Salon 68 // Appropriation

Hello, everyone. My name is Colin Goldberg, and welcome to the Techspressionist Salon Number 68. The topic today is appropriation, and it is Wednesday, April 26. So without further ado, I'm just gonna turn the mic over to the artists who want to share. It's basically an open-ended topic, as most of our recent salons have been set up, where it's just sort of a general topic, and you can share anything related to it direct or tangential. It could or doesn't even have to involve sharing your screen and or your own work. So.

Colin Goldberg

Yeah, and the first artist that I see on the list is Renata. So,

Renata, you wanna. Yeah. Start us off. Thank you very much, Colin. I'm gonna share So I wonder if I could just start off by saying that it's a very specific type of appropriation that I'm going to talk about in my work. And ever since I was very young, I was a big fan of the Belgian illustrator and graphic novelist, Hergé, and his real name was Georges Rémy.

Renata Janiszewska

You may have seen covers of his books, and he was an artist. He was a consummate artist in so many ways. One of the aspects of his work was that there was always motion going on within it. And as you can see in this one where the professor calculus is levitating and Snowy the dog is running in one direction, and there are always these little lines and indications of movement. Same here. If you look in the bottom left-hand corner, the truck that they're riding in is levitating right off the ground, just with a little curve. So it's a little curlicue. I was also really taken with his sense of color.

Renata Janiszewska

He was really, really an amazing colorist. And as a child, it's the stories that grab you. But I honestly think that he was just so unique, and he had me from the very beginning. There's a photograph of him on the left. And I think that's a very interesting photograph. This was taken in 1977. He obviously was well known enough. You know you really made it when Andy Warhol does a painting of you. You can see him behind. And Warhol seems to be holding one of Hergé's books and perhaps even a poster. So also I found in this photograph what was amusing was that they're both wearing striped shirts.

Renata Janiszewska

So what is a Tintin brush? Well, I make these. I made these using software from Adobe. And I made a little sampler here for you so you could see the variety. And the one on the bottom left is made up of the image that I showed on the cover of this talk. So it's a sequence of three panels. And I edit them, of course, to be less than the whole thing. I just take the parts I like. Above it on the right there's a train station scene with a lot of people milling about.

Renata Janiszewska

Above that is one of my best, most useful brushes. It's a picture of a monument in Tibet. And it's just incredibly well proportioned. And the detail is quite amazing. And then above that there's the unicorn, which is a ship that was featured in the book. And it's featured in one of the other books.

Renata Janiszewska

So I use these brushes as part of paintings. The movement of the characters and the action inside, they're very, like, how shall I say, they're very dynamic. And they have two ways of being looked at. They can be looked at purely as ornament. Just an assemblage of color. And shape. And line. Or you can actually read what's going on inside them.

Renata Janiszewska

And here I'm going to show you a close-up of this work. So if you look carefully, the name of this work is the rocket ship escapes the fly trap. So this is the rocket ship shape here. And this is the fly trap below. And here he is trying to save a very expensive vase from falling down to the ground. And crashing.

Renata Janiszewska

Another example of this work is I made it into an animation, which I'm going to play you a very short clip from. And it's, hang on. It's soundless. There's no soundtrack. But you can see there on the left the Tintin sequence coming into focus. And as I said, it can be decorative. The brush. Or it can tell a story. Literally part of the comic.

Renata Janiszewska

So for example, here you have, I'm going to blow it up even bigger. You have the captain, Captain Haddock. And you can see him saying, snowy, be careful. You'll fall. The dog snowy is trying to jump off a ledge. But mostly I think I like them because they're very dynamic. They're injecting someone else's art into my art. But it's done in a very respectful way. It's done in a way that I love this man's work so much. And it's so enjoyable for me to be able to incorporate it into my paintings.

Renata Janiszewska

Again, I particularly wanted to point out here that I made this one yesterday. And I didn't use the brushes at all as narrative elements. These brushes here. And these brushes here. I really looked at them as simply form and color that I was adding to my work. But then if you go down farther, you see the climbing. He's climbing the stairs and snowy. They're on a ship. And the dog is on the balustrade. And I'm sort of telling the story of how this poor young hero is climbing up the shape, which is monumental when you zoom in on just that one part. Of the painting.

