Introduction
Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power… We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.
Paul Valery 1

Living at the beginning of the twenty-first century in new conditions produced by the electronic era, artists confront a revised cultural and technological context. The purpose of this book is to examine the relationship between technological development and aesthetic change. It views the cultural crisis of the present postindustrial age by seeing it as parallel to the wrenching cultural, aesthetic, and social crisis brought about by the Industrial Revolution.

Fundamental to the understanding of the impact of technological media on society as a whole, as well as on perception and the fine arts, is the work of Walter Benjamin. 2 He brought into a key position in critical discourse awareness of the relationship between art and technology. He argued that widespread integrated changes in technological conditions can affect the collective consciousness and trigger important changes in cultural development. His essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936) is a significant assessment of the pivotal role played by photographic technologies (first as catalyst, then as instrument for change) in twentieth-century art.

Benjamin was the first to study mass culture seriously as a focus of philosophic analysis. In "Author as Producer" Benjamin anticipated the crisis of identity, and the loss of moral authority of the author/artist. His interdisciplinary thinking anticipated the interwoven, layered structuring of associations and observations that has come to be understood as the postmodern. It is clear from his writing, particularly "The Arcades Project, " that, while Benjamin understood the potentially positive influence of technology on art and on culture, he was also aware of the major losses created by what he called the loss of "aura, " that sense of uniqueness and primal consciousness that attaches to a singular work of art and that is lost in reproduction. Whether consciously or subconsciously, the independence and the deep integrity of his thinking led him to move philosophy beyond what Adorno called the "frozen wasteland of abstraction" to a concrete engagement with historical concerns and images. 3 This entailed endless examination of the forces which formulate culture. His work is still alive for us today as a medium for "fertilizing the present." 4

Benjamin's work has influenced contemporary cultural critics and theorists including Roland Barthes, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. In addition, aspects of his thought have deeply affected a generation of writers such as John Berger, Raymond Williams, Geoffrey Hartman, Celeste Olalquiaga, and Brian Wallis. His writings are included in important collections of postmodern essays such as Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation (edited by Brian Wallis) and Video Culture (edited by John Hanhardt), among many others. Several of his essays serve as benchmarks for today's generation of students of the social sciences and the arts.