two questions;
1. why did the 22 visual designers feel the need to write &sign the 2000 design manifesto when the work an artist does is truly the individual artist's choice? designers are not being forced to put their talents toward certain areas. artists who feel their expertise &help is needed in the areas of cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes, etc., should focus their work toward these areas. artists who believe their skills are more useful in advertising, marketing, and brand development should not be made to feel guilty if that is the work they choose to utilize their talents in. artists should create what they want to &what they feel is important, not what other designers tell them to. who decides what is "worthwhile use?"
2. in reading the paragraph that introduces the idea of the surgeon &the magician in "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction," the preceding material in the essay gave me the idea that benjamin was referring to the painter as the surgeon &the cameraman as the magician. did anyone else feel this way, that benjamin would consider the painter a surgeon, diminishing the distance between himself and his work, and the cameraman a magician, creating in hiding "multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law?" i was confused &surprised when his opinions were clarified in the following paragraph ("the painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web") because i was originally so intrigued by the comparison.
