Society as a whole is acclimating itself to light speed relational interconnection through constantly evolving communication technologies. Social networking through Facebook, blogs, forums, and Twitter are happening over indiscriminate distances in real time via Smartphones, computers, internet connections, and satellites worldwide. The center of the evolution in relational perception is New Media. It is the digitized world of video and audio bits which give each user the perception of being a part of each other’s reality and world. This virtual reality has become the means one uses to continue personal relational connectedness without being in the actual presence of the other individual. The perception of the work of art in the light of mechanical reproduction, the subject of a paper by Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), thoughtfully addresses how new advances in the use of photography and film, in his own day, were already changing the perceptions of art, society, and challenging its traditions.
He predicted that due to the ease of access to art in audio and visual media by the common masses, with minimal effort, revolutionary demands would formulate in the politics of art. New media would threaten the “basis in ritual and the original use value”. Ostensibly the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions. Painting in itself is limited to the perception of the individual artist only giving an overall image of that seen through his eyes. This can only give a semblance due to the limitation of the media, its function was to communicate what the artist saw through replication. Benjamin, points out that film and audio are able to bring the artist’s audience deeper into the reality of the artwork without their actual perception of the artist’s tools and work, film transports you beyond the camera into the reality. The perception given by a Skype call on your Mac laptop through streaming live video is that, you are there, with the other person, even more so than a cell phone( even some newer cells phones have video cams that can do this). New Media has changed the ordinary man’s perception of artistic function. Our electronic devices are the constant connection we have to art like never before, with IPods archiving hundreds of thousands of musical selections art has taken on a new perceived function. We can be entertained uninterrupted by outside distraction from the “real world” anywhere we want, whenever we want.
Benjamin’s conclusion concerning the availability of art to the masses would eventually change the criterion on which art would be judged. Everyman would become the basis for critical evaluation of new media; no longer would there be use for the expert. This has its emergence in the public creation of video on sites such as YouTube. Artists are able to post their work in an unbelievably huge art gallery to an audience limited only by its access to the worldwide web. Now the critics are everyone who visits their site and views. There are those works that held no value to the expert critic that became instant hits with all the viewers on You Tube. The Numma Numma guy lip sang himself into celebrity status with a song performed by an Eastern European band of little notoriety, until he made a video with their audio track.
The question becomes, with societies’ perception of art, its availability, and its function being radically altered by new generations of social networking on constantly evolving electronic devices, what will the social superstructure and its perception of art become in the near future, and how will it change the way each of us perceive one another and the reality around us?
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