Having run a search on the entire Boidem, I'm rather surprised to discover that although I've mentioned Walter Benjamin a few times in the past, I've never referred to his classic essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. It would be simplifying Benjamin much too much, but a case can still be made that Benjamin's thesis is basically that our perception of art has changed drastically because of our ability to make unlimited copies of a particular work of art. Through reproduction the original "aura" of a work of art is lost, but though some might see this as negative, as a deplorable situation, Benjamin saw it as a tool toward democratization of the arts. The value of art was no longer determined by an elite with access to that art, but became freely open to interpretation by all who now had that access. Perhaps through repetition we free ourselves from only one possible interpretation, allowing myriad angles and aspects to be taken into account.