Renata Janiszewska

Depends how much time you have, I guess, to really read them. So, Bianca Castafior is an opera singer, otherwise known as the Swedish Nightingale. And I just love the exuberance of this character. And she's pushing a pram of some kind, actually a wheelchair, which I've cut out. But the notes are floating above her. And again, it's beautiful. And there's a narrative. But she's stuck on a shape. She's on some kind of remote otherworldly planet.

Renata Janiszewska

And just to finish off, somebody sent me this today. From the website Artnet. And you can now buy an NFT of the work of Hergé. And this piece that you're seeing here is an illustration. And it was sold in 2021 for $3.99. And now they are starting to take the digital works and putting them up for sale. And the NFT site that they're on sale with takes fiat. You can use your credit card to buy one of these.

Renata Janiszewska

That's what I have for today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Renata. Thanks so much. What platform is it out of curiosity? Is it on Nifty Gateway? No, it's not on Nifty Gateway. But I can definitely look it up and send you in the chat. The other thing I forgot to mention at the beginning was that Cynthia Beth Rubin sent a link to us today of an essay that she wrote.

Renata Janiszewska

And again, whenever I talk about my 10-year-old, I'm always thinking about my 10-year-old. So I always stress that these are an homage. They are quoting. I'm quoting literally from somebody's work. But it's because I love and respect his work so much that I feel that's why I call it an homage rather than an appropriation.

Renata Janiszewska

And I think that, you know, she had some really interesting points to make in her essay. And I'm sure she'll talk about it a little bit with us. Awesome. Yeah. I actually had that objective loon book as a child. Me too. And seeing it brought back these memories. And that's when I think I started really like, you know, having a fascination with rockets and outer space. It's from that book probably.

Renata Janiszewska

So, yeah, thank you for sharing that work. All right. Rebecca

Tombaugh. Is it Tombaugh? Yes. Tombaugh. Okay. Yeah. And where are you zooming in from? Kansas City, Missouri. Right on. And Renata, you're from Lion's Head? Lion's Head. Lion's Head, Canada. Gotcha. Okay. All right. Go ahead, Rebecca. Okay. Well, before I started, I just wanted to give you an update. I did a presentation probably more than a year ago on I was doing painting in VR. And I was trying to get it in galleries and find a way to show it. And I finally did get it in a couple galleries. And I actually won an honorable mention in the other category in one of them. So that was kind of a thrill.

Rebecca Tombaugh

So what I wanted to show today was I know you guys are this is not new to you probably, but it's new to me. And I was pretty excited about it. And you might even be able to help me move along in a little bit. But it's working in mid-journey with the AI. And how I even got into it was my son is a computer programmer. And he was playing in there and he was using my art with photos to come up with something, you know, else. And he realized he was using my art without my permission. So he called and, of course, you know, I said, of course. And so he said, and I laughed about it, you know. But he said, no, really. People can just take your art and use it without you knowing. And they maybe sell it or whatever using the AI. And so I anyway, that's how I got into it. Just from him talking about appropriating his mom's art.

Rebecca Tombaugh

And so he got me into the mid-journey. And I've been playing around with it for about three weeks. And so I think I'm going to do a screen share here. And I guess if you and I paid the $10. I did do a free trial and they cut off the free trial pretty quick. And then I had to pay $10. And that's how I meant it. Let's see here.

Rebecca Tombaugh

All right. OK. All right. So I'm actually going to go in it. And I'm going to go to the screen. And I'm going to go to the screen. Are you seeing my. My scrolling. Are you seeing my screen now? I could see that you're in discord. Okay. It's not letting me do a landscape. So I'll give it a try. So what I've been doing.

Rebecca Tombaugh

Is. Blending. My own artwork. And with photos and then sometimes just, just my own artwork. So I'm going to take. The flowers. And then a recent little sketch. And it, you know, it doesn't bother me so much using my own photos and my own artwork and stuff, but I'm doing other stuff with the, the other prompt where you can use words. And so what I end up with is.

Rebecca Tombaugh

You know, something. That has sourced from other people's work. But if it's something that's actually coming from another person. I don't know where they're even coming from. So it's kind of a. Been on my conscience lately. Like, is this right? Is it okay? And I had some conversations with my son about it. At first I thought, well, if you're using my art.

