Photos of the Copy Paste exhibition currently taking place at Piksel in Bergen, Norway, and online in the Piksel Cyber Salon
Full list of exhibiting artists inculde Carol Breen, Constant, LoVid, Lorna Mills, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez + Julien Deswaef, Duncan Poulton, Eric Schrijver, Peter Sunde.
Photos taken by Maite Cajaraville. More photos can be seen here.
Copy Paste opened at Piksel in Bergen on the evening of Friday 22nd May. Sadly myself and all of the exhibiting artists were unable to be there but fortunately they live streamed the whole thing.
After all of the uncertainty about whether Copy Paste would go ahead I’m really happy that situation in Bergen has been good enough for the exhibition to welcome visitors. It was sad to not to be in Bergen myself to see everything IRL but I’m thankful to Maite and Gisle, Directors of Piksel, for handling all of the logistics and installation of the works.
Happy to announce that my second solo exhibition, We Are Your Friends, will be taking place from 11th - 27th November at the Czurles Nelson Gallery at Buffalo State University, NY.
There’s a reception on 14th November 17:00 - 19:00 and I’ll be present in Buffalo from 11th - 17th. Come say hi! Many thanks to Brent Patterson for making this happen :-)
On Friday 29th March 18:30 - 22:00 I’ll be showing two new videos at Copy / Paste at V&A.
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Human culture is built on a history of replication. We copy to learn, to assimilate, to preserve and to magnify. How is this behaviour being transformed by advances in technology and what is the value of the authentic or the original today? This Friday Late, watch dance pieces to examine how human error impacts repetition and examine the role of copying in preserving cultural heritage. From architecture to online identities, explore duplication in the digital age.
Since May 2017, alongside everything else, I been undertaking a fellowship with Near Now in Nottingham. The Fellowship, now in its third iteration, is for anyone interested in developing a project that uses technology in a creative way.
For my fellowship I have been conducting research into the relationship been copyright, curating and automation. There are no concrete outputs yet but do take a look at the blog, Curating the Machine, which collates all of my research to date.
From 16th January - 3rd February my 2016 piece Transformative Use will be on show at University of Greenwich as part of Granular: The Material Properties of Noise.
Granular noise is explored as a condition of material transfer in this exhibition. A central concern across the works on display is the material state change that occurs within the processes of mediation. Here, disintegration and/or reintegration of elements at a granular level is encountered as a mode of transference between states, whether physical or digital, and as a phase at which a thing starts or ceases to be.
The video of my presentation, No Copyright Infringement Intended, from CopyCamp has now been uploaded.
The presentation is largely about the No Copyright Infringement Intended exhibition along with some thoughts about how we can help artists better understand the complex area of copyright.
It of course featured sharks ;-) I posted a more detailed writeup of my experience for my Near Now fellowship blog, Curating the Machine.
I’m happy to announce the second iteration of No Copyright Infringement Intended will be taking place at Vivid Projects, Birmingham, from 1st - 23rd September.
No Copyright Infringement Intended is a group exhibition exploring the relationship between copyright and culture in the digital age, investigating how the concept of ownership and authorship is evolving and coming into conflict with outdated copyright and intellectual property laws.
This September I’ll be flying out to Warsaw, Poland to take part in CopyCamp 2017. The Internet of Copyrighted Things.
Is your life affected by copyright? No doubts if you are into culture, as you are certainly aware that you have to adjust to it when building upon others’ work or when planning to make a living from creativity. You must have heard about copyright also if you are a teacher, a scientist, or a programmer, as copyright-protected works are used in education, research, and technology.
CREATe have put the video from the Copyright as Frame and Prison panel discussion online.
Using the works within the exhibition as a starting point, a panel featuring artists and copyright experts will discuss how emerging technologies are shaping creative processes, how (perceptions of) copyright enable and inhibit those technologically-enabled processes and the appropriateness of appropriation.
On 11th May I’ll be conducting a curator’s tour of the No Copyright Exhibition currently on at Phoenix in Leicester
Join No Copyright Infringement Intended curator Antonio Roberts for a guided tour of the exhibition, followed by a chance to ask questions about the show. The tour will be preceded by a short presentation called Ctrl + C, looking at the one-way system of cultural appropriation by corporations.
On 28th April from 18:30 to 20:30 there will be panel discussion, Copyright as Frame and Prison, to coincide with the No Copyright Infringement Intended exhibition currently on at Phoenix in Leicester.
Alongside our exhibition No Copyright Infringement Intended, this discussion will highlight the disruptive power of technological innovation on culture and copyright.
Using the works within the exhibition as a starting point, a panel featuring artists and copyright experts will discuss how emerging technologies are shaping creative processes, how (perceptions of) copyright enable and inhibit those technologically-enabled processes and the appropriateness of appropriation.
Imperica recently released the first issue of its digital magazine. I’m happy to have contributed an article called Copyright, Culture, and Creativity. The article focuses on how large commercial corporations appropriate and exploit internet cultures and aesthetics.
Beginning to understand copyright on even a basic level can be a career in itself and take years of study. Just as no users of technology read the terms of service, no artist spends their time studying the Statute of Anne in order to understand Copyright. And why should they? We’re in the business of creating art, not law.
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be curating the No Copyright Infringement Intended exhibition at the Cube Gallery at Phoenix, Leicester, taking place from 7th April - 21st May.
No Copyright Infringement Intended is a group exhibition exploring the relationship between copyright and culture in the digital age, investigating how the concept of ownership and authorship is evolving and coming into conflict with outdated copyright and intellectual property laws.
The latest issue of Elephant Magazine is out and is focused on brands and copyright:
Are brands out to get us? Could our food, sartorial, satirical and political choices now all be considered as brand alliances? Most importantly, do we secretly really love the idea of being defined in this way?
