What is the aura of a work of art in the age of mass-production technologies?

Walter Benjamin

Is there the reminiscence of presence in an original?

Original is a construct of time, space and culture. The manifestion of idea to object is constained to the medium of material.

This materiality is the integrity of the original and that which maintians it's construct of presence.

Replicas lose the aura of the original through filtering of material and the sensibility those materials evoke.

This is seen in design 'knock-offs' which at first glance may seem like an original but their material sensibility only imitates.

Forgeries on the other hand, try to dupe these sensations by masquerading the material's temporal sensibility.

Their expert mimickry gather 'original' material and their use,

to fool the eye's interpretation becoming a form of tromp l'oeil trying to encapsulate the aura of the original.

The digital cannot be replicated or forged. Only copied verbatim, without distinction. It is an individual multiple.

The digital negates all materiality, rendering aura absolete. The dematerialization of the digital focuses on the seen.

The sensibility of materials is implied through a sensate inventory filtered by the visual.

So the mere concept of original has to be redefined when works are constructed by or transfered to the digital.

The intersection of act and idea form a communicative device which is transferable through an unobjectified medium of exchange