Rebecca Tombaugh

And you're using it like instead of using ink and a brush. You're using photos and art so you're actually the artist you're creating something new and that's what I was thinking about it but now I have doubts you know like maybe that's not right maybe I'm appropriating other people's stuff and I don't even know who they are you know so I you know now I have mixed feelings about it so that's why I thought I'd bring it up let's see while we're waiting for something to happen here and it those of you who use this already maybe you can give me some pointers about how to use this better they might take a minute or two here I mean is Colin is this what you have been doing or I actually have been I guess appropriating in the sense that I do use just sort of prompts to generate images from whatever the database is primarily not for my own work but I've been using it for the Techspressionist Salon invite graphics for like the last maybe 10 or so more as sort of an experiment in illustration and sort of applied AI but I did I have played around a little bit with my own work but never sort of came at with anything that I felt sort of satisfied with so what I kind of was going for was using my own artwork to and then I keep blending you know the AI pieces with AI pieces all from my own work and I end up with these images that are completely different it's kind of me but it's something else and so I think like I'm trying to get the AI to paint like me sort of or sketch a lot of if you keep going further and further it gets weirder and weirder and awful but it's sometimes I get something that's not too bad so when you do that you start the prompt off with slash blend versus slash imagine because that's what I usually use yeah, the blend will put things together.

Rebecca Tombaugh

The other one where I'm just using words, the imagine, yeah. I've been doing both. I see the person below you is using slash describe. I've never even. Heard of that one I haven't used that and that's new to me yeah and see I that's why I thought we could have some fun today if you guys want there's some people like me that just use a couple words but then they're I'm seeing other people you know have gigantic descriptions down to the shutter speeds of what the camera should be I know there's some things that I've added like if you do dash dash ar it's aspect ratio so you could say like dash dash ar 16 colon 9 and a lot that'll give you like a 16 by 9 aspect ratio or like an hd aspect ratio instead of just a square image there's a bunch of different ones that you can sort of like parameters that you can add on at the end and I have a hard time finding myself too yeah that's one other benefit we were talking about like the paid account like if you subscribe to you mid journey like Michael was saying you can you know add it to your own channel so you're not in a long queue with a ton of other people it's just your own yeah okay so here those two things came together the flowers in the sketch there's kind of some people on flowers there so let's say I had this and I had something else two separate things created by AI then I would blend them and I just kept keep blending and blending and I get all kinds of really strange things and then from this you can make variations from one of the views and this well this may go faster and I even though I'm really like I said I'm really clunky and new to this I think with some practice and just keep banging at it that I can get to get to what I'm imagining which is taking say a photo and using my artwork to blend and getting something I don't know human-y out of AI sort of and that's it that's what I kind of like to do I don't know what I like about even these because I'm getting kind of my strokes sort of so are you limited to blending just two images or can you feed it more at the same time it says five but I've not been able to get more than two or three and I don't have the process down well enough let's see does anyone else have some questions while we're in the app now here's some variations of the one so can you give us the name of the app or is this something that I'm a little confused here is this a regular app or is this something your son did this is discord if you're in discord this is on discord okay if you yeah then it's mid journey yeah and you and you should be able to try it out for a couple days for free yeah I think I already signed up once and didn't do it I mean I am really interested my dream actually would be if we could get together small groups of artists you know between two to ten who all just make a pool of their images and then we could find a way to do among ourselves yeah it's like a good collab which we haven't you know we haven't had one of those in a while yeah I think that's a good thing to do yeah I think that's a good thing to do I mean I would love that maybe we can do it within to expressionists and that would avoid I mean they're good I'm not going to pass judgment on the appropriation thing right now I'm going to talk about that in a minute but it's one way to avoid it also if we make a collective where we all agree and we credit each other oh my gosh that is you know what all of our different styles and everything would be incredible and then just for those that haven't I know some of you guys are way better at this than me I just think it's neat that you can take one of these creations and then you can make variations from that or you know make it more detailed and so I thought I'll show you the other thing which is the imagine we can all just throw in some words and I'll type them in and we'll see what it comes up with yeah and I'm going to start with I'll say an oil painting of if somebody wants to name something just anything you got German Shepherd what is it German Shepherd German Shepherd can you put to Techspressionist in the front and see what it does.

