Aura dripping

What's going on here is what academics describe as "slippage of the auratic". Walter Benjamin theorised about the "aura" possessed by the singular artwork, the painting or sculpture, in the age of mechanical reproduction. Yet as digital culture takes over, "aura" is being conferred on things that not long ago would once have been considered mass produced and characterless. In the age of the webzine and MP3, it is solid-form cultural artifacts – vinyl records, vintage DJ mixtapes, yellowing magazines – that become attractive in the face of the infinite dissemination and seeming ephemerality of web culture. In this respect, fanzines have a significant edge over even a golden-era copy of NME or Rolling Stone, in so far as they're limited-run and thus closer to being a one-off. Fanzines are dripping with "aura". They're special too because they're typically the singular expression of an individual, who often appears to be deranged with enthusiasm or frustration. And in addition to evoking the fanatical intensity of particular moments in music history, they tend to contain amateur photography of bands or gigs: images that haven't been widely disseminated or officially approved.