When John Philip Souza wrote in 1906 bemoaning the arrival of the phonograph and its impact on the musical profession, he questioned the ability of the ‘soul’ of a piece of music to be transmitted through a reproduction. In 1936, Walter Benjamin formalized this objection in the application of photography to the visual artwork. In his essay we see the concept of a work of art’s ‘aura’. The changes that occurred in both of these fields were complex -- while the initial media themselves did not change, another medium brought forth second order effects that forced a transition of context to both of these media. In so doing, these second order mediations ultimately became the target of the original acts, and therefore dramatically changed the direction of the artistic fields.

Prior to the recorded sound, music was a transitory phenomenon; its seat through time lay only in the human brain and as sheet music notation paired with instrumental traditions. Its reproduction was cumbersome and manual, requiring space and skilled human labor. The mechanization of sound reproduction allowed this storage to be collected into a paired device with physical object of memory. This redirected earlier performances of musical scores into mere production of sound to be recorded onto condensed physical media.

A working definition of soul will allow us to evaluate Souza’s skepticism regarding its transmissibility through recorded media. Let us assign ‘soul’ to refer that aspect of a human that carries informational content, a position consistent with our intuitive historical concept of soul within a deterministic universe. The soul of music is then precisely that which the mechanical reproduction intends to maximize: not, perhaps, its temporal concentration, but surely its overall human impact, and the distribution of its effects into the neural memory of humankind.

Given this context, the field of performed music evolves into a precursor for the recorded object; the restrictions are to that which can be transmitted through a mechanical apparatus for sound recording and generation: the accepted definition of music expands dramatically, and, as Mark Katz explores, so does its aesthetic.

Turning to Benjamin’s essay, we can reconsider the concepts of aura, exhibition value, and cult value. The soul of a work of visual art seems to be that information which is to be transmitted. Aura refers to the information transmitted solely through the context of a work, especially through its uniqueness and thus cult value. The exhibition value is more closely aligned with what can be considered the artwork’s soul; it is what is, and what is denoted. It is the life of the work itself, regardless of its material composition or location.

In the visual arts, the tradition of photography has allowed the concept of a visual artwork to transcend restriction by the physical and cult aspects of its material basis. It has encouraged a drift to focus on soul, on the pattern of its organization rather than the material itself. This drift is one that allows eternity to apprehend the arts and permanence to enliven their context. Once a physical painting is meaningful only as support for its visual stimulus, the artwork consists of the stimulus, and is something that is at least theoretically irrespective of time.

This in turn promotes the consideration of artwork as a spatio-temporal entity: something that unfolds through time can nonetheless be represented outside of time. We have seen this, notably, in recorded sound, but it is also strongly apparent in the emergence of performance art: postmodern expressive acts, in general, imply both a physical and temporal presence, and therefore rely on a contemporary consideration of recording for their legitimacy as artwork.

What is it that is fundamentally projected onto a physical spatial media? In what ways do the methods of projection impact the sources of expression that target that physical instantiation? How do the limitations of their action constrict the expressions that are represented? How are these limitations overcome, and with what varying reliance on pre-existing semiotic conventions?

How can interfaces and media be classified and considered to best evaluate their constrictive or restrictive effects on the artworks that rely on them? What would an ideal interface consist of in the visual arts? Ultimately, how has the evolution of interfaces over time changed the output of soul in art, and how might this evolution progress and continue to challenge recorded work in the future?