Wait. It sounds suspiciously like you want artists to be paid a living wage for doing work instead of being either broke or millionaires. What nonsense is this?
Yeahhh it's pretty depressing too the way the university systems work...A lot of fine artists have to teach in arts programs in order to be able to fund their practice, which is all fine and dandy. I loved my experiences with the staff and fellow students I had . But it's really expensive with little chance of recuperating that money ever ,even more so than the usual career, unless you are lucky enough to be accepted to some of the more prestigious universities that give you a little more of a golden ticket. (or you just hit it big as an artist ) . A lot of these programs graduate students who really haven't put the work into the degree. I know art is very subjective so it's hard to tell someone there work is not good, but my experience is that an arts degree is pretty easy to sail through. I mean in the end the people who work hard end up getting more for their time , so that's what matters, but...I sometimes feel like young people who aren't really sure what art entails go into these programs, and are just pushed to the end because a quota needs to be filled, and it ultimately hurts the student. But the thing is these programs are often less funded than others,have less resources, have less people wanting to come into the program, and the arts industry needs it for a lot of their artists to have work. Oh and don't even get me started on being an adjunct professor....... Sorry I vented. An arts education, if you put the time into it is a really great thing,but it's a hard path. And yes I would prefer artists be paid a more even wage across the board, ...
Or we could take it step further, remove human labor's status as a commodity from the equation entirely. Let artists make what they want, and divorce this entirely from their access to resources that they need to survive.
"Every piece of art is transforming into a new work every second it is allowed to exist within our world." I wish more people understood this. I also wish people weren't so focused on the model of "trading cash for a product" so that maybe artists/performers/etc might have more ways to make a living. I mean, if someone were to come to me and offer to cover my needs for an entire week so that I could focus on creating content, I would see that week as a challenge to create as much quality output as possible. I'd come out of that week with a couple albums, several written works, and a nicely edited gameplay montage full of unseen and unusual circumstances. Maybe even somehow learn to draw a thing that wouldn't make eyes implode in their own sockets.
This video has had one of the best aesthetics yet, I loved the BillWurtz-esqu song and the rotating anarchist flag. As for a solution for creators without copyright or even capitalism I feel like you hinted at one in this and the previous video. A system where people donate directly to the creators(ownership of the means of production and all that)., If people like the content and want more of it then donation would be a good way to make that happen.
That could work for film, music, games in some scenario's... *But what about when companies use art to sell a product? It's hard to imagine a donation to an artist fairing well with stockholders. *What about art targeted to poorer audiences or ones less quick to donate? I think it's a given that compensation for your work shouldn't be dependent on how wealthy or charitable your target audience is. *Also, plagiarism is still a problem, and copyright law gives a reason not to do so. You can't expect 'the masses' to be very good at ensuring artists that are copied get compensation. If 'the masses' are effective in this, you could expect smear campaigns on plagiarism compensation from businesses. (Like what happened with law suits in America after the McDonalds coffee incident: the narrative of a suing epidemic is adopted a lot more than the practice of looking at legal cases individually.)
This is why I am surprised more gallery artists aren't upending the system and going to patreon and crowdfunding to fund their bodies of work...But to be fair the public is pretty aggressive in general towards anything that is more off the wall , and not tied into figuration/ storytelling. . I think maybe there could be a way to bridge that gap though....
Can't think of any other people that deliver thoughtful and concise ideas that genuinely help my thinking for my uni work along with a straight up bop. Thanks Patricia
Reading this made me sad. ): I wouldn't say anything if this were a shitpost, but it's not. Saying you don't understand directly to the person who made this, especially since i'm sure she's taken years to come to this conclusion, is like... high key rude, my dooderonii... It's just... mean... it's like saying all the work patty's put into this video is for nothing because you don't understand, and you say that like it's patty's fault. ): !! Why must u be meanypants
She's basically saying that it's not accurate or moral to sell art as a "thing" because there is no "thing" to sell. The value comes from ideas which are propagated from one mind to another, and since those valuable ideas effectively belong to everyone exposed to them, the ownership of an art piece is impossible. People don't own art. They have access to it.
Hey, I know this is a dumb nitpick, but most of the mocap data attributed to Andy Serkis was actually done by a team of animators who bring to life the mess of data they get if not re-animate it altogether. They always get sidelined in any mention of mocap, so I thought I'd point that out.
Ocelotl Chimalpahin Why? Because the general public doesn't have a fraction of a clue how computers or computer shit works, especially anything to do with digital media production. It's entirely beyond their scope of knowledge.
eric this is a good video and i'm on board with most of what you're saying here, but i do take issue with the way that you seem to vilify creators who charge money for their work. i agree that putting digital content behind a paywall is silly from a theoretical standpoint and would not be a thing in an ideal postcapitalist society, but for many people this is the only viable way for them to make a living from their work. from talking with other people who have experience with this, relying on donations just objectively makes less money in many cases. for people who rely on making profit from their art to buy food and pay rent and such, not charging for their work like this is just not an option. services like patreon are good but only really work for certain types of work and for people who already have an established audience. many people i know who charge for their work wish they didn't have to, but they don't feel as though they have a choice. big fan of your stuff!
With piracy as ubiquitous as it it is, if you're selling digital art and I choose to pay for it rather than just download it for free, that is effectively a donation. Granted, not everything can be found on piracy sites, and sometimes it isn't that simple, but the vast majority of the time it is this straightforward.
@@eractess I agree with you. For example I went to see a movie made by a comic book artist I love (I'm Italian) because I wanted to support is independent project. I first knew him from his first movie that I pirated because it didn't have a good distribution, I watched and liked it so much I bought it. If I never have downloaded it in the first place I would have never followed him the way I do now (I have also his board game and all of his comics). If a work is good then you get payed back one way or another. While another contradiction is in the fact that until the early 2000's distributors were ok with the selling of used book, movies, games ecc...now they changed their policies about it. Art should be as avaliable as possible to grow strong.
caw caw I thought the dress meme as a vehicle for explaining ur point was particularly well-chosen caw caw / also u don’t have to justify your music by being consciously self indulgent abt it, believe in urself bby 🎐 big luv
A friend just linked me your Bennet Foddy video and I have binged like 8 of your videos. Can’t believe TH-cam algorithms have hidden you from me! As a game designer who isn’t quite sure how to leverage my skill set into a sustainable life, you hit me at home with your perspective. You are an artist and an inspiration. Thank you
Correct me if I'm misunderstanding something you said but when speaking about art in the digital age and how it *should* be free since the costs that go into distribution (the physical part of the commodity that isn't the art itself ie. packaging, shipping etc) are basically non-existent, even under capitalism, yeah? Because it sounds like you brushed past the labour that actually went into the production of the art itself. Free distribution aside, artists should be able to be compensated for a) the materials that went into production and b) their extracted labour time. I don't disagree with the point of your video I just felt like this part could have been expanded a bit :)
Ever since the topic came up on one of Hbomb's streams I've been thinking about your views on copyright and I think they hold up better than people give you credit for.
i really liked both parts of this video, but my favorite aspect has to be the song at the very end. very reminiscent of simcity 4 music which i love deeply
i came back here from your new DHMIS deconstrucion, and i thought, "this voice sounds slightly familiar." and i dug through your channel and found this and i remembered it. this 16 minute video cemented itself so much in my brain i was able to instantly recognize you after four years which is something not really common with my brain. i love your content keep it up!
One concern I still haven't heard challenged is that without copyright those with means and a powerful enough platform will simply steal (without attribution) the works of independent artists. You may say there will be no incentive to do that by big money men, but yes there is. Even without copyright, they can attach stolen works to personalities, build up those personalities (and control them through contracts) and 'create' value through non-fungible commodities like a live concert or signing events. The original artists will only have their own social media platform reach out to the good nature of other individuals to compensate them personally. I'm still very against copyright law, but a robust solution to all these specific problems is needed.
7:49 Completely unrelated to the point you're making here and commenting on a year old video, but the science came in a couple years back on why the dress illusion happened (Rabin et al)- it literally at the visual, not perceptive, level differentiated people based on their proportion of different colour cones in the eye. The photo's colour levels were right at the boundary of where someone with proportion X would receive the optical code for a different colour than someone with proportion Y- prior to the transmission to the brain. (This is also why some people would see it change colour based on the brightness or type of screen) Completely useless bit of trivia but kinda interesting that, at least in this case, it isn't even due to someone's perception in the brain, but an outright proportion of cell types.