Rebecca Tombaugh

I always add that in on my prompts. Couldn't hurt. Miss Bell. Yes. Any other words that can be anything at random? Them how about in the forest It's tech-squizit corpse. Does it have a spell checker? Obviously no. That's too bad. I guess you could type it first and text at it with a word processing thing with a spell checker.

Rebecca Tombaugh

I was telling Colin too that I've been reading, there's a lot of chat about appropriation with this. And all kinds of... Opinions about it. But people are discussing it. I got the German and the separate. In the forest. Oil painting. I don't think Techspressionist added very much. Think it confused expressionist and painting on velvet. I think it confused expressionist and painting on velvet. Go ahead.

Rebecca Tombaugh

Let's see. I was going to show you... When I used this just to show you without doing it again. I did do a bouquet of cats. I got all these... It was pretty good. Cats. I used my granddaughter. Let's see maybe I'll have that okay here's a here's a daffodil in a in a beer can and I use one of my one of my sketches like you can kind of see the pen sketches and it came up with this I don't know if I can oh shoot I don't know if you can see it very well but that on the left of the beer can is what it came up with using the photo and my sketching style and I'm going to show you a little bit of the picture here which I thought was pretty good and then to the left of the toaster that was another where I used a photograph and some of my artwork and it came up with this kind of abstract stuff so anyway I just wanted to kind of you know show you what I'm playing with awesome thanks so much Rebecca I appreciate you know doing that demo and I do like that idea of doing some sort of collaboration using AI and a lot of the platforms the NFT platforms now offer splits like foundation lets you mint something and split it across like four different you know four different artist wallets and then you can do some sort of collaboration with your own audience so that might be something cool we could do actually like a mint out of it or something so let's see Cynthia you are up next

Okay let's see I'm going to unplug my second monitor okay because I always have disasters so I wanted to talk about this paper that I wrote in 1992 which is called the which kind of amazed me when I took it out and looked at it here it is just so you can see what it you know the first page of it published because I feel like wow that was 30 years ago and I feel like I could have written it yesterday and I think that some of my opinions have not really changed so this is from the paper saying that I was converted appropriator and so this is me in 1992 thinking that taking from other artists was immoral and that doing it with the computer was even worse because it didn't mean that you had to draw and paint it and are you sure are you trying to share your screen oh I'm sorry I'm not sharing my screen yeah I'm not seeing anything of course I unplugged the other monitor and then I quickly did not share okay so let me go back to the top of this okay so here it is 1992 the title of the paper and what it looked like in print and then I tried to take some of the highlights apart apart although I did post the link to it in both Instagram and on Facebook so I used as I said here I used to feel that it was really wrong to take images from other artists And in 1992, there were images available on Laserdisc for people.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

So people could, did start taking from other people then. And in the paper, I used the example of Picasso. And in the painting of Mademoiselle d'Avignon, he put in an African mask. And I just had this mask on my wall. So I don't know if that's, it's clearly not the mask he used because it's one I bought in New Orleans, but just to kind of show the connection.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And apparently in a little Googling, he actually did see masks in museums, but he didn't travel to Africa. He was looking at the masks out of context. And that's one of the things that, today reading this, what I was talking about, then and now are kind of slightly different issues for me because at the time that I wrote the paper, I was thinking about what happens. You have to hand draw something. And does hand drawing give you a familiarity with the form? Does it give you more respect for the images? And how is that different? If you do it with the computer, do you need to use your own photographs? And those are really, for me, kind of the important point. Like how well do you have to get to know something if you're going to use it?

Cynthia Beth Rubin

This is one of the things that is speculative, but that I've learned about appropriation because I used to teach a class at RISD where we visited the textile collection. Basically, I was having students develop their own cultural motifs because I thought it was, it was really important to think about cultural motifs. So that was actually the class. The class was computer transformations, accessing cultural motifs. And we ended up using textiles because most of them don't carry the religious issues and cultural issues that some other objects do, possibly even the masks that Picasso used. I don't really know. There are also textiles, textiles that do carry heavy cultural history with them and have to be used with a certain kind of respect that people coming from another culture wouldn't realize.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

