Salon 62 // Art Pirates

Hey everyone, my name is Colin Goldberg and welcome to the Expressionist Salon number 62. Today is Wednesday, February 1st, 2023, and this evening's topic is art pirates. So I'm just going to really quickly share my screen here. So this piece of artwork, art pirates, fittingly enough, was created using Midjourney, pirating the artwork from everyone on the internet and coming up with this image.

Unattributed

And the prompt that was used to create the image was Expressionist art pirates. So that's what Midjourney thinks an Expressionist art pirate looks like. Wow. But the topic was originally just pirates. And I think Renata suggested, I think Tommy might have came up with pirates. And then Renata suggested that we add art to make it art pirates. But anything that anyone wants to show to share related to this idea and or anything else that's going on in the studios, I'd rather have the time be spent while we're recording of people showing and sharing their work than just having to do it on the internet. So I'm going to go ahead and get started. And then, you know, I mean, definitely discourse is also, you know, certainly encouraged. So without further ado, I'm going to kick us off with our first artist who we'll be presenting.

Unattributed

And that is Zach Zaitseff, Zachary Zaitzeff. So just a quick intro. I met Zach many moons ago when I was through Steve Miller, when I was primarily doing a lot of client work. And I'm going to talk a little bit about Zach. And I'm going to talk a little bit about Zach. I've gotten to know him as an artist as well. At that time, I was working with him doing a website for a restaurant that he owned in New York that was actually pretty close to where I used to live in New York back in the day. So I'm going to hand the mic over to Zach. And Zach, you're welcome to share your screen at any time if you wish. Sure.

Yeah, I'm Zachary Zaitzeff. I am a transplant from originally from New York, but live in. Louisiana, just north of New Orleans. And I've been making art for close to making and selling art close to 30 years. And I use as many, many different kinds of media as possible. Hello? Can you hear me all right? Yeah. And for everyone who isn't sharing, if you could just mute yourselves, that'd be appreciated. Sorry, Zach. So, I mean, for example, now making. Whirly gigs. But I consider myself a painter. And I have something to share that I really haven't shown anybody except for Colin. It's a short video that I did. And let me just sort of present it. And then I can explain it. But I'd like to definitely hear people's feedback on it. So how do I? Where's the share? So on the bottom of the Zoom window, there should be a green.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Share screen button. Right there. Okay, good. And when that pops up, it'll ask you what you want to share, what screen you want to share. And then you can just click the share button. There you go. Okay. And. Now, is there. There's audio in this, right? There's audio. And the audio for me is really important. Okay. Did you. When you click share, there's a checkbox that says share device audio. I don't know if you checked that. But if you didn't. You might want to. So stop the share and then reshare. And then make sure that box is checked before you click the last share thing. Because you need that on. All right. Hold on. So go back. So I go to this. And so. There should be a little checkbox after you hit share screen. There you go. Do I do optimize video for video video clip as well no I would skip that one okay all right got it all right y'all can see the black screen yep Thank you.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Thank you. Thank you. All right. And what's the title of that piece? It's Listen to the Crows in the Fire. So just a little bit of a background. Years ago, this was when I was living in upstate New York. I was I saw a lot of flags hanging out right by people, the entranceways to people's homes. It was a very common image. Especially in the northeast, you don't see it all that much down here in Louisiana. And, you know, I was just thinking about the symbolism for that. It's a very welcoming image. And so I just started to play with it as far as far as art.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Right around that same time, I took a trip down to the Smithsonian and you could see some of the battle flags, flags that had been in wars and had been torn apart. You know, it's an object that has been sort of through a great ordeal. Like we all do. You know, this. The art that I've made with the flag, I don't consider itself political in any way. It's more dealing with the human condition and sort of the trials and tribulations that we all go through in life. And that, you know, a lot of times, you know, we can be destroyed, you know.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Damaged in a way, but we all deserve. Protection. And so. The flag that I had made for that, you know, it's studying the flag. I learned that, you know, over 100 years ago, flags were homemade and you could use any sort of hue of red, white and blue that you wanted. Any sort of star configuration that you wanted. And it was a way for someone to sort of express their individuality. And at the same time saying, you know, I'm not going to do this. You know, unity, you know, being being with a larger group.

Zachary Zaitzeff

And I like that, too. I like that symbolism. And, you know, the flag that was in the video had a U.S. Star configuration. And that was actually patented over 100 years ago. I like the symbolism of that as well. And I, you know, I was I was playing on sort of, you know, not only the video, but it being sort of like an action art piece.

Zachary Zaitzeff

And I thought that. Behind the flag as the flag was burning, you sort of see, you know, sort of a beautiful field with a road. And, you know, there are a lot of questions that. That, you know, can be asked, you know, as far as far as our lives and going down, going down the different roads that we all go on. Yeah.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Cool. So does anyone have any questions for Zach or I think, you know, the way that this salon is looking, we could probably do a little bit of conversation, you know, with each artist after they present. When Zach first showed me this piece, I thought, you know, that it probably could fit within the current theme and that, you know, the flag itself is a piece of art that he's appropriated.

Zachary Zaitzeff

And I think that it's interesting, too, in terms of that configuration. You know, that's something that was preexisting. But does anyone have any thoughts or questions for Zach? Well, it's kind of hard to say that this is apolitical. Because, you know, the nation is literally on fire. States that are suffering from climate catastrophes.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Political discourse is especially not civil. And increasingly less based on facts. So there is a movement within Congress itself. Burn it down type of attitude of the family annihilator. If I can't have it, nobody can. You know. So how do you broach this obvious symbolism that's staring at us and we're living it every day? And your desire to.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Be apolitical with it. You know, I. I almost don't want to. Go there with it. I don't I don't know. Like when I when I first thought about it and sort of executed, you know, my battle flags and in this video. I was thinking more of, you know, I think just the individual, regardless of country and where you live. It's just, it's everybody is obviously everyone is different and everybody has, you know, their problems more so than others.

Zachary Zaitzeff

That's as far as I went as far as my thought or my conscious thought of when I executed this piece right well you live in Louisiana you know I'm in South Carolina so I'm just calling the spade a spade I recognize that But I recognize that. Definitely do. And, you know, you can, you can read into it. And really any way you want to, that's sort of the beauty of art is that, you know, you're never, you're never wrong. You know, it's, it's, it's one's opinion, but I can just tell you that's what I was, you know, sort of the themes that I was thinking about were resilience. You know, that's, that's a huge, a huge theme with, with my, with my flag work.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Okay. So maybe one way you could really make that point of resilience is to reverse the film sequence, reverse it and have the flag reconstitute itself. Mm-hmm. Sort of like a finesse. You know, from the ashes, that type of thing. But I sort of, you know, the way I saw it was the flag comes down and what's it overlooking? It's overlooking something beautiful. Like what's, what's behind it? What's in it? What's, what's in the flag? It's, it's, it's a beautiful field with, with a road.

