Week 5

This week’s lecture gave a good insight into Wikipedia and its credibility. It was learned that Wikipedia is not a credible, scholarly source. This is evident as shown in the articles written about Steve Stockwell and Lee Cox which held no truthfulness whatsoever. Whereas there are people employed to screen everything that is written to ensure truthfulness and credibility, articles are being posted at such a fast rate that these editors cannot keep up.

A short story – Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges was read as well. Although quite hard to understand, the story explored ideas of a made up country, Uqbar, and how by creating false knowledge, truth is altered and people can start to believe it without physical proof.

Important notes included:
Correspondence Theory: Just the facts - observable, measurableCoherence Theory: Does it fit together and make sense?Performative Theory: I do declare
Social Theory: What can we agree on?

Tutorial Task
Walter Benjamin’s ideas in “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” do apply to contemporary digital media as it discusses new forms of communication in comparison to old forms eg. Audiences seeing everything in a play in comparison to the highly edited forms of entertainment watched nowadays, in the forms of television and movies.
Now that anyone with a computer can create things digitally (music, images, videos, etc), art is starting to lose its authenticity. Artworks made in the past suffer in physical condition and change ownership many times. Digital art can always be produced as many times as needed as well as updated – therefore losing its authenticity.
For this reason, photo shopped images are not authentic.
Also, it was found that digital things do not have an aura, as said by Benjamin, “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” He further explains that “the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.” Really, once a work of art is reproduced, the original loses its value as everyone has access to their own copy at much cheaper prices.