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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.
What, is there something good on TV or something?
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
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.
The ascii-art version of the CSS-auth code: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/Pooshee bla-dvd.html
Repeal the DMCA!
....to those of us who are reading /. instead of being out at a themed party *cough* might be the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" link.
(yeah, I'm one of the above mentioned too...go figure)
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
This kind of stuff has been on the Internet for years but Disney seems to pretend it doesn't exist. Anyone ever hear of any lawsuits coming out of this sort of fan art/fiction (other than Star Trek, which has gotten a lot of press here :).
:)
(Note: I know the piece I am talking about is from the 60's, not implying it's unoriginal
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
What would happen if I copied their site and put it online on a Geocities page? Think they'd sue?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
What would happen is that the artist, Boggs, would go into a shop and ask to buy something. He would try to convince the person at the checkout to accept a Boggs note rather than a normal one. So, he might offer you a £5 Boggs note in exchange for £5 worth of goods. If you felt that his art was worth £5, you would accept.
If you did accept, you were about to become very rich. He would tip off the people who collected his art that a note had been "spent", and the lucky shop assistant would be offered thousands of pounds for the note.
Of course, Boggs was charged with counterfeiting currency, because the people who govern us don't have a sense of humour. In due course Boggs appeared in court, represented by pro bono counsel. It seems that Boggs offered to paint his fee, but, not wanting to get struck off, his lawyer said that he would rather work for free!
After one of the most wacky trials I can remember, the jury voted to let Boggs off. In the process, the government made Boggs rich; thousands more people heard about his art, and the price went through the roof.
Shortly afterwards, the British currency had one of its periodic redesigns. The banknotes had changed to include a claim of copyright. Presumably the government wants to be able to get an injunction against any future Boggs, rather than taking its chance in front of a jury.
One Disney lawyer to another: Let's shut their website down -- we'll plant a Slashdot article!
OK, so it's not illegal, but it's still pretty funny... Check it out here.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
This month's issue of the 'zine stay free! has companion articles and a CD with some of the pieces in/related to the exhibit, like negativland's U2 radio mix and sampled tracks from De La Soul and the Beastie Boys. I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibit in Chicago.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
You have /.ers looking at "illegal-art", messing around with the DoD .mil domain registration system, ants.... in space( think about it)
Trying to save some bandwidth costs by removing a few readers from the free roaming population?
Well ok ants in space might not get you in trouble. Maybe.
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echo [Address] | sed s/[-a-z]//g | tr A-Z a-z
.. . I dropped into the this place (western on the blue line, 2040 north milwaulkee upstairs, in the In These Times magazine office.)
The show is off the hook. There is some video pastiche and collage from the first gulf war that was on GNN (www.gnn.tv?) that is amazing and oddly precient for what is going on now, what is about to happen yet again.
They were asking for donations for the wine, but weren't pushy about it. Thusly, the wine ended up being resonably priced and quite good. It started to snow around 7pm or so, and I didn't get there till after six, so I didn't hear the opening speach (which was quite good, I heard).
I'm so glad this came to Chicago, I'd seen the NY announcement and thought it bad ass. This show rules, and the SF MOMA should definitely try to scope it (it plays to the SF Moma strength of design) for a west coast engagement.
But mostly, this stuff should be on-line. Somebody should take a good ditital camera and make some higer-res photos of the show and do a real on-line catalog, the low-res shit on the current site doesn't do it justice.
They were giving out this CD of music that looked good (and soon to be MP3'd) that says: "Not for Sale: Stay FREE! 003"
Ha. Right on. Also, it has an Invisibl Skratch Piklz track on it (also in CDDB as Various Artist Illegal Art): finally a free giveaway cd that doesn't suck. De La Soul track, Beasties, ubiquitous Negativeland "U2" track, hopefully some punk: tracks like "the JAMS - the Queen and I" sound kind of punk-rock, don't they?
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
Art can be purely asthetic, or it can be a message. Anything can be art.
.. if you copied your CDs and put them on display, then its art. And think about it .. if you copy all your music (illegal) and put them on display (ie, youre not ripping the artist off because youre not even listning to their product, youre just making a point) .. why should that be illegal?
.. by putting the CDs on display, they cease being usable for their intended purpose, and become art - but, for reasons other than keeping artists from making free "CD Collection Exibits", its illegal to do that, and the point is made! The message is the irony that its illegal to copy information if you dont use that information in such a fasion that the original creator of the information should be compensated. Presumably, he could have copied anyones CDs .. the actual product (the music) is being completetly disregarded in this case, so no artist should get paid .. youre left wondering if this piece of illegal art, should, in fact be illegal.