Zachary Zaitzeff

That's what I was sort of thinking. So it could go either way. I mean, I, I, I take your point. I think, I think, you know, as far as I can, I could try that. Yeah. Show some people, you know, faces kind of get the point too. Thank you. Sure. All right. For me, I, I would say that I feel like it's perhaps less political than it's, it's about the whole country as a whole. And I tend to see politicals being one side or the other, and I think that putting myself in a conservative point of view, I think they also would feel that the, the country's burning down for different reasons. And so it feels to me, I mean, I can understand not calling it political, but it feels like a sign of the times, perhaps, that reflects on, you know, just the, yeah, the sign of the times. Mm hmm.

Zachary Zaitzeff

You know, another thing I thought that was interesting when I was researching the flag is that, because once I went down to my town hall and there was an entire basket of like old flags and they retire them, the way you retire a flag is, is, is you burn it. Which I thought was kind of interesting. I like, I like the way the Tibetans retire their flags. They put them on the top of mountains and let them decay. Like, with the, the words that are being carried off. Mm hmm. And then they put them into the wind. Right. Letting the, you know, a little more holistic or something. Yeah.

Zachary Zaitzeff

All right. So unless anyone has any other questions or comments for Zach, I guess we can move, move on. Malavika, do you have some work you'd like to share? Yeah. Yeah. But I think Michael wants to say something. Michael, please. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Michael. I think you're muted. Okay. Yeah, my bad. I think context is everything sometimes. I, I guess I, I, I, I think Vernetta brought up a very interesting point. Just in general, what happens if your intention is this thing and, you know, a, a, a big swath of folks, interpret your work as something completely different or they, they run with your work in a way that you don't feel like that's what you were trying to represent. And I think that's, that's the vulnerability, I think. And, and I think Zach, you mentioned that as well.

Zachary Zaitzeff

It's like, you can interpret it how you like. But I think sometimes things take on a life of themselves. And, I, I guess my, my initial interpretation, was, was more along the lines of, I think, maybe how Vernetta was seeing things as well. And so I, yeah, I, I, I don't have a, a strong opinion one way or the other. I thought it was interesting, but the whole flag burning thing can, can, you know, really kind of, you know, separate people depending on how you look at it. And again, context I think is very, very important. And as it relates to art pirates, I just, for me, I just think oftentimes as artists, if we're doing things that we feel are important, that puts us on the fringe. And, and to me that's kind of not the, not the stealing piracy part, but the, the pirates fighting, fighting the big colonialism.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Entrenched powers. So if you look at it from that standpoint, I think as artists, we oftentimes take on the prevailing mindset and try to bring in viewpoints that are maybe on the outskirts of what's acceptable or what people are willing to tolerate. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Anyone else? Yeah, I just wanted to jump in really quickly. I think that taking the flag on is the ultimate piracy.

Zachary Zaitzeff

It's a symbol that's a heavy symbol, and people have taken it to mean different things. And it was co-opted at one point by a certain part of our society. And one of the great joys in my neighborhood, when the election was declared, the last presidential election, people brought out their American flags. And of course, unfortunately, my flag, my childhood flag only has 48 stars. I guess I was supposed to burn it. I'm dating myself with apologies to Colin, who has ties to one of those other states that came in later.

Zachary Zaitzeff

But that's just how it is. And my neighborhood had a spontaneous block party and closed out the street and people were dancing in the streets. And I felt that it was a real pirating of the flag, if I can even say that, to kind of take back the flag, which had come to mean something else. And then someone else has come along, will come along and make it mean something else. But in terms of the topic of piracy, I think the flag is like really ripe for that. Okay.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Let's start with you. Thank you. Yeah. I think Marlo had her hand up for a minute. Marlo, you have something to say? Well, you all had just discussed it. Zach, your presentation had, I had conflicting feelings, the flag being such an icon and in my lifespan, seeing it, you know, the personal is political, all sorts of discussions started arising. And so I've just been enjoying what, what you've said. And what everyone has shared. I, I have nothing more to add to it. Thank you though, Renata. Thank you. I would just add that right now I'm looking at the flag that draped my father's coffin.

Zachary Zaitzeff

You know, they fold the flag and they give it to the family. I'm looking at the flag that draped his coffin. He was a Marine. It's a big part of my family legacy, the flag is. So I'm just going to start with you. Yeah, that's a good way to start. E nur Kaveh's world. It's an event I'm going to have to make the next video. So you can see that I'm going to have to make the next video. So you can see that I'm going to have to make the next video. So you can see that I'm going to have to make the next video. So you can see that I'm going to have to make the next video. So you can see that I'm going to have to make the next video. So you can see that I'm going to have to make the next video. It's really positive, you know, regardless of what the discussion is. I feel like the discourse aspect of this format is what makes it interesting.

Zachary Zaitzeff

You know, I feel like a lot of other sort of group oriented things on the Internet are like a presenter comes up and then another presenter comes up and another presenter comes up and then it's over, you know. So I think, you know, through the last couple of years, you know, seeing familiar faces on here and getting to know various artists all around the world and their bodies of work and their personalities and everything else.

Zachary Zaitzeff

You know, to me, that's a real big part of what expressionism is all about. And it's really been pretty amazing, I think, to see, you know, to see this group. And community kind of like grow and come together. We just added a new artist. I haven't added her to the artist index yet, but I'm really excited to have her as part of the community. She's a poet, actually. And her name is Sasha Stiles. She just DM'd me back because I had seen her work on Instagram, but I ordered her book. It's called Technology.

Zachary Zaitzeff

And it's all, you know, work revolving. It's all revolving around technology. And I believe she's, I'm not sure if she's minted the poems as NFTs, but she's also, you know, pretty actively involved in the NFT space. And, you know, if you're interested in poetry, yeah, I, you know, highly recommend checking it out.

Zachary Zaitzeff

So without further ado, I would like to move along to Malavika. If you'd like to introduce yourself and let everyone know where you're zooming in from, that'd be great. Yeah. Hi, I'm Malavika Mandalantru from India. And right now it is 4.28 morning. And I don't know whether it will fit to the today's topic or not. But I thought sometime, knowingly or unknowingly, we use a lot of images directly from the net. And even the time when I've... Made this, I have one work where I have used the images from the net. And it was, I think, 2012.

Zachary Zaitzeff

That time, the reason of developing this is one of the... What I should say? One of the building, very expensive building came up here. Its name is Antalya. And the reason of... Taking that was that, what is the necessity? Because I was working more on desires, more on in-transit. So I'll just share the screen. So...

Zachary Zaitzeff

Wilted... All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Am I audible? I can hear you. Yeah, I can hear you. I didn't see your screen being shared. Did she just disappear? It's showing shared. Because it is not showing at my place, the correct screen, what I want to share. Again, same problem I'm facing. Is it visible? Okay. One building? No, I'm not seeing the screen.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Can I do a little later so that I can share the proper one? Sure. I'm taking unnecessarily time. Yeah, no worries. Well... Steve... If you're interested in sharing some of your book work as it relates to the topic of art pirates. When I first was speaking with you earlier, I was thinking about those books and you actually introduced me to Richard Prince's work, which I think has some sort of relationship to that body of work in terms of the appropriation idea.