So these are things I just found on the internet today because I didn't have time to go look in my pictures from the RISD collection, although I do have them. And the curators told us that there's a speculative idea that what we think of as Native American art actually came, came from India, India, in India, Indian art was very popular in France. And so when the French nuns came to North America and they were helping the Native Americans, American Indians develop crafts that they could sell to tourists to sustain themselves or to the general population, not necessarily tourists at that point, that they showed them these motifs. So this idea of cultural transformation, transmission is not a new thing. It's an ongoing idea of appropriation.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And I think that for me, what I said in 1992 is that we're products of our cultural conventions. This is again, quoting from my paper and that we then, once we realized that we start looking for how we can expand our visual vocabularies outside of the narrow ideas that we've been taught. And I think today, many of us are much more aware of it. So we like to take pride in what we're doing, but if we use the computer to replicate somebody else's work and mix it with our own, how much of it really is our own? That's the question.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And pretty sooner or later, we kind of arrive at the conclusion that none of us really is that independent. That we don't make art by ourselves. So I came to the conclusion 30 years ago, and I agree with this again, that the computer is kind of the great equalizer. That seeing things in museums, we don't take them into our own world the same way we do when they're in the computer with our own imagery and with our sources. And that mental space of the computer, for those of us who've broken the wall, I mean, there are many people who have broken the wall. There are many people in the general population who have not broken the wall and they don't enter into the computer the way I assume everybody here today, the computer is just an extension of our studio space and we enter into it and it feels comfortable to us.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

So one of the essays that I referenced in my paper, which when I Googled it today, I just kept coming up. It doesn't, it's all like, oh, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to find it. But I think it's a wonderful essay and it doesn't look like very many other people have quoted it. I could only find two other people who reference it. Was by Paul Kukwaga, I'm not probably saying his name right, about how hard it is to see work in a museum from your own culture. And interestingly enough, I just, I was looking for something I saw last night on Facebook and a little story of an Indian Indian comedian. And I was like, oh, I'm going to be able to find it. So it was just me and my husband talking about the experience of having people invade your country, teach them, make you speak their language, adopt their customs.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And then they take your trophies and steal them and take them back to their own country and put them in a museum. And it was kind of the way that many of us experience anything outside of our immediate culture. But I think even within our culture, so this is a slide that I prepared for another talk, so I was able to throw it in here. We experience these things like the culture of 200 years ago also is no longer our culture or, you know, however you look at it, if you're American or not American. And so we also experience when we go to museums, even something historical that people say, oh, this is Western art. We still we read these labels. It changes what we're thinking about it. So we experience things mediated in some way. These are some pictures I took this summer at the museum in Nîmes.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

There's a Roman museum in Nîmes. It's wonderful. If anyone's in the South African. I strongly suggest it. It's like not crowded and wonderfully air conditioned and your restaurants and walking distance from the train station. But again, we're seeing these pieces completely out of context. And, you know, there's still a little label telling us that it's a helmet with a cap on it.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And, you know, it's like and it's really old. Okay. So. So my own experience with appropriation, I think I've seen these before, is that I got really interested in Indian and Persian manuscripts and tried to incorporate some of those motifs in my work way before I was on the computer, but with some really early photo color photocopying.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And then I started looking at Hebrew manuscripts. And in the beginning, I had to do all this hand drawing. So I thought, okay, I'm getting to know them really well. And that was probably an important experience. For me. But then I was given permission to photograph them in Marseilles and started incorporating the motifs into my work. So this really, to me, going through this exercise and then using the motifs even more like really overtly and having them be here are the sources that went into this piece, just saying, okay, I can take these and they're going to enhance the other elements that I'm putting in. And I felt like that was really important. So this has been an important thing for me. So this is my most recent work where I'm using the Leningrad Codex. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that image today unworked on.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

So here it is partially worked on a little bit. But this is what I'm doing now. And I'm kind of happy to let it show. And I know that I wouldn't be doing this kind of circular form. If I hadn't looked at this work that was circular. And by the way, the border thing all came out of the presentation that I did a couple months ago. We're talking about breaking boundaries. And then after that, I've been making the breaking boundaries like really central to my work. So I have to thank all of you for that. It was that experience of going through it. So really, this is what I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to. I wanted to return to that paper. I have the I put up the link. I'm going to stop my share.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And just the issue. I am not really comfortable going out and taking work from artists that I don't know unless they're long dead. I do have some issues with that. And the way that I finished this paper that I wrote in 92 is something that I still believe in. Which is that I think that artists should footnote that if we took from sources and especially sources that we take from sources that are public domain or in some ways were allowed to take from and then footnote them that's the way other intellectuals are we intellectuals? Well, yes, I think we are. To some extent. Yes. Yeah. But we also want to put some footnote there so that other people who are doing intellectual work in all other fields footnote. And we have this notion of the inner artist vision that has to be unique and precious.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

