Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. In his reflections he focused a great deal on the relationships between art, technology, and mass culture in the modern, technological world. He made a ferocious critique of the way in which capitalism affected human existence and experience, especially with regard to its tendency to commodify and devalue cultural artefacts. His essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” is probably his most important and influential work in this respect, deeply influencing reflection on the significant transformations that the work of art has undergone under the hegemony of modern technology and within the frame of the particular human way of existing in our technological world. Benjamin’s essay is still a major reference today when discussing the conception of art in the age of digital media, the impact of mass production and reproducibility on the aura and authenticity of the work of art, as well as its implications for society, culture, and politics. It shall serve as a starting point for an analysis of the connections between art, technology, and human existence in our contemporary world. In this seminar, we will first focus in critically reading this famous essay by Benjamin in depth and detail, with the idea of complementing this reading with some pages by Vilém Flusser (1920-1991), in which he develops part of his conception concerning the "technical image". This is thought as the first stage of a broader project, consisting of reading together four important referents for a critical approach to our general subject: Benjamin’s essay on the artwork, Heidegger’s “The time of the world image”, some parts of Vilém Flusser’s Communicology and The shape of things, and some parts of the recently published book from Byung-Chul Han Non-things. The syllabus with a detailed bibliography will be provided in the first session.