The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Abstract

In this article, which was presented as a paper at the Colloquium Lierature and Media at Nagoya City University on June 16, 1998, I focused on the relationships between the early 20th century avant-garde movements and the new media. I provide some ideas on the influence of avant-garde aesthetics on today’s media environment. The article stresses the new media’s use of traditional avant-garde techniques such as collage on an internalized and functional basis. The computer is seen as a surrealist network. Art is performed as a bourgeois event. The Internet, which is often considered to be a world wide museum or library, builds a bourgeois institution, which controls the production as well as the reception of art.