Zachary Zaitzeff

So if you're interested... I'm interested in sharing and talking a little bit about that. That would be, I think, really relevant to the topic. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I don't know if my own work is going to be part of this discussion. But yeah, we used to call this appropriation, right? There was this idea with appropriation and the concept that came out of like pictures, culture and Douglas Crimp writings that he had done in the, I believe, the 80s. And the idea was there were so many images out there that there was no need to create new images. And with the proliferation of mass imagery, there was this notion that they could not all have meaning and that the meaning became kind of null and void. And you could rescue those images, put them in a new context by appropriating an image.

Zachary Zaitzeff

And create a new discourse on meaning and imagery. And examples of this would be someone like Cindy Sherman, who would take, you know, Hollywood roles of posing and take those kinds of images you would have around the creation of a movie, for example. Those sort of scene images. They'd have professional photographers come on set and do these sort of photographs. And she...

Zachary Zaitzeff

Kind of reinvented and embedded those images with roles about the roles of women in culture and feminism and bringing that content to these images that were kind of previously used. Other people in the movement, Jack Goldstein, Barbara Kruger, who just had a huge installation at MoMA. So this idea of appropriation was that you can take something that was not in the original form of a movie and put it in a new context. And you can do something, recontextualize it and give it new meaning. Now, I was just in a... Listening to a podcast today. I don't know if any of you guys know Jerry Gagosian, who has a podcast called Art Smack. And she was talking about AI today and a major lawsuit. So, you know, where art appropriation was this kind of one-time thing on an individual basis of unique artists.

Zachary Zaitzeff

This whole AI discussion that's coming in right now is like there's artists that are suing some of the platforms for, you know, taking their work and include it in the part of the algorithms for the art that some of these machines are, you know, appropriating or stealing or, you know, really pirating on the high seas and acting like swashbucklers without... Yeah. Any responsibility towards the whole idea about copyright and intellectual property. So, you know, what Richard Prince was obviously, as Colin was saying, he's one of the first people in this, you know, prominent appropriation. Then I think a lot of them, does everyone know the Instagram pieces that Richard did? So originally started out in Time Magazine, ripping out, you know, the ads and stuff, you know, where he... He was working as a photo editor and then just re-photographing those and then presenting that as his own work.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Famous for doing that with the Marlboro Man, taking the Marlboro ads, you know, removing the text and presenting those as his work. And he was sued for the... He's been sued a lot of times, as has Jeff Koons, right? These are two major appropriators that are taking other people's imagery. But what we're, you know, what's interesting... Right now for me is that even in, you know, the time of, let's say, Richard Prince and Jeff Koons, there was a potential structure to litigate this kind of theft, right?

Zachary Zaitzeff

And it's really hard to win these cases. And with AI now, I mean, this... I mean, how do you possibly, you know, with Instagram where, you know... Meta supposedly owns all of the Instagram images, your work. If you put it on Facebook, you no longer own that work. So we've got this individual artist piracy of appropriation that's become mass corporate piracy with AI. And again, I don't know where the hell any of this is going to go. But when you introduced the pirate thing, that's the first thing I thought about. Right. And we can have a discussion about that if we haven't had already online. Would you want to share your screen and pull up your site and show some of those books that were, you know, screen printed on top of other content? You know, when I first was thinking about you and your body of work, those ones came to mind as relevant.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Steve, I have a question, Steve. Sure. You stated that... There's... That Facebook appropriates the artwork that we publish on their platforms. Do you have, like, a reference for that? Well, you... I think you sign something when you do the... You know, when you sign the agreement to be on those platforms, you basically sign away, you know, your rights to your... To your...

Zachary Zaitzeff

You know, to your product. And I think that's the part that's incredibly disturbing, right? And, you know, they claim that they own, you know, own your imagery. And that is really, really, really disturbing. So I think, you know, that's the issue with this media. So if, you know, one could argue if they're scraping, you know, all of Instagram, then Instagram... Owns, you know, owns this, you know, this imagery that you've created. So it's just getting really, really, really super complicated.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Hey, Steve, I could share... I could share off of mine. I was thinking even, like, something like that gold Rasta book. Yeah. I mean, is this coming up now? So is it... Are you saying it's dangerous or risky to post your art on Instagram? Well, we all know that the Instagram... Yeah, read the Instagram contract. Yeah. They... You give up ownership of your work. Of your work or that image?

Zachary Zaitzeff

Of anything you post online on those platforms. So, like, if you're an artist, you shouldn't be posting anything on Instagram. Well, that's, you know, that's... Yeah, that's... A lot of people have taken that position. So, you know, I think that's a whole... You know, the idea about... About ownership and... And even if somebody rips you off, are you going to, like, litigate? I mean, this is happening all the time. Richard was sued for taking Instagram images and reposting them. He changed the...

Zachary Zaitzeff

I mean, the legal parameters are... Is it a change in medium? Is it ironic? Is it commentary? Those are some of the criteria for fair use. And one could argue... You know, he was arguing... He takes an image from a cell phone and he manipulates it and changes the text. He has it printed, you know, ink on canvas. So, one could argue pigment on canvas is a painting and transforms it into a painting. And that was, you know, the argument he was using. I don't remember whether we won or lost that case. Jeff Koons lost that case. Well, he's won and lost different cases. A friend of mine sued him. And I'm going to keep this person's name because they don't want to talk about. But they actually lost because part of it is the percentage of the image used. That's one of the criteria. Again, this is done by judges that don't know anything about art.

Zachary Zaitzeff

But because this person's art was part of a collage. And the percentage of... The space on the painting didn't represent enough of her to claim ownership of the whole image. That's why Rauschenberg would win. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's really important right now to understand what the legal arguments are about fair use value. That gets litigated in courts. I'm just giving you some of the parameters around what these issues are. But these issues are quaint when you... Start to get into the level of corporate theft on a large scale, right? I mean, it's just... Yeah, you can sue on this individual level. But now that you get to the AI conversation.

Zachary Zaitzeff

And AI bots are now being sued by a group of artists. That's what this ArtSmack podcast was about today with Jerry Gagosian. But I think we're in a whole new world about... Is there even a legal structure that could litigate the company? Is there even a legal complexity of scraping images by AI bots? I mean, that's... These are some of the issues involved in this whole pirate issue. Can you guys see the screen I'm sharing with the book? So, Steve, do you want to just speak briefly about this piece in particular and the thinking behind it? Okay. Is the book up now? Yeah, I don't know if you... Can you guys see it? No, I don't think so. Okay. Oh, you know what? Let me actually... It was there. I didn't start sharing.