Commenting on a year old comment, but I used an image editing software to sample the colors on the dress, and they were white and gold/some light shade of dirt yellow.
As an _-abridger-_, wait no. _-retooler-_, wait no. visual fanfic creator, your work highly speaks to me. This is your best video thus far, although you probably didn't need me to tell you that, I'm sure you already knew.
I come at this too much as a visual arts person. one thing I appreciate is that artists do put out digital photos of their work that is shared online, so everyone gets to 'own the image' , but if someone wants to own the physical copy/ material they have to purchase it...So maybe that's a good step in the right direction.
I think I already agreed with this position long ago when I justified getting art commissions at anime conventions. That's some weird-ass foresight on my behalf.
As a mathematician I relate to the worry about ideas loosing value, because abstract mathematics is just that the art of logic and in academia it’s even more pertinent that we need to remove copyright.
Thanks so much, I used your "Kunst Saga" and this video as points of departure in my "Advanced Art History" class. I'd love to see more videos on your ideas about art.
Yo your videos are so good dude. As an artist and TH-cam content creator myself, I’m always looking for channels that really go into the meat and potatoes of critical art theory, artistic realities in society, and so on. Also your presentation with basically multiply and difference blending modes is really unique. Also your music taste in the background is a big hell yea. Lots to think about. I don’t know where I stand in agreement or disagreement with the points given here, and that’s a really exciting thing. I love when I have to really question and find out where I stand on something, and you’re provoking that. Keep it up
thank you so much for making these videos, ive basically always felt the same way about copyright laws and how stuff is sold digitally, but im awful with words so i can never get my thought across. but your videos almost perfectly encapsulate my thoughts, and its amazing. .
I think your oversimplifying the problems of the conflation of the medium and the art when it comes to trade.Since long before digital files were ever a thing, music wasn't meant to be performed just once. I'm not an expert on this topic (started with Kapital I but haven't gotten very far as of now), but I think this poses a problem with the value of said art. Labour goes into creating art: to come up with an idea and execute it takes time and effort. Writing a song takes a certain amount of time (labour). Praticing to perform it takes a different amount of time and actually performing it takes yet another amount of time. However, subsequent performances by the same person take less effort as the song doesn't need to be written and practised as intensly. Different people performing the same song (adaptations trying to be faithful anyways) skip the process of writing the song altogether. The time writing the song never changes, but the relative effort it takes for a performance of the song changes with each performance.So how would you determine the value of a song? If the value simply writing (and in modern times recording it) should be seperated from distributing and performing it, why should anybody trade something for a song anybody could use at any time? Abolishing copyright law under capitalism completely eviscerates any entitlement artists have to be compensated for their work, wich under capitalism equals them being useless to society. Artists and beggars would be virtually the same thing. So I do very much think capitalism *needs* to be abolished for your proposal to work. If society as a whole were to compensate artists for their work, society as a whole would also be entitled to the works of those artists, so it can work under non-capitalist societies.However, this is only true from your perspective. I think under a capitalist perspective copyright can be defended. It does take indeed labour to distribute songs even now. You need devices wich can copy, store and play songs and those devices need labour to be produced, it is just that that labour time is very little for each individual song. However, labour time doesn't set prices under capitalism, so the condition for a price existing is just any labour being used. The high demand can be used to justify the relatively high price (as the supply is artificially shortened).I for one prefer the anticapitalist perspective.
DOES capitalism need to go? Getting paid a living wage is totally possible as an artist with modern technology (See Patreon, and no, not just TH-camrs use it.) I realize I am not among friends as I say this but, the market IS useful, and a living wage really isn't such a bad fate for an artist. The market can give further monetary incentive to those individuals consider most valuable. (In a socialist system, I would be pissed to have to support someone's work whom I detest. But, I wouldn't stand against someone who saw value in the work in question.) edit: although I said wage, I don't mean to infer that those who are crowd-funded are entitled to their earnings, it should be perceived as a donation. In fact this reliance on the their base could insure further quality and bolster artistic scrutiny.
SIMPalaxy Patreon isn't really capitalist in its function though. Donations are not a systemic part of capitalism and ensuring the workings of an entire industry solely on donations is a strange notion I think. Also, I don't think it contradicts my point of artists becoming beggars. They have no commodity to trade and rely solely on the favour of others. It could work under capitalism, but it explicitly wouldn't be capitalistic.
I full-hardedly disagree with abolishing capitalism, mainly due to capitalism being so engrained in the world and because it has very unique benefits as opposed to other forms of economies. While capitalism and corporatism have very big issues, society as fixed them in the past, and there’s no other system that functions better than the current mix of socialistic capitalist markets. For example, Full Communism has a power vacuum, and treats all people as open-minded, well-mannered and respectable beings. Mercantilism as proven in history sucks the life out of chosen parasites, and accelerates class divide. Mutualism, while built on an important ideology of the existence of currency, falls short as it treats people as naturally good, like Communism. There’s just no other better alternative that doesn’t lead to authoritarian control based on whoever like how we have late-stage capitalism. And so the only option is to continually edit our capitalist system with patches of other ideologies. And so, throwing out capitalism is impossible, unless someone comes up with a brand new, and more effective economic system, which probably won’t happen anytime soon.
Im intrigued by this idea...a lot of anarchist bands ive seen do scales on their merch 2-5$ in a pay what you can fashion...and most of the shows ive been to lately are by donation. What are you thoughts on live music vs band camp as far as the art has 2 forms argument goes?
I agree with a lot of the sentiments that copyright has a lot of outdated problems and we should definitely do more to value to the labor of the original artists. Though I think there is an under address aspect of most conversations about copyright and copyright laws; an issue that I call the Pepe problem. Pepe the Frog was an original character and piece of art created by the artist Matt Furie in 2005. Once Pepe gained attention as a meme, Furie enjoyed some success as a creator. Though by 2016, many people in the Alt Right co-opted Pepe's image as a symbol for the fascist and xenophobic ideologies within Alt Right communities. When Furie saw that his art was being used to inflict harm on others, he teamed up with the anti-defamation league to help identify hateful incarnation of his art. Which leads to the question, copyright is theoretically there so that the original artist can retain ownership of that creation whenever it becomes used for purposes that the artist doesn't agree with. It seems that because most richer creators and companies have abused copyright to monopolize their art, it has made it easier to ignore many smaller artists whenever there seem to be instances where other people abuse their art for purposes that the original artist doesn't agree with. And yes, I realize that this gets into some murky territory about authorial intent, this potential use to censor and disrupt criticism, and how it disincentivize creative adaptation: though do you think that there should be at least some measures in place to make it so that we can potentially prevent the next Pepe? Just something I think we should try to think about. Best Wishes.
anticopyright antifascist action is not only how u prevent pepe from being taken, it is how u take fascist works and weaponize them against their original purpose.
i think ur problem is less of an politically economic one then a politically cultural one. if fascism and other forms of bigotry are confronted more as a whole, obv they would be more afraid to fuck with the works of creators against them
Just had a realization, not pirating is effectively a donation. you fully have the option of experiencing something for free but you choose not to because it would be wrong to not pay someone for the joy you gain from the experience. the only real difference is how much the creator approves of this whole framework and some possible troubles with the pirating itself but its still the same choice just with a different default.
"Fish" is a weirdie, but yeah. Chrondricthyes is the whole cartilaginous fish clade, and Helicoprions are specifically Holocephalans, like ratfish/chimaeras. Im sure I shouldn't have commented this.
The “music video sequence”, with the lyrics and descriptive text, reminds me of the recent DJ Koze video. I love the minimalist, descriptivist quality. ✌🏼
You touched upon how there are two costs of making art: the physical medium related cost and the "artistic labour" cost. Let's say i create a video. Why should I not have the right to ask people to pay me for my "artistic labour"? Yes I'm sending them a digital copy that doesn't carry material costs, but why is it wrong to charge for the artistic labor? Why does it have to be donations as in the consumer decides? What is the argument for why the creator cannot or should not have that power? (I am mostly on board with copyright abolition. Just curious about this line of thinking)
I always thought abolishing copyright would mean that the artists name would be „erased“ from the work, which was the reason I thought the abolishment would be bad. But after listening to you, I think I get it now. The part about the idea of a piece and not the piece itself is really mind changing!
