Thursday night, we were treated to an insightful and inspiring production at the New York Public Library as part of their Live from the NYPL series and sponsored by Wired. Titled “Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy”, the event featured Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons among other things, and Shepard Fairey, whom you may have heard of recently. Moderated by cultural historian Steven Johnson, it intended to focus on the future of art and ideas in an age when practically anything can be copied, pasted, downloaded, sampled, and re-imagined. Less about commerce and more about moral and congressional corruption crippling artistic expression, the panel was self-admittedly pretty one-sided about the whole debate.
Johnson, the 35th most popular man on Twitter, according to Live from the NYPL Director Paul Holdengräber, opened the evening with the famously reclipped Charlie Rose video by Andrew Fillipone, Jr, in which Rose appears to be interviewing himself with little success about the future of the internet. Johnson laid the groundwork for the evening in his assessment that, though these issues were timely due to the widespread and accessible nature of technology and information, they were also timeless – old values that we have been wrestling with for centuries. He invoked the original ‘remix’ by Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin’s insistence that ideas get better as they flow and circulate, attracting “the attentions of the ingenious.” To his panelists, he posed the question: “Where do we think innovation and creativity come from? From building walls and protecting them, or from sharing and expressing them?”
Lessig picked up the idea that the now-famous Fairey was not the first to base his art on others work, and drove it further home with images of Warhol’s Marilyn, Will.i.am’s Yes We Can, and music by Girl Talk. “Remixing with new voices,” he argued, “is creative practice.” What is different now from when Jefferson or Warhol were working isn’t this idea – it’s the law. He presented an exploration of what the law could and should do. It’s intention being to produce motivation for creatives to create, the law protects artwork and creates ways for an artist to be compensated. However, as when record labels pull YouTube videos of babies dancing along to the radio, the cost often outweighs the benefit. In favor of copyright deregulation, Lessig argued that the presumption should be that permission is free (rather that the presumption that it is not), protecting the Remix artwork in question. Instead, current regulation and public policy is fueled by corruption and campaign dollars to make money for Congressmen and lawyers. This regulation is not going to stop the remixing anyway, only criminalize it.
Shepard Fairey then took the stage to “informally” walk us through the now familiar images that have marked his career and rise to the front pages. From Andre the Giant to the Obama/HOPE poster, Fairey reflected on his discovery that images in the public space that weren’t advertising brought back wonder to the public space. Though it was the random-seeming ambiguity that drew people to his early Giant and Obey images, he moved to remixing images that meant something when he saw that message was more potent when it drew upon other known references. As for the Obama poster itself, he said, “forget me, forget [photographer] Mannie Garcia, the image is of and about Obama, his abilities as an orator and to bring people together, and it’s about the colors red and blue meeting in the middle”.
Though his now iconic image and style have been riffed upon countless times themselves, Fairey said he believed the spoofs only give more value to the original – to which he added that the photograph he controversially worked from was out of date, out of the news cycle, and out of mind, and yet here suddenly everyone’s talking about it. He concluded that he personally will only ‘go after’ real bootleg operations reselling his work. For the most part, the work he sees being done with his art reminds him of his earlier days photocopying album covers on his mom’s copy machine to create stencils to make teeshirts, and he doesn’t exactly want the FBI busting down his, or anyone else’s, door over that.
We were left with the question, “Okay, but is it original?” To which Lessig quoted Andy Warhol: “It is the duty of responsible men to restate the obvious.” Or, as Shepard Fairy put it, “when original art means taking a can of paint and throwing it into an airplane turbine which shoots it onto a canvas fifty feet away, maybe I don’t want original.” The panelists agreed that there is creativity within the recycling, and it is only when we recognize and encourage it that we can see where it will take us.
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Well it’s really a matter of exposing a very limited talent.
The market place decides what’s art and what’s not.
We are currently in the “good enough” era when it comes to images that capture our attention.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
If only Fairey would substantively acknowledge the value Garcia’s creativity and the AP’s distribution of the original photo of Obama instead of premptively seeking to legally validate his fair use claim. He seeks to protect his creation without honoring that of those he uses. How does that serve creativity?
