Category: Reading

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Final Reading - Walter Benjamin Reading

Final Reading – Walter Benjamin

Benjamin argues that film represents a break from earlier forms of art, unlike painting or theatre, which rely on the presence of the original, or the continuity of performance. Film is made through fragmentation. Actors perform pieces, scenes are shot out of order, cut, edited, and stitched back together. The final product is something even the actor does not fully control or realise until it is out.

What interests me is how Benjamin connects this process to the idea of “aura”. In traditional art, aura is tied to the uniqueness of it, being present with something original. Meanwhile, film destroys that aura. It can be reproduced endlessly, and every viewer sees the exact same image. At first, this might seem like a loss, but Benjamin sees it as a kind of liberation.

As film is reproducible, it is no longer tied to elite access, it becomes a public art form, one that can be critical, political, and accessible to the masses. Benjamin shows us how technology does not only change art, it changes how we think, see, and even how we define reality.

Today, we are surrounded by videos, livestreams, deepfakes, TikToks, and all forms of reproduced and edited media. Influencers, celebrities, and regular people are performing for a camera, but their image is constantly shaped by filters, edits, and algorithms. Like in film, there is a disconnection between the person and the performance. Benjamin helps us realise that media doesn’t just reflect reality it constructs it. And that means we need to approach what we see with awareness, maybe even with skepticism.

Reading his ideas make me wonder, is anything “authentic” anymore, or are we always performing – digitally mediated, edited, and consumed?

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Reading Reading 5 : McLuhan

Reading 5: McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

The line “All media are extensions of some human faculty—psychic or physical” is one of McLuhan’s most fascinating and unsettling claims. It draws a direct line between what we create and what we are – suggesting that every medium is not just a tool we use, but a literal outward projection or growth of our minds or bodies.

This idea shifts the way I think about media entirely. The book isn’t just saying that media serve us or enhance our lives. It’s saying that media are us, in an extended, externalized form.

What makes this passage so compelling to me is how it erases the boundary between the self and the technological. We like to think of media as separate from us, as things we can pick up and put down. But McLuhan argues otherwise. If media are extensions of our faculties, then every new medium rewires how those faculties operate. We don’t just use media; we become part of them, and they reshape the boundaries of what it means to be human.

That idea feels especially urgent now, when digital media have become so integrated into our lives that they feel like a part of our bodies. Our phones are practically external brains. Social media amplifies the psychic need for connection.

The line holds my interest because it makes me reflect not just on what media do, but what they are, mirror images of our own bodies and minds, carried into the world and then reflected back at us, often changed in ways we didn’t anticipate or realize.

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Reading Reading 4 - Russolo, The Art of Noises

Reading 4: Russolo, The Art of Noises

Reimagining Sound: A Response to The Art of Noise

Reading Luigi Russolo’s The Art of Noise made me rethink my relationship with sound. He argues that industrial noise: engines, machinery, the hum of the city, should be embraced as part of music. At first, this idea felt strange. I’ve always thought of noise as something to block out, usually with my music of choice, not something to appreciate. But the more I read, the more it made sense. The modern world is loud, unpredictable, and chaotic, why shouldn’t music reflect that?

At the same time, I’m not sure I fully buy into the idea that all noise is music. A sirens outside my window at 5 AM doesn’t feel like art, it just feels annoying. But maybe that’s the point. Russolo challenges us to hear the world differently, to notice rhythm in the random, to find beauty in what we usually ignore.

Also, I explored UbuWeb’s sound archive and landed on Williams Mix by John Cage. This piece is built from spliced-together recordings of various everyday noises—city sounds, static, machinery, human voices—all arranged through chance operations. It’s disorienting, unpredictable, and kind of overwhelming. It felt less like music in the traditional sense and more like a raw, unfiltered sound of modern life.

Before this, I never thought of the noise around us as art. Now, I’m paying more attention. I’m not sure I’ll ever love the screech of brakes or the drone of an air conditioner, but I might listen to them differently. And maybe that’s enough.

