Aram Sinnreich

Aram's Keynote on Remix Ethics at DMY Berlin [video + slides]

A few days ago, I gave a keynote speech at DMY Berlin's Copy/Culture Symposium. The subject was the ethics of configurable culture, and the ways in which our cultural norms and expectations are increasingly more complex than -- and in conflict with -- our intellectual property laws.

Although the presentation drew on themes I've discussed in previously published work and presentations, it featured brand new qualitative and quantitative data from a survey I recently fielded with Mark Latonero and Marissa Gluck. My audience was largely design professionals, so I tried to keep the academic jargon to a minimum.

Here's a link to the video:

(Unfortunately, the engineer screwed up and for a few minutes, this video relies on the room microphone instead of my direct mic).

If you'd like to follow along at home, here's a link to my PowerPoint presentation:

Aram to Russian Gov: Ease Up On the Capitalism, OK? [audio + slides]

A few weeks ago, I had the honor and pleasure to give a talk in Moscow for the Russian Government, who are in the process of assessing their Intellectual Property policy, as well as Google, who co-organized the event.

While most of the other speakers (record and movie execs, WIPO officials, IP attorneys, think tankers, etc) focused on specific IP policy items, I chose instead to focus on creative communities themselves, in whose name intellectual property law is enacted and enforced. Specifically, I focused on six creative communities (three traditional, three emerging) that have thrived in the absence of copyright control or enforcement, both in terms of cultural innovation and economic benefit. (For more in-depth analysis, see the book chapter about music and fashion I co-authored with Marissa Gluck a few years back).

The specific creative communities I discussed included quilting, food, fashion, mashups, doujinshi, fansubbing, and Filipino cover bands.

The talk went over well, but whether I swayed the Russians away from potential copyright maximalism remains to be seen. Below are audio from my talk, as well as my PowerPoint slides.

You can listen to the audio here: http://bit.ly/sinnrussia2011

And here are the slides: http://slidesha.re/jKSMJM

UPDATE:

A few weeks after my talk, President Medvedev addressed the G8 summit, and expressed his doubts about the strategic value of copyright maximalism. In his words:

"The declaration reflects an absolutely conservative position that intellectual property rights should be protected according to the existing conventions. No one questions that, but I have repeatedly stated that, unfortunately, those conventions were written 50 or almost 100 years ago, and they are unable to regulate the whole complex of relations between the copyright owner and users. . . Unfortunately, this was not included in the declaration because, in my opinion, my colleagues have a more conservative opinion than is necessary at the moment. Or maybe they just don't use the Internet and have little understanding of it."

I'm sure I can't take full credit for this, but I'd like to think I played a small role.

Theft or democratization? Great-looking documentary about the Barnes foundation imbroglio

Just in case you thought that the theft vs. democratization arguments started with digital and configurable culture, Don Argott's new documentary The Art of the Steal is here to tell you otherwise:

Update: for the record, I discovered this trailer when my friend, business partner, and earlier adoptrix Marissa Gluck mentioned it on Facebook.

Griefers: The Anti-Situationists?

For my masters course in digital media yesterday, I assigned Julian Dibbell's excellent, if flawed, Wired article on griefers, as well as a few critiques of the article.

As often happens with grad classes, I felt that my students had an excellent understanding of the subject matter, but not much historical contextualization.

I thought it would be interesting to discuss the griefer methodology, namely interrupting the normal flow of behaviors and protocols in online social environments, as a descendant of Guy Debord and the Situationists. (Similarly, my friends and colleagues Doug Thomas and Biella Coleman have both chronicled the Yippie origins of the hacker movement).

But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that griefers are really anti-situationists. What do I mean by this? Dubord and company were revolutionaries, attempting to forge a "new culture, independent of the political and union organizations which currently exist," through their theatrical disruptions. By contrast, griefers are (mostly) a bunch of white, male, middle-class, middle-Americans who use racist avatars (such as the "Patriotic Nigras") to disrupt furries, fantasists, and other "deviants" and dreamers from enacting their alternative lifestyles online.