In Issue 27 Elephant investigates the paradoxical relationship that a host of the art world’s new generation of makers have with brands. We meet Chloe Wise, Antonio Roberts, Jemma Egan, Holly White and Rachel Maclean to discuss the changing face of branding and the rise of subliminal messaging.
OpenGLAM published a feature on my Permission Taken exhibition on their site on 9th May. It talks not only about the exhibition but also on the need to communicate issues surrounding copyright in a variety of ways:
Copyright is an incredibly important law that can have massive implications on individual artists and the cultural sector as a whole. Unfortunately, it isn’t until it affects us negatively that we begin to seriously consider it. Legal cases such as the estate of Marvin Gaye versus Robin Thicke , Katrijn van Giel versus Luc Tuymans, and earlier examples such as Art Rogers versus Jeff Koons, and TufAmerica versus Beastie Boys show that the law can negatively affect creativity. If we allow this behaviour to continue we risk entering into a permission culture where even being inspired by an artist can have dangerous consequences.
It’s been open since 2nd March and now the second part of Permission Taken, taking place at the Bramall Music Building at University of Birmingham, will be having its launch event on 7th April from 17:30 - 19:30.
Join us this Thursday 7 April in the Bramall Music Building from 17.30 for the launch of Permission Taken! This exhibition displays work by Antonio Roberts created during his 2014/15 artist-residency at the University of Birmingham. Roberts focused on issues surrounding copyright, permission culture and art: issues which become ever more pertinent as online communities become more prolific and harder to police.
Following the opening of the Common Property exhibition at Jerwood Visual Arts I was interviewed by Filippo Lorenzin about the exhibition and my views on copyright in general. On 8th February this interview was published on the Furtherfield website.
I think Copyright as a whole is in a terrible state. As Cory Doctorow suggests in the exhibition programme (which is in itself an excerpt from his book “Information Doesn’t want to be Free”) Copyright as we know it isn’t written for artists or any individual. Its verbose terms and complexities cannot be understood and are probably not even read by most of us. They are written for other lawyers. If, in order to go about our creative business, we are expected to read and understand the terms and conditions and law - it is estimated that it would take 76 days to read all of the Ts and Cs of websites we use - what time do we have to be creative?
On 21st January I went to London Art Fair to take part in a discussion about Copyright and Intellectual Property and the Common Property exhibition at Jerwood Space. If you weren’t there, or you were and wanted to refresh your memory, the audio is now online.
The discussion featured myself, Hannah Pierce, Curator of Common Property, Shane Burke, current PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London, and Shonagh Manson, Director of Jerwood Charitable Foundation. The exhibition runs from 15th January - 21st February,
On 21st January I’ll be in London for a discussion about Copyright and Intellectual Property at London Art Fair
This panel discussion will consider how contemporary artists contend with issues of copyright and intellectual property in their practice, taking the most recent Jerwood Encounters exhibition, Common Property, as its starting point.
Panel:
- Hannah Pierce, Curator of Common Property
- Shane Burke, current PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London, who is researching the relationship between copyright law and conceptual art
- Antonio Roberts, exhibiting artist in Common Property
Y’all can register for it here.
With the closing of my solo exhibition at Birmingham Open Media fast approaching, on 19th January I’ll be holding the final workshop. In the Remix Animation Workshop we’ll explore the art of remixing and reappropriation!
In this workshop I will introduce open source software programs and discuss ideas around free culture. You will then have time to rework images downloaded from the Copy Bombs and from the University of Birmingham’s archives. Participants need to bring their laptops with the following free and open source software installed:
For my first exhibition of 2016 I’ll be taking in Common Property at Jerwood Visual Arts fom 15th January - 21st February 2016
Curated by Hannah Pierce, Jerwood Encounters: Common Property seeks to demonstrate how artists engage with and relate to copyright through the work of six emerging and mid-career artists, including three new commissions. The exhibition and accompanying events programme seeks to generate new conversations about how copyright is currently impacting the way visual artists make and distribute their work, and demonstrates how artists are challenging the limitations of copyright through their practice.
Perhaps the most immediately visible piece in my exhibition is the Dead Copyright vinyl wall installation.
Inspiration for this piece came from the Copyright Atrophy project I undertook in 2013. I began to consider how objects, logos and images can be abstracted into basic geometric shapes that eventually become noise. Are they still recognisable when presented in their most simplified form? This is combined with the projection of the glitched logos from the Copyright Atrophy project to create forms that might seem almost recognisible but disappear shortly afterwards.
Permission Taken launched at Birmingham Open Media on 23rd October and it couldn’t have been better!
You may have noticed my internet presence has been somewhat quiet over the last few months. This can all be attributed to the many hours it took to prepare for this, my first solo exhibition. Prior to this I had done many performances, contributed videos, gifs and still images to group shows, and curated shows featuring the work of other artists. Being given the large gallery space of BOM was therefore quite a challenge and a new experience.
I’m happy to announce the launch of my first solo exhibition, Permission Taken, taking place at Birmingham Open Media from 23rd October 2015 to 23rd January 2016.
The exhibition features a number of digital, video, print and installation pieces developed as part of my residency at the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections and Fellowship at Birmingham Open Media. The pieces explore ideas of ownership, copyright and free culture - issues which are pertinent as online communities become more prolific and harder to police.
Reading Floss+Art really has got me wondering if art should be free. By free I don’t mean public domain, but rather in a way that ensures the work stays free, such as releasing their work under Creative Commons or some similar Copyleft licence?
When I approached this question I split it into two questions, should art be free and should design be free. To clarify, I see art as something more aesthetic, more pleasing to the eye. I don’t think it strictly is there to answer questions, but more to raise them. It’s like a fiction book, which isn’t there to provide facts, but to entertain.