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Reading Reading 3 - RiP

Reading 3 – RiP

RIP: A Remix Manifesto really made me rethink how we define creativity and ownership in the digital age. The way the documentary explores remix culture, especially through Girl Talk’s music, made me realise how much of today’s art is built on reinterpreting and reshaping existing works. It’s frustrating to see how copyright laws, which were meant to protect creators, have been twisted to benefit corporations at the expense of innovation.

One of the things that stuck with me was how historically, even artists we consider “original” were borrowing and remixing from those before them – Disney, for example, built an empire on public domain stories but aggressively locks down its own content. The hypocrisy is hard to ignore. I also liked how the film didn’t just complain about the system but pushed for solutions, like Creative Commons, to create a fairer balance between protection and freedom.

At times, it felt a bit one-sided, but I get why… It’s a passionate defense of a culture that’s constantly under attack. Watching it made me appreciate how much of what I consume daily is influenced by remixing, whether it’s music, memes. It’s a reminder that creativity thrives on collaboration, not restriction.

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Reading Reading 2 – Lev Manovich

The Language of New Media

Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media outlines five key principles that define new media: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. These principles distinguish digital media from traditional media and influence its creation, distribution, and consumption.

One passage that stands out is:

“A new media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation. In other words, media becomes programmable.”

This refers to the principle of automation, which highlights how digital media can be created, modified, and managed with minimal human intervention. Unlike traditional media, where editing was a manual and laborious process, new media leverages algorithms to streamline and even generate content.

A clear example of automation in today’s world is AI-driven content creation, such as machine-generated art or auto-captioning in videos. Platforms like TikTok, which heavily rely on algorithmic filtering and automated effects, showcase this principle in action.

However, Manovich’s insight also raises questions about authorship and creativity. If media can be algorithmically generated, where does human creativity fit in? While automation empowers creators, it also introduces ethical concerns, brought out by creations such as deepfakes and AI-generated misinformation.

From my perspective as a computer science major studying AI, automation represents both an exciting innovation and a complex challenge. Machine learning models can generate text, images, and even videos rather accurately, but they also inherit biases from training data and can be difficult or even impossible to control. The development of explainable AI and ethical AI frameworks is crucial to ensuring that automation serves as a tool for enhancing creativity rather than replacing human input entirely.

Understanding Manovich’s principles helps us critically analyze how technology shapes media. Automation makes content creation more accessible, but it also challenges traditional notions of authorship. As we continue integrating automation into software and media, we need to strike a balance between efficiency and authenticity.

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Reading 1 – Saltz

All Art Is Identity Art!

In Jerry Saltz’s 33 Rules for Being an Artist, he argues the statement that “All Art Is Identity Art!”. In my opinion, while it’s true that all art is created by individuals and thus inherently reflects some aspect of their identity, this view fails to account for the multifaceted nature of artistic creation and interpretation.

The assertion that art is a confession, “more or less oblique,” holds merit. Artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Mark Rothko, and Agnes Martin created abstract works during periods of significant global conflict, which can be interpreted as personal expressions or responses to their circumstances. However, this perspective may be reductive, as it does not fully account for the artists’ intentions or the broader cultural and philosophical contexts that shaped their work.

Kazimir Malevich – Black Square and Red Square (1915)

Mark Rothko – Untitled (1952)

For instance, Malevich’s Suprematism was not merely a reflection of political turmoil but an attempt to transcend material reality and explore pure artistic expression. Similarly, Rothko’s color field paintings, while often viewed through the lens of post-war existentialism, were rooted in his desire to evoke profound emotional experiences beyond personal narrative. Agnes Martin, on the other hand, sought serenity and spiritual transcendence in her minimalist grids, which resist direct autobiographical interpretation.

While historical and social conditions undeniably influence artistic production, reducing abstract art to a mere reflection of personal or collective trauma risks oversimplifying its philosophical and aesthetic ambitions. These works often aim to communicate universal themes-such as the search for meaning-rather than serving as direct confessions of the artists’ struggles. Thus art can be a space where artists engage with ideas that extend beyond their immediate personal or political realities.