Reinvestigating “Cultural Industry” in the Digital Age
Researcher: Ko-Lun Chen
In response to current developments in digital information, artificial intelligence, and data computation technologies, alongside evolving patterns of use, this project seeks to examine whether the critique of the “culture industry” (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1947) remains applicable to today’s conditions.
Following the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, Theodor Adorno argued that through standardised mass production, the commodification of culture and art refrained Erfahrung—a dialectical process between subject and object—in the constraint Erlebnis, wherein individuals merely seek stimulation and satisfaction from artworks. This results in “a palmed-off cultural surrogate” (1997: 245–246), which conceals the autonomy of the artwork as its objectivity and obstructs the subject’s dialectical encounter. Still worth interrogating is whether the products of the culture industry—and the reproducible Erlebnis and effects generated by mass production—ultimately deceive perception and undermine dialectical Erfahrung. Arguably, while facing the capitalisation of cultural formation and the de-aestheticisation of artistic creation, the capital-driven production continues despite critique.
This project reconsiders the critique of the “culture industry” in light of the current Third and so-called Fourth Industrial Revolutions. From the Information Age in the mid-20th century, the most recent Fourth addresses how the implementation and popularisation of Cyber-Physical Systems reshape labour, creativity, perception, and aesthetics. This research unfolds in three parts: first, revisiting the culture industry’s response to technological development, with attention to aesthetic questions and material conditions; second, exploring how emerging digital technologies and AI restructure labour and production; third, analysing performing arts cases to investigate immersive experience, digital embodiment, and synthetic liveness, questioning how audience participation is re-defined and manipulated.
