Time To Address A Redress
Shepard Fairey. If you have a pulse, live in the United States and have access to the media in any of it's various forms, you've heard of this gentleman. Doubtless, you've heard his name amidst claims of plagiarism and theft. First it was the Associated Press accusing him of copyright infringement for borrowing from an image one of their photographers took of then-congressman Obama. Hoards of people jumped on the "OMG, like $ue him, dude! He hates your artistic soul!" bandwagon. Some were honestly against Fairey's appropriations (like Milton Glaser, who shared some less than kind words about Fairey.) Following that, other artists came in upset about Fairey's appropriations including Ed Nachtrieb.
It's time to address and end this silly debate. For most of those who are on the offensive toward Fairey, they fall into one of two camps. The first, and most common, camp includes the historically ignorant. These folks seem to be completely unaware of art history as they claim that Fairey should at least "cite" or "give credit" to those whose works he appropriates. Let's think about this in terms of other mediums for a minute:
Books - Authors commonly cite other authors, borrow from cultural events, and quote pop culture figures under the guise of an alias. Commonly, these cues are represented by a visual cue: the quotation mark. Yes, I'm quoting this! I want you to see it! Of course, the idea is that you will recognize the quote. If you don't, then they haven't necessarily given the author credit, they've just mentioned that it's not their own original phrasing.
Music - When was the last time you saw a rock artist cite Bach? You haven't you say? Well then clearly those theifs all need to be prosecuted. Get going, you have most of the last 100 years of music to go arrest.
And then there's that art history thing I mentioned before. DuChamp superimposed his face on the Mona Lisa and called it his. He never cited Da Vinci. Warhol painted the Campbell's can and a Brillo box. He never gave credit to those designers. Have you heard of Raphael's Modonna and Child? Pick one.
The second group of people are those who seem to think that Mr. Fairey is some ignorant fool who just wants to make money by stealing images. This group, whose complaint is far more realistic, is still missing a few parts of the truth. First, Mr. Fairey sells his prints at minimal cost on small runs and doesn't sell competitively on the market. Did anyone also notice that he gave away the Obama image? It wasn't sold to the campaign, it was a donation. His non-competitive approach makes it fairly clear he's not doing it for money. He would make loads more selling his prints at five times the cost, and would get just as many buyers.
And, last, to address Mr. Nachtrieb's complaint that Fairey misuses his image because "with no attachment to it's original context or how it fits into the Chinese story" it loses it's original meaning and significance. First, Mr. Nachtrieb's original photo also does not indicate that this was the first appearance of weapons on the Beijing streets. Second, those in the US who are educated will clearly recognize those soldiers as members of the red army during the revolution. The rest of the folks who wouldn't know that wouldn't know it in Nachtrieb's image either. Both images do give a minimum story of Maoist soldiers on the move. What's important, and where Mr. Nachtrieb seems to miss the point, is that Mr. Fairey's image is only important because of the context of Mr Nachtrieb's photo. The accusation is that it loses it's context, when in reality Fairey's image only makes sense because of the original context juxtaposed with contradictory elements.
I'm well beyond my word count, but I hope this clears up a very small part of this complex issue.
Some Really Awesome Tools to Commemorate the Inauguration
For those who aren't keeping up to date, there are several cool visuals out there to help commemorate and share experiences from today's historic inauguration. Regardless of your political sway, this is a huge moment in America's history and in the advancement of civil rights. As such, people are doing all they can to share in the moment and to become a part of history. Their names won't be in the books, but there is always the pride and joy of saying "I was there when America broke the racial barrier to the presidency".
CNN is offering up Your View of History, which allows iReporters and laypeople to post their photos and reactions from their experience at the mall. Posters put their content at their viewpoint, and describe their experience from that point. There are definitely some great candid images and a lot of great visual descriptions of the emotional aspect of the event.
Even cooler, CNN is also offering the chance to rebuild The Moment using Photosynth. The short version: Live attendees post their images to the photosynth database, and it uses Microsofts crazy new technology to rebuild a 3D rendering of "the moment" of the inauguration. To get a good idea, here's a moment and a description of the software. Reeeeeally cool stuff.
CNN is offering a third option for the tech savvy out there who can't not check their facebook every five minutes: a live status update response to the events of the day as they unfold, without blinders to statuses across participating pages. In other words, you can see the updates without leaving facebook, without opening up your profile, and without the minor lunacy of message boards. I don't have a link, but you can find it on their home page.
MSNBC is giving viewers a chance to brush up and compare Obama's speech to others by offering the last 18 Inaugural speeches. Also pretty cool, and very informative. It's interesting to see the approach each president has taken in his first address to the people, and then to look back at how they acted in office.
MSNBC also does an amazing job at allowing people to report their own reactions of the Inaugural by giving them the power to create their own clips. I'm pretty sure this is the web2.0 innovation of the day. It allows users to do what the news normally does, except without the need to be there with fancy equipment for capturing audio and video. It basically comes down to permission to make it what you will, and that's a huge step for a media outlet like that.
Even More Tweetness
Just when you may have started to think about using Twitter, let me give you one more reason: it's an event organizing tool. What do you do to maintain order when you expect millions of people to show up at one location at one time? What do you do with ten thousand charter busses and ten times more people than there are spaces? If you're the DC security staff working Obama's inauguration, you'd use twitter.
And it's pretty brilliant. It seems to me, in my infinite shuffle through new media articles, that Twitter has really been pushed as a "microblogging" tool; meaning you basically update your status so people can look at you and what you're doing (as though they actually cared The real power of a tool like Twitter comes from the creative organizational uses and the Obama security team understands this just like the Obama campaign team understood this. It streamlines communication lines. Instead of "trees", you simply have a single text getting rerouted not just to other security members (which access can be limited to) but also to regular foot and vehicle traffic looking to navigate the soon to be packed-out DC streets. Where's the traffic? Has there been a wreck? Are some lines not being used? Are there alternate routes? Twitter's design allows for all of this information to be sent out immediately through a single channel of communication. Frankly, it's brilliant.