Task 2... Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction

Read the Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. Write a 300 word analysis of one work of Graphic Design, that you think relates to the themes of the text, and employing quotes, concepts and terminology from the text.



Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' discusses the change that is impacted by the progression of technology and how it enables us to reproduce art. New technologies allow for mass production and widespread distribution of artworks, changing the traditional values that art once held. As technology progresses the copy gets more and more power over the original, causing it to lose value. The copy doesn't physically touch the original, but it makes it less special and depreciates it. 
The elite society once drove the interpretation of artworks produced, but as technology progressed and allowed these artworks to be cheaply reproduced, they became readily available to people of other classes, allowing members of the public to draw their own interpretations. 
The fact that we can all have the technology to reproduce works of art means that we can all have our own, redefining the meaning of it. Mass production allows us to redefine culture against how taste makers say it should be, allowing normal members of the public, of all classes to define their own meaning of the piece. What you do with art also changes the meaning, which challenges authority and the idea of one work having one meaning. 'In permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced'.

An example of graphic design thats meaning is changed by mechanical reproduction is the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster. The poster design was originally produced by the minority to control the majority, however they are now reproduced by the minority. People of all classes reproduce this poster and the original meaning gets lost. The mocking nature of these reproductions devalue the original and takes away the authority it once held. Most people that own or have seen the copies of the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters will not even know the true meaning of the original, having it only for aesthetic or commodity value, thus completely changing its meaning from the original. The reproduction and modification of this piece of graphic design makes it readily available to the masses in present day, thus taking away its 'it's presence in time and space' and in turn makes it lose all meaning.