Ownership, Influence, and Art

With advances in technology, how we’re able to share things with one another has opened the flood gates of information and thus, influence. For every ‘thing’ that we create, whether it be a paper, a birthday card, a painting, a computer program, an ad, a building, anything, whether admitted or not, we draw from countless sources. If “creation isn’t born of void; it’s born of chaos,” then it is impossible to create without influence. What does it mean to take inspiration from other sources? And can we call it inspiration or is it flat out plagiarism? In some cases, that distinction is defined outright by copyright law. The three articles I summarize below look at copyright laws in music and art and question ownership.

On the Rights of the Molotov Man is written in two parts. The first part is by Joy Garnett who found a photograph online, a photo of a man later named the Molotov Man, and decided to paint it as a part of a series she was creating. She chose photos based on “aesthetic criteria more than on the emotional attachment to their individual narratives.” In essence, she was creating a new story for these characters she chose to paint, putting them in a collection she called Riots. When Garnett was contacted by lawyers representing the Molotov Man’s photographer, she posted her story online and in chat rooms, gaining support from parts of the art community and the public. In turn, art pieces starting popping up online, variations of the Molotov Man and people creating their own art based on Garnett’s piece.

Susan Meiselas took the photo of the Molotov Man in question and is the author of the second part of the article. Meiselas had sued Garnett for using her photo without permission and was asking for licensing fees. She ended up dropping the charges. Her part of the article focuses mostly on the Molotov Man’s story itself. She claims that context is everything and that removing the Molotov Man from his context is disrespecting his story. She believes as artists, as storytellers, they have obligation to preserve his story and share it, not distort it. It seems she was in reality trying to protect the rights of the story and the context of the Molotov Man himself, not of her photograph. per say.

But who gave her the right to tell the Molotov Man’s story? I think there is room for both: artists who can use their art to share and preserve the stories of others, and artists who can use their art as an expression of influence and create new stories and contexts.

The Ecstasy of Influence is an essay on plagiarism and ownership by Jonathan Lethem. His main point is that creation is not possible without influence and that the laws around copyright need to continually be challenged and updated. The art of form of the twentieth century is the “collage,” from futurism, Dada, cubism, situationism, pop art, and more. Lethem questions whether we can call it stealing if the original creator is not missing anything. We can make a copy but not taking anything away. Unlike stealing a car or a purse. He proposes the term “usemonolopogy” in which the artist has complete monopoly over his creation, no one can benefit from it. But is this what artists really want? We start to get into the question of whether art is a commodity to sold or a gift to be shared. Lethem believes it can be both.

I found the idea of “undiscovered public knowledge” really interesting. It’s the idea that answers to some of our questions, like cures for diseases, can be found in public knowledge. It just all needs to be made public and someone needs to want to look through it all. Lethem wonders if in fact more funding is needed for more scientific research or could we find answers through a creatively deployed power search engine help us find answers that are already out there?

This made me think of open source technologies and the communities that support them. Let’s look at WordPress for example or Arduino. Lots of people are working with these because they are open source. When people post their work, their solutions, their processes, and their questions, this all gets added to the collective knowledge base, so that the next person to come have something to build from and could probably find answers to a lot of their questions.

The Record Industry Braces for Artists’ Battles Over Song Rights
is a New York Times article by Larry Rohter about a law that is allowing artists to reclaim rights to their songs. Artists like Bob Dylan are beginning the paperwork necessary to take claim to their hits from 35 years ago. Record companies are fighting back, making claims that the artists were like employees of their companies that did “work for hire” and so the work they created belongs to the company. Artists are arguing that they generally made the records themselves with advances from the record companies who then charged royalties. Artist did not receive benefits are employees do and were in fact more like independent contractors.

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