Class Six Summary: from museums and galleries to Benjamin

October 17, 2007


Focus: expanding the domain of internet pedagogy to museums/galleries

There are many ways we educate. First we think of schools. But there are also museums and galleries. There is also the internet. How do these relate? Are they independent “silos” that don’t speak to another? Or does Castells “network of flows” apply here?

Museums and galleries often consider themselves to be primarily educational institutions. Their stated goal is often “to educate”. But they do it differently than the classroom.

Lisa Robert’s study is called from knowledge to narrative. She distinguishes four functions: entertainment, empowerment, experience and ethics. Interestingly, her chapters are not "museums as …" but "education as …" Under the heading of “experience” she discusses the culture of imitation, of authenticity and of simulation.

The internet, too, focuses on these same dimensions.

We need to expand the concept of education beyond the classroom walls. The museum and gallery do this as stand-alone institutions. The internet also teaches as a stand-alone phenomenon...with or without the input of the formal educational establishment. But these can also relate. Museums and galleries can use the internet to enhance their image and to promote their programs. This is the idea behind Croft’s analysis of museums in the 21st century, To highlight just one of Croft’s comments (from Lucille’s presentation) “Looking at a screen is a chore; Looking at the real thing becomes a rare treat in comparison.”

Antoinette led us through the complex classic paper by Walter Benjamin (1936) provides a challenging and theoretic position. His title “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction: is critical. Today we have gone beyond “mechanical reproduction.” Perhaps it should be “electronic reproduction” or “”the network society.” But his work is remarkably contemporary.

He is chronicling the move from a world of real objects to a world of copies. The internet is a world of copies and inauthentic objects. One does need to be clear… that is not necessarily bad; it simply is. Indeed, Benjamin likes the new media: technology (film in his case) “extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives.” On the other hand, what is lost is “aura”. There is an almost spiritual reverence towards the real thing which disappears when everything is a copy.

In today’s world, the original has lost its power; indeed often there may not be an original any more. Everything is a copy. This moves towards the postmodern theories of Jean Baudrillard.

[The following did not come up in class, but is added here. An interesting move from Benjamin in 1936 to today can be found in two works. Patrick Geary's Phantoms of remembrance: Memory and oblivion at the end of the first millennium discusses the transition from orality to the written record. Sophie Simons follows this with her analyses and review of The Jerwood Photography Project at the British Library. She writes :


Other essays in the book present case studies examining the multiple identities given to or created by photographic objects as they move between different domains: from private to public, from commercial commodity on the art market to the confines of an institutional home in museum, gallery or library.

AND

“A photograph might be invested with an aura of sanctity.”

And finally…

"The concluding essay by Joanna Sassoon illuminates many of the preceding discussions by contrast. It is a sharp critique of the negative impact on photographic materiality, as she sees it, caused by the huge and ongoing wave of contemporary institutional digitisation projects. While not denying the benefits to public access and preservation, Sassoon interprets digitisation as a process that changes the meaning of photographic objects. She argues that it is often the materiality of photographs which is lost in the process of creating 'digital ghosts' and considers the impact of this loss on photographic research. She warns that 'institutions that manage photographs as digital image banks shift the way photographs are understood and likewise limit the origins of photographic meaning from being contextually and materially derived to being content-driven.'"

Sassoon asks:
Is the original different from its digital surrogate? Can context change meaning? Does digitization serve us well?

This leads to what must be a significant question for us today: Is the internet (google) the collective memory of the 21st century?]



…all of this is heady stuff.

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The last part of the class moved towards one of these unique internet constructs in which the idea of an original is stretched to the limit. Wikipedia created by Jimmy Wales is such an object. Its ideal is an encyclopedia in the hands of everyone. We previewed Wales at TED, explaining his concept. The strengths of wikipedia are (1) its currency (2) its democratic nature (3) its volunteer base. Its weaknesses are (1) lack of credibility (2) unsigned articles (3) open to vandalism.

AJ Jacobs is one journalist who has explored the co-operative nature of wikipedia entry creation. (See his latest just released book The Year of Living Biblically.

Best advice at this point: Use wikipedia for gaining a quick overview of a topic … but don’t tell anyone. Don’t reference wikipedia in a paper. (You cannot reference it anyway, because there is no author.)

Wikipedia also has implications for the concept of “constructivist learning” and indeed may be the quintessential example of constructivism operationalized. And pushed to the limit. What happens when “everyone” is the author of a paper? Gilbert and Sullivan wrote in the Gondeliers “When everyone is somebody, no one’s anybody.”

We concluded the evening by examining two interesting websites with a pedagogic potential: Sparknotes.com and nytimes.com. These were both listed in my day five notes (one of the five research sites noted), but we ran out of time to complete that. Both are useful resources, though the latter is heavily American in content and should be used with care.


Next Class: Please read assigned articles. (See previous blogpage)