Zachary Zaitzeff

Let's see. Can you guys see it now? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay. There we go. So, let me go back to the beginning. So, this

Is a very interesting conversation about appropriation. So, this is a book that Patrick Cario... So, Richard Prince... Hmm. Hmm. He took images from this book and he massively blew them up on... You might just stop here for one second and then we keep going. He massively blew them up and then put them on paintings, which he called the Rasta paintings. And this artist, Patrick Cario, sued Richard. He won the first round. He lost the second round. Hmm. But I've been doing this for a while as well, whether... And what happened was, in this instance, the person that was doing... Making these silver gel photographs... So, you can keep scrolling now. But you can see I, like, you know, take ownership of the book. And they were printed.

Steve Miller

These are now me taking my images and painting on top of the images of the book. Okay. And I used the book because it had something to do with marginal cultures being pushed farther away by the advent of technology and civilization. And I... The person that did develop the photographs and printed them came to my studio because he's shooting a book about artists of the Hamptons. And he said, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I'm just taking this book. And I... It was part of another series. And I was doing about recycling, you know, again, what we talked about in the appropriate. And actually, I had maybe in the back of the book, if it's even photographed, there'll be the image of the recycling. But so, I basically self-screened on every single page of the book.

Steve Miller

And I had asked... I had actually written... I think that was one image that Richard used, that guy with the Rasta hair. And there's one with a guy and a donkey. I don't know if that... That was the one that he used. That was the one that he used a lot that was in the paintings that he showed at Gagosian. The paintings at Gagosian sold for, you know, several hundred thousand dollars. The artist felt ripped off. But in this case, what Richard did was take the book, cut out the images, slather them with paint on the back, and then push them on top to larger collages in another composition.

Steve Miller

I had written Patrick Carey asking him for permission. And he had said... He didn't reply. And part of this, you know, suing is... You can sue for, like, the profit of the book. In case of the double helix, I got permission from James Watson. I did start to get permission from people. But I was sued as well by other authors for the same reason that Richard was sued. In this case, you know, I say I'm the author, Steve Miller. Now we can see here James Watson's signature. So I actually got his approval to do it. In the case of the Cario book, what happened was is that because this is being recorded, I'm not going to reveal my conversations with Patrick. But actually, there was no reason to sue me because I don't make any money. And the books sell for nothing. So... So... So you're not going to get into a legal suit to sue me for, you know, the few hundred dollars that I make on these books.

Steve Miller

So I sort of fell under the radar of litigation. And see if the... I did get sued for the... See if the Forrest book is there. Let's see. Yes, Rasta. Yeah. No, is there... What's the other drop down? Yeah. Colin, thanks for doing this. Thanks for doing this for me, by the way. Edition books. Okay. So, Favela Defenders. I was sued for this one. And it was on a website. It harpers books online. So I take the book. It was called...

Steve Miller

I guess it was called another... We'll see it when we flip the page open. Is there a title page on this? I can't remember. It was called something else. And I made the title Favela Defenders. I put my name on it. Then I silkscreened on every single page of the book. Images of these wires. And this guy did sue me. I just, you know, I pulled it from the bookstore.

Steve Miller

And I tried to engage him in a dialogue. We did speak. I was trying to explain what I was doing. And, you know, my lawyer and other people said, you know, you're not going to sue me. I'm going to sue you. And I said, there's no way that people would, you know, with 10 books, my signing them, think that this was this other person's work. But at any rate, I withdrew it from the... From, you know, it's online. You can still see it's on my website. But I withdrew it from the store in order to just avoid litigation. Because what the hell? I haven't sold one of these books, right? It's an edition of nine examples. And what I did was I contributed to his GoFundMe. And in return for doing that, I got a side book of the original copy of this. Oh, I think it was called Forest Defenders was the original title of the book.

Steve Miller

And these are wires from the favela in Brazil. And that's sort of one of the images from my practice. And the idea is that these chaotic wires represent this, you know, this unrestrained need for resources, which has to do with the deforest of the Amazon. Right. And so I've been working on this for a long time. And I've been working on this for a long time. And one of the things they're doing is ripping off the electricity. So recycling...

Steve Miller

Is the last page here the recycle image at all? See if that's... If I have that. Okay, I don't have that. So sometimes I have this logo that says art. That's the recycle logo. And I'm recycling something. So I try to make it really clear, you know, the intention. But this issue about... Appropriation, whether you're stealing.

Steve Miller

And in my case, because I don't really make enough money on this stuff, it doesn't really matter. I'm not worth suing. But now with, you know, the AI and the corporate level of theft, I think we're... We could have a lively conversation. All right. Thank you, Steve. I'm going to open up the floor for some discourse. So people, just feel free to unmute yourself and jump in if you'd like. I have a question for Steve. So, Steve, if I were to take a photo of your artwork and put it on my Instagram, and I don't have Instagram, would you theoretically lose ownership rights in that, even if you didn't post it yourself? Well, I don't... You know, if you post on Instagram, you don't own it anyway. Someone else has taken... I've taken my work and posted it on Instagram. I would have never seen it, but somebody pointed out to me.

Steve Miller

They said, is this your work? And they presented it as their work. And it was an X-ray of a snake that I had done, a python. And all I did was write them and say, hey, really, thanks for showing my work and supporting it. I said, would you kindly give me photo credit? And she decided to do that, to, you know, tag it. And that's... That's all I cared about. I mean, I know that when we... I know that when I put something on Instagram, you know, it's like using Gmail or anything else. Google has every single email you've ever written stored somewhere. And, you know, you make the... You know, you take the risk that it's better to get eyeballs on the work and have people looking at what I'm doing. You know, in my case, I made that decision rather than worry about whether, you know, Instagram is going to do something with my work or not.

Steve Miller

But, yeah, go ahead. I have here the Instagram copyright statement. And what it says is we do not claim ownership of your content, but you grant us a license to use it. Nothing is changing about your rights in your content. We do not claim ownership of your content that you post on or through the service. And you are free to share your content with anyone else. Wherever you want. However, we need certain legal permissions from you, known as license, to provide the service. When you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos or videos, on or in connection with our service, you hereby grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform, and use. We are also free to use the license to create and display, translate, and create derivative works of your content, consistent with your privacy and application settings.

Steve Miller

This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems. You can delete content individually or all at once by deleting your account. I put the link in the chat. Thank you. That's oppression. So they don't ask for permission. They don't actually own the content. They don't own it. They can use it. They have unlimited right to use it however they feel. And they did state that they could make derivative works. And that is a loophole through which the AI people are jumping. The derivative work provision.

Steve Miller

They didn't say that they could relicense it, though. And for someone to take it off of Instagram and use it, then they would have to relicense it. It almost sounds like they are granting themselves the creative commons line, which is, you know, we will use your work. You can make derivatives of it. But they don't mention anything about giving you credit. A tagline that this is originally your work in what Renator read. Maybe there is something later on. I don't know. But this is something that they are giving you credit for. There is no mention of credit.

