Ms Sullivan, you are right -- I was carried away by a series of associations (among them the relationships between presentation, aura, and shock-experience), which, as you've noted, take us far afield from the issue at hand, namely aura.
One of Benjamin's major concerns, however, is the concrete manner of presentation (Dartsellung) employed by a work of art, rather than representational content as such. I think the idea of Aura is meant to capture a distinction in presentation rather than representation. It highlights, I believe, the difference between individual, unique works, which require individual, solitary attention (an 'I' returning the gaze of a 'Thou'). So I don't think we need to force the issue of mechanical processes producing something that doesn't exist in itself, as it were (Benjamin is discussing, technische Reproduzierbarkeit, not mechanische Reproduzierbarkeit [technical, not mechanical reproduction]); It's a question of techniques inherent to a medium, not of mechanism simpliciter. For, if we were especially creative, i think we could describe painting or writing in terms of mechanical/technological processes which create the impression of something that doesn't exist in itself too. Instead, what I think is important is that a mode of artistic production necessitates a mutliplicity of identical -- in every respect (barring accidental damage, etc) -- works, whose value is related to the manner in which audiences engage with it (and here Benjamin's conception of film seems to parallel his understanding of Brecht: montage and defamiliarization essentially operate to create a shock, an interruption, which allows viewers to take stock of the verisimilitude of dramatic production and their own lived experience. But this only works so long as the object isn't essentially prejudged and distanced from its viewers). Although I don't have the essay in front of me, I would point to the passage where Benjamin discusses the necessity of multiple film reels in order to ensure a wider distribution, which allows for lower ticket prices, and a larger audience. In any case, the notion of aura can't -- so i think at least -- be separated from the notion of experience and its fields of possibility, which Benjamin has been developing elsewhere in the essay. Let me find a copy of Benjamin's essay, and I will develop this further. thanks for pulling me back to the text