In other words, griefers use the methods of the Situationists, and the tools of hackers, to enact a reactionary political agenda that is anathema to the Situationist movement, and to most hacker cultures. In a way, they are almost agents-provocateur, giving a bad name to the online environments and communities which threaten their "real world" hegemonic power.

In a way, then, the Situationist claim that we should treasure "the value of the game, of life freely constructed" is opposite in both literal meaning and political valence to the griefer battle cry that "the Internet is serious business."

Just a thought, at the moment, but hopefully when I get a little time, I can work this up into a more formal journal article.

Kristeller, P. O. (1952). The modern system of the arts: A study in the history of aesthetics (II). Journal of the History of Ideas, 13(1), 17-46.

 

Note: this is part 2 of an article. See part 1 for background.

Notes

Modern system of fixed fine arts finally established in first half of 18^th century.

Birth of the notion that arts depend upon “genius” or talent, while sciences depend upon accumulated knowledge.

Music becomes definitively an art by this point

FRANCE:

Batteux (1746): separates fine arts (aim = pleasure) from mechanical arts (aim = usefulness). Fine arts = music, poetry, painting, sculpture, dance. Some arts combine pleasure and use (e.g. architecture). Holds that all arts imitate nature’s beauty, in a nod to classical antiquity. Pleasure vs. function

Batteux reinforced and reified by the encyclopaedists (despite certain criticisms, especially re: his focus on mimesis)

French revolution reinforced encycloapedists, collapsing academies into the single Academie des Beaux Arts.

ENGLAND:

Earl of Shaftesbury: ideal of the virtuoso centered entirely on arts, not on sciences. Yet failed to distinguish art from morality. emphasis on technique

Addison (1712): essays on imagination, connecting it to art.

Hutcheson (1725) parses morality from beauty, which was later adopted by Hume (who parses ethics and aesthetics), who in turn influenced Diderot and Kant.

Music paired less w/ painting and more w/ poetry – reflects poetic shift to Romanticism and influence of Handel and Lulli.

GERMANY:

Baumgarten: coined “aesthetics” meaning sensuous knowledge. Arts as a separate philosophical doctrine.

Sulzer (mid-18^th): General Theory of the Fine Arts

Explosion of interest in aesthetics post-1760

Kant/Critique of Pure Judgment: aesthetics on equal standing with ethics and metaphysics.

For Kant, music is an art “of the beautiful play of sentiments” similar to my argument that the referent of music is the human cognitive affective system

CONCLUSION:

Causes for genesis of modern fine arts system in the 18^th C.

- rise of painting and music in prestige

- rise of criticism

- rise of an amateur (meaning enthusiastic consumer) public the role of an avid audience in the genesis of our current ontological framework contributes to its emphasis on the artist/audience distinction

Quotes

“it would appear that the notion and system of the fine arts may have grown and crystallized in the conversations and discussions of cultured circles in Paris and London” (17)

“the Encyclopedie, and especially its famous introduction, codified the system of the fine arts after and beyond Batteux and through its prestige and authority gave it the widest possible currency all over Europe.” (23)

“the emphasis of writers and literary critics on the affinity between poetry and painting was followed after the middle of the [18^th] century by an increasing insistence on the links between poetry and music.” (31)

Kant “was the first major philosopher who included aesthetics and the philosophical theory of the arts as an integral part of his system.” (42)

“since Kant aesthetics has occupied a permanent place among the major philosophical disciplines” (43)

“the modern system of the fine arts is thus pre-romantic in its origin, although all romantic as well as later aesthetics takes this system as its necessary basis.” (44)

“In the course of history, the various arts change not only their content and style, but also their relations to each other, and their place in the general system of culture, as do religion, philosophy or science. Our familiar system of the five fine arts not merely originated in the eighteenth century, but it also reflects the particular cultural and social conditions of that time” (45) ontological framework is dependent upon cultural and social conditions