Steve Miller

Yeah. I think we all should copy this stuff. Print it out. And read it. Go to that link and print out everything. We should copy all of their stuff and pirate all of theirs. Yeah. We should take their long haul. You know, even though, I mean, I abhor the idea that they can take your work and use it any way they want. I'm not aware of many instances where they actually do that. And to me, it's not as big. I mean, emotionally, intellectually, it just feels outright wrong. Ethically wrong. On the other hand, they are giving us a platform to promote ourselves. And to get eyeballs in front of our work. And that's one of our jobs as artists is to get our work out there. And there's always a compromise in that process. And while I'm not endorsing their point of view, I mean, what's the risk you take, you know, as an artist to get your work seen in relationship to the risk of somebody ripping you off or, you know, Instagram running an ad campaign based on your images?

Steve Miller

That makes a lot of sense. I agree. And I feel that the earlier point you made, Steve, about the piracy that's going on. With AI. And visual artists is far more serious. No, I think I agree with you. I think the AI thing is much more pernicious. And also, how are you going to litigate, you know, with a corporation? And, you know, as we saw in the friend of mine, or as I talked about, the friend of mine that did sue Jeff Koons and lost, her percentage of the image. She was a commercial photographer.

Steve Miller

She was a professional photographer. And the percentage of the image that they used didn't, you know, the judge decided that it wasn't enough of the total imagery to, you know, Jeff was basically in charge of that whole content. So when an AI bot is scraping you and you feel your images are coming up, like, say the AI bot says, make an ad campaign based on the images of Steve Miller.

Steve Miller

You know, you would. Or let's do an ad campaign based on Steve Miller. Or let's do an ad campaign based on the imagery of Steve Miller, Colin Goldberg, and Zachary Zaitzeff, because these three guys are next to me on the screen. That's the only reason I'm mentioning the three of you. It's, you know, it's going to be really hard to litigate something like that. And I think, you know, the only defense that we have is to figure out, you know, how to get our work in front of an audience. And does an audience respond to what we're saying? Does an audience respond to what we're saying? And what we do as artists. And these legal issues are just way beyond our ability to litigate. So, in fact, I'm powerless over these AI bots. I don't have the horsepower to fund litigation. And I'm hoping that, you know, get my work out there in front of an audience.

Steve Miller

I think you can hold the company responsible. Just like if. And maybe you can use the argument just like if my dog went and attacked somebody, I would be responsible. I think there's legal arguments to go after them. The question is, are you going to? Yeah. Are you going to? What's the energy and cost? What is the emotional energy and the financial, you know, powder keg you got to have at your disposal in order to litigate?

Steve Miller

So what's the best strategy? And is it like a you know, and I don't know what I'm getting at is you're right. I'm just kind of doing that to me. I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me.

Steve Miller

And I'm just kind of doing that to me. And I'm just kind of doing that to me. Think about early on and throughout my time working and building websites for people, a constant sort of question was, well, how can I prevent people from stealing my work if I put it on my website? And, you know, there really isn't any way. Even if you can, you know, put something that's going to disable people from right-clicking an image and everything else, people can always screenshot an image. And my response always was like, you know what, if you're publishing it on the internet, people can take it. Bottom line, you know, so it's that trade-off of, do you want to hold your images so close that like only the people that you select can see them? Or do you want to make them available for as many people as possible?

Steve Miller

And, you know, that's part of the reason with Techspressionism that I decided to put it on my website. And I think that's a really good way to put it. Creative Commons license right on the Techspressionism website, because you know what, like I actually feel the opposite of the way that mentality is in that, like if people are taking a concept or content and propagating it, it's actually to the benefit of the people who are originating it, not the contrary. I mean, that might or might not be a popular point of view. I think the whole open source software movement is sort of based on that. And even closed source people like Bill Gates used to say, I hope they, you know, pirate my software because then they're, you know, they're going to be using that system. And at some point we'll have to eventually upgrade to the paid version, you know?

Steve Miller

So anyway, just kicking that in there. Yeah. I just saw something in the chat and, you know, I agree, you know, when I was, someone put their work on Instagram and presented it as their work, I said, just give me, give me credit. And whether, you know, the AI bot or someone does an ad campaign, I had, I sued Chanel. This is a whole nother thing. They took one of my images from a work of mine that they owned that was in their corporate art collection and did an ad campaign based on my imagery. And that was like two or three years worth of litigation.

Steve Miller

I ultimately lost. It's a whole long story, but I. You're muted, Steve. Yeah. Sorry. Getting your work out there is, is, is a better result than not getting it out there and, and taking the risk. And like I say, like, you know, one of Richard's argument was for the, one of the people that he appropriated was that person got tons of, of, of publicity out of it. And they started, they started, they started reselling their images because of the Richard Prince thing and were able to monetize it. So whether you can monetize it or not, I think it's, it's, it's how many, what's, what's the price of getting your work in front of as many eyeballs as possible. And that quite frankly is a lesson I learned from Colin.

Steve Miller

I mean, with Richard Prince, like, was the work basically about the idea of ownership? I mean, you know, it was about the idea of, of ownership and intellectual property as its basis, right? Like why else would someone take a picture of the Marlboro man ad and, you know, present it, recontextualize it as their work, you know, and, you know, what do you think about that as, as, you know, in terms of it, you know, was he basically just, he's, you know, being a provocateur, right? To see, well, if I do this blatant theft, are there going to be legal repercussions? You know what I mean? Like to me, that's what it was all about. There's, it's more than, I think that's part of it, but I think it's more complex. Richard is a cultural sociological anthropologist, and he's gone through, you know, lots of different areas of mass culture to kind of excavate and represent.

Steve Miller

And with the Marlboro man, I think what he was trying to say was that this is the American man. Right? It's a myth. And it's, and the myth is, is created through advertising, right? Also through movies. But this is a myth that everybody buys into, and this is the content and the myth of the American, you know, freedom and, you know, all these issues that we're hearing spoken about in the current discourse. And then the female version of that myth was the nurses, the nurse paintings. And he took book covers from, you know, the American women's book. And he took a lot of, I guess there's a whole series of nurse books, pulp nurse, and he took those and then, you know, photographed them, then painted all over them. And I think, you know, he's trying to make, whether you agree with him or not, he's making a statement about, you know, people's roles in culture, how those roles are presented, through what filters are which they viewed, through which filters are they received.

Steve Miller

In this case, the Marlboro man is through mass advertising. In case of the nurses, it's the nurses. It's the sort of intimate novels and fantasy. And the nurses, the, you know, theoretically, one of the aspects is of nursing is the sort of taking care of, right? The role of one might define the female role as a supportive role and taking care of in the nurturing role of mothering and womanhood. And you can argue with any of these concepts. But I think what he's doing is looking through different aspects of American culture. And I think that's a really important thing. And I think that's what he's doing is looking through different aspects of American culture and excavating, you know, what he thinks are the presentation of the role and the context of how we perceive those roles. So I think it's about content.

Steve Miller

The recontextualization, the removing of the text then makes you feel like, oh, this is really what everybody believes in. This American Miss that's an actor dressed up in a cowboy suit and ad for cigarettes. I agree with Steve. I think it plays a lot into this whole notion of implicit bias as well.

