Benjamin in a digital era

In his 1936 essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Walter Benjamin analyzes the impacts of reproducing artwork by 'contemporary' means, focusing on the 'aura' of authentic works. He theorises that original artworks possess an 'aura', not due to the inherent 'beauty' of the art, but rather a number of extrinsic factors such as "its known line of ownership, its restricted exhibition, its publicized authenticity, or its cultural value." (Wikipedia article: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction)

By this definition of 'aura', it is a reasonable deduction to assume that Benjamin would not have considered the vast majority of, if any, digital productions to possess one. Digital medias have a basic implementation of interesting, amusing, or otherwise appropriating a reaction from the viewer; none of which fall under Benjamin's definition.

A photoshopped image cannot be considered to be 'authentic' in an artistic sense, as the basic principle of photoshop is to alter a preexisting artistic interpretation. 'Authenticity' is generally defined as something that is new or original, not an alteration of another's work.

With digital art media (e.g photoshop, CGI editing tools, video and sound multimedia editing) now readily available to the general populace, every day citizens have the capacity to alter and interpret preexisting art in their own way. This leads to an ever-evolving digital creation which will forever change art in its original form; a far stretch from the cultural stereotype of 'high' or 'sophisticated' art, which was generally only considered to be produced and enjoyed by upper echelons of society; the art which Benjamin initially considered as developing the concept of 'aura'.