Exercises: Mechanical Reproduction
Exercise 1: Aura
Read the essay by Benjamin, focusing most closely on the first four sections (I – IV). Then answer the following questions in prose – about a paragraph each.
- What role does the “original” play in the concept of “authenticity”?
- How is technical reproduction distinct from manual reproduction?
- What role does history or “historical testimony” play in an object’s authenticity?
- How is distance related to aura?
- What does Benjamin suggest is the difference between art based on ritual and art based on politics?
Exercise 2: Film
This activity will allow you to use compositional analysis skills in a new arena – film analysis. It will also add some new film-specific compositional analysis principles and expand our compositional analysis vocabulary.
Find a still frame from Modern Times. Perform a compositional analysis of the still as if it’s a painting. Alongside the original set of compositional analysis principles (Balance, Stress, Leveling, Sharpening, Lower-left Preference, Attraction and Grouping, Positive and Negative) also consider:
- Camera Angle and Distance
- Lighting and Filters
- Subject Matter
- Costumes, Hair, Makeup, Accessories
- Gestures and Poses
- Rule of thirds (division of the film screen into thirds producing a more satisfying composition)
Exercise 3: Reproductive Organs
In 2008, an art student at Yale University repeatedly attempted to impregnate herself before inducing miscarriage two weeks later as an art project intended to serve as her senior thesis in her visual arts degree. The artwork caused great international controversy and a wealth of comment, including by Dayo Olopade in her essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Reproduction” in New Republic.
What connection does Olopade draw between Aliza Shvarts’s work and Walter Benjamin’s essay with her title? How does Shvarts’s work affect the “aura” of conception, contraception, and abortion? Explain in standard prose.
“L0059976 Model of a contraceptive pill, Europe, c. 1970” by Wellcome Library is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.