Film
Searching (2018)
Directed by: Aneesh Chaganty
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We get messages every day mainly through computers and mobile screens. The film is filmed in a very special perspective. The director used the perspective of MacBook, especially the facetime function to “shoot” the whole movie, and the entire movie is switched between the computer desktop, the camera screen, and the video playback, everything in this movie is shown from a screen. The film reflects the life of modern people. As information technology penetrates into every corner of our life, the shift in a new perspective has made people aware of the“virtual-real” and “real-virtual” world.
SEARCHING - International Trailer, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Published on 17 May 2018.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKmGONvI94M
Books
Ways of Seeing
By John Berger
Everyone would see things differently, but the camera allows as to see what the others saw, by a simple click.
In the book, John Berger quoted a manifesto which was written by Dziga Vertov: “I am an eye, a mechanical eye. I the machine show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I am in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse’s mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, maneuvering in the chaotic movements. Recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I coordinate any and all points of the universe wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus, I explain in a new way, the world unknown to you.” (Berger, 1972: 17)
He also wrote: "In the age of pictorial reproduction the meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them; their meaning becomes transmittable [...] Reproduction isolates a detail of a painting from the whole. The detail is transformed. An allegorical figure becomes a portrait of a girl." (Berger, 1972: 24 )
Berger, J. (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
By Yuval Noah Harari
According to the book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” chapter two, Harari proposed human’s job might be replaced by computers and becomes an automation world. I am especially interested in the part that he wrote about AI and human creativity. In the past, we thought that chess is a game to resemble human wisdom. However, he made the recent AlphaGo chess competition as an example to prove that creativity is already the trademark of computers rather than humans (at least in chess).
From the Alpha Go A.I. competition that took place in 2018, to the recent A.I. painting event, I began to think about the difference between myself and artificial intelligence. I am also wondering whether artists will be replaced by algorithms in the future. Artificial intelligence can be able to collect data from all over the world through an algorithm, and based on the information given by big data to create artworks that everyone will like. In the same chapter, he used music as an example to suppose artists might be replaced by algorithms. Based on our database and playlists, an algorithm can generate a piece of new music that will match your current taste and mood within a few seconds. However, I doubt it. I think an algorithm can generate new music based on the database but it cannot create its own music, they do not have a characteristic.
Moreover, the machine and algorithm do not have consciousness. The algorithm is only a set of calculations that predict an outcome from a series of existed information. For example, when you eat an apple, the bio-algorithm technology can track the data on your body’s endocrine and nerve activities, but it cannot understand the feeling of your entire experience. One of the core issues corresponding to the idea of consciousness is related to our emotion. For example, Ke Jie cried after losing the chess competition, but AlphaGo did not generate an emotional reaction, because they have no idea about the value to win or lose a game. so, I suggest this is the basic difference between human and AI.
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Harari,Yuval Noah (2018) 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
By Walter Benjamin
The book discussed the diversification in art under the capitalist conditions and explored the idea of mechanical reproduction art is the reason and method for the proletarian revolution. In the first chapter, he wrote about the development of the replication technique, the ancient Greek’s methods such as cast, stamp, woodcuts, etchings, and lithographs provided the reproduction techniques, and these techniques improved the efficiency to spread the visual materials. The technology of mechanical reproduction not only convenient our visual experience, but also created a way for artists to copy and reproduce their works. The mechanical reproduction produced a large number of identical mechanical copies of an artwork, he considered this process disperse the “echtheit”(authenticity) of the work, and the “aura” in traditional artworks is disappeared. In the article, Benjamin is very clear that all works of art can be copied. Whether it is for students to learn the techniques or for the artist to reproduce the works for commercial purposes, or for commercial purposes, reproduction is a very common behavior. However, the point is that the authority of the original work cannot be copied. There is only one original, which cannot be replaced. No matter how detailed and perfect of this copy is, it will not have the same aura as the original work. Hence, there is no general difference between manual copying and mechanical copying, except that mechanical copying is less able to preserve the aura than manual copying.
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The copying technique not only scatters the aura of the work of art, but also changes the function of the work of art. Benjamin believes that the important function of mechanical reproduction art is to exert its function, toserve the class conflict, and become a tool for political propaganda and agitation. It reminds me in "Ways of Seeing", John Berger said: "in the age of pictorial reproduction the meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them; their meaning becomes transmittable: that is to say it becomes information of a sort, and, like all information, it is either put to use or ignored; information carries no special authority within itself. When a painting is put to use, its meaning is either modified or totally changed." (p.24)
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​​Then, What is the work of art in the age of digital reproduction?
Benjamin, Walter (1935) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
