From The Era Of Mechanical Reproduction To The Electronic Age: Study On The Relationship Between The Technology And Art

Since the beginning of the20th century, the application of mechanical reproduction technology in art has triggered a massive artistic revolution, which has changed the developing direction of traditional arts. With the application of electronic technology in mid-20th century, as well as the popularity of digital information transmission technology in the late20th century, the second revolution in art field formed different existence style and developing trends from the mechanical reproduction age. Thus, the art concept itself changed again. It is not difficult to find that technology and art is more closely linked to each other, and technology has become an important and necessary factor of art, dating back into the development of modern society. The close link involves the impact of mass culture, cultural studies, media culture, visual cultural, aesthetic culture, post-modern cultural and other fields, forming a vast and complex knowledge networks. Therefore, the research on the relationship between technology and art is of great significance in understanding the development of contemporary art practice and promoting the construction of contemporary art theory and cultural theory, and more important it is a new dimension that traditional art theory lacks.Major impacts on arts by technology have attracted researchers’wide attention, but previous researches were mainly of social criticism conducted in the social system rather than of in-depth analysis of the acting mechanism about technology itself. Therefore, this dissertation analyzed the technology factor in art and proposed a new perspective of technology, namely "technology ideology", based on the theories and methods of media studies in order to explore its acting mechanism onto art grounded on the nature of technology. According to its developing shift, the integration process of technology and art is divided into two stages,"mechanical reproduction age" and the "electronic age", the different effects of different types of technology on art is to be compared. The author conducted a comparative study on the art change in two ages from perspectives of both perception approach and subject of art, on the basis of technical analysis as well as combining theories and methods of aesthetics, philosophy and other disciplines. The last part is on the aesthetic reflection the change of art in the electronic age. This dissertation consists of five chapters:The first chapter is an introduction of the relationship between technology and art. The first section is a historical study on the relationship between technology and art. The evolution of concept and meaning of technology and art shows that the relationship between them has gone through a spiral development process integrated——division——integrated, that the integration of technology and art in modern society is based on two separated areas and driven by the development of modern technology, compared to chaotic integration in the early stage. According to modern technological changes, art has gone through two stages in the process of integration and formed its special Spiritual characteristics.Secondly, the author summarized and reviewed the research history of the relationship between technology and art. With the process of integration of technology and art, the previous researches have gone through three stages:the first is Frankfurt School on the early mid1900s, age of mechanical reproduction represented by film; the second stage is the cultural study in late1900s beginning from Britain, the transition from mechanical reproduction age to electronic age, in which television took the place of films as a major representing art form; the third stage is the study of media culture arising in1990s, which corresponds to the highly sophisticated electronic age, also known as the information age. During the three stages, the recognition of technical art changed with the deepening development of its own practice, from the initial denial and contempt to the present more objective analysis and criticism, developed distinctive research methods, and formed some common research traditions. However, differences emerged in the following aspects, status and influence of technology, Issues related to the subject and aesthetic change, which have become the basic theoretical issues of understanding contemporary art.Chapter2focused on the views on technology from the perspective of modern artistic theory. Firstly, the author analyzed different views on technology from the viewpoint of cultural theories and philosophy. It was found that researchers lacked clear knowledge of attributes of technology itself although they considered the technical art as the main subject and realized the important role of technology. In philosophy,"Instrumental theory of technology" and "Substantive theory of technology" are the main views on technology, both of which are reasonable but with their own biases. Feenberg’s "Critical Theory of Technology" mediated the two conflicts with "forms of bias", but the premise of which is based on the impact of social choice on technology, and which was not able to do independent analysis out of specific social contexts.This dissertation references from contemporary media’s theories such as "dissemination of bias,""medium is message" and so on, proposed "technology ideology" and conducted a cultural analysis on the impact of technology."Technology Ideology" refers to a specific cultural preference caused by the physical properties of a specific technology, the formation of which has nothing to do with the users, social and economic factors, and is just an objective result of its self property. It means that the technology itself has an independent power, and to play a role in a covert manner. But technology is not a decisive factor, and plays its role with the interaction and struggles with other social forces.Therefore, the end result of this paper changed from the use of technology to the nature of technology itself. The author took this transfer as a basis to analyze the impact of technology on artistic mechanism:the nature of technology itself impacts on choosing artistic themes and contents, and builds in its own way which suits technology itself; technology helps the emergence of new art forms, which change the existing arts ecology correspondingly; Thus, by the global impact of art, technology shapes the overall status of art in the same period to make different art forms share common concepts of art.The third chapter is about technology and aesthetic perception. The most significant change in art brought by the application of technology is the change in the way of aesthetic perception. Firstly, the art of mechanical