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Review: Illegal Art
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The exhibit is of artwork on the legal fringes of intellectual property, litigation clouds loom over many of the pieces. (Buy now! This is a limited time offer! ;-) Even to an artistic ignoramus such as myself, it's clear the exhibit contains classic works of the genre. In this category are such items as the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" (Poster, 1967) by the Mad Magazine artist Wally Wood, and the trademark certificate which certifies Professor Kembrew McLeod's ownership of the phrase "Freedom of Expression" (Conceptual, 1998). I also particularly enjoyed the finely detailed Spiderman quilt (Untitled) (Commercial fabric and recycled materials, 2002) by Ai Kijima and the counterfeit postage stamps, including "Prozac" (Computer generated laser print, 1996), of Michael Hernandez de Luna. De Luna creates stamps good enough to fool postal workers, as attested to by successfully delivered letters complete with postmarks. (Sorry, I cannot find any contact info for this Chicago artist on the web.)
An exhibition like this is innately political and nowhere is this more apparent than in the exhibition's video accompaniment, much of which is strongly anti-war and anti-corporate. Like the visual artwork, the borderline legality of the video work is due to its appropriation of corporate trademarks and sampling of copyrighted work. What makes it interesting as well as sometimes funny, regardless of your politics, is how the material reveals the manipulative techniques of everyday media and thereby turns the content against its owners. The very strength of the alternative message the videos present is often due to the strength of the original images.
Audio works are also included in the exhibit but I have not had the time to sample the wares.
Those who can't physically visit the exhibition in Chicago can experience many of the works via the Illegal Art web site. Video, audio, and visual art is available for download. A number of works have been added to the exhibit since it has come from New York. Images of the Chicago artists' work should be added to the web site as soon as the organizers get around to it. FWIW, rumor has the exhibit traveling to San Francisco.
It is good to see that in this age of major corporatism and restrictive copyright laws that there is at least some vestige of free expression. Too bad it is not showing in my area.
"This kind of stuff has been on the Internet for years [news] but Disney seems to pretend it doesn't exist."
That may be because it's unfeasible for Disney to hunt down and pursue every last infringer.
Four years ago, University of Iowa professor Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase "Freedom of Expression"--then hired a lawyer to sue for infringment.
There's modern day society for you.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
"This kind of stuff has been on the Internet for years"
Yeah, but 99% of it is a bunch of poor-quality cut-and-paste jobs, a bunch of horny prepubescent boys discovering what their warez copies of Photoshop can do. "Disneyland Memorial Orgy," on the other hand, is obviously done by a professional. This guy spent more than five minutes producing it and obviously had something more in mind beyond "heh-heh... they're naked!" This was obviously intended as satire.
A lot of college towns do something very similar to this. You can get a card which you basically use like a debit card, but instead of spending dollars, you spend "collegebucks" (or whatever they call it in your town). Various merchants throughout the community agree to honor these collegebucks. Of course, one generally puchases this currency with real national currency.
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I don't think art necessarily has anything to do with effort, and not that much to do with originality. Art is a constellation of practices as discourses - conversations - that use aesthetics as a touch point. Effort and novelty are irrelevant.
Again, people mixing the ideas of freedom and copyright issues.
/. logo, I guess it is copyright/left and not GLP'd. /. has good viewer ownership, even those who hate /. feel a party to what it stands for, so your support is now being associeted with Microsofts new endeavour to associate open source with crime, 3rd world poverty, poverty and starvation in the richest countries, child abuse in the world and the lack of a balanced diet we all suffer from.
If I was to create an image, an association, an icon which stood for something, and someone was to twist this creation, twist this idea, without my consent, then my ideas themselves have been taken and twisted, with my own creative efforts.
Satire is a fundemantal tool we have to give freedom to our voices against political/commercial oppression, it gets things noticed.
The whoring of the Starbucks logo is on one hand, an expression of an opinion, which should in no means be suppressed. However, using the device in the satire is the point in question.
Starbucks is associated with this device, and it is only be used because it serves a purpose, that is, if starbucks had a different logo, it would make this work less effective, it is tied to this assocoation, to the feelings it emits.
Should we allow this? On one hand, I like the idea of being able to take the identity of a company, and tear it to shreds publicly. On the other hand, using their work that they developed, their iconic identity, is it more than a mere identity symbol.
Lets not talk about identity theft, but if the starbucks logo was a beautifully crafted work of art, then would it surpass the artistic license of reference?
Would it be theft to make a derivative work of art? I think so. Lets take this to sites such as deviantart.com, which probably has the largest collection of online art that is digitally managed, and attibuted to so many authors. Many works on that site are reworked and, on suggestions from many artists including myself, you can now attribute your sources for this work, and also express a permission on a derivative work, appeasing viewers.
Given that some of the pieces just hijack the aesthetic pleasing qualities of a work available, and use it to convey a message of their own devising, compounds this as not being fruitful to society. This not only associates the artist with this message, but devalues the work, as others hijack it. We cannot stop this, but should we encourage it?
Imagine Microsoft took Slashdots logo, and reworked it to associate them with hacking and insecurity, and everything it stands for is bad. And people believe it. I am not sure on the rights of the
Ownership of work, and the right to protect what it stands for is paramount, for both sides. Remember, artwork is inherently open source, you can see exactly what it composite aspects are, if you can see in the normal colour spectrum (and we are talking about art that can be defined as viewable through the normal human-visible spectrum).
So if you think open-source == free, then forget it. If you agree that you can take any work, no matter what, and make a modified clone version, then forget it, if you think linux == open-source then remeber it is also free, and some open source, accessible works aren't free (not beer).
Even free(beer), open-source software may come under restrictions that you cannot modify it (copyleft)
Yes it is nice, and fitting to twist up a corporate logo, and yes some peoples works can be used to involke the opposite emotion, but like Gary Larson said, their works are like children, they are protective over them.
What if someone kidnapped your kid, and decided to twist it up for their own agenda, especially if it isn't one you subscribe to.