Be Andr
Painting in the Age of Technological Reproducibility: Re-establishing the Humanity of Touch

There is a palpable threat to painting becoming not useful in a society that is dominated by technology. The way technology has infiltrated all aspect of our lives, has created a dependency on algorithmic coding, which is problematic in relation to the loss of the human touch in everyday life. There is a loss in the sensuousness, in what is understood as originality of art. Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility introduced aura and this thesis takes this to the next stage of digital paradigm shift; the world of artificial distributed intelligence, where it appears that scenarios that is not technological become obsolete.

This thesis take what painting has traditionally offered; a form of originality, sensuousness, communicated intimacy, and show how that can be embodied in the technological process. Within the heart of digital code intimacy exists. It exists via certain form of tactility that is intimately connected to undecidability and in-determination.

I argue that the assemblage of the algorithmic and the human touch enables the affective; the desire and emotion to re-enter through the haptic dimension of the hand’s touch. The touch is not simply the function of the hand, touch can be amalgamated to coding. This encounter introduces humanity back into to the quantitative system of the algorithmic, securing the human sensuousness to remain present.