Orchids in the land of technology

An orchid in the land of technology …Lithography… …permitted graphic art for the first time to put its products on the market, not only in large numbers as hitherto, but also in daily changing forms. Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing… …But only a few decades after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography… …Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: it s presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be… …The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity… …technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself… …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… …The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition… …were equ ally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura… …the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art — politics. is reversed… …With the different methods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its fitness for exhibition increased to such an extent that the quantitative shift between its two poles turned into a qualitative transformation of its nature… …For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it… …The equipmentfree aspect of reality here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology… excerpts from The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

Semester project developed as a guest student in the Digital Graphics class (Class of Christoph Knoth & Konrad Renner) at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK) with the background of investigating the physical fleetingness of possessions in the digital space. Questions about the reproducibility, aura of a material place and its traceability become visible with the help of tracking technologies and offer the possibility of being viewed and changed interactively. The question will be explored - can the attachment of a place to its location break down and expand, and through digital possession expand, bypass physical boundaries and enable new perspectives, or do our technologies only serve as liminal space for material reality?

Are Non Fungible Tokens {Things?} a purely digital and ephemeral construct? How to pull this digital idea into the physical realm? What defines physical space and the originality of artworks? In an ever-evolving digital landscape, are these ideas future-proof?

If you really want to change the city, or want a real struggle, a real fight, then it would require re-engaging with things like public planning for example, or re-engaging with a large-scale institutionalised developers. I think thats that's where the real struggles lie, that we re-engage with these structures and these institutions, this horribly complex 'dark matter'. That's where it becomes really interesting."(Wouter Vanstiphout, interview with Rory Hyde, 2010)

Artworks on the Blockchain as Hyperobjects?

"Hyperobjects are not simply mental (or otherwise ideal) constrcuts, but are real entities whose primordial reality is withdrawn from humans. [Hyperobjects] exhibit their effects interobjectively; that is, they can be detected in a space that consists of interrelationships between aesthetic properties of objects."
– Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects