Authorship, Aesthetics, and Randomness

What is the artist's role in authorship?

    Instead of tackling the issue of copying or stealing or editing or remixing or combining *whew* - let's tackle what it means to claim ownership. When you claim ownership you claim that you deserve the credit for a creation. And if people don't get credit for their creations, some say inventors will not longer pursue inventing.

    This is why we have patents - to give inventors some recognition, therefore encouraging inventors to make their work known. In theory this is great, but in practice you get patent trolls and huge companies patenting everything they can in hopes of using a vague patent to win a lawsuit.

    What should we do with the patent? Is claiming ownership of something that is obviously not yours bad? Yes. But how can you measure how similar the copy is to the original? Is a musical remix enough different from the original? Is a fan-fiction using the a literary universe also too similar? These questions demonstrate the fuzzy, movable line that is authorship. On the other hand, you also have companies trying to get vague patents that can control the market, destroying the aspirations of other inventors.

My point here is this: patents cause a lot of issues, and frankly, they may cause more harm than benefit. But that's an entirely different argument. What we want to solve is how we can distinguish between work that is stolen and work that is built upon.
    Unfortunately, this isn't something that can be understood in theory - it only works on a example to example basis. And to be honest - most work is probably closer on the stolen side of the spectrum, but no one is usually aware of it: begging the question: What does it matter? Check out this great talk about originality:

What role does randomness play in art?

    Earlier in class I was asking someone about ideas they may have, to which they said they had not yet had any. The classmate then said, "But I might do something random." To which generated my reply, "Isn't that what ideas are?" The person looked at me like the pretentious punk I was, but in my silly teasing, I realized something about ideas. Most people think them as organized - but they must spring from somewhere. Surely ideas dont come about through spontaneous generation. They come from our past associations, (what we've learned), and these ideas are intellectual jumps toward new associations. The jump part is what's interesting, because often times the jump isnt logical - at times it can seem strangely random. Do humans have a built in random generator? Not necessarily . . . but we do have a vast array of memories and thoughts, and when new information places us into a position where none of our experiences give us an answer, we make loose connections between information. These connections can be WRONG, like, very WRONG. Or they can be surprisingly right... 

My point is this: random is intertwined in the idea process. Random is what makes things new. 

"If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results."   - Sol Lewitt

    Or in other words, if you try to create something new by purely doing what has already been done, you sure as heck wont make anything new. So - randomness is crucial in art, whether you are aware of it being active or not.

Aesthetics: Is Beauty Subjective?

    I answered this same question in class. I said the classic cop-out quote: "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder." I'm taking it all back.

    "Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided..."   - Paul Graham

    
    I'm a fan of relativistic notions, but I never deny the fact that we're all pretty similar. And because people are all pretty similar, then there must be certain aesthetics we're likely to like. It's as simple as that. And if for some reason you are convinced that people are not at all that similar, then I'm afraid I wont bother trying to convince you, but I do implore you read books and talk to people. You're realize my point pretty quickly, I can guarantee it. 

    At this point a person may say:
"So you're saying there's an objective definition of beauty that exists outside the human realm?"     To which I would respond:
"Wait - what? Why would you ask that sort of question?"
    And they would retort:
"Is there an objective set of morals and laws that exist over and outside the realm of humans? "
    And I would say:
Whoa, whoa whoa, tiger, you can be serious - asking questions like these? They provide us absolutely no use - it's like saying, "What would broccoli taste like if no one had taste buds?" The answer is meaningless, because it can never be applied. Likewise, trying to describe "truths" as they apply to humans can be a silly pursuit: people tend to be, not always are.

So when I say I agree with truths of aesthetics, I merely mean "things that tend to be true, or are as close to being true as we can get." And how, you might ask, can personal tastes like aesthetics be unversal across humans? Here's your answer: because humans exist together, and we are always copying, mimicking, and taking from each other. What has happened over several years of content sharing? Aesthetics happened, aesthetics that we all share. 

Okay, rant over. Now I'll just post my favorite quotes from the Taste for Makers article.

"Ornament is not in itself bad, only when it's camouflage on insipid form."

"When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance."

"a painting that suggests is usually more engaging than one that tells."  

When you have to climb a mountain you toss everything unnecessary out of your pack. And so an architect who has to build on a difficult site, or a small budget, will find that he is forced to produce an elegant design. Fashions and flourishes get knocked aside by the difficult business of solving the problem at all."

"It helps to have a medium that makes change easy."

"If you don't know where your ideas are coming from, you're probably imitating an imitator. "

"The ambitious are not content to imitate. The second phase in the growth of taste is a conscious attempt at originality."