningful way. Therefore, the act of producing a copy can be informative, but the act of consuming or absorbing a copy may not be.

Such mindless consumption links to the Lessig talk, particularly when Lessig mentions the development of a "read-only" culture. I fear that this RO culture may happen/is already happening, for a strange reason - since information is so easily accessible, consumers that might otherwise create are placated into absorbing media, because the responsibility of creation has been dissipated by countless, often anonymous individuals encountered through the internet. This makes me sound like a Luddite and like I want to restrict access to content, which is not the case- I want people to become motivated by all of the art available online, not use public domain works such as those under Creative Commons (and even works that are not public domain) as an excuse to torrent everything they can get their hands on and in the meantime forget about creating new content. Complacency is a poor excuse.