Much like the book takes time and resources to create, a digital work also takes time and resources. You need the electricity to power the computers, food, and housing to keep the squishy humans alive and sane. Different things acquire their price in different ways. Rare items get there price through their demand. A packet of crisps, by contrast, gets its price through the cost of production, it doesn't make sense to apply the same system of pricing for something that is rare to something that is abundant. Which is more often what I see. We buy artists work because if we didn't then they would have to get some other job to maintain themselves and then the art would probably suffer. Ether being lower quality or taking much longer to be produced. ... I skipped the song part. I guess in my view, an artist selling their work is them trying to recoup the costs of its production. Rather than relying on a paron to pay for their work.
Hi Eric, I was wondering what you think of the idea of not just not enforcing copyright on works but also distributing the tracks, mixes, and project files used to create the work. That way, if people really like one particular part in a song you wrote, they could take that specific track, unadulterated, and make their derivative work from it. It would also be very helpful to artists who want to see how their inspirations make their art so that they can use those techniques in their own creations. Thank you for making your videos and music, they are very good :)
Lovely personal story that ties into this. I have had 2 stories I wrote for my classroom English class that later (entirely separately to me) had very similar stories! The first one was way more like than the second and both when you break it down had massively different story beats but still to find something and go "wow... that's exactly like my silly thing I did as a kid" was really bloody lovely. 1. Film: Passengers vs Story: The Janitor 2. Film: A Romcom about Ghosts Story: An "Edgycom" about Ghosts But the themes of the ghosts were exactly the same (a notable trait being that many of the comedy beats revolved around them being affected by but not affecting physical objects and therefore them being trapped inside places (alternately shops and a cinema) and in both cases just being very human) and both set in my home country if I remember correct. Now did they "infringe on my art". Sod no. It's just a lovely personal example of artistic likeness in my eyes.
i love this way more than the Kunst Saga; maybe its cause of the fucking musical number(the TRANSITION into it tho, the TRANSITION), maybe its cause youve completely convinced me and now im on the side of Copyright Abolishment
Copyright isn't just a means by which a creator gets paid for work after its initial sale, its also a way of claiming authorship which, ideally, enables the artist to protect against the exploitation or undesired iteration of an idea. On a different note, refusing to distinguish between an idea and its execution is to ignore the ways in which an idea is altered by the creative process itself and to disregard the gulf between an idea as it exists in the artist's head and what is meant to be a physical manifestation of that idea.
Liked the music in there my man, gonna have to check out ur tunes it's a fckn jam Gotta say I really enjoy ur vids, I like ur analyzation of shit, it's a good listen
With games, that raises an interesting question, since the computer processing those rules does have an impact on the art being experienced in the form of graphical settings, lag and input lag, framerate, etc. It's more than 'everyone's experience with bioshock will be different' because it's 'every instance of bioshock being run happens differently.' I know that's minor, but if you blew the idea up to a more extreme version (that I can't think of right now), there's some cool discussion there.
dividing "art" into "medium" & "art" is kinda redundant and muddies what is otherwise a good point made in this video, Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium Is The Message" explores these concepts while replacing the term "art" for "message" to describe the ephemeral idea within a work of "art".
Your point about plagiarism in the last video was excellent! Why crap on it? It had nothing to do with the ‘market sorting it out’, but with how tech advances to the current day allow empirical verification, which basically prevent anyone from falsely saying they’re the author without extreme backlash. It’s an ethics thing as well as tech. It was a VERY good point.
It's interesting how certain artists have used law to protect work that.....kind of really can't even be sold, and is meant to be temporary. I know you brought up Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his clocks before, but he also does the famous candy pieces, and I think it's done in a 'contract' sort of way where the place showing the work pays for the ability to recreate it....ie put a lot of candy in a specific configuration in order to communicate the idea. Museums will also buy documentation of a performance, even if that documentation is just plates with food stains on them, etc. It's just kind of bizarre the ways art has attempted to get around all of this..and still uphold capitalism in some ways...I mean know there are works that are done in a more of 'I pay for you to make this in this space, and then we own whatever is left from it ' ' or even performances that aren't recopied. ... I do understand it is hard to make a living as an artist,and a lot of artists in order to be able to live decently at all have to sale as much from their work as possible, because that's just the way things go..Even some artists just sell enough to keep making work (still having to have another job) and all they really are able to do is break even if they are lucky, because running a studio is expensive, getting the materials, getting work to shows, and you are doing it all for a very very select audience that may not even decide to invest in you. And if they do, the gallery gets half that money anyways for housing the work and getting that buyer to you. It's kind of really depressing, and I wonder why more fine artists don't forego the system, but a lot of them are tied to the materiality of the objects they make .... I like the system of residency, where the artist lives in the location and has the museum fund them to create a show, but this kind of thing is reserved for the few who are accepted, and you have to have a good track record usually (ie be accepted by previous galleries / residencies) to even have a shot. They also have some reduced rent studios that you can apply for so you can actually afford a space in the city... Just some ramblings, sorry. I am a bit disheartened as a painter and debating if I just need to work in the digital space because I am not sure I buy into the idea that you need to make a concrete work that sits in a specific room to have an impact...But I do think there is something different about the experience of a physical object as opposed to a digital one, and I think the context of bedroom vs gallery is something to consider.
"I see a forest green and periwinkle" Patricia... did you deadass just turn off the color correction in your brain? CAUSE LIKE YOURE RIGHT objectively its those colors. ALSO HOLY SHIT THAT TRANSITION INTO SONG WAS SO FUCKING SMOOTH UR THE COOLEST ARTIST EVER
Loved all of your videos so far. Are you taking some inspiration from Theodor Adorno and the others from the Frankfurt School regarding critical theory when making these? If not, would you be interested in making a third part using some of their critiques as a foundation? Keep up the good work man!
I'm glad that you recognised that 'People will recognise the original author!' Was a crappy argument because people dont and it doesn't work. :/ Its entirely dispiriting and deflating as an artist to have your work taken by someone else and get more recognition for it. It destroys your desire to create, and is deeply wounding.
Well the other problem is that artists over inflate what counts as theft. The wrong part is implying that the thief will face ridicule, when in actuality they'll probably just go on their way. Whether this is a bad thing or not is what I want to change.
I work in open source games. I give my stuff away for free, we just launched on Steam actually, Zero K. But I made a singleplayer mode where you fight waves of monsters for my game in order to have a unique feature that would increase my playerbase. It was very successful. But then my main competitor just... took it. Implimented it wholesale. Because it's open source. Suffice to say I simply stopped making art like that. I will never again make art like that. All I wanted is people to enjoy the work, maybe recognition and appreciation. Instead it felt like someone else was getting that and punching me in the gut for the priviledge.
Oscar Evans so what they 'stole' was the game mechanics themselves? also I get that feeling but why shojld that stop you from making art? look at standing Jack Kirby, or even Alan Moore, both got screwed over waaaaay more than you did and in the copyright system that was supposed to protect them but they kept chugging along. even Moore keeps making comics sometimes, even if he did swear off superheroes.
