Something that’s on my mind a lot lately; Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building /faust, more here: /july, web: july.rocks

Interesting how art does feel "local" in space and time. It makes it real, in the physical science sense.

This exert reminds of, if not mistaken, Baudelaire explaining we cannot replay the past. Like movies on mythology, say Troy or Gladiator: Tainted by our current society norms. Pitt's Achilles is too 21st century.

Scientist and engineer interested in Life across the Universe.

Work on (GOF)AI, Agriculture, Biology, Robotics, Deep Space.

Big fan of HBO's Rome. A well thought through series, I wish they made more of shows that really adhered to these "details" as you described them

The 2005 HBO series Rome tries more historical veracity. Like how slaves are mentally locked into how normal their life is then, how "obvious" the difference with citizens, etc.

Many movies and books "situated" in ancient Rome pass on this "detail", as the "now audience" would not hook up with the story.

Yet I used to feel something of the sort with Apple computers, rather mass produced. There is something about “design” efforts—quotes needed as design means different things for Apple and, say, Microsoft or Samsung.

I think that's why a lot of art is only understandable (especially modern art) through its context (for better and for worse) - also this specific "locality" is what Benjamin goes onto call "Aura" which goes missing in this industrial reproduction of objects - which don't have "Aura" are not art