reproduction technology has brought a wealth of audio-visual experience. In the electronic age, with the emergence of television and the Internet, as well as the film and other art’s digitalization, the pursuit of sensory experience reaches its peak, and the multiple artistic perception system gearing to visual sense formed and promoted the emergence of visual culture shift. Compared to the traditional Visual-centrism and visual culture in the printing age, visual culture in electronic age lost its epistemology advantages, no longer being truth-oriented and changing from rational nature to emotional nature, and has become a watching style to pursuit and meet desire and pleasure. Meanwhile, technology provides many means to meet sensory experiences and forms art’s perceptual developing direction. Taking the film’s change from narrative to spectacle and the Internet literature as examples, the author found that the pursuit of sensory experiences is increasingly becoming a common trend of contemporary art, that art changes from the metaphysical pursuit of truth and beauty to representing the daily life, which result in the gradually growing secularization of the inner spirit of art.Secondly, the technology has changed the way the perception of space and time. In terms of aesthetic categories, Technological changes brought about by the performance of works of art to the "shock" experience on the "aura" of the place of aesthetic experience. Shock is a fast dynamic viewing mode which can not be sense by the use of consciousness, reflecting the pace of technological change in modern society. In time, the shock caused by rapid change and in contrast to aura which is rooted in contrast to the traditional constant; In space, shock represents a crowded public life of the urban space, and lack of the required distance of the aura. In terms of art’s value, changes of the value from the "worship","display"to "present" incidents the expanding of space. In the age of mechanical reproduction of art, display value of art demonstrate the value of worship for the first time, into the electronic age, television, Internet, mobile phones and other communication technology has expand existing space of art to areas of daily life. Now it needn’t to deliberately seek but the art products appear automatically, and it means further replaces the display value of present. In time, while in the media from endless, continuous, real-time flow of ephemeral of art has the characteristic of information of fleeting and ephemeral, external value of art is no longer.Thirdly, from the development of "visual unconscious ", to the generation of "virtual reality", with the help of technology, art shows a new world. In contrast, what the "visual unconscious" displays is still the appearance of the real world, while "virtual reality" is entirely generated by the digital technology which has been out of correspondence with objective reality, but it is also true with the surface of real, thus forming a new set of artistic perception system. The art artistic perception system extends the perception of reality, but also make it shows virtualization features, giving rise to the reality itself of Philosophy.Chapter4is on technology and the subject of art. Beginning of literature as a print culture, the mechanical reproduction age inherits the subject concept of traditional art, namely the artist was seen as a creator of art and the source of meaning of the works, so he is regarded as "genius" of the authority which embodies on author. However, in contemporary art, "genius" as the image of art subject has been replaced by Cyberborg."Cyberborg" originally referred to the artificial cybernetic organisms, and now represents the state of close integration between people and technology, and became a typical image of the electronic age. From the creators as a "genius" to "Cyberborg", shows the changes in the philosophy of subject content:Author belongs to a rational subject, while cyberborg is a technical subject, reflecting the enormous power of technology. Technical subject beyond the fixed boundaries and highlight the physical factors, the rational subject is subversion.As a means of communication, technology plays an important role in the configuration of subject. Printing trends to construct an independent individual, a fixed identity, a stable subject, and it is the modern rational subject which the premise of the concept established on. Film extremely depends on technology, and its rapid flow of images has a strong attraction on the audience senses. These serious challenges to rational are capable of the subject. In the way of electronic communication, the playback mode of television is not logic and causal laws constraints, and the characteristics of the audience to accept distracted, so the result of television is that entertain spirit collapses of the rational spirit of the printed age. And the characteristics of internet literature of the subject of virtualization, the text of the variability, multidimensional, interactive communication, directly digestion of the writer’s image of authority, and further breaking the traditional stable, continuous, center of the rational subject, and will help create a new unstable, the fragmentation, decentralization, and multiple subject.Chapter5is on electronic technology and aesthetic changes of art. Into the electronic age, two-way movement appears:generalization of art and materialized of art. What hiding in these two trends is the lost the spirit of art:the meaning of art image exhausted while the infinite expansion image, the rise of the deep economic logic hides behind aesthetics, the arts enhance the impact while the transcendence nature of art disappears. Compared to mechanical reproduction technology, electronic technology has a more freedom meaning, and provide a new opportunity for the restoration of the aesthetic and humanistic spirit of art:the virtual nature of electronic technology to get rid heavily dependent on the objective reality of the mechanical reproduction technology and can be more full the creative play of the subject:The two-way, interactive, de-centered mode of transmission for the arts provides a solid technical foundation for the democratic era, the democratization of art will bring a diversified development of the art situation.Recognizing the double-sided nature of electronic technology, it needs to adhere to the spirit of the pursuit of art, give full play to its advantages, and to avoid adverse effects. This requires handling in the relationship between the narrative structure of art works and technical means, and to seek a comprehensive and balance between the spiritual dimension of art and sensory experience, and between artistic quality and cost-effective. Then it will lead to a healthy development of the art.