the dirty bit
i’ve mentioned cory arcangel’s berkeley talk before, but in it, he talked about trying to do the minimum edit to existing items, in creating “his art.” he implied that any less of an edit than his work, and it wouldn’t be his work. any more of an edit, and it’d be too much work. he simply deemed himself “lazy” (though i found him to be good at implementing his whims).
the other day, i wrote a few words on a piece of stationery (thanks daniela!), and suddenly i felt as if i’d made an original creation (see right)
i didn’t do much, i took a black sharpie and barely took 10 seconds to write a few context-setting words. yet people ask me about “my drawing.” decades ago, a talented illustrator named Martin Provensen spent a significant amount of time and effort developing the character of Tony the Tiger. Isn’t it audacious of me to think that a piece of stationery, bearing both the long-standing icon of Provensen’s success, and my overlaid chicken-scratch, is MINE?
this spurs questions that i thought i’d pose to everyone:
- what constitutes a re-authorship edit? restated, what are the properties of an edit that causes the authorship to be reassigned to the editor?
- what are some examples of tiny tiny edits that re-frame the authorship or the statement of a work?
google scholar’s slogan is an imperative statement: “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” the bulk of “user-created” content on the web is somehow derived from copyrighted content that users find compelling.
- are we just relaxing the once-hard boundaries of originality? should we be worried? is originality less relevant, as overall quality goes up?
UPDATE: it seems that Tony really did have to go through an interview process, and beat out Elmo the Elephant and Newt the Gnu, who never got to be cereal mascots.
These issues are fascinating. Read James Boyle to learn about the problems with copyright law, how certain issues and are “defined out of existence” by current policy based on the romantic ideal of the Author. Authors and artists have re-mixed and appropriated forever. These boundaries haven’t always been so hard, but have only become stronger as corporations have asserted their role as creative producers.
Kevin, I don’t specifically want to speak to the relevance of originality, but who’s to judge whether quality is going up? What’s quality? Does your checklist somehow improve Provensen’s drawing? Did it improve by being printed on a notepad (presumably often used to make checklists–how circular!)? I don’t mean to make a suggestion either way: your drawing is funny and biting; Provensen’s sells cereal. Which is higher quality, your apple or his orange?
ps–I believe it’s spelled ‘grrrrrreat’
And why is my link broken?! http://sunsite5.berkeley.edu:8000/WebZ/Authorize?sessionid=0:entitycountDisplay=0:next=NEXTCMD“/WebZ/CheckIndexCombined?next=html/openingframe.html:entityactive=search:bad=error/badsearchframeStatic.html:entitydbgroup=Glad:entitydbname=Glad:format=B:numrecs=20:entitycountWhere=0:entitycountAvail=0:entityCurrentPage=Search:entityCurrentSearchScreen=html/search.html:entitytoprecno=1:format=B:entityCurrentSearchPage=html/search.html:entitytempjds=TRUE:entitycurrecno=1
O-for-2. Try Amazon.
Is baking Luis Vuitton cookies copyright infringement? Will this be enforced in Germany?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASRYCci8z2U