New Media and the Permanent Crisis of Aura

Bolter, Jay David; MacIntyre, Blair; Gandy, Maribeth; Schweitzer, Petra

doi:10.1177/1354856506061550

Cited by 59 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The community co-design and co-production employed in the ACCORD project is a key part of this process, creating relationships between people, places and objects often expressed in forms of identity and belonging. Thus, whilst much of the literature on the authenticity and value of digital media focuses on accuracy, resolution, aesthetics and consumption (see Bolter et al 2006;Gartski 2016), this research shows that modes of production and participatory practice are equally if not more important. The results challenge received assumptions about authenticity and new digital media, and advance related philosophical and theoretical debates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…The work of Benjamin has been particularly influential in debates about digital authenticity (Bolter et al 2006;Cameron 2007;Garstki 2016;Jeffrey 2015;Rabinowitz 2015). Writing in the early twentieth century in response to new technological developments such as photography and cinema, Benjamin argued that mechanical reproduction undermines the uniqueness of the original art object, which in turn leads to the decay of aura, along with the sense of awe and reverence associated with it.…”

Section: Authenticity and Digital Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

3D heritage visualisation and the negotiation of authenticity: the ACCORD project

Jones

Jeffrey

Maxwell

et al. 2017

International Journal of Heritage Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:This article examines the question of authenticity in relation to 3D visualisation of historic objects and monuments. Much of the literature locates their authenticity in the accuracy of the data and/or the realism of the resulting models. Yet critics argue that 3D visualisations undermine the experience of authenticity, disrupting people's access to the materiality, biography and aura of their historic counterparts. The ACCORD project takes questions of authenticity and 3D visualisation into a new arena -that of community heritage practice -and uses rapid ethnographic methods to examine whether and how such visualisations acquire authenticity. The results demonstrate that subtle forms of migration and borrowing occur between the original and the digital, creating new forms of authenticity associated with the digital object. Likewise, the creation of digital models mediates the authenticity and status of their original counterparts through the networks of relations in which they are embedded. The current pre-occupation with the binary question of whether 3D digital models are authentic or not obscures the wider work that such objects do in respect to the cultural politics of ownership, attachment, place-making and regeneration. The article both advances theoretical debates and has important implications for heritage visualisation practice.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Section: Authenticity and Digital Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

3D heritage visualisation and the negotiation of authenticity: the ACCORD project

Jones

Jeffrey

Maxwell

et al. 2017

International Journal of Heritage Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For Latour and Lowe the complex digital techniques required to create a physical facsimile are an intermediate phase of the replication process and the aura migrates to the final replica. While the concept of aura in the digital realm has been previously recognised, the focus has been on a general crisis of the aura or the accrual over time of a new form of aura [12,13]. I would contend that Latour and Lowe's argument regarding physical replicas or reproductions can also be applied to digital replicas and reproductions i.e.…”

Section: "The Authenticity Of a Thing Is The Essence Of All That Is Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenging Heritage Visualisation: Beauty, Aura and Democratisation

Jeffrey

2015

Open Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:In this paper I will pose a challenge to digital heritage visualisation that takes as its starting point the weirdness of the digital world in comparison to everyday experience. Related to this is the apparent inability for digital objects to benefit from or acquire aura from their originals. I contend that, unless mitigated, these properties will cause a continuing lack of engagement with digital heritage visualisation beyond the professional and academic circles in which they are created. Contrary to expectations, I will argue digital objects can indeed manifest an auratic quality and that this is in fact fundamental to how they are received by various audiences. I contend that both aura and the intimate relationship between digital representation, aesthetics and the creative imagination need to be understood and embraced in practice. Finally, I will suggest some ways of addressing the challenge by looking at modes of co-production, physical replication and aesthetic quality. The ChallengeOver the last two decades, digital visualisation methodologies have become firmly embedded in the canon of archaeological practice. Archaeologists and heritage managers have drawn on a range of recording technologies to generate highly accurate datasets of historic objects, monuments and landscapes. They have also increasingly drawn on the rich functionality of 3D modelling packages to create visualisations and reconstructions of the past. 3D datasets, and the visualisations generated from them, are used in site recording, site management, structural analysis, archaeological interpretation and hypothesis testing, and increasingly, as a dissemination mode for broader audiences. In this paper I will focus on the challenge we face in using heritage visualisation to help us think anew about the past itself, rather than strictly in relation to their function as digital documents of real world heritage objects, structures and landscapes.In the digital domain long-standing issues of data integration, discovery and long-term preservation have now begun to be tackled in a meaningful way. Engagement with multiple audiences through digital visualisation is possible and, if good practice is followed, the visualisations are discoverable, referenceable (e.g. via DOI), contextualised and permanently available. This should herald a Golden Age in heritage visualisations. However, there is a danger that the quest for new technological approaches, precision, accuracy and apparent realism becomes an end in itself, following a path that Huggett has referred to as technological fetishism [1]. In this paper, I will argue that there remain significant challenges that need to be addressed if we are to capitalise on this potential Golden Age.

show abstract

“…In all of these cases, the status of the old as residual of a nostalgic past or as decaying intersects with the emotional attachment between media technologies and their users. The old medium is invested with an aura of fascination which may stimulate the creation of fantastic narratives (Bolter et al 2006). …”

Section: Fantasies Of Obsolescence and Death: The Imaginary Of Old Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Media and the Imaginary in History

Natale¹,

Balbi²

2014

Media History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper discusses how media theory and history should approach specimens of evidence about the cultural reception of media pertaining to the realms of the fantastic, such as speculations, predictions, dreams, and other forms of fantasy regarding media. It argues that the role of the imaginary in the history of media can be fully comprehended only by employing a perspective which is dynamic in time. In different phases of a medium's evolution, in fact, we find different fantasies; it follows that we need specific approaches to study them. The article discusses fantasies which are specific to three stages in media change: those preceding the actual invention of a medium; those accompanying the earliest period after the introduction of a new medium; and those connected to old media. Media ChangeStudying the way a technology is perceived within the public sphere means considering a broad range of elements, including popular fears and enthusiasms for innovation and progress, as well as political, economic, cultural, and social issues. While many of these aspects might appear relatively straightforward, there is a class of evidence about the reception of media which are particularly complicated to deal with: that of evidence which pertains to the realms of the fantastic, such as speculations, imaginary narratives, predictions, and other forms of fantasies regarding media technologies. Media scholars are often tempted to regard them as irrelevant to historical analysis. However, as Carolyn Marvin noted in her now classic work When Old

show abstract

New Media and the Permanent Crisis of Aura

Cited by 59 publications

References 17 publications

3D heritage visualisation and the negotiation of authenticity: the ACCORD project

3D heritage visualisation and the negotiation of authenticity: the ACCORD project

Challenging Heritage Visualisation: Beauty, Aura and Democratisation

Media and the Imaginary in History

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About