Today all communication, design and art forms face a challenge in their encounter
with the advance of digital technologies. Traditional media and their established
institutional structures (media industries, education programs, museums and galleries)
try to incorporate and adapt to these new technologies.
 
The huge body of the diverse directions of experimentation in this ongoing
transformation process is being documented and discussed by many scholars in a
basically empiricist and piecemeal approach. The importance and popularity of the
few writers like Lev Manovich, on the other hand, depends on their recognition of the
dialectics between technology and artistic language in the newly developing modes of
expression and communication. Such theoretical enquiry will be a leading resource
and inspiration for changing the paradigms of practice and research in various media
in the near future.
 
In this paper we reflect upon Walter Benjamin’s well-known essay, “The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” and attempt to summarize some basic
observations related to the emerging role of digital technologies in contemporary
artistic practices.
 
The crucial emphasis in Benjamin’s approach is a “critical interpretation” of the
impact of new technologies in shaping the social and political role of art.  “Theses
about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production”
constitute his main concern: “Their dialectic is no less noticeable in the superstructure
than in the economy. It would therefore be wrong to underestimate the value of such
theses as a weapon. They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as
creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery...”
 
It was 1936; and Benjamin was amazed by the potential of photography and cinema
as the new art forms that were mechanically reproduced. But Benjamin’s vision
eventually comes true in the digital age: the prevalent practices of art in the digital age
remarkably challenge established values and conceptions about art. 
 
 
Devaluation and Democratization of Art
 
On the internet, the ultimate global network, we witness today a superabundant
distribution of commonplace art. The notion of the artistic genius evaporates in the
mechanistic creativity of the multitude. When you visit some popular websites about
Digital Arts you see that there are thousands of artists posting their works. Actually
the main impetus for an artist is the recognition of her work or the criticism she
receives. The internet provides a channel for publication which offers principally
unlimited space when compared to printed media. This potential encourages the
appearance of every amateur or beginner on the international stage. 
 
The consequence is that quantity blurs quality; and we do not have famous masters in
the modern sense anymore. There are no more myths about individual artists; on the
contrary, digital objects usually become anonymous during copying. This is so
widespread a practice that most designs are ad hoc making use of found objects. And
it is often the case that the artist prefers to remain anonymous and uses a nickname. 
 
Actually we observe a general disinterest in copyrights, which can also be the result
of the ease of designing in the digital medium.
 
Since art is digitally distributed now, even the best examples of art are consumed at a
quick glance especially when surfing on the web. The aura is completely lost in the
virtual space: The screen image is definitely transitory; and if you really like some
digital object, you immediately download it into some folder in your hard disk to look
at it later. Contemplation, which defines the appreciation of art in the