Always the real the thing?

Authenticity in the age of digital reproduction

Abstract

Walter Benjamin’s famous 1935 essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ addresses the authenticity of a work of art as something beyond the merely material and technical. Benjamin constructs a broader notion of authenticity that includes ‘the life of things’ and is related to new techniques in artistic production. This broader sense of authenticity is used here to explore how it may help us to understand architecture in the age of digital reproduction. Two aspects of authenticity in Benjamin’s article are discussed: process reproduction and image  reproduction.

In process reproduction, authenticity is transformed through the mediation of technical procedures. Benjamin’s analysis of photography and film is a seminal version of how the digital age raises new questions through tools and techniques such as programs, coding and algorithms. The work of Kees Christiaanse in collaboration with Ludger Hovestadt provides an example of an increasingly algorithmic approach to urban planning. In image reproduction, the question of authenticity revolves around the increasing proliferation of images. In this context, the Wangjing soho complex by Zaha Hadid and its apparent imitation by a Chinese developer proves illuminating. These projects show aspects of the changing conditions of the digital age, in which new techniques of realization may transform current notions of authenticity.