“the distinction between ‘major’ arts and their subdivisions is arbitrary and subject to change.” (45)

New technologies create dissatisfaction with “an aesthetics that is trying in vain to hide the fact that its underlying system of the fine arts is hardly more than a postulate and that most of its theories are abstracted from particular arts, usually poetry, and more or less inapplicable to others.” (46) technology forces ontological shift

Kristeller, P. O. (1951). The modern system of the arts: A study in the history of aesthetics part I. Journal of the History of Ideas, 12(4), 496-527

Notes

“art” to the ancients simply meant human endeavor, not a separate refined area thereof. Neither is aesthetic beauty distinguished from moral good.

Plato and Aristotle treat music and dance as elements of poetry, rather than as distinct arts – this made them reactionaries, as instrumental music was in the process of being separated from poetry. This change was accelerated by Pythagorean discoveries re: mathematics and music.

Ancient Greeks united arts theoretically on the basis of “mimesis”

Early middle ages inherited 7 liberal arts schema. Became inadequate after 12^th/13^th centuries. 7 mechanical arts were added. Throughout middle ages, music remains closely grouped with mathematics, separated from poetry.

Renaissance: music retains status as liberal art, but begins to be re-joined with poetry. Hence, birth of opera at end of 16^th century.

Also, painting makes the leap from mechanical art to liberal art. In fact, by end of 16^th century in Italy, painting/sculpture/architecture began to be considered akin to fine arts. This happened in 1563 in Florence when practitioners of these arts cut ties to guilds and started an academy.

1600: Jacobus Pontanus places musical composition (not musical theory) as a separate art on the same plane as poetry/painting first appearance of composition as a discrete endeavor.

As France became dominant, rise of academic institutions for various arts. Still no comprehensive sense of the Arts per se.

Elevation of the natural sciences, and resulting comparisons between modernity and antiquity, finally spurred separation between Art and Science.

Music still on the fence between science and art, as the two increasingly separate, at the turn of the 18^th century.

Quotes

“Such dominating concepts of modern aesthetics as taste and sentiment, genius, originality and creative imagination did not assume their definite modern meaning before the eighteenth century.” (496-7)

“The basic notion that the five ‘major arts’ constitute an area all by themselves, clearly separated by common characteristics from the crafts, the sciences and other human activities, has been taken for granted by most writers on aesthetics from Kant to the present day.” (498)

“of the fine arts only music, understood as musical theory, appears among the liberal arts” (505)

“ancient writers . . . were neither able nor eager to detach the aesthetic quality of these works of art from their intellectual, moral, religious and practical function or content, or to use such an aesthetic quality as a standard for grouping the fine arts together or for making them the subject of a comprehensive philosophical interpretation.” (506)

[in the middle ages] “the very concept of ‘art’ retained the same comprehensive meaning it had possessed in antiquity, and the same connotation that it was teachable.” (508)

“there was artistic production as well as artistic appreciation in the Middle Ages . . . . Yet there is no medieval concept or system of the Fine Arts.” (510)

“contrary to widespread opinion, the Renaissance did not formulate a system of the fine arts or a comprehensive theory of aesthetics.” (510)

“the revival of Platonism also helped to spread the notion of the divine madness of the poet, a notion that by the second half of the sixteenth century began to be extended to the visual arts and became one of the ingredients of the modern concept of genius.” (511) neo-platonism >> genius

“Musical theory retained during the Renaissance its status as one of the liberal arts” (512)

“by the first half of the seventeenth century, the taste and pleasure produced by painting, music and poetry is felt by several authors to be of a similar nature.” (517)

“The modern system of the fine arts does not appear in Italy before the second half of the eighteenth century” (520-1)

“the separation between the arts and the sciences in the modern sense presupposes not only the actual progress of the sciences in the seventeenth century but also the reflection upon the reasons why some other human intellectual activities which we now call the Fine Arts did not or could not participate in the same kind of progress” (526) Fine arts = areas where modernity couldn’t improve upon antiquity through accumulated knowledge

Gross, L. (1995). Art and artists on the margins. In L. Gross, ed., On the Margins of Art Worlds.