.. should it be illegal to create art by copying data off of CDs, when the infomation on those CDs is never used by the purchaser? Should the purchaser owe the musicians on the CDs money for using their creations to make a statement .. should we not consider the context in which the information is being used before the law states that copying that information is illegal? Is this fair use? Etc, etc ...
If you copied all your CDs, and called it art, poof! Its art!
Whether is good art, or not, thats for you to decide. You didn't like it, good stuff.
But art is a message (in this case)
I think thats the message there
So who cares if its good or not
"Old man yells at systemd"
Dammit. I'm never going to get my karma back to "Terrible".
See A Comedy of Values by Weschler for the most well known book on Boggs. Boggs' money related art, which has drawn zealous interest from the Law in several countries, gets the viewer to question the true value of the bits of paper in their back pocket. You can see a few images of his work here and here.
BTW, the engraving of Boggs on the above mentioned book was executed by T. Hipschen - who happens to have done the front and back design of the new US 100 dollar bill - amongst others.
Another artist following in Boggs' footsteps in Tim Prusmark.
Hum. When I went to the site, THIS popped up...
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Isnt this Yew-la thing bad?
"I read about someone who had made an entire CD from sampled works, and then couldn't get anyone to publish it. I haven't been able to find anything else on it, and couldn't pull it up again later on. I *think* it was called "Nothing to Fear" but I can't be certain.
:-)
Also, the U2 song that negativland sampled, or whatever, was recalled and all copies they could find were destroyed. It isn't about art, it is about how much money can you afford to pay to copy other works. It is a little nutty, if you really think about it."
well, now I know what happens when you moderate and then post, even as AC...
What I was trying to say is, has anyone else heard of this CD, knows any more information, and/or where it can be bought?
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
Oh come now. Equating art with effort is rediculous. Art is art, buddy, and its okay that you didnt like the CDs. But by virtue of the artist calling it art, its art.
.. there are tons of qualities you can analyse in art.
.. no comment :)
.. its such a simple song, it seems like anyone could come up with it. The point is, nobody did until the composer did. So the composer deserves the credit (like the artist for the CD piece) for recognizing that something so simple could still become a point of conversation, of thought, for other people.
Feel free to make your own, work as hard as you like on it, but dont expect people to honestly critique your work based on the effort you put into it. By your measure, you should be the most famous artist in the world, regardless of artistic ability, so long as you work 20 hours more than the next best artist.
The asthetic, the message,
And how you can spin a 6th grade project into a case for what is art - uh
I think your reaction is natural tho; imagine how many people should feel upset at whoever wrote the song "Happy Birthday"
Art isnt a meritocracy - in line with the definition, by working against nature, art is made to escape any value judgement you can place on it by quantitative analysis (how big is it, how long did it take to make) alone.
I think your questions are valid, but you'd have a very difficult time convincing anybody remotely affiliated with the artistic community that art can be discounted as being such based soley on the effort that went into it. More effort goes into producing , in terms of how many people worked on it, for how long, etc. So now is some shitty blockbuster that took 500 people 3 years to make better than, the mona lisa, which only took one guy a few months to make in the comfort of his own home? Of course not.
(I should point out that I didnt agree with the troll mod.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
hi, we've put together a package of articles to coincide with the show. here's some links:
AN UPHILL BATTLE: INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE LESSIG
Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig is the nation's leading advocate for intellectual property law reform; we interview him about the state of the movement.
THE PIRATES OF HOLLYWOOD
The language of film may be universal, but don't tell that to the Motion Picture Association of America--you might end up in court.
MUSIC FOR THE MASSES
When Lester Chambers stepped onto the stage to galvanize the audience with "People Get Ready," his band included one guy who looked like he might be from the IRS. But he wasn't. He was there from the Federal Communications Commission.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
The power of corporations to censor was greatly expanded by the passage in 1998 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was written by and for the lobbies that paid to push it through Congress--the software, entertainment, pharmaceutical and other intellectual property industries.
The logo is clearly not an infringement of copyright or trademark. First, it is protected under the First Amendment because it is a parody. Also, it's being used in non-commerical way to criticize a company, which of course is also protected speech. Third, no one would ever confuse our site with Labor Ready's so it does not infringe on their trademark. What's more, the parody logo only vaguely resembles the company's official logo.
This is just another way corporations get to push around the little guy. They have the resources at their disposal to try to scare and intimidate this organization into shutting up or else face the prospect financial ruin trying to put a fight.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
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.