Walter Benjamin said " To an even greater degree of work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense." I disagree with Benjamin, because the first print of a photo is the original copy, that has a much greater quality. Because of everyone downloading and reprinting photographic artworks, the true value of the authentic copy has been lost in society today. However, i believe in a contemporary society with an emphasis on digital design and manufacture, authenticity plays a large role on the values we give design. This value has also started to move into other areas of design, such as graphic and industrial. The perfect example of all this is the music industry, buying a physical copy of music is becoming less and less popular, with the large amounts of people downloading it off the Internet. To get people to spend money on music again they have designed and made collectables that are in fact more valuable for the everyday person. These collectables have unique pattern designs, an example of this would be the Liars CD cover; which starts with a sleeve, which is removed to reveal a hard back CD case with a concertina attached to the back. When extended you can peek through a window down the concertina to a shot of the band playing the woodland scene.

Craft and Design

Modern craftsmanship is most commonly recognizes through out the world today, as the skill of an individual or a group designed and making as artistic object; without it being mass produced and / or created by machines or in a production line. The object should have a meaning and a reason for being made other that just for money and profit.

An example of 'craft' today that i found is the Broken Bench Chairs, the Unique furniture of clever art, by Fracture Furniture's. these chairs have been designed as benches and then broken apart into groups of two or more. The benches are very simply made, with many different materials. This furniture is made to bring back the sense of tactfulness and the real feeling behind an object. We are used to seeing things smoothed or flattened down and made to a point of near perfection.

In these chairs and benches the properties of each material has been tested and experimented with, these are shown in the final product, like plastic deforms, wood breaks of splinters and concrete and plasters shatter of crack. The designers and craftsman experiment and show the real qualities of the material like the people in our past and history used to.

reference to site

http://dornob.com/broken-benches-chairs-unique-furniture-or-clever-art/