Instead of the idea that there's the world is filled with all kinds of wonderful cultural explorations. And that those wonderful explorations can inform what we want to see. We do expand our own visions, expand our ways of thinking. So that's where I am with it. And yeah, that's it. So, okay. Thanks.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

Anyone have any immediate questions? Can you place that link in the chat again? So anyone after just hearing the presentation can click it and bookmark it if you have it handy. Yeah, I can go back to my slide and take it off and put it in. Was it in the chat initially? I could copy it. No, I never put it in the chat. I put it on Instagram.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

It's right here. And I actually had to find it myself. I mean, it's on some old hard drive somewhere. But this is the one. This is the wonderful thing about the digital age, right? I found it in the archives, the Isaiah archives. And then, oops, I only sent it. I didn't send it to everybody. And then I ran it through Adobe Acrobat to OCR and be able to quote for myself.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

So it's there now. Cynthia, I think you raised a number. A number of really important points. And obviously, the idea of appropriation, the way you're looking at it, is one that I think has classically been the issue that a lot of people have used where appropriation means taking from somebody else's culture and perhaps not understanding.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

So I guess right now, the thing is, there are some visuals, there is some imagery in certain cultures that are pretty sacred. And to use outside of that context would be inappropriate, even if you're an artist, if you adhered to those cultural norms. And that happens quite a bit. I mean, so I... I think as artists, we have to determine for ourselves where that line of respect is and how we act accordingly. Just, you know, for instance, I mean, Native American headdress oftentimes get used on sexy models, female models wearing, you know, full regalia of the Plains Indians. And for some... For some folks, that's really offensive and others give it no second thought.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

You know, just it... For those of us who are old enough to remember, when Piss Christ came out, the church went completely ballistic because there was a complete, you know, thing about going against something that's sacred. But yet, Christianity has used other people's elements to their own, you know, for their own use. And I'm not just labeling Christianity in that regard. But it's something that for me, I don't think there's a cut and dried answer to all of this. It's certainly, I think, something to be mindful of. And as an artist, if you're going to do that, you've got to own it. Well, I think... For good or bad. That's the really interesting tension. And I discuss this a lot with artists. I've talked about this with my students when we were looking at work from other culture. But I've also experienced this.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

If you only look at what's, you know, someone deems your own culture, and many of us don't even know how to define that, you know, what is our own culture? I mean, I certainly, I just showed this Trumbull painting from 200 years ago. Typical American. Like, I don't feel like that's my culture at all. You know, I didn't have ancestors on this continent. I wasn't... You know, there's nothing. How do we define our own culture? Corporate monoculture. Yeah, corporate monoculture. But on the other hand, how do we expand? I mean, if we have this dominance of Western wall painting informing mainstream aesthetic, and we want to get out of that mold, how do we get to know what is in other cultures?

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And I think that's the tension. So I think Picasso did something really beautiful. I don't know how to do this. In some ways, and in other ways, I don't think he was probably very respectful. I mean, I think he thought that he was being super respectful by going to the museum in Paris and looking at the mess, because apparently he did go to the museums a lot, and, you know, really thought that he was breaking out of a stifling definition of what painting was.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

But did he know anything? Did he know any Africans? Did he find out what was really behind them? I don't know. You know, I really don't know. I don't know the answer to that. So anyone else have any thoughts about that? Well, we do have a couple other people that are going to present, so maybe we should have them go first, and then we can sort of open the floor up for general discussion.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

I see at least two more people. I'm going to go ahead and start. So Lee, do you want to present?

Yeah, I would love to. Thanks. And Cynthia, I really like, first I want to say I really like the fact that you sort of came to the dark side. Kudos to that. Because I was actually going to, one of the things I wanted to show today was a video from 92. And I thought, wow, 92, 92, maybe there's something there. I