Love all the spinning and the repetition of shapes and dead silence that makes "urgency" feel like it takes forever. Please, for part 3 (I'm assuming there will be a part 3) talk more about the practice part of praxis. You got closer with this part. I mean, I agree with some comments I've seen here that this ultimately can't work in the way that it should work while capitalism is still a thing, but it's imperitave not to twiddle our thumbs and wait for The Revolution™. So what specific things are people doing right now to make this work the best they can? What factors affect those efforts? "Donating" is still so vague--obviously there is a difference between using Patreon and standing on a sidewalk playing saxophone beside an upturned hat. How does the medium for the donation affect the choices of the artist? Artists? How do we think about collaboration in this context? You've got firsthand knowledge as a creator/collaborator (love your music in the hbomb video!!) but it would be great to see/hear your thoughts on stuff outside your area. How do donation-based nonhierarchical art galleries work? Some anarchists I knew tried to get a community art center going and it died pretty quickly because they rented a grungy inaccessible space and all the event advertisements read like dissertation abstracts. Too much theory, not enough practice. Not enough concrete ideas flowing. I'm officially rambling. tl;dr (pretend I'm an undergrad art professor) great start, want to see you push this further
I disagree with the idea that an idea is functionally equivalent to a finished piece of art just because there is no clear line between inspiration, adaptation, and piracy. When in the smelting process does iron ore become steel? In which generation did monkey evolve into man? How much wealth must you possess to be impoverished or in the 1%? How far to the right must you go before becoming a fascist? There is no clear line in any of these cases. Does that mean the beginning is the same as the end? Should we treat them the same, just because there's no obvious Laws often deal with fuzzy matters. the obvious case: How much threat do you need to be in for assault or murder to be justifiable self-defense? Obviously, there's no clear line; there's a sliding scale of threat, from actively shooting to drawing a gun to drawing something that _looks_ like a gun to standing still. The justice system is imperfect. Its decisions are inconsistent and often wrong; what is self-defense for a police officer shooting a black man won't work the other way around. This does not mean that we should treat all violence equally, regardless of the threat posed by the other side. From a more artistic perspective: You can have a scene where characters sit around a cafe, discussing exposition; you can have an emotional action scene set in a cafe. You can also have scenes which mix expository dialogue and action, still set in the cafe. Are all of these scenes equivalent in any way, shape, or form? I have written dozens of documents' worth of ideas, but very few stories. You need time and labor to turn one into the other. One cannot just assert the distinction away by asserting it doesn't matter. I agree with many of Patricia's conclusions, but I can't agree with the logic she uses to get there. Part of that is because I tend to be a bit more tactical in my political opinions (e.g, art suffers under capitalism, but I believe that art should be able to function under capitalism for as long as we have this much capitalism), but part of it is because of the fundamental fallacy at the root of the argument.
I wish I could agree with you, but we diverge in the "we don't need to abolish copyright before abolishing capitalism". I'm sorry, but I need to eat, to have clothes, to solve day-to-day problems. If i'm still under capitalism, I can only do all that with money. While I'm still to make a name for myself, I have no guarantee that I will earn anything for my art, or that I will recieve comissions, or that I will have a stable income to mantain myself every month. yes, we are underselling our art, but that's because a) no one wants to buy it at higher prices if you arent a big name, b) you are making art eletist again by charging prices only rich people can/are willing to pay. even if I could sell each piece of art for an amout of money that would mantain myself for a month, that's still a gambit. If I rely on that, I have the risk that one month, I don't sell anything, and then everyting goes to shit. that system works for a material art, but for digital? I can sell the same art multiple times when it's digital. I can sell the same art forever. I can never fell bad for having sold an art and never being able to apreciate it myself again. And you're telling me I should let it for free in the internet? Look, a LOT of artist already post their regular art online for free and already rely on comissions and donations. And we still need the copyrights for thoose arts because good art is stolen everyday. And theese people often get a lot of profit for none of the effort. It's a diffrent thing from remixes or remakes. Yes, the diferences are gradual, but there are clear definitions for Stealing art and apropriating art. Every penny made by someone who stole my art is a unjust penny, and more often then not, a penny I desperately need. So, under capitalism, I NEED copyright law to be able to live of of my art, and to not be stolen. If we abolish capitalism, THEN it's not a problem anymore, and we can fully make art just for the art, and not to be able to survive.
If people won't know you exist, won't know that your art exist, how do you think you'll become a "big name" huh? All advertising is content and all content is advertising. Giving your art "for free" is actually a marketing tool to get exposure, to get someone to commission art from you. If they won't be able to see whether you're a capable artist before commissioning you they simply won't risk that. Nobody wants to pay for crap. Or getting something custom-made and receiving crap instead. And, if you play it right, you can get Patreon or one-off donations for the art you publish from the people who appreciate it and can afford to give some money but don't have enough to order a commission.
@@weirdo3116 I don't think she would, but if she did, it'd be a dumb argument. this comment is 1 year old so my thoughts on this matter have evolved, but I still think that it's an idea that won't work if we're still under capitalism. There's a diference between making art and posting it online and making a commission. an art commission is less creatively free, as you're making what someone asked you to make, and often times it's going to be used commercially. Comissions can't be done for free, even if by exposure, because SPECIALLY while "unknown" in the market, EVERY penny matters. Exposure won't feed me and the time wasted on a free comission could be spent on a paid one - or doing other side jobs. And specially the free pieces that one makes and publish need copyright protection, because if someone takes it and earn money with it, and I recieve nothing over it, that's ALL my surplus value being stolen AND SOME MORE. Yes, copyright law, today, often hurts small artists more then help, but the solution, UNDER CAPITALISM, is to reform it to better protect the small artists and fuck the big corporations over. all of that while we actively work on trampling capitalism down.
@@marcostsuna1 I say she would mostly because of this comment exchange cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/319487813852725248/702348653695860806/unknown.png
If I'd seen this before the whole pepe the frog thing I'd probably agree with you wholeheartedly. I dont want to live in a world where terrible people can use my characters or art for hate speech and I'd have absolutely no power to stop it. I do agree copyright is very broken and goes for far too long, but I'd like at least that much control over my creations while I'm alive.
you make some very interesting points here (esp. your lotr analogy) but i think part of the issue is the binary choice of art either as a commodity or not, when it can be both. i think this is especially important to consider, given the history of art predates capitalism. an example to consider is performance and body art, where the line is blurred between artist, performer, audience, idea, and performance. marina abramovich is a good example. as an artist myself, i am always attempting to find ways to ethically make a living, while also making my art accessible. however, the statistics of donations are such that it is not effective. patronage seems more effective, and i'm grateful that there seem to be services that fit this model.
The transition into Jacked actually fucking blew my mind holy shit
Wait. It sounds suspiciously like you want artists to be paid a living wage for doing work instead of being either broke or millionaires. What nonsense is this?
Yeahhh it's pretty depressing too the way the university systems work...A lot of fine artists have to teach in arts programs in order to be able to fund their practice, which is all fine and dandy. I loved my experiences with the staff and fellow students I had . But it's really expensive with little chance of recuperating that money ever ,even more so than the usual career, unless you are lucky enough to be accepted to some of the more prestigious universities that give you a little more of a golden ticket. (or you just hit it big as an artist ) .
A lot of these programs graduate students who really haven't put the work into the degree. I know art is very subjective so it's hard to tell someone there work is not good, but my experience is that an arts degree is pretty easy to sail through. I mean in the end the people who work hard end up getting more for their time , so that's what matters, but...I sometimes feel like young people who aren't really sure what art entails go into these programs, and are just pushed to the end because a quota needs to be filled, and it ultimately hurts the student. But the thing is these programs are often less funded than others,have less resources, have less people wanting to come into the program, and the arts industry needs it for a lot of their artists to have work.
Oh and don't even get me started on being an adjunct professor.......
Sorry I vented. An arts education, if you put the time into it is a really great thing,but it's a hard path. And yes I would prefer artists be paid a more even wage across the board, ...
There is an idea: you don't need to graduate college to be an artist
Or we could take it step further, remove human labor's status as a commodity from the equation entirely. Let artists make what they want, and divorce this entirely from their access to resources that they need to survive.
Well it's more than that
@@eartianwerewolf and now ai art
Lol I love how “instrumental break” is a chapter now.
I will never understand why Patty puts random musical interludes in her video essays, but I hope she never stops doing so.
Sounds like a part of you knows the reason, then
"Every piece of art is transforming into a new work every second it is allowed to exist within our world." I wish more people understood this.
I also wish people weren't so focused on the model of "trading cash for a product" so that maybe artists/performers/etc might have more ways to make a living. I mean, if someone were to come to me and offer to cover my needs for an entire week so that I could focus on creating content, I would see that week as a challenge to create as much quality output as possible. I'd come out of that week with a couple albums, several written works, and a nicely edited gameplay montage full of unseen and unusual circumstances. Maybe even somehow learn to draw a thing that wouldn't make eyes implode in their own sockets.
This video has had one of the best aesthetics yet, I loved the BillWurtz-esqu song and the rotating anarchist flag. As for a solution for creators without copyright or even capitalism I feel like you hinted at one in this and the previous video. A system where people donate directly to the creators(ownership of the means of production and all that)., If people like the content and want more of it then donation would be a good way to make that happen.