Steve Miller

You know, my wife, my wife's a doctor, psychologist, and older male patients. Well, don't does it, you know, they don't use the word doctor with her. And she's done that with a lot of females and never happens to male doctors. I don't know what Vernadis experiences were. Back in the day. But, you know, it's there's just a lot of that. And I think as artists, I agree with Steve that sometimes it's important to kind of put that front and square and show that as a mirror to our, you know, to society, to people.

Steve Miller

Well, it is a problem. The sexism and implicit bias is a problem. And you do have to put it in people's faces in order for them to learn. I don't know why it takes so much for some people to learn, but it does. I used to appoint myself a one person committee to educate everybody about how to deal with me and my white coat and stethoscope. And someone once called me the N word. He's six feet tall. I'm six feet, three inches tall and weigh 250 pounds. And I worked him good, honey. Yes, I did. I smacked him. You know what out of him?

Steve Miller

They had to pull me off that sucker. But so alas, you know, there's all kinds of ways to educate. Well, I think, you know, Vernadis, what you're talking about, and I think what Michael is talking about as well, and what I think the artists are showing in this appropriation work. A lot of women were part of this group, and I think they were really starting to, you know, women were coming in just starting. I mean, it's insane. But just starting to come in as recognized artists, because the art world was a completely mal domain for hundreds of years. Yeah, there are like a few exceptions, right? You know, one Renaissance painter.

Steve Miller

One, you know, impressionist. Painter. But for the most part, with this rise of appropriation became this rise of understanding that role models and these things are going to be looked at and dissected on how they're presented in the culture. And now we're in a, you know, a whole nother place with Black Lives Matters. The number of artists of color that have come into the marketplace. The status that these artists are. The number of artists that are achieving the kinds of cultural commissions they're getting. Let's say the Hank Willis Thomas Commission for the Martin Luther King Memorial in Boston. So we're starting with this, you know, recognition of something that started, you know, in the 80s. It's now blossomed into a much larger movement that's more inclusive. I'm just worried, you know, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Steve Miller

That the AI bot can just be a part of it. I'm just worried that the AI bot can just completely suppress this kind of progress that we've made in terms of making the world more inclusive. It's a slow job. But it's happening in museums. Museum directors. Women are in positions of leadership. And they're getting, you know, comparable, not always, but, you know, high prices at auction. And I'm worried that kind of like this whole pirate thing could really put the kibosh on the line. And I'm worried that kind of like this whole pirate thing could really put the kibosh on the line. That's a concern of mine as well.

Steve Miller

That AI especially can be pernicious. Yeah, because I think the effort is on the far right is to dehumanize right and left. Right? And that dehumanization allows for, well, if this other thing is dehumanized, then it's okay to have violence. You know? So I think the dehumanization of the other side of the equation is part of the, you know, distressing part of the political discourse right now. But the AI pirating can really like, you know, suppress those issues completely in this sort of mass absorption of scanning of all identity and turning it into a kind of corporate authority. Yeah.

Steve Miller

So I think the AI will have to do that. It's not like I'm going to say I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you. It's not like I'm going to say you NERD you.

Steve Miller

Up to create a badge on content that is verifiable, quote unquote. That is, they can track probably through hashes in the document. I'm not exactly sure the specifics of how it would be done, but the origins of the file, if it was created in Photoshop, I'm sure there's some metadata that's involved. So it's a really interesting and slippery slope. But as time goes on, we're all going to be starting to see images on CNN.com, on New York Times, with this little eye icon that you would click. I think it's an eye icon. That means that it's real. You know what I mean? So on the one hand, it prevents rogue, deep fakes from tricking us into thinking that Obama or Trump are saying things that they never really said. But on the flip side of that, it's a couple very large corporations. It's determining what truth is.

Steve Miller

And certainly anything that can be used to create those badges can be hacked. Part of what I actually wanted to show was basically my

First thing that I thought of when this topic came up was my first computer was a Commodore 64. And I can admit now that the statute of limitations is gone. I was involved in hacking and trading pirated video games as a teenager. And a lot of what I saw that these cracking crews would make, like if you Google C64 crack intro, it's not crack the drug. These are people who cracked software. And I mean, this is sort of not such great ones. But some of these people, I mean, I don't know if you've seen them, but some of these sequences, they were actually better than the video games. And these crews, to me, were creating the equivalent of graffiti on computers in the 80s. And I feel like it's a part of underground culture that most people don't ever see. They would never Google those things. But I look back at that stuff with a lot of respect.

Colin Goldberg

And I think it's a part of the underground culture that most people don't ever see. And I think it's a part of the underground culture that most people don't ever see. And I think that, you know, it's a very interesting sort of subculture. And I see it, you know, now in the NFT scene, as you know, in some ways echoing into the NFT scene with people operating with handles, and so on and so forth, you know, in pseudo anonymity. So anyway, a little bit of a segue there. Yeah, just, you know, that's interesting, because the AI thing is, you know, you mentioned, like the tag, like, we're never gonna know, this is something really positive for every artist that's on the screen right now. You never know, like, actually, you know, if the tag is real, if the information you're getting from the bot is real, what the source is.

Colin Goldberg

But I think what it's, my hope is, is that the actual practitioners, like us artists that are making, we artists are over the right vocabularies, that are making individual works of art, it'll be clear that's something you can trust, right? So to, to get to an analog painting practice, you know, you'll, you're not going to know what the world AI world is, what's authentic, what's not, what's true, what's not true. But I think it's going to give a kind of authority to individual artistic practice, that is actually going to be beneficial.

Colin Goldberg

I think so, too. You know, the, I think that the thing that's interesting with these deepfakes is like, you know, they're, they're pretty convincing, you know, and like, a lot of still AI imagery is pretty easy to detect, you know, you sort of can see the stylistic watermarks of a mid journey image or a dolly image. But with deepfakes, depending on how, you know, how sophisticated the systems are, I mean, you know, you can see, you know, you can see, you know, you can see, and this, this whole technology probably was also, you know, aided in its development through Hollywood, like, you know, Carrie Fisher was in a Star Wars movie where she wasn't alive anymore. And she was, here's Princess Leia saying stuff that was never, never recorded on film, you know, and it was as convincing as can be, you know, so it's, it's cool.

Colin Goldberg

And it's also sort of very frightening in some ways. I'd like to see when Steve was talking about the metadata. I think it was Steve, or it was Colin, about how they could trace back in the, maybe it was Colin, in the deepfake to where the original item or image came from. Why can't, hopefully they do that with a digital art, whereas there, you know, there would be metadata embedded in the file as it is, there is metadata there already, but metadata that it would identify. You as the original creator of something. They have software that can do that. It's called Digimark, D-I-G-I-M-A-R-C.

Colin Goldberg

And you can subscribe to the Digimark service, and they will embed a code that is uniquely yours into your images in a way that is not discernible to the naked eye. And they also have a service where, you can scan the internet to see if any of your images, the images bearing your Digimark are out there and you didn't put them out there. So you can retrieve and identify exactly where your images are that are bearing your mark. And Digimark is very reasonably priced too.

