Mass production of works of art in the "digital era"

Alikhanova Veronika Levanovna Postgraduate Student, Department of History of Philosophy and Culture, Voronezh State University 394018, Russia, Voronezhskaya oblast', g. Voronezh, Universitetskaya ploshchad', 1 alihanova.veronika@mail.ru Other publications by this author

In the modern socio-cultural situation, digital technologies have a huge impact on the life of a person and society as a whole, and we feel this influence on ourselves literally every day. We listen to music, read books and watch movies on a variety of gadgets, we count steps and calories in special applications, and our messages and calls now come directly to the watch on our wrist. The list of digital technologies that we use on a daily basis can be continued for quite a long time, and in the context of a pandemic, the impact of numbers on society has increased even more. However, the processes of digitalization have a very ambiguous impact on society in general and on culture in particular. Various aspects of the problem are touched upon both in domestic and foreign literature, but the classical and generally accepted point of view has not yet been developed. In fact, we are direct witnesses and even accomplices in the development of digitalization, which determines the novelty and relevance of the study. Nevertheless, there are a number of works and authors that precede modern socio-humanitarian studies. These are V. Benjamin, H. Ortega-i-Gasset, N. Luhmann, N. Goodman, etc. In this article, we will try to consider the interaction of digitalization processes with the changes that occur with various forms of art. In our opinion, digitalization has an impact on almost all aspects of the existence of art in modern culture.

Our reasoning should begin with the definition of digitalization. So, "Digitalization in a narrow sense is considered as the transformation of information into a certain digital form that contributes to the formation of new opportunities in certain areas of life. In a broad sense, digitalization is defined as a worldwide trend of effective global development of various spheres of public life based on the transformation of information into a digital form that contributes to improving the quality of life" ^{[1, p. 335]}. In the definition, we can notice some positive attitude of the author to the phenomenon under consideration, based on the phrase "contributing to the improvement of the quality of life" and "effective world development". Digital technologies really, on the one hand, make a person's life easier, make it more comfortable. However, is the positive impact of digitalization on art so obvious? In our opinion, the modern situation of art development is characterized by the interaction of the processes of digitalization and mass production. Let's try to define the process of massing. So, "in a broad sense, massization is the transformation of a non-mass (based on the primacy of creative–altruistic elite values, on vertical mobility, ascent to the elite) anthroposociocultural system and its elements (culture – society - man) to their mass, internally homogeneous state" ^[2]. It should be noted that massing includes a fairly large number of manifestations, the totality of which is its essence. Important signs of massing are the destruction of established ideological attitudes, the dominance of the emotional and sensual over the logical and rational, the growth of the role of the unconscious, etc., as noted by A.S. Starygina ^{[3, p.61]}. Let's consider some aspects of the influence of digitalization on the forms of art development in the modern situation, as well as the manifestations of their connection with the processes of mass production. Let's make a reservation that it will be mostly about fine art, in order to avoid excessive breadth of reasoning.

The development of modern digital technologies has a fairly high pace, as evidenced by the emergence of a large number of special services and applications for broadcasting art. These services are aimed at making digital copies of masterpieces of art more interesting, popular, unusual for the user of digital technologies. These technologies are used not only in the Internet space, but also in cultural institutions that use them in order to attract visitors. These are, for example, interactive expositions. An invisible code is placed on the surface of the exhibit, which is read by a special application, in which the image begins to move, becomes "alive", and animates. Such applications have gradually become available not only for use in museum spaces, but also for entertainment. Now, using a smartphone, you can see a moving picture from a postcard with a reproduction, for example. Special postcards of this type have appeared on sale, and artists who create their works in such a way that they can be considered by such an application have also become popular. An example of such a phenomenon can be the augmented reality application ScanAr. On their website we can read: "Augmented reality (English augmentedreality – AR) is an advanced technology that allows you to complement the perception of the real world with virtual (digital) elements. It is created through the use of mobile devices. With the help of a mobile device camera, the user sees the surrounding reality in real time, and the intelligent combination of print and digital channel creates a multimedia show, blurring the boundaries between virtual and real content" ^[4]. No less popular service for animating images is DeepNostalgia. With the help of it, you can "try on" a smile to the image in the picture, make it turn its head or blink, etc. With an arc, such a service is a Round Deep Fake neural network running on the telegram platform. You can also talk about online services and neural networks, with the help of which you can make the canvas move directly on the network, if you add a digital reproduction to the site, and then the network will use special algorithms. In the space of social networks, such techniques are currently quite popular. An example is the project of Denis Shiryaev, who tried to show what the heroes of famous canvases would look like today. Works of art are increasingly becoming entertainment material, like memes in popular videos. Now we can laugh by watching short videos showing, for example, "A girl with a pearl earring", on whose face we see bright makeup, or "Mona Lisa" taking a selfie. "Today, in the era of total computerization, non-mass classical art, modern arthouse cinema, and other arts that embody not mass aesthetics, but original, deep, in many cases deeply author's perception of the world and man are being massively disseminated. The novels of Leo Tolstoy or A.I. Solzhenitsyn, circulating on the Internet, do not cease to be a complex, serious art – although they are undergoing very widespread distribution and they may even have so–called fan fiction" ^[5] - E.V. Salnikova notes. All this makes you think – is art in its traditional forms no longer interesting to the viewer? Why do we need filters and neural networks if the works of Vermeer and Leonardo da Vinci are beautiful in themselves? Of course, there is nothing wrong with trying to make art in the digital space more vivid and accessible, but it seems to us that these services and applications sometimes excessively distort the original work of art. Perhaps it is a new way of interpretation, a new reading, a new life of art, or perhaps it is a mockery of it. Probably, the most neutral attitude will be to such practices as gaming: "It is difficult to see serious actual potential in the samples of science-art, computer art, video art. In the gigantic stream of mass culture (TV series, fantasy, shows, clips ...), one can, having gained optimism, see the primordial chaos from which a beautiful logos, the highest order, is born, but now even the outlines of this logos cannot be imagined" ^{[6, p.543]}.