That could work for film, music, games in some scenario's...
*But what about when companies use art to sell a product? It's hard to imagine a donation to an artist fairing well with stockholders.
*What about art targeted to poorer audiences or ones less quick to donate? I think it's a given that compensation for your work shouldn't be dependent on how wealthy or charitable your target audience is.
*Also, plagiarism is still a problem, and copyright law gives a reason not to do so. You can't expect 'the masses' to be very good at ensuring artists that are copied get compensation. If 'the masses' are effective in this, you could expect smear campaigns on plagiarism compensation from businesses. (Like what happened with law suits in America after the McDonalds coffee incident: the narrative of a suing epidemic is adopted a lot more than the practice of looking at legal cases individually.)
This is why I am surprised more gallery artists aren't upending the system and going to patreon and crowdfunding to fund their bodies of work...But to be fair the public is pretty aggressive in general towards anything that is more off the wall , and not tied into figuration/ storytelling. . I think maybe there could be a way to bridge that gap though....
You're editing style of constantly overlaying videos and spinning images makes your stuff absolutely nuts to watch high. I love this channel.
I also really like that synth patch and I really appreciate it that you let it play for another 2 bars. Awesome video by the way!
these keep getting better! musical breaks should happen more in people's essays
IT'S
J A Z Z
STRAIGHT TO THE MOON AND BAck
ITS JAZZ
*walks into the room 6 years too late* LET’S ALL WRITE FANFICTION
@@RejoyousMelissa *Follows You in* ITS JAZZ
Can't think of any other people that deliver thoughtful and concise ideas that genuinely help my thinking for my uni work along with a straight up bop. Thanks Patricia
10:08 is the song time
the transition from video to song was very smooth
damn son this was an experience
Sgt.Butterface you could say this video was an art.
when part 3 hits 😩😩😩
JoJo's BizzART Capitadventurisn'tacommodity Part 3: Stardust Crusoldencalfs when?
Hey Thom, love your work. Will you upload 2019?
You mean part 4? LETS GET JAXED
I don't have a clue what this dude is saying but I agree with him because the song is cool
So let's get JACKED
Reading this made me sad. ):
I wouldn't say anything if this were a shitpost, but it's not. Saying you don't understand directly to the person who made this, especially since i'm sure she's taken years to come to this conclusion, is like... high key rude, my dooderonii...
It's just... mean... it's like saying all the work patty's put into this video is for nothing because you don't understand, and you say that like it's patty's fault.
): !!
Why must u be meanypants
She's basically saying that it's not accurate or moral to sell art as a "thing" because there is no "thing" to sell. The value comes from ideas which are propagated from one mind to another, and since those valuable ideas effectively belong to everyone exposed to them, the ownership of an art piece is impossible. People don't own art. They have access to it.
Patricia is a woman, not a dude :>
that original comment very very likely was posted before she came out
Hey, I know this is a dumb nitpick, but most of the mocap data attributed to Andy Serkis was actually done by a team of animators who bring to life the mess of data they get if not re-animate it altogether. They always get sidelined in any mention of mocap, so I thought I'd point that out.
Red Walker I wonder why all of those workers are ignored? I WONDER WHY
Ocelotl Chimalpahin Why? Because the general public doesn't have a fraction of a clue how computers or computer shit works, especially anything to do with digital media production. It's entirely beyond their scope of knowledge.
"What is Art"
S O C R A T E S
"Money don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more"
D E S C A R T E S
eric this is a good video and i'm on board with most of what you're saying here, but i do take issue with the way that you seem to vilify creators who charge money for their work. i agree that putting digital content behind a paywall is silly from a theoretical standpoint and would not be a thing in an ideal postcapitalist society, but for many people this is the only viable way for them to make a living from their work. from talking with other people who have experience with this, relying on donations just objectively makes less money in many cases. for people who rely on making profit from their art to buy food and pay rent and such, not charging for their work like this is just not an option. services like patreon are good but only really work for certain types of work and for people who already have an established audience. many people i know who charge for their work wish they didn't have to, but they don't feel as though they have a choice.
big fan of your stuff!
If you rely on selling your work, you already rely on donations. you just called it selling your work.
The function of the two monetary processes are different, so you can't really conflate the two terms.
Eric Taxxon No. Go take a basic community college course in economics.
With piracy as ubiquitous as it it is, if you're selling digital art and I choose to pay for it rather than just download it for free, that is effectively a donation. Granted, not everything can be found on piracy sites, and sometimes it isn't that simple, but the vast majority of the time it is this straightforward.
@@eractess I agree with you. For example I went to see a movie made by a comic book artist I love (I'm Italian) because I wanted to support is independent project. I first knew him from his first movie that I pirated because it didn't have a good distribution, I watched and liked it so much I bought it. If I never have downloaded it in the first place I would have never followed him the way I do now (I have also his board game and all of his comics). If a work is good then you get payed back one way or another. While another contradiction is in the fact that until the early 2000's distributors were ok with the selling of used book, movies, games ecc...now they changed their policies about it. Art should be as avaliable as possible to grow strong.
Your musical number near the end was amazing! This is only behind the Kunst Saga as my favorite video of yours!
caw caw I thought the dress meme as a vehicle for explaining ur point was particularly well-chosen caw caw / also u don’t have to justify your music by being consciously self indulgent abt it, believe in urself bby 🎐 big luv
I fuckin' love you angry crow. Your name is an unfitting one, I found this comment to be pretty congruent with my nurturing PMA vibes
A friend just linked me your Bennet Foddy video and I have binged like 8 of your videos. Can’t believe TH-cam algorithms have hidden you from me! As a game designer who isn’t quite sure how to leverage my skill set into a sustainable life, you hit me at home with your perspective. You are an artist and an inspiration. Thank you
The boy is back in town
@@tomofthetomb She presented herself as a boy when that comment was made.
Finally, someone on TH-cam who never runs ads, talks about points in great depth and NO RAID SHADOW LEGENDS
So fucking tired of youtube videos becoming capitalist money grinds
Gosh, I really like your style.
I could listen to these all day long. Your essays are super insightful and interesting~
Correct me if I'm misunderstanding something you said but when speaking about art in the digital age and how it *should* be free since the costs that go into distribution (the physical part of the commodity that isn't the art itself ie. packaging, shipping etc) are basically non-existent, even under capitalism, yeah? Because it sounds like you brushed past the labour that actually went into the production of the art itself. Free distribution aside, artists should be able to be compensated for a) the materials that went into production and b) their extracted labour time. I don't disagree with the point of your video I just felt like this part could have been expanded a bit :)
why did this video essay just turn into a musical?
Dear mr. Taxxon, your videos about art fascinates me! They are some of the best I watched in this platform. As a fellow composer I congratulate you!
This video inspired me to try to finish that fanfic I've been wanting to write for a year now. Thank you.
I'm blown away by the sheer beauty of your work. Please don't ever leave us.
Ever since the topic came up on one of Hbomb's streams I've been thinking about your views on copyright and I think they hold up better than people give you credit for.
In essence you're using Plato's Theory of Forms in an art context. I like this approach to art theory very much. Thanks for this great piece!
i really liked both parts of this video, but my favorite aspect has to be the song at the very end. very reminiscent of simcity 4 music which i love deeply
I WISH THE SONG PART WAS ON SPOTIFY
i came back here from your new DHMIS deconstrucion, and i thought, "this voice sounds slightly familiar." and i dug through your channel and found this and i remembered it. this 16 minute video cemented itself so much in my brain i was able to instantly recognize you after four years which is something not really common with my brain. i love your content keep it up!
One concern I still haven't heard challenged is that without copyright those with means and a powerful enough platform will simply steal (without attribution) the works of independent artists. You may say there will be no incentive to do that by big money men, but yes there is. Even without copyright, they can attach stolen works to personalities, build up those personalities (and control them through contracts) and 'create' value through non-fungible commodities like a live concert or signing events. The original artists will only have their own social media platform reach out to the good nature of other individuals to compensate them personally. I'm still very against copyright law, but a robust solution to all these specific problems is needed.