Notes

Art is a specialized form of communication

- a source encodes a message that is decoded by a receiver

- an artist creates a work that is appreciated by an audience

high/low art distinction maps onto class distinction, but this is not a truism throughout human culture. Two poles of artistic definition:

- virtuosity in performing conventional skills, approaching ideal form

- innovation and individuality as the badge of genius and mark of quality

birth of the romantic ARTIST

- European 15^th/16^th centuries, Reformation/Renaissance

- Western preoccupation with the individual

- Thus, art was defined as the innovative product of creative genius.

- This, in turn, undermined art’s traditional communicative function

- Artists came to be viewed as avant-garde

Arts were defined as a separate class of product in the 18^th C., and were defined by their irrelevance to daily life. – Arts were banished to a cultural “reservation”

Artists (like clerics) are viewed with a mixture of contempt and awe. This wasn’t always so. As religion’s function waned, so did art’s.

Most Western adults view art as fundamentally separate from their lives. Why?

- our culture doesn’t nourish artistic symbolic competency the way it does linguistic competency.

- children are not raised to be competent in the arts, because the assumption is that only a special few will possess the requisite talent, and most adults are not equipped to help them gain competency.

Artist exceptionality >> arts as scarce resources

- unique, individual, innovative all become synonymous

- this is a problem if we view art as communication, and thus shared meaning

Kant: aesthetic vs. utilitarian

Rousseau: untainted childhood >> becomes model for western artist (cf. Baudelaire)

Late 18^th century: Romanticism elevates the role of individualism in art by shifting from skill to unique personal vision

- sincerity, integrity become essential qualifiers of a true artist

- represented through unique distortions of representation (e.g. cubism)

Stetson (late 19^th c.): believed that design would be the key to industrial success in a competitive international market (got trumped by Ford, who aimed instead for efficiency and economies of scale). This is really interesting, especially in light of the recent resurgence of design aesthetics for basic consumer goods (e.g. Target). Wonder whether the rules change to benefit Steston’s theory in a post-Fordist, information economy.

Practical art education was thus considered to be essential in public schools through WWI. Then it got eclipsed by “progressive” art education in the 1920s. John Dewey was its chief proponent. Emphasized individuality, etc. In other words, a return to a non-functional, Romantic notion of art, with an I’m-OK-you’re-OK-everyone’s-OK angle. I think there is a middle ground – or rather a meta-ground – between Dewey and Stetson. Aesthetics can be functional but self-contained. This is too complex to elaborate here, but at least I know what I’m talking about.

‘social synergy’ (Bendict and Maslow) – when something is good for both the individual and the collective. Values abundant, rather than scarce, resources. Art can be considered this way instead of as a scarce resource but he doesn’t get into the larger reasons – it’s not just the art-world argument. Our treatment of art echoes and reinforces the logic of capitalism.

Quotes

“The resulting pattern of constant innovation in the arts undermines their ability to embody the common experiences and meanings of the society, to serve the central communicative functions of socialization and integration – roles now assigned to the ‘popular’ arts and the mass media.” (3)

“The common observation that art and religion seem to ‘go together’ in many cultures of the past and the non-Western present can be traced to their joint roles as carriers and articulators of these cultures’ basic beliefs about the nature of things and about the moral order.” (4)

“Perhaps the capacity to acquire competence in the symbolic modes we associate with the arts is not rare but widespread, and it may wither for lack of nourishment.” (5) RIGHT ON. (Cites Blacking).

“few adults manifest competence or expect it in the child, and the arts do not function as common carriers of cultural knowledge, which thus reinforces their marginal status.” (6)

“Parents, schools and peers convey in a variety of forms the message that art isn’t quite ‘real’ and that its ambivalent, peripheral status is appropriate to those who are ‘called’ to it.” (7)

“The undisputed sincerity of this progressive position nonetheless reinforces the isolation of the arts from the things that really matter and further weakens the basis for art education.” (13) What ‘really matters?’ Politics? Social change? Economics? Aesthetics plays a role in shaping each of these, even if artistic practices remain self-contained (e.g. not used specifically toward commercial or political ends). I should take this up with Larry.

