In his essays, Walter Benjamin describes the impact of the technological innovations of the Second Industrial Revolution on the perception and reception of the work of art. Through technical reproduction, i.e. photography, film and the gramophone, the work of art, which was once characterised by its unique existence in time and space, has become mass reproduced and universally accessible. In this way, according to Benjamin, it loses its authenticity, its authority is shaken and, as a consequence, the aura of the object begins to deteriorate. In my MA thesis I examine the latest trend in digital art - the non-fungible token, or NFT. It introduces the notion of scarcity into the digital world of perfect copies and unlimited reproduction by means of blockchain technology. An NFT is a permanent, unique piece of data in a blockchain that identifies a piece of art and records its entire history from creation to the last owner. It seems that authenticity is no longer limited to the »here« and »now« of an object, because the historical narrative is also no longer limited to the »here« and »now« of the original. I wonder whether, in the context of the blockchain, the concept of aura, as set out by Benjamin, has the same content as it did during the Second Industrial Revolution. In the digital space, tradition has never been and never will be conceived in an original work of art, but the notions of authenticity, uniqueness, cult authority and aura are something that humanity does not want to give up.
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