Write in complete sentences, do not use bullet points or ellipses. Your response should be between 250-500 words. The style of your post can be speculative and personal, you do need to come up with arguments, rather just reflect on your own comprehension of the material. Write in your own voice. But this is not a social media space– your posts should be thoughtful and structured.
Response to your peer’s discussion within 100 words.
Walter Benjamin, in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ theorized the concept of the ‘aura.’ He said that the ‘aura’ of an object comes from its singular position in space and time (for example, there is only one original Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci and it hangs in the Louvre in Paris). The aura gives authority to an artwork, invests it with power and meaning and yokes it to established traditions and rituals. The aura and its traditions, he argues, are diminished by mechanical reproduction. Because people can experience these works of art in their own way (you can have the Mona Lisa as your screen saver), Benjamin sees the potential of mechanical reproduction as the potential to re-evaluate systems of value that have been in place for a very long time (and have transformed over time). Even though he was writing over 80 years ago, his ideas may still have some resonance. Using your own words and your experiences, think of some moment when you experienced ‘aura’ in relation to some artwork. And how did its aura affect your experience of viewing. Succinctly define your terms and support your observations with a select quote from either Benjamin or Berger. And then answer this specific question: reflect on your experience of spectatorship of some narrative based media story- could be a film, or a video game, or an IG story. How did you enter the world of the story? and reflect upon how the context of your spectatorship affected your experience of the story