“As a society made up of people whoa re mostly unsure of their judgment in the arts and who are aware of their own lack of skill, we perpetuate a contradictory set of views that trap most of us into dropping out.” (14) I think there are other functional reasons for this (e.g. division of labor)

“It is also important to understand that the ideology of talent and individuality as the passport to the reservation is congruent with the institutional structure of the official, elite art worlds.” (14) yes. Ideology << >> Structure

“A program for early education that focuses on the acquisition of competence in primary modes of thought and action – lexical, iconic, musical, logico-mathematical – understood as communicative systems could make possible a fuller employment of human potential than we now achieve.” (14) telos = employing human potential

Benjamin, W. (1968). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In Illuminations. New York: Harcourt Brace.

My copy of Benjamin's essay is cut-and-pasted from the Internet, so page numbers do not correspond with the published version. That being said, it’s all about the Benjamin.

Notes

Creativity, genius, eternal value, mystery – these concepts lead to fascism. WB’s concepts, by contrast, are useful for the “formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art” (2)

Reproduction of art has advanced since ancient times, and has had profound consequences for our relationship with art.

• Handmade      reproductions have always been dependent upon (and inferior to) originals
• Technical      reproductions, by contrast, are more independent of, and can be superior to,      originals

Reproducibility destroys cultural heritage, strips unique works of their “aura”

Notion of “art for art’s sake” was a reaction against the impending crisis catalyzed by photography and socialism. Negated functional and social aspects of art, undermined representational value. Yes, but didn’t this start earlier, with Kant?

“cult value” (fixed, hidden) vs. “exhibition value” (portable, displayed) of art. Shift from CV to EV creates new functions for art >> enabling film.

Aesthetic change always precedes – and demands – technical change, an improvement in materials (hence, dada preceded and demanded film effects through a relentless destruction of aura) bears on bernard-donals’ formulation of art’s journey from margins to mainstream

Fascism = introduction of aesthetics into political life >> war. War as art is the culmination of art for art’s sake.

Communism responds by politicizing art. Although I buy much of his argument re: fascism, I just can’t get with his stated cure. I guess it depends what he means by “politicizing art.” In practice, the soviet union and red china have politicized art by censoring it, and using it as a mode of propaganda. This doesn’t really do much to reclaim art’s organic role vis-à-vis society. However, if politicizing art could also mean sensitivity to the politics of art, thereby countering censorship and dull utilitarian appropriation of aesthetics, then, hey, I’m all for it.

Quotes

Theses about “the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production” have value “as a weapon” (2)

“even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (3)

technical reproduction “enables the original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a photograph or a phonograph record” (3)

“that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art” (4)

on film: “its social significance . . . is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage” (4) the same could be said for recorded music

“the unique value of the ‘authentic’ work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value” (5)

“for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual . . . Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.” (5-6) antithesis of Frankfurt critique of mass culture

“the cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the ‘spell of the personality,’ the phony spell of a commodity” (9)

“the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case.” (10) very prescient (also very Marxist)

“the greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public” (11) yes but causality is unclear. It could be a > b, b > a, or x > a & b “thus the same public which responds in a progressive manner toward a grotesque film is bound to respond in a reactionary manner to surrealism” (12)

“As compared with painting, filmed behavior lends itself more readily to analysis because of its incomparably more precise statements of the situation” (12-13) I think this is a serious analytical error. Only someone not acculturated with cinema could believe this to be the case.

“Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise.” (15)

“Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right [to change property relations] but instead a chance to express themselves.” (16) I think this underestimates the power and value of self-expression

“only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system.” (16) interesting in light of Bush. Also technologicically deterministic.