Digital Media: Aesthetically Pleasing

1. How have digital technologies changed cultural notions of authorship?

Digital technologies have changed cultural notions of authorship because copyright and plagiarism created a war with technology. Technology changes have provoked challenges for authors because the use of image reproduction and the lack of protection used to defend these digital images. Having rapidly advancing technology makes it extremely hard for authors and artists to protect their images because works in digital media form are easy to copy and distribute via internet.Having access to distribute these works on line is hard to detect and even harder to police making it unclear to who has original authorship.

2. What is the relationship of the concept of "remediation" to Walter Benjamin's concept of "aura?" What is "aura," and how is it affected by digital technologies?

Throughout all digital media mediums, images are affected by digital technologies because of recreation, reproduction, and distribution. Eventually a digital image will alter and change in some shape or form. Walter Benjamin's concept of aura-- the atmosphere generated by the creation of a medium. When an artists creates their image they want that image to have a specific appearance that reflects the artists feelings or mood incorporated. Throughout digital reconstruction those feelings that should be appearing are modified and lost. Remediation is when one medium is transferred into another medium. The relationship of the concept remediation and Walter Benjamin's concept of aura are affected by digital technologies because the atmosphere generated by the creation of an image is lost during remediation.

3. Select an artist or theorist described in this chapter whose work you find particularly interesting, and briefly describe why.

Patricia Piccini-- uses computer-generated photographs to refer to the programming of code in both media imagery and genetic engineering.

I find using computer generated photographs fascinating because you can create whatever you want. Generating fictional animals (such as her mouse in figure 3.4) takes skill and creativity to produce. I also find it interesting that Patricia uses programming of code to create her images because I've only used code to distort images not to actually create an image.