7:49 Completely unrelated to the point you're making here and commenting on a year old video, but the science came in a couple years back on why the dress illusion happened (Rabin et al)- it literally at the visual, not perceptive, level differentiated people based on their proportion of different colour cones in the eye. The photo's colour levels were right at the boundary of where someone with proportion X would receive the optical code for a different colour than someone with proportion Y- prior to the transmission to the brain. (This is also why some people would see it change colour based on the brightness or type of screen)
Completely useless bit of trivia but kinda interesting that, at least in this case, it isn't even due to someone's perception in the brain, but an outright proportion of cell types.
Commenting on a year old comment, but I used an image editing software to sample the colors on the dress, and they were white and gold/some light shade of dirt yellow.
its always weird discovering a new creator and then binging their old content and then like hitting their transition in reverse
As an _-abridger-_, wait no. _-retooler-_, wait no. visual fanfic creator, your work highly speaks to me. This is your best video thus far, although you probably didn't need me to tell you that, I'm sure you already knew.
I come at this too much as a visual arts person. one thing I appreciate is that artists do put out digital photos of their work that is shared online, so everyone gets to 'own the image' , but if someone wants to own the physical copy/ material they have to purchase it...So maybe that's a good step in the right direction.
I think I already agreed with this position long ago when I justified getting art commissions at anime conventions. That's some weird-ass foresight on my behalf.
As a mathematician I relate to the worry about ideas loosing value, because abstract mathematics is just that the art of logic and in academia it’s even more pertinent that we need to remove copyright.
Thanks Ray Troll image of a Helicoprion
Your editing style is wholly unique, and this is a really well thought out video! Thank you for this.
"I personally see a dull forest green and a light periwinkle" BRUH
Thanks so much, I used your "Kunst Saga" and this video as points of departure in my "Advanced Art History" class. I'd love to see more videos on your ideas about art.
Yo your videos are so good dude. As an artist and TH-cam content creator myself, I’m always looking for channels that really go into the meat and potatoes of critical art theory, artistic realities in society, and so on. Also your presentation with basically multiply and difference blending modes is really unique. Also your music taste in the background is a big hell yea.
Lots to think about. I don’t know where I stand in agreement or disagreement with the points given here, and that’s a really exciting thing. I love when I have to really question and find out where I stand on something, and you’re provoking that. Keep it up
As someone who has been thinking a lot about truth and conveyance of meaning accurately lately, I appreciate this video.
thank you so much for making these videos, ive basically always felt the same way about copyright laws and how stuff is sold digitally, but im awful with words so i can never get my thought across. but your videos almost perfectly encapsulate my thoughts, and its amazing. .
I think your oversimplifying the problems of the conflation of the medium and the art when it comes to trade.Since long before digital files were ever a thing, music wasn't meant to be performed just once. I'm not an expert on this topic (started with Kapital I but haven't gotten very far as of now), but I think this poses a problem with the value of said art. Labour goes into creating art: to come up with an idea and execute it takes time and effort.
Writing a song takes a certain amount of time (labour). Praticing to perform it takes a different amount of time and actually performing it takes yet another amount of time. However, subsequent performances by the same person take less effort as the song doesn't need to be written and practised as intensly. Different people performing the same song (adaptations trying to be faithful anyways) skip the process of writing the song altogether. The time writing the song never changes, but the relative effort it takes for a performance of the song changes with each performance.So how would you determine the value of a song? If the value simply writing (and in modern times recording it) should be seperated from distributing and performing it, why should anybody trade something for a song anybody could use at any time? Abolishing copyright law under capitalism completely eviscerates any entitlement artists have to be compensated for their work, wich under capitalism equals them being useless to society. Artists and beggars would be virtually the same thing. So I do very much think capitalism *needs* to be abolished for your proposal to work. If society as a whole were to compensate artists for their work, society as a whole would also be entitled to the works of those artists, so it can work under non-capitalist societies.However, this is only true from your perspective. I think under a capitalist perspective copyright can be defended. It does take indeed labour to distribute songs even now. You need devices wich can copy, store and play songs and those devices need labour to be produced, it is just that that labour time is very little for each individual song. However, labour time doesn't set prices under capitalism, so the condition for a price existing is just any labour being used. The high demand can be used to justify the relatively high price (as the supply is artificially shortened).I for one prefer the anticapitalist perspective.
Also, I'm afraid this comes of as needlessly negative. Overall, I enjoyed this video very much and want to congratulate you on your nice work.
DOES capitalism need to go? Getting paid a living wage is totally possible as an artist with modern technology (See Patreon, and no, not just TH-camrs use it.)
I realize I am not among friends as I say this but, the market IS useful, and a living wage really isn't such a bad fate for an artist. The market can give further monetary incentive to those individuals consider most valuable. (In a socialist system, I would be pissed to have to support someone's work whom I detest. But, I wouldn't stand against someone who saw value in the work in question.)
edit: although I said wage, I don't mean to infer that those who are crowd-funded are entitled to their earnings, it should be perceived as a donation. In fact this reliance on the their base could insure further quality and bolster artistic scrutiny.
SIMPalaxy Patreon isn't really capitalist in its function though. Donations are not a systemic part of capitalism and ensuring the workings of an entire industry solely on donations is a strange notion I think. Also, I don't think it contradicts my point of artists becoming beggars. They have no commodity to trade and rely solely on the favour of others.
It could work under capitalism, but it explicitly wouldn't be capitalistic.
@@SIMPalaxy yes, capitalism needs to die for many reasons apart from just this issue
I full-hardedly disagree with abolishing capitalism, mainly due to capitalism being so engrained in the world and because it has very unique benefits as opposed to other forms of economies. While capitalism and corporatism have very big issues, society as fixed them in the past, and there’s no other system that functions better than the current mix of socialistic capitalist markets. For example, Full Communism has a power vacuum, and treats all people as open-minded, well-mannered and respectable beings. Mercantilism as proven in history sucks the life out of chosen parasites, and accelerates class divide. Mutualism, while built on an important ideology of the existence of currency, falls short as it treats people as naturally good, like Communism. There’s just no other better alternative that doesn’t lead to authoritarian control based on whoever like how we have late-stage capitalism.
And so the only option is to continually edit our capitalist system with patches of other ideologies. And so, throwing out capitalism is impossible, unless someone comes up with a brand new, and more effective economic system, which probably won’t happen anytime soon.
"There is zero labour in copying a file." ... *cries in computer science*
My favourite part of a Patricia taxxon video essay is when she unexpectedly breaks into song in the second last part of the video
This video essay is the first of it's kind, no cap
Im intrigued by this idea...a lot of anarchist bands ive seen do scales on their merch 2-5$ in a pay what you can fashion...and most of the shows ive been to lately are by donation.
What are you thoughts on live music vs band camp as far as the art has 2 forms argument goes?
I agree with a lot of the sentiments that copyright has a lot of outdated problems and we should definitely do more to value to the labor of the original artists. Though I think there is an under address aspect of most conversations about copyright and copyright laws; an issue that I call the Pepe problem.
Pepe the Frog was an original character and piece of art created by the artist Matt Furie in 2005. Once Pepe gained attention as a meme, Furie enjoyed some success as a creator. Though by 2016, many people in the Alt Right co-opted Pepe's image as a symbol for the fascist and xenophobic ideologies within Alt Right communities.
When Furie saw that his art was being used to inflict harm on others, he teamed up with the anti-defamation league to help identify hateful incarnation of his art.
Which leads to the question, copyright is theoretically there so that the original artist can retain ownership of that creation whenever it becomes used for purposes that the artist doesn't agree with. It seems that because most richer creators and companies have abused copyright to monopolize their art, it has made it easier to ignore many smaller artists whenever there seem to be instances where other people abuse their art for purposes that the original artist doesn't agree with.
And yes, I realize that this gets into some murky territory about authorial intent, this potential use to censor and disrupt criticism, and how it disincentivize creative adaptation: though do you think that there should be at least some measures in place to make it so that we can potentially prevent the next Pepe?
Just something I think we should try to think about. Best Wishes.
anticopyright antifascist action is not only how u prevent pepe from being taken, it is how u take fascist works and weaponize them against their original purpose.
i think ur problem is less of an politically economic one then a politically cultural one. if fascism and other forms of bigotry are confronted more as a whole, obv they would be more afraid to fuck with the works of creators against them
Just had a realization, not pirating is effectively a donation. you fully have the option of experiencing something for free but you choose not to because it would be wrong to not pay someone for the joy you gain from the experience. the only real difference is how much the creator approves of this whole framework and some possible troubles with the pirating itself but its still the same choice just with a different default.
