Where's Walter? Beating a Dead Meme

November 29, 2006 7:20 AM

Where's Waldo? Reflections on Copies and Authenticity in a Digital Environment. Consider for a moment The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (JSTOR PDF here) by Douglas Davis. Alternatively, of course there is The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (alternative link) by Robert Luxemberg. Not to be outdone, Charles Alexander Moffat recently added to the discussion with The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction. I hope all of the authors mentioned were able to make it to the ATA's fundraiser last year called The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Some people are willing to admit that it's not just all about the Benjamin^.
posted by illovich (12 comments total)

I think this post has definitely inspired me to write a paper.

I'm still working on the name though.
posted by Alex404 at 7:49 AM on November 29, 2006

I wonder who owns the copyright to that title...
posted by elkelk at 8:03 AM on November 29, 2006

Alex: I got it! How about "The Age of Digital Reproduction and The Work of Art in it.
posted by arcticwoman at 8:08 AM on November 29, 2006

You damned near gave me a heart attack, putting my name on the front page of Metafilter.
posted by waldo at 9:19 AM on November 29, 2006

This is a great post. Dead meme? Nope.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 9:57 AM on November 29, 2006

You need a YouTube Link!

May I present culture-jamming luminary, Keith Sanborn's The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:20 AM on November 29, 2006

(Thanks, illovich, I may add some of these to my syllabus! Teaching a class in Found Footage next month.)
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:23 AM on November 29, 2006

My area of expertise is medieval literacy and it's impact on theology (Ong, Phenomenology, and such like), and as a hobby, I'm big into linux, open source, patent and copyright reform.

I was musing the other night that if copyright and patent law is reformed the way that some of my fellows would want, then we would return to a very medieval form of textual authority, a morass of shadowy attribution, where the most authoritative text is given to the most authoritative author, regardless of it's acutal provenance, and for some works, the exact opposite. Even though the GPL requires proper accreditation, and then uses the existing legal framework to enforce that, we see infringement daily. It's as if the concept of intellectual credit (but not property, I hate that term) is growing into two separate branches.

I'm not making any value judgements, nor am I trying to debate the value or validity of patent or copyright law or the GPL - I'm just thinking, well, long-term.
posted by eclectist at 11:37 AM on November 29, 2006

Excellent post.
posted by MarshallPoe at 1:44 PM on November 29, 2006

eclectist: digital signatures solve that problem, don't they?
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:52 PM on November 29, 2006

waldo, you chose your name. Now you have to lie on it.
posted by Deathalicious at 1:59 PM on November 29, 2006

excellent post, illovich. Such style!
posted by mwhybark at 8:47 PM on November 29, 2006