As my paper comes to its end I've been thinking about Walter Benjamin's essay on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility". Essentially in Benjamin's theory art and politics are become intertwined in the age of reproducibility. When things are easily produced and shared there is no longer the sacredness of the original piece of work, it becomes unimportant when photography and film come into the picture. Benjamin states, "For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual". With photography and film there is no "original" and there is no inherent value in one copy of the photograph or film over the other. Benjamin theorized that as the ritualistic placement of art faded then art would become based on politics; in addition the barriers between artist and audience would in turn break down. Benjamin strongly desired to see new conceptualizations of the role of art and artist in society. Sadly, I do not believe photography and film ever caused the revolution Benjamin hoped it would.

After listening to Shannon's presentation at the symposium I was overtaken with questions for myself about my own views on art and aesthetics and where the digital entries fit within that spectrum. In my 295 class we were talking about Janice Radway who wrote an essay about how she wishes that academics would focus more on “middle brow” works rather than “high brow” because you get little pleasure from “high brow” works other than the bragging right of having completed them and they re just too threatening. Sometimes that is how I feel about “art” or what people define as art. I like going to museums and looking at paintings, but I hate that overwhelming feeling that I'm not understanding that deeper meaning or whatever it is that the art critics or historians have decided that I get from this. Now a days, so much is available online and, like Shannon articulated, it is so hard to tell or define what is art. Again, in my English 295 class we were talking about what fits in each category and how throughout the years things have moved categories and have fit in different areas. Art, just like everything else, is relative (in my mind). In this case someone brought up Blogs and where they fit. Prof. Richards said that he believes that currently blogs fit into the “low brow” sector, but he believes that within the near future that they will make their way to the “middle brow” and maybe even move into the “high brow” depending on the genre and the author**. He went on to say that he wouldn't be surprised if in a couple years Mary Washington offered a course in analyzing blogs. That got me thinking about this course and its location in the university. A lot of people hear the word “code” and think of computers or ciphers, but few people think of the art that is behind it.