Mr Eric. You are a brilliant person.
I love your aesthetic, and the points you make, now I must say the arbitrary "why don't you have more subscribers your videos are SO GOOD"
Wooo!! excellent song and excellent points!!
Your Background Track is Fabulous !
good use of helicoprion, my favorite cartilaginous prehistoric fish(...?)
"Fish" is a weirdie, but yeah. Chrondricthyes is the whole cartilaginous fish clade, and Helicoprions are specifically Holocephalans, like ratfish/chimaeras.
Im sure I shouldn't have commented this.
The “music video sequence”, with the lyrics and descriptive text, reminds me of the recent DJ Koze video. I love the minimalist, descriptivist quality. ✌🏼
DID I HEAR SOME STEVE REICH?! This is automatically better than almost any non-Steve-Reich-having TH-cam video.
You touched upon how there are two costs of making art: the physical medium related cost and the "artistic labour" cost.
Let's say i create a video. Why should I not have the right to ask people to pay me for my "artistic labour"? Yes I'm sending them a digital copy that doesn't carry material costs, but why is it wrong to charge for the artistic labor? Why does it have to be donations as in the consumer decides? What is the argument for why the creator cannot or should not have that power?
(I am mostly on board with copyright abolition. Just curious about this line of thinking)
I'm a simple guy. I see helicoprion, I press like.
your videos on art are exhilarating and inspiring. thank you. and..... first
I always thought abolishing copyright would mean that the artists name would be „erased“ from the work, which was the reason I thought the abolishment would be bad. But after listening to you, I think I get it now. The part about the idea of a piece and not the piece itself is really mind changing!
Much like the book takes time and resources to create, a digital work also takes time and resources. You need the electricity to power the computers, food, and housing to keep the squishy humans alive and sane. Different things acquire their price in different ways. Rare items get there price through their demand. A packet of crisps, by contrast, gets its price through the cost of production, it doesn't make sense to apply the same system of pricing for something that is rare to something that is abundant. Which is more often what I see.
We buy artists work because if we didn't then they would have to get some other job to maintain themselves and then the art would probably suffer. Ether being lower quality or taking much longer to be produced.
... I skipped the song part.
I guess in my view, an artist selling their work is them trying to recoup the costs of its production. Rather than relying on a paron to pay for their work.
Hi Eric, I was wondering what you think of the idea of not just not enforcing copyright on works but also distributing the tracks, mixes, and project files used to create the work. That way, if people really like one particular part in a song you wrote, they could take that specific track, unadulterated, and make their derivative work from it. It would also be very helpful to artists who want to see how their inspirations make their art so that they can use those techniques in their own creations. Thank you for making your videos and music, they are very good :)
Lovely personal story that ties into this. I have had 2 stories I wrote for my classroom English class that later (entirely separately to me) had very similar stories! The first one was way more like than the second and both when you break it down had massively different story beats but still to find something and go "wow... that's exactly like my silly thing I did as a kid" was really bloody lovely.
1. Film: Passengers vs
Story: The Janitor
2. Film: A Romcom about Ghosts
Story: An "Edgycom" about Ghosts
But the themes of the ghosts were exactly the same (a notable trait being that many of the comedy beats revolved around them being affected by but not affecting physical objects and therefore them being trapped inside places (alternately shops and a cinema) and in both cases just being very human) and both set in my home country if I remember correct.
Now did they "infringe on my art". Sod no. It's just a lovely personal example of artistic likeness in my eyes.
i love this way more than the Kunst Saga; maybe its cause of the fucking musical number(the TRANSITION into it tho, the TRANSITION), maybe its cause youve completely convinced me and now im on the side of Copyright Abolishment
Copyright isn't just a means by which a creator gets paid for work after its initial sale, its also a way of claiming authorship which, ideally, enables the artist to protect against the exploitation or undesired iteration of an idea.
On a different note, refusing to distinguish between an idea and its execution is to ignore the ways in which an idea is altered by the creative process itself and to disregard the gulf between an idea as it exists in the artist's head and what is meant to be a physical manifestation of that idea.
You deserve all the subscribers, and all the kapital.
Liked the music in there my man, gonna have to check out ur tunes it's a fckn jam
Gotta say I really enjoy ur vids, I like ur analyzation of shit, it's a good listen
So much better than your other vid on the golden calf 💯
Great video! Thanks Eric!
Patricia, you are so good
With games, that raises an interesting question, since the computer processing those rules does have an impact on the art being experienced in the form of graphical settings, lag and input lag, framerate, etc. It's more than 'everyone's experience with bioshock will be different' because it's 'every instance of bioshock being run happens differently.' I know that's minor, but if you blew the idea up to a more extreme version (that I can't think of right now), there's some cool discussion there.
dividing "art" into "medium" & "art" is kinda redundant and muddies what is otherwise a good point made in this video, Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium Is The Message" explores these concepts while replacing the term "art" for "message" to describe the ephemeral idea within a work of "art".
Your point about plagiarism in the last video was excellent! Why crap on it? It had nothing to do with the ‘market sorting it out’, but with how tech advances to the current day allow empirical verification, which basically prevent anyone from falsely saying they’re the author without extreme backlash. It’s an ethics thing as well as tech. It was a VERY good point.
To call this only a video essay is to sell it short by half.
It's interesting how certain artists have used law to protect work that.....kind of really can't even be sold, and is meant to be temporary. I know you brought up Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his clocks before, but he also does the famous candy pieces, and I think it's done in a 'contract' sort of way where the place showing the work pays for the ability to recreate it....ie put a lot of candy in a specific configuration in order to communicate the idea. Museums will also buy documentation of a performance, even if that documentation is just plates with food stains on them, etc.
It's just kind of bizarre the ways art has attempted to get around all of this..and still uphold capitalism in some ways...I mean know there are works that are done in a more of 'I pay for you to make this in this space, and then we own whatever is left from it ' ' or even performances that aren't recopied. ...
I do understand it is hard to make a living as an artist,and a lot of artists in order to be able to live decently at all have to sale as much from their work as possible, because that's just the way things go..Even some artists just sell enough to keep making work (still having to have another job) and all they really are able to do is break even if they are lucky, because running a studio is expensive, getting the materials, getting work to shows, and you are doing it all for a very very select audience that may not even decide to invest in you. And if they do, the gallery gets half that money anyways for housing the work and getting that buyer to you.
It's kind of really depressing, and I wonder why more fine artists don't forego the system, but a lot of them are tied to the materiality of the objects they make ....
I like the system of residency, where the artist lives in the location and has the museum fund them to create a show, but this kind of thing is reserved for the few who are accepted, and you have to have a good track record usually (ie be accepted by previous galleries / residencies) to even have a shot. They also have some reduced rent studios that you can apply for so you can actually afford a space in the city...
Just some ramblings, sorry. I am a bit disheartened as a painter and debating if I just need to work in the digital space because I am not sure I buy into the idea that you need to make a concrete work that sits in a specific room to have an impact...But I do think there is something different about the experience of a physical object as opposed to a digital one, and I think the context of bedroom vs gallery is something to consider.
Ps, Lets_Get_Jacked.mp3 needs to be uploaded to your bandcamp IMMEDIATELY. I vogued DOWN to the song, and I need it RIGHT NOW.
"I see a forest green and periwinkle" Patricia... did you deadass just turn off the color correction in your brain? CAUSE LIKE YOURE RIGHT objectively its those colors.
ALSO HOLY SHIT THAT TRANSITION INTO SONG WAS SO FUCKING SMOOTH UR THE COOLEST ARTIST EVER
Loved all of your videos so far. Are you taking some inspiration from Theodor Adorno and the others from the Frankfurt School regarding critical theory when making these? If not, would you be interested in making a third part using some of their critiques as a foundation?
Keep up the good work man!
I'm glad that you recognised that 'People will recognise the original author!' Was a crappy argument because people dont and it doesn't work. :/ Its entirely dispiriting and deflating as an artist to have your work taken by someone else and get more recognition for it. It destroys your desire to create, and is deeply wounding.
