Mind the posting gap

I believe that the notion authenticity produces itself as a photo-negative to the ‘cartoon’ of reproduction technologies in a given era. Scott McCloud made the point that every representation cartoonally (yeah, I said it) is a selective choice that represents particular salient features of the world in a way that suits the author. In a similar way, technologies of reproduction (mechanical or otherwise) selectively ‘cartoon’ the world to produce salient or what we perceive as real, representations of reality. Inevitably, reproduction leaves something out – it can never capture everything we know about the world through embodied experience, and so it selectively incorporates important objects. The photo-negative of ‘authenticity’ emphasizes the terms or fields of knowledge under- or un- represented in the act of reproducing (something). So, when visual elements were subject to reproduction, as described by Benjamin, what became important to ‘authenticity’ was an author, situated in time with the aesthetic werewithal to create an original document – an idea situated within the analog reproduction technologies which required some form of physical correspondence to create a copy. What cannot be reproduced in the copies becomes the foundation for ‘authenticity.’

So, what cannot be reproduced in an age of digital reproduction? In a consumer society tactile objects are subject to mass production, as are sounds sights and even tastes (ever tried ‘real’ Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavor beans?). What remains elusive to reproduction is the non-sensory: in this case, the most important feature is time. Indices of recency, originality, and time of creation produce what we know as an original document: no matter how fast transmission occurs, the display of certain media events occurs in at least one place before transmission, and that then becomes the standard of authenticity. Before the age of mass reproduction, artists working in isolation could simultaneously produce similar/identical works of art and still be considered original, or even masters in their work. With mechanical reproduction, and now digital reproduction, the simultaneous ubiquity of ideas and images accelerates the production of ‘authentic’ works by drastically increasing exposure to individual pieces of art, and so increasing the body of work against which ‘authenticity’ sets itself. When art can be copied and reproduced with great ease, the measure of authenticity becomes one of primacy: of being first, before the copies, before the imitations.

Duncan