The high level of development of digital technologies can contribute to the gradual severing of the connection between a work of art and its viewer. To put it in terms introduced by Ortega y Gasset, we can say that the process of dehumanization of art continues in the modern world, and this is partly due to digitalization. The viewer has the opportunity to come into contact with a digital copy of a work of art using a variety of digital technologies, while not referring directly to the work, that is, to its original or reproduction, "Even in the most perfect reproduction there is one moment missing: here and now the work of art is its unique being in the place in which it is located. The history in which the work was involved in its existence was based on this uniqueness and nothing else" ^{[7, p. 194]}. The museum, gallery, exhibition hall cease to be the only translators of art, lose their exclusive right to the viewer. Their functions can partly be performed by gadget screens, from which digital reproductions can be observed, theatrical productions begin to be broadcast in cinemas, in which films-excursions to the great museums of the world are also rolled. An average viewer who wants to touch art can do it today without visiting special institutions. For this purpose, many applications and special devices have been created, with the help of which you can get acquainted with works of art online without leaving the room. Of course, initially, as we think, the use of digital technologies in art was aimed at popularizing it, increasing the accessibility of art, "shortening the path" from the viewer to the work. However, in the end, in our opinion, this turns against both the viewer himself and art in general. Attempts to make art in its digital reproductions as accessible as possible to any person mean that it is aimed at the mass, the most average viewer without special knowledge for its perception, without high aesthetic taste, without pretensions. The result is the massization of art. As a result, a person gradually moves away from long art, which is replaced by a digital copy, a kind of simulacrum of the work. N. Goodman wrote about the change in the perception of the world and art: "The world is diverse, it can be described, seen, and colored in different ways" ^[8]. Digital technologies greatly contribute to the angle of view on classical and modern works of art. In addition, this approach reduces the aesthetic taste of the viewer, forms a consumer attitude to art, increasingly shifting the emphasis towards the show. Even if we consider as controversial the fact that digital reproduction is in any way inferior to a genuine masterpiece, we still recognize that the number of reasons for referring directly to genuine art or its reproduction in a cultural institution is increasingly decreasing for the ordinary man in the street. In the digital space, art cannot be perceived in the same way as in the space specially reserved for it. As a result, we comprehend art without touching the work of art itself. Rather, we are learning not exactly art, but a completely new phenomenon, its new form, which is perhaps quasi-art. Naturally, this does not mean that we can no longer visit art spaces if we wish, and we emphasize that the pretentious viewer, whom we could previously call elitist, who has a request for contact directly with art, will not lose the need for contact with it somewhere other than the Internet, and will continue visiting museums, galleries etc. But above we were talking about the most average viewer, who can now feel the need to leave the house to learn art and is content with its digital simulacra.

It is obvious that digitalization is not the only factor contributing to the mass characterization of art. It is impossible not to take into account that these processes are associated with other equally important ones – for example, with a change in the status of the author, with a change in the understanding of the phenomenon of creativity in principle, etc. However, in our opinion, there are causal relationships between the above processes. Thus, digital means of broadcasting art significantly affect its perception, the process of creation and storage. Being digitalized, works of art that fall into the network are becoming more accessible, but at the same time simplified, oriented to a wide audience, that is, they lose their elite status in the network, undergoing the processes of mass production. In addition, art on the web is increasingly acquiring an entertaining character, as if becoming content. It can be subjected to Photoshop and other manipulations to please the viewer, which makes digital reproduction more like a joke, surr, than art in general. These facts allow us to talk about the connection between the processes of mass and digitalization in the modern socio-cultural situation. Of course, we do not seek to assess the consequences of digitalization in an exclusively negative light. This process has a contradictory nature, which was emphasized above. The positive aspects of digitalization and, in particular, its manifestations in art, can be called an increase in the availability of art, the emergence of new forms of its distribution and broadcast, as well as new forms of the existence of art and opportunities for its popularization.

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