Peace.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Daniel:
I don’t think generic photojournalism constitutes artistic creation – all due respect to the (allegedly) AP photographer. Fairey’s art is, and generated more, ongoing cultural commentary, the journalistic photograph is a static snapshot of a nondescript moment in political reality. It’s like saying that your art violates the original vinyl even though it builds something completely different from it, a new kind of creative expression – to answer your unnecessarily rhetorical question, Fairey’s work serves creativity precisely by taking the tools of the mundane and using them to craft the extraordinary stuff of cultural significance.
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Hey Maria! Good retort. The only thing is that I must’ve not been clear. The issue I have with Fairey is not that he did what he did. The cultural significance of the interpretation of the photograph is unquestionable. The issue I have is his disrespect for the photographer and the AP vis a vis copyright law and ownership and, yes, creativity. It’s unfortunate because you seem to have the same perspective, considering the photograph not even an artistic creation. It’s the photographer who captured the pose, the expression of Obama, not Fairey. Mundane? It’s that expression that made it the perfect photo for Fairey to interpret. So how can you say that it was not creative? It’s that opinion that Fairey is perpetuating by not giving the photographer his due in an appropriate manner. It’s not that he doesn’t respect the legal system setup to protect ownership either. He obviously does as time and time again he’s used it to protect his creations at the expense of the originator of the image he’s used.
To return to my art in the analogy, the vinyl is a canvas, not the original photo. So your comparison doesn’t work. In my case, it’s the photo of the musicians that compare to the original photo of Obama, and I’ve stated that I’ll give credit as desired reasonably to those photographers if they ask. See the post I’ve put as my website link in this comment. I’ve since preemptively credited as many as I could find the source on my website.
It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. It’s a matter of intent in action.
Peace.
March 4th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Daniel:
But the photograph IS mundane. Why else would there have been so much debate as to which of the various photo-wannabes was actually used? Watch this – http://blip.tv/file/1821209 – the part where Lessig shows the dozen strikingly similar photos taken by various journalists at various times. This “expression” is just one of Obama’s own facial mannerisms, not so hard to “capture” and not much creativity involved in the act of doing so. The expression itself, as such, is in the public domain. THAT is what Fairey built upon, not the particular photographic facsimile of said expression.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:00 am
From what I’ve read, Fairey readily admitted to using that particular photo. The confusion was that the photographer wasn’t technically under contract with the AP at the time, filling in for another free-lance photographer. So the question wasn’t whose photo, but who really owns it.
Musicians who sample and remix are required to credit original owners. Koons was required to pay for “Puppies”. All I’m sayin’.
Again, it’s not what he did, it’s how he did it and his subsequent actions. Making light of it by comparing it to other photos and saying that the expression is in the public domain… then why didn’t he take the picture? Why did he need to directly, obviously, admittedly, manipulate an existing photo. Isn’t he creative enough?
Peace.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Also, if Obama’s expression is in the public domain, why then did the Obama campaign decline to officially endorse the poster design. They’d asked Fairey to use a photo owned by the campaign. They knew the legal issues if he were to use another photo.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:21 am
The Obama camp didn’t endorse the HOPE image becauase it had been “perpetuated illegally” by Fairey beforehand in a guerrilla/street art fashion. The decision had nothing to do with the copyright issue. They did, however, use the VOTE and CHANGE images complementing the original one.
(Check out this interview: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Shepard+Fairey%3A+Purveyor+of+Hope/)
He did also get a Thank-You letter from Obama: http://obeygiant.com/headlines/check-it-out
Point is, the use of the images in the campaign has absolutely nothing to do with the fair use case discussed here.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:46 am
And those other images were owned by the campaign. Exactly. And the campaign new Fairey hadn’t followed rules. Exactly.
Rules and contracts and the legal framework are there to protect creativity. I simply don’t like it when someone uses that system selfishly.
Again, why, if he’s going to go so far to hold onto his pride does he not respect Garcia’s? It just shows, as his whole “guerilla” packaging does, his character. Is as does.
Peace.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:54 am
The fact remains that Garcia’s image was virtually indistinguishable from all the other contenders for the “base” image. More importantly, the fair use case – as per the current copyright legislation – isn’t just about giving credit, it seeks to vilify Fairey’s work. Which, on the most basic level, has far more creative and cultural merit than any of the contender photos. Supporting legislation that seeks to rob society of cultural artifacts is nothing short of tragic.
But I suppose we’ve reached a deadlock.
Peace.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:00 am