Well the other problem is that artists over inflate what counts as theft. The wrong part is implying that the thief will face ridicule, when in actuality they'll probably just go on their way. Whether this is a bad thing or not is what I want to change.
I work in open source games. I give my stuff away for free, we just launched on Steam actually, Zero K. But I made a singleplayer mode where you fight waves of monsters for my game in order to have a unique feature that would increase my playerbase. It was very successful. But then my main competitor just... took it. Implimented it wholesale. Because it's open source.
Suffice to say I simply stopped making art like that. I will never again make art like that. All I wanted is people to enjoy the work, maybe recognition and appreciation. Instead it felt like someone else was getting that and punching me in the gut for the priviledge.
Man, you really don't like art.
I've been working in open source game development for 10 years and give all my work away for free.
But like, if you think so.
Oscar Evans so what they 'stole' was the game mechanics themselves?
also I get that feeling but why shojld that stop you from making art? look at standing Jack Kirby, or even Alan Moore, both got screwed over waaaaay more than you did and in the copyright system that was supposed to protect them but they kept chugging along. even Moore keeps making comics sometimes, even if he did swear off superheroes.
Love all the spinning and the repetition of shapes and dead silence that makes "urgency" feel like it takes forever.
Please, for part 3 (I'm assuming there will be a part 3) talk more about the practice part of praxis. You got closer with this part. I mean, I agree with some comments I've seen here that this ultimately can't work in the way that it should work while capitalism is still a thing, but it's imperitave not to twiddle our thumbs and wait for The Revolution™. So what specific things are people doing right now to make this work the best they can? What factors affect those efforts? "Donating" is still so vague--obviously there is a difference between using Patreon and standing on a sidewalk playing saxophone beside an upturned hat. How does the medium for the donation affect the choices of the artist? Artists? How do we think about collaboration in this context?
You've got firsthand knowledge as a creator/collaborator (love your music in the hbomb video!!) but it would be great to see/hear your thoughts on stuff outside your area. How do donation-based nonhierarchical art galleries work? Some anarchists I knew tried to get a community art center going and it died pretty quickly because they rented a grungy inaccessible space and all the event advertisements read like dissertation abstracts. Too much theory, not enough practice. Not enough concrete ideas flowing. I'm officially rambling.
tl;dr (pretend I'm an undergrad art professor) great start, want to see you push this further
your voice is perfect for that song, my god--
I disagree with the idea that an idea is functionally equivalent to a finished piece of art just because there is no clear line between inspiration, adaptation, and piracy. When in the smelting process does iron ore become steel? In which generation did monkey evolve into man? How much wealth must you possess to be impoverished or in the 1%? How far to the right must you go before becoming a fascist? There is no clear line in any of these cases. Does that mean the beginning is the same as the end? Should we treat them the same, just because there's no obvious
Laws often deal with fuzzy matters. the obvious case: How much threat do you need to be in for assault or murder to be justifiable self-defense? Obviously, there's no clear line; there's a sliding scale of threat, from actively shooting to drawing a gun to drawing something that _looks_ like a gun to standing still.
The justice system is imperfect. Its decisions are inconsistent and often wrong; what is self-defense for a police officer shooting a black man won't work the other way around. This does not mean that we should treat all violence equally, regardless of the threat posed by the other side.
From a more artistic perspective: You can have a scene where characters sit around a cafe, discussing exposition; you can have an emotional action scene set in a cafe. You can also have scenes which mix expository dialogue and action, still set in the cafe. Are all of these scenes equivalent in any way, shape, or form?
I have written dozens of documents' worth of ideas, but very few stories. You need time and labor to turn one into the other. One cannot just assert the distinction away by asserting it doesn't matter.
I agree with many of Patricia's conclusions, but I can't agree with the logic she uses to get there. Part of that is because I tend to be a bit more tactical in my political opinions (e.g, art suffers under capitalism, but I believe that art should be able to function under capitalism for as long as we have this much capitalism), but part of it is because of the fundamental fallacy at the root of the argument.
Bill Wurtz refuses to monetise his videos. He is a true artist.
*I love this*
I like the helicoprion
Great video, love your content
Eric ma boy
I wish I could agree with you, but we diverge in the "we don't need to abolish copyright before abolishing capitalism".
I'm sorry, but I need to eat, to have clothes, to solve day-to-day problems. If i'm still under capitalism, I can only do all that with money.
While I'm still to make a name for myself, I have no guarantee that I will earn anything for my art, or that I will recieve comissions, or that I will have a stable income to mantain myself every month.
yes, we are underselling our art, but that's because a) no one wants to buy it at higher prices if you arent a big name, b) you are making art eletist again by charging prices only rich people can/are willing to pay.
even if I could sell each piece of art for an amout of money that would mantain myself for a month, that's still a gambit. If I rely on that, I have the risk that one month, I don't sell anything, and then everyting goes to shit.
that system works for a material art, but for digital? I can sell the same art multiple times when it's digital. I can sell the same art forever. I can never fell bad for having sold an art and never being able to apreciate it myself again.
And you're telling me I should let it for free in the internet? Look, a LOT of artist already post their regular art online for free and already rely on comissions and donations. And we still need the copyrights for thoose arts because good art is stolen everyday. And theese people often get a lot of profit for none of the effort. It's a diffrent thing from remixes or remakes. Yes, the diferences are gradual, but there are clear definitions for Stealing art and apropriating art. Every penny made by someone who stole my art is a unjust penny, and more often then not, a penny I desperately need.
So, under capitalism, I NEED copyright law to be able to live of of my art, and to not be stolen. If we abolish capitalism, THEN it's not a problem anymore, and we can fully make art just for the art, and not to be able to survive.
If people won't know you exist, won't know that your art exist, how do you think you'll become a "big name" huh?
All advertising is content and all content is advertising. Giving your art "for free" is actually a marketing tool to get exposure, to get someone to commission art from you.
If they won't be able to see whether you're a capable artist before commissioning you they simply won't risk that. Nobody wants to pay for crap. Or getting something custom-made and receiving crap instead.
And, if you play it right, you can get Patreon or one-off donations for the art you publish from the people who appreciate it and can afford to give some money but don't have enough to order a commission.
QVear
Are you ACTUALLY saying we should do commissions for exposure?
@@marcostsuna1 "Are you ACTUALLY saying we should do commissions for exposure?"
I feel like taxxon would also say that.
@@weirdo3116 I don't think she would, but if she did, it'd be a dumb argument.
this comment is 1 year old so my thoughts on this matter have evolved, but I still think that it's an idea that won't work if we're still under capitalism.
There's a diference between making art and posting it online and making a commission.
an art commission is less creatively free, as you're making what someone asked you to make, and often times it's going to be used commercially.
Comissions can't be done for free, even if by exposure, because SPECIALLY while "unknown" in the market, EVERY penny matters. Exposure won't feed me and the time wasted on a free comission could be spent on a paid one - or doing other side jobs.
And specially the free pieces that one makes and publish need copyright protection, because if someone takes it and earn money with it, and I recieve nothing over it, that's ALL my surplus value being stolen AND SOME MORE.
Yes, copyright law, today, often hurts small artists more then help, but the solution, UNDER CAPITALISM, is to reform it to better protect the small artists and fuck the big corporations over.
all of that while we actively work on trampling capitalism down.
@@marcostsuna1 I say she would mostly because of this comment exchange cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/319487813852725248/702348653695860806/unknown.png
This song has no right to slap as much as it does
If I'd seen this before the whole pepe the frog thing I'd probably agree with you wholeheartedly. I dont want to live in a world where terrible people can use my characters or art for hate speech and I'd have absolutely no power to stop it. I do agree copyright is very broken and goes for far too long, but I'd like at least that much control over my creations while I'm alive.
gives me jack stauber vibes
you make some very interesting points here (esp. your lotr analogy) but i think part of the issue is the binary choice of art either as a commodity or not, when it can be both. i think this is especially important to consider, given the history of art predates capitalism. an example to consider is performance and body art, where the line is blurred between artist, performer, audience, idea, and performance. marina abramovich is a good example.
as an artist myself, i am always attempting to find ways to ethically make a living, while also making my art accessible. however, the statistics of donations are such that it is not effective. patronage seems more effective, and i'm grateful that there seem to be services that fit this model.