Technology in Search of an Artist: Questions of Auteurism/Authorship and the Contemporary Cinematic Experience

Anna Notaro

Abstract

Anna Notaro focuses primarily on how the concept of the auteur/author manifests itself today in the context of technological changes and a “digital revolution”. She examines the concept from its inception (in Cahiers du cinéma) through its critical reception by post-structuralists to its contemporary forms – scattered, collective and displaced authorship. The issue of interactivity is also considered; it helps the viewer to become the co-author of a given work. Notaro posits no stiff thesis; she rather offers various approaches to the present condition of the author – those that believe in interactivity and those that see in it an illusion; those that enthusiastically herald the democratisation of authorship via new media and the Internet and those that are skeptical about “techno-utopian” concepts. Notaro’s article also engages with the extremely important phenomena as regards the expansion of new media, including the initiative started by the Open Source Movement, the concept of “Hollywood 2.0” and “Future Cinema”. In her reasoning she is accompanied by the reflection on how the “aura of the artist”, the ethos of the author as master, genius or a singular creator is reflected or lost in contemporary technologies.

• The text is a translation of the article Technology in Search of an Artist: Questions of Auteurism/Authorship and the Contemporary Cinematic Experience published in The Velvet Light Trap 2006, no. 57, pp. 86-97. © 2006 by University of Texas Press.