Colin Goldberg

So, you know, you might want to check that out because everyone that subscribes to the service has their own unique identifier. So when you see that those digits inside an artwork, then you can easily trace it back to the person, their address and everything. Well, it sounds interesting. And of course, as Colin always points out, when you have an NFT and you burn it, you've established that it's your piece. Right. But that, you know, that's not something every artist is going to do, or perhaps at some point, you know, you're going to have to have a copy of it. And that's something that you might be able to afford to do. Right. But certainly if it was done less expensively in the future, where you could actually place them there, and they would be in the blockchain and belong to you, that would be another way to establish ownership of something.

Colin Goldberg

Yeah. I've been using Digimark since 2003. And so far, I've been using it for a long time. And it's proven very useful. So, yeah, I might want to check that out as an intermediate step. Yes. The other thing I wanted to mention, there was the article where I think it's three female artists have sued Stable Diffusion, or is it Dalai? I forget. And there's another individual who's written a rebuttal to all of the points that have been made by the original lawyers. And I think it's a lawsuit. The original lawsuit talks about these AI models making collages of artists' work that is scraped off the web. But this other individual argues that it's not a collage that they create. And they start talking about the first article mentions that there's this business of noise. Reducing your image to noise.

Colin Goldberg

Right. And then going back from the noise to create another image. And somehow using that as an argument against AI. The people on the other side that are for the AI are pointing out that there's the whole issue of fair use. That we as artists should go out there and read all about fair use. And, of course, one of the building blocks of the argument for the original models was that they were doing an educational review. And they were doing a research project. So that would give them the reasoning to go out and scrape the web. And take all of that and use it within their modeling machines, if you will. So there are, you know, there's two arguments now going on. Two lawsuits.

Colin Goldberg

So it will be interesting to see how that comes out. Well, you know, fair use is predicated upon noncommercial values. Fair use is considered reasonable when you're educating, of course. But also when you're not using it for commercial purposes. If you're a nonprofit and you're not making profit off of the information that you're using. So the fact that they had an educational objective to start with, so to speak. But now they're making big money. You know. And they're making, you know, multi billions off of these end products. That would more than nullify, I would think, legally any educational advantage they may have had in the fair use argument.

Colin Goldberg

Another criteria for fair use is also commentary. So if it's critique commentary or irony, that is actually one of the criteria for fair use as well. And I believe they surpass that by setting up multiple entities. So they have a research wing that's a nonprofit that has access to the images without copyright issues. And then that gets passed on to another entity through some sort of ungoverned arrangement that has a for profit purpose. And I think our government is so far behind the understanding of what's going on that it's going to take years. Years for the legal system to catch up to that. Yeah. That's the problem.

Colin Goldberg

You know, the legal system, the people that are making these decisions in court, two different judges will make two different decisions just based on having no knowledge of fine art. And, you know, that's what's going to make it really hard with AI is the proliferation of images and even a legal system that could handle the arguments. Right. But fair use is commentary, percentage of the image in the work.

Colin Goldberg

Another criteria. Oh, I just it just fell out of it. I've been in these lawsuits. So there's one more criteria. It's oh, I know. Transformation. Is it transformative? Yeah, Steve, I think that's a really, really big issue. And in fact, the link that I posted. Actually covers both transformative and derivative and what the difference is. And it looks like probably the AI companies are going to really heavily rely on transformative work versus derivative because of pretty much everything we've talked about, but also in the way that they see their engines working. And some of the lawyers that I have posted on about this on Zoom and other places.

Colin Goldberg

You know, they fall into their different camps. But I think the crux here is, is the work that AI does. Is it transformative? Because I think that's going to be probably a really big, big discussion. Yeah. That's a really exciting issue on where this may fall. So what happened with Rich with Jeff Koons is too different. You know, Jeff Koons took a postcard of a bunch of Swiss people on a bench with puppies. Right. He took the postcard and he made a three dimensional painted wooden sculpture based on the image. You know, I would argue that going from a postcard to a three-dimensional sculpture, so, you know, at least 50% of the image is made up because you can't see the back of the postcard, right? You can't see the back of the image. So, you know, and he lost that case, the puppy case.

Colin Goldberg

He lost that. And to me, the photograph to a sculpture clearly is a demonstration of transformation. The other transformation argument that Richard was making was you're taking a digital image from a telephone and putting pigment on canvas. And, you know, his argument, you're going from a digital image to a painting and that the ink on canvas defines painting and or pigment on canvas. And therefore it was transformative. So what if someone takes a photograph? Of your painting and, you know, takes that painting and transforms it to pixels, essentially digital art, you know. So what's the difference?

Colin Goldberg

It depends on what judge you get. That's the whole that's the whole crazy thing about this. You know, so Richard won his suit. Jeff lost his. And to me, it was clear that the from a postcard to a wooden sculpture was clearly transformative. So it's like we can argue what's transformative, but doesn't matter. It's what the judge decides who doesn't know a damn thing about art or derivative versus transformative. I would argue that with Coons, that piece that he created was so little change from the photograph. It was. It looked exactly like the photograph that it was, you know, on face value. It was he had really not added anything other than to make it three dimensional. And he made up 50 percent of that image. He made it three dimensional, but he didn't he didn't really add anything to it.

Colin Goldberg

Whereas if you look at I mean, even prints taking out the text and making it into something else. He had no idea. Like Coombs never had an idea. He just wants to use it as marketing to go to court and get litigated. So he has, you know, he gets more marketing buzz from it. Well, you know, again, this is what we get to, Lee. It's legal opinion. I am not the lawyer. He lost the case. Your argument is the one that won in court. My own feeling is a photograph to a wooden sculpture sculpture is transformation of that image. You know, yes, it's the same image, but to put it, blow it up a huge scale, create 50% more that wasn't there. Know, from my point of view, that would be transformative. Yes. Did he rip off the other person's work and use that image? No question. So Steve, I'm noticing just behind you too, the Duchamp bottle rack plays into what we're talking about right here, right?

Colin Goldberg

I mean, you know, the idea of what that's all about, you know, and you might want to mention it for the people who might not be familiar. Yeah, this is a bottle rack. And as many of you people may know in art history, Marcel Duchamp took a bottle rack and put it in a gallery and called it a sculpture. And so I just went to an antique store. I saw a bottle rack. I now have a Duchamp. All I got to do is like put it, you know, put it into my world. I'm never going to be able to afford a Duchamp. So I just bought a bottle rack. It's a great point, Colin. And, you know, talk about deep fake. This is not a signed Duchamp bottle rack. I did not buy it from an art gallery with a certificate that said it was by Duchamp. But I love Duchamp's work. I recognize the value of... The snow shovel, the bottle rack.

