This units essay was heavily inspired by the Year 1 Seminars on Walter Benjamin that I participated in at the beginning of this term. Although I had already read his work and aware of his ideas, these seminars (conducted by Paul O’Kane) really allowed me to dissect Benjamin’s ideas in a group forum as I felt that I understood Benjamin better than I ever had before.
From this then I re-read many of his famous works such as The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov , ‘Introduction’ to Illuminations, A Short History of photography, The Arcades project etc. in order to re-analyse my original thoughts on the subject.
After doing this, I realised that a common trend running through Benjamin’s writing were the idea of the future, and the future of technology in the arts. From this then began to annotate and cross analyse Benjamin’s ideas on the future an this really became the basis for my essay.
For my this essay is very important as it forms yay primary interest of my dissertation as I feel such a strict focus really allowed my work to start concise and detailed. In addition, I really feel that I have learnt more about Benjamin and his discourse throughout the process.
In terms of my dissertation I plan to conduct even more in-depth research into Benjamin’s ideas, as well as his contemporaries and those who inspired Benjamin and really discuss the idea of the future of the arts and to what degree that successfully predicted the future, especially regarding image-making technology such as photography and film.
Essay Plan:
