To mark the publication of the new book, ‘The Art of Mechanical Reproduction: Technology and Aesthetics from Duchamp to the Digital’ (University of Chicago Press, 2015), the author, Tamara Trodd is joined by Briony Fer, Ed Krcma and Klara Kemp-Welch to reflect on themes arising from Walter Benjamin’s famous essay and more widely on questions of artistic making in relation to industrial and technological production. What are the politics of ‘reproduction’ in art history, e.g. as a theoretical model for artistic succession and inheritance? Does anything of the utopian energy of early avant-garde embraces of technology survive today? Along or perhaps evading the axis of production and reproduction that Benjamin charted, what is the interest of the test and experimental objects artists make – why and how do they compel our interest?  How and why does the idea of a ‘medium’ emerge in art history, and what cultural politics does it serve? In what ways is the category of ‘nature’ put at stake by Benjamin’s theorisation of ‘mechanical reproduction’, and what might this mean for us today? What is the potential of Benjamin’s theorisation of toys and games for understanding artistic production and reception?