Thoughts on "aura" in digital art, value, and NFTs (gasp) prompted by The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

A central concept in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is that of 'aura'. Benjamin doesn't really define 'aura' directly, but wikipedia sums it up as:

The aura of a work of art derives from authenticity (uniqueness) and locale (physical and cultural); Benjamin explains that "even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" located.

My understanding (taken from my notes) is aligned:

Aura is implicitly the specific circumstances and history of the object/performance/artwork - i.e. the 'now' of the viewers experience of the artwork and all the 'now's of that artwork that lead up to it from its creation to the viewer's encounter with it

E.g. a film actor's performance looses it's aura because the audience are not able to view it directly - they loose the special connection between the actor/theatre/moment and them

Mechanically reproduced things therefore loose their aura, by definition, which seems a tiny bit unfair since he's basically defining the 'special' thing as being 'the thing that mechanically reproduced things don't have'! However, I do agree that he has a point, that by ceasing to be the work of art, every copy is basically diminished. As noted previously, I think every work of digital art is effectively a copy - there can be 'original' copy as all copies are ephemeral.

This leads me to some questions, and tentative opinions:

• To what extent is aura really important? Does it trump meaning? Is it important to meaning: I suspect the answer is 'it depends'... Aura is important to value - people will pay for the work of art, at least more than for a copy. However, aura perhaps only important to meaning if there is a physical object involved, the digital artwork must be created knowing it will never be an original object, and never have provenance. 
• Is aura a sentimental emotional attachment to the object itself? I think it could be actually - but that doesn't mean it's not important! Sentiment is key to art, as I understand it.
• To what extent is the aura about the object itself and to what extent is it about the experience of seeing it? I suspect it's both - although the object is perhaps just a container for the experiences and encounters it has had.
• To what extent is Benjamin filtering his definition of the artwork through his own prejudice and assumptions? I.e. the editing process that occurs in cinema is arguably as much a part of the artwork as the performance of the actors. There is definitely something 'missing' from a purely digital work but that is made up for perhaps in other ways, which might also drive more engagement, more meaning, more value. There is definitely a feeling for me that Benjamin's views are somewhat rooted in their time - old art is 'good', new art is 'bad'. Old art is precious, new art is popularist and low quality.

I was reflecting that there is definitely a part of the artwork 'missing' by not having a way to attach the 'story' of the artwork to it - every digital copy is cleanly minted, robbed of the dust and scratches of a real object with a real life. NFTs are trumped as a way to add this history back, and actually a lot of the culture of NFTs now makes more sense to me! It's about creating a single instance of the digital artwork, and creating a chain of custody from the artist to the initial buyer, to the subsequent buyers, and NFT artists will work hard to create an 'event' around the minting, which the buyer then becomes part of. So do NFTs solve the 'problem' of aura? They partly solve the problem of value, but:

• Does an NFT actually capture anything other than the idea of a chain of custody? You can prove that I own an NFT of an artwork, but I don't actually own the artwork itself, which can continue to be copied, and those copies are only inferior to people who care about the NFT
• NFTs don't necessarily improve the meaning of an image - although it would be fun to find a way so they did - so the chain of custody became part of the meaning of the artwork itself! E.g. finding a series of owners that themselves are relevant to the artwork e.g. an artwork about the survivors of a traumatic event could be 'owned' in turn by the survivors of that event!
• NFTs are yet another way to create artificial scarcity, which seems morally dubious... Deliberately preventing people from owning an artwork

There's definitely some interesting noodling to be done around using the chain of custody as part of the artwork itself - creating an event that creates a unique artwork by virtue of the people/things/places involved... Not sure what that would look like yet...