Subluminal

I recently came back from San Francisco and LA, where I had an interesting conversation on copyrights and the characteristics of a genuine piece of art.

It started with the fact that Shepard Fairey who created the iconic “Hope” picture of Obama has been sued by Mannie Garcia, the photographer who took the original picture and won (the case is not settled, though).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This reminded me of the (more confidential) work of Andy Baio, who revisited Miles Davis in 8 bit : Kind of Bloop. Strangely enough, he was sued not for the music, but for the album cover which was considered to be too close to the original photograph !

The question that these cases eventually raise is “What is an artwork?”, especially in the era of digital transformation/alterations.

If you have watched the movie “Exit Through the Gift Shop” (full length movie on Vimeo, a must see), you might have been shocked by the cynicism of M. Brainwash, who is basically an industrial Fairey. All he does is to reformat and alter photographs, to sell them at high prices. It is shocking, since you are led to consider that his works have no intrinsic value and that art collectioners are just a bunch of fools (which is not far form truth, when you consider the mechanics of speculation around Jeff Koons’).

But remember that this movie is not a documentary : to me, Banksy is a genious scammer : he actually does worthy stuff, and wants to influence you so that you realize that you do not base your judgement on artistic feelings but rather on their social value. He does that in order to extend the question “What is art?” to a whole new horizon. Duchamp superseded.

As I previously stated, art is not only an esthetic emotion : it is also a “social emotion”. Paul Bloom introduced the notion of existentalism, which helps explain the difference between an artwork and a copy, whatever similar they can look, for they don’t give the same amount of “social emotion” :

He tells the story of Goering, a Nazi leader, who was great a fan of Vermeer and acquired a painting he liked a lot (WWII offered great opportunities).

After the Nazis had been defeated, Goering, who was responsible for the death of so many people, discovered that the painting he acquired was a forgery -a very fine imitation, but a fake masterpice nonetheless. Goering has been described like:

he looked as if for the first time he had discovered there was evil in the world

News from the front : open access to culture and science on the way

Recently, PIPA and SOPA have been rejected, thanks to a massive protest in the US, while their equivalent in Europe, ACTA, followed them in the vast nothingness of space.
This is good news. Not that I’m against copyrighting and patenting, but the current notion of intellectual property, designed years ago to allow the spread of knowledge (by giving incentives to music majors or industrial company) is obsolete : the spreading of information has no little-to-no cost.

So obsolete that even the scientists now rebel against scientific journals prices, and call for a free-for-all science, through the Access 2 Research movement.
Their fight is against the high prices of journal, who are a major burden for institutions and labs, while the journals only add a little value : after all, research is done with public funds, and even peer-revieweer are paid by taxpayers. It seems though that the current prestige of certain journals, that is historical, is what ultimately slow the liberation process started this spring.

 

Speaking of science and art :

“Should Newton sue Pink Floyd for stealing is original idea?”

Ressources & references:

I’ve discovered the exitence of Damforst Museum of damaged, forged and stolen art
You will find here an excellent article about digital transformations of iconic work, and what is the ‘Fair Use’
Four Mistakes That Killed the Record Indstry Before File Sharing