Colin Goldberg

I mean, this is really the start of this whole discussion. And yes, I guess I'm the owner of a deep fake thing. So Steve, can you explain, because I know you know this, what Richard Prince did with Catcher in the Rye? Because he didn't really change that at all. Yeah, I actually have one of those Catcher in the Rye books.

Colin Goldberg

He did absolutely nothing but to put his name on it, right? So he had the book. I mean, I'd have to go get it. It's on my bookshelf. Right. Didn't he make them himself? But they're exact first editions, right? Yes. He made a replica of the book and just put himself as the author, like I did with, you know, the Patrick Carey, except I kept Patrick kept Patrick Carey's name there to recognize that this was his work that I then appropriated. So I wasn't trying to obliterate.

Colin Goldberg

I don't know if he ever got sued for that. I don't know what the litigation was, if there was any litigation, but I happened to be at a book fair and I got win because I knew some people that for, you know, for 20 minutes. Was going to pull out a bag of these Catcher in the Rye books. So I ran out there and I grabbed one and then I actually got him to double sign it. So my copy is the original ones that he sold were not signed, but I know Richard and I got him over to the studio. I got him to sign it. But yeah, it is a 100% appropriation, nothing different other than he changed the name. It's Richard Prince Catcher in the Rye. And then, you know, this is the whole discussion about that goes into this AI discussion about authorship, ownership, you know, copyright, you know, your intellectual property.

Colin Goldberg

And the start of it is here, right? It's, it's Dushop, right? And no one was suing Dushop for taking the bottle rack and, and hey, that's my bottle rack. You know, he just started this whole thing off. And then you have people like Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, that then would appropriate or create images in the genre of something else to make statements about identity, class and gender. And, and now we're at the point where we're at the, you know, the corporate level. And again, like to go back to the point that we're all going to be as producers of culture and content, we are going to look authentic.

Colin Goldberg

We're going to look like the shaman, the interpreter of culture in an authentic way that I think people will be interested in when this sort of mistrust of AI and authorship becomes like completely nebulous. Like, do you want the authentic, do you want to have a reminder of authenticity and originality?

Colin Goldberg

Or, you know, are you going to buy a whole collection? Is your collection of art, if you buy art, going to be all AI generated art? And that's what the NFT, right? We were arguing NFTs, you know, three years ago, like, hey, that's not art. It's, it's code on a blockchain. You know, and now we've just gone to this whole other level, but we're at seven o'clock, Colin. I just, sorry, I talked for so damn long, please excuse me.

Colin Goldberg

It's quite all right. You know, a pleasure to have you here at the salon. Tommy, you have something there? Pirate. What does it say? Is this the mirror image for everybody? I know it's front facing. Pirate enlightenment something or other. Pirate enlightenment. This is, this is a recently published book. It was on, on my mind when we were talking last, was it last, weeks ago, when, when, we were talking about, you know, what to do this session. I just want to give everybody the name of the book and the name of the author and give you the overview of the book, which is the idea that pirates in late 1600s, early 1700s were sort of a bastion of free thought and had established places in Madagascar that passed on a lot of this sort of interesting, somewhat dubious stories of these tales of sexual liberation, you know, sort of scandalous things in the sort of 1600s.

Colin Goldberg

You think about what was going on in Europe. These tales made it to Europe and might have been the instigation of the enlightenment there. So that's the tall tale that this pirate, you know, tells in this book. It's a book by an author who wrote, you know, this he wrote on bullshit jobs, don't have everything, debt and coined the term we are the 99%. So last book. So I'm really glad that we're talking about pirates in the way that we're thinking about, you know, the sort of corporate negative, you know, they are the pirates now that come in and tax everything and make everything work. They're not doing anything unaffordable in a way that sort of rapacious, you know, corporate buccaneers, if you will, in that sense. But there's also this other sense of pirate that I think is lost in that idea.

Colin Goldberg

And also we're talking about signifiers and icons and this idea of the flag and the power of symbols. And, you know, the idea that a pirate can be as powerful symbols as a pirate can be. And so I think that's a symbol of what? But a freedom, actually, you know, breaking free from that, you know, colonialist period, colonialist past that, you know, they were spawned from, you know, and spurned. So anyway, that's my long and short of having read only a quarter of the book so far. So don't take my word for it. Read it yourself. Thank you, Colin. I was waving the book around. Awesome. Thanks, Tommy. And thank you for suggesting this topic. You know, when you first said pirates, I thought, well, that's obscure, you know, like, I don't know how that's going to roll. And Renata added art pirates and the whole session kind of like it just I mean, you know, and that process of picking the topic in itself was sort of like an exquisite corpse moment of like, hey, you know, like, how about this absurd thing?

Colin Goldberg

And like, it's really it's really interesting. And I think, you know, a lot of fun. So I do not want to go over. So and we're coming right up to about 7 0 5 and we started at 535. So it is getting near the end point. But you're all welcome to hang out and engage in the community meeting. Formerly known as the after party and you know, also referred to as group conscience in some contexts.

Colin Goldberg

So with that I am. Oh Michael. Do you have any questions? Anything? Yeah. Check out the latest roundtable. Thanks. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry for not mentioning that. Let me just share my screen here and pull that up real quick. So Michael has been kind enough to develop this idea of the roundtable, which is somewhere in between our artist interviews and the salons and the roundtables are basically. Small gatherings.

Colin Goldberg

The first one was one that I did and moderated between Christiane Paul, who's the curator of digital art at the Whitney and Helen Harrison, who is the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center and also our advisor for Techspressionism as a community and the newest one. Michael moderated with Roz Dimon Renate Anashevska and Tommy and it's a great discussion. On the topic of approach, which relates directly to the definition of Techspressionism, which is an artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience. And it was made clear to me that was the topic. I had originally created an intro sequence where it said process and Renato. Let me know. I mean, it was actually Roz. Let me know that it was really approach and at first I was like, oh, I created this intro sequence animated.

Colin Goldberg

Now I got to re-edit it. But then I realized you know, I'm not going to do that. You know what? Like that's a really important point. And it was a point that was brought up by Helen Harrison that the original definition of Techspressionism was an artistic style in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience. And if that stood we wouldn't all be here today because it would all look like my work essentially, you know, I mean I came up with this idea to describe my own work and you know, I the goal is, it's not work that all looks digital and computer II right? In fact, a lot of the work you'd never know that technology was involved at all.

Colin Goldberg

Just like Franz Kline's famous black and white paintings in the 1950s were created with the aid of technology in the sense that a bell. I think it was a Bell Opticon opaque projector that he borrowed from Willem de Kooning was used to produce that work. And it was based on. Little charcoal sketches of furniture that he, you know, painstakingly rendered in oils. So when I heard that story for the first time, I was like, yo, that's technology too. That's, you know, a predecessor of where we are today. So anyway, it's my little diatribe here.

Colin Goldberg

And with that, I am going to close now. But again, you're all more than welcome to stick around. And first order is we will pick a topic for the next salon. So I thank you all for attending and I hope to see you in two weeks. And we will stop recording at 321 and cut.