Smiley Face - 2/5

Today's class helped me understand both the readings for this week. With the difference interpretations of the aesthetic and our general development of a postmodernist culture, there is more of a strive to regress to the times of the 'original.' From the classist appreciation for art, the renaissance moved more towards the aestetic being found through the means of science and reason. Today's appreciation of the beautiful is very different to how it was in a way that represents the development of new technologies and opportunities. As much as we live in a culture of commodity and the nee to consume so that we can identify ourselves amongst everyone around us, we still strive to feel unique (for example getting an iPod that lots of other people have, yet getting our name engraved on the back to somewhat distinct ourselves different from the rest and be 'original').
As much as companies contradict themselves by mass-reproducing an original, the art of print-making is in fact reproducing the original. The print comes from the carved piece of linoleum, yet that is not the art work. The art work is the print that results on the piece of paper from transfering the desing onto it. Therefore, the original is being copied over and over while maintaining its oriinality. One could argue that with each print the artist must go through the process of applying the ink and that application can change depending on the amount added, and that could subsequently make differences between each original yet these differences are still original to that piece.
This desire for the original has transcended today as a way of finding what is considered beautiful as well as finding reality. The realism approach to media is making us question our reality as it goes above and beyond what we consider 'reality.' As discusssed in CMC 100, MTV record college students partying and clubbing because it's what assume they do while those students act that way because it's the way they are depicted in media and therefore it is assumed that everyone else acts that way also. The never-ending cycle of expectations, realism, originality and aesteticism are the reasons that I believe propel Lyotard to state that a war should be wages against totality.