Technology·Art·Perception

Walter Benjamin have made thorough and precise explorations into technological reproducibility about art like a surgeon in his a series of papers,among which "The work of Art In the Age of Its technological reproducibility" and "Little history of photography" are the most crucial and widely-known. He differentiate painting or sculpture from film and photographic works in view of their distinct fate when facing the coming of revolutionary technological reproducibility methods, such as cinematography and photography. In a whole, Benjamin came to a conclusion that fundamental transformation had occurred in art or artwork because of innovatory technological reproducibility methods. In Benjamin'viewpoint, technology or medium is not a external but essential or structural element. Cinematography and photography changed human aesthetical perceptive mode or our experience of the world. He believes that the development of technique results in the transformation of the production and reception of art, thus brings developments to the form or structure of art, changes the relationship between art and world. Though Benjamin'proposition is rare in mainstream western philosophy history, we can detect the internal logic between Benjamin and other important philosophers, such as Aristoteles and Merleau-ponty.On Walter Benjamin'technology-art thinking, among which technological reproducibility in artwork is the most important, Researchers have made plenty of analysis, some of which is thought-provoking. But as a whole, the focus of their deliberation is disproportionately bound with social or political meaning. In contrast, Researchers rarely attached importance to the philosophical or phenomenological meaning of Benjamin'reflections, especially on the great impact that a revolutionary change in technological reproducibility have made on our sensory perception of art. So in this thesis I try to do this work——to find out the philosophical meaning, especially of phenomenological meaning in Benjamin' relevant writings by deliberating on the relevance of some essential conceptions such as technology, technological reproducibility, art and aesthetic perception.