This is best understood in the cultural moment in which Benjamin develops his thought – in the same way he challenges readers to bring past and present together to form a new conception of history, he anticipates the way movement that is often unacknowledged in apprehending visuals is absorbed in a way that becomes unconscious material. The distraction and concentration required to consume cinema requires a new mode of perception. This absorption works on several levels, though. “A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it.”Īs a result, the symptom swallows civilization. One of the revolutionary aspects of film came from the way this medium requires both distraction and concentration on the part of the viewer. Anticipating what Katherine Hayle s refers to as hyper and deep attention in How We Think, Benjamin discusses the role of attention in the act of seeing a film. When a scene of a film is cut, the potential for interpretation follows. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction.” Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things “close” spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. We define aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. “The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones.
BENJAMIN AURA DEFINITION HOW TO
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