The Presentation

Introduction

The Youth Movement

The Technological Reproducibility

The Human Sensorium Through Technologies

Conclusion

Introduction

“The idea that happiness could

have a share in beauty would be

too much of a good thing”

Introduction

Was an important figure in 20th century academia – a literary critic and a distinguished philosopher.

Was also known for his writing on topics that were ahead of their time (including those concerning technology and the concept of the work of art).

Discusses the issue of materialism in a growing capitalist society, and how it has influenced modern social science research.

He befriended Bertolt Brecht, an ally who shared with Benjamin both Marxist culture and ideals.

Introduction

Published an essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities in 1924 that earned him much recognition in the field of social science.

When the Nazis overtook the German country in 1933 Benjamin fled to Paris.

His legacy is found predominantly in the hands of Theodor Adorno and Gershon Scholem who managed to revitalize interest in his work within academia after the war.

Kept his personal life private, leaving scholars, translators and historians to argue over the nature of his thoughts and texts.

Youth Movement

“The construction of life is at

present in the power of facts far

more than convictions”

The Youth Movement

Interest in the youth movement helped form his intellectual identity, and gained self-confidence and authority with people he interacted.

Developed the concept of “expressionlessness” as a metaphysical center for his theory of art, technology and modernism.

To achieve backing for the new view he had acquired he joined the radical wing of the youth movement.

Dedicated a large part of his time to the organization of student groups who were to publicize the idea of an independent youth culture.

The Youth Movement

Joined the student group known as the “group for school reform” under the guidance of Gustav Wyneken and the Free Student Movement in 1912.

The Free Student Movement, in contrast to the conformist of learning, oriented toward Wilhelm von Humboldt‟s ideal of freedom and self-determination.

Gustav Wyneken published his manifesto Youth and War at the end of 1914, was influenced by Wynken‟s work with the youth social movement.

After the movement, he moved to Munich to continue his undertaking of intellectualism and social value.

Technological

Reproducibility

“All efforts to make politics aesthetic

culminate in one thing, war”

Technological Reproducibility

Stresses the possibility of conceptualizing technology and connection of its relationship to human identity beyond the concepts between misotechnia and filotechnia.

Present acceleration and transformational of technological advancement and development in the modern world being a threat to the future of humanity and nature.

Felt that the conceptualization of technology would cause an examining of our own identity(es).

Technological Reproducibility

Technology stands witness to the connection that ties human inseparably to the context of power.

With technology man is linked to a problematic bond with the natural world, but also with his own nature.

Repercussions of technology is nothing other than the complement of that which Benjamin called, in his essay on the work of art, the „aestheticizing of politics‟.

Saw technology as being used as a political tool and as an instrumental character towards another.

• Reflection arises rather from a criticism of the link which technology has formed with war.

• Technology can signifies the destruction of human nature.

Technological Reproducibility

To understand technology‟s origin, must look past the attitude of how the work of art has influenced the origin of technology.

The topics of art and technology, both Martin Heidegger and Theodor Adorno concluded differently on the political drama of technology and politics.

Benjamin thinks about technology as never reductive or overemphatic.

Martin Heidegger

• Technology can appear to be a destiny that completes that of metaphysics.

• Identifies the modern essence of technology with an approach of that disturbs nature in order to utilize it.

Theodor Adorno

• Technology‟s origin is either brought back to a philosophical attitude of thought or subtracted from an activity that makes the work of art more lucent.

• Technology is an encryption of the administrated world.

• Opportunity for technology to sprout lies in characterizing its production in a reproductive

logic.

Human Sensorium

“The camera introduces us to

unconscious optics as does

psychoanalysis to unconscious

impulses”

The Human Sensorium

The history of changes in the human sensorium –

Benjamin concentrates on two crucial difficulties:

Capability of the artwork to encode information about

its historical period (to reveal aspects of nature).

Way in which modern media (as genres and

individual works) affect the changing human sensory

apparatus.

The Human Sensorium

Just as works of art express communal situations they also play an important role in shaping the human sensory capability.

Central aspect of Benjamin‟s work is to rethink the multifaceted processes which our sensory and cognitive apparatuses participate in the world around us.

Significantly influenced by Romanticism and has offered a highly original reconventionalization of relationships among people, works of art, and the larger world.

• Exploiting of new media‟s potential for cognitive and perceptual transformation.

The Human Sensorium

Benjamin eagerness to understand the modern world and uses of technologies, which brought forth a brand of capitalism and social structures, are influential on the emergence urban industrialism and modernity.

Technological developments not only altering human relationship with the natural world, but exploits the human relationship in/with new fields within the realm of art and politics.

Whose work was in persistent dialogue with Benjamin‟s, were Alois Riegl and László Moholy-Nagy.

Alois Riegl

• Aspect of work is the most important association on the subject of theory and media.

• The concept of “artistic volition” show how art trailed major shifts in the structure and attitudes of various groups, including societies, races, ethnic groups and so on.

László Moholy-Nagy

• Production-Reproduction, suggested necessary relationship between technology, media and the development of the human sensorium.

• Photography as a technological prosthesis remain entrenched in a call for modification of the human cognitive apparatus.

Conclusion

New technologies that produced changes in, and served as, a virtual or actual prosthesis for human perception.

Being influenced by works of Adorno and Wynekenhelped explored the themes of technology, war and politics.

Theorization on the numerous relationships among technological change, the production of new media forms, and the development of the human sensorium were equally significant in his explorations on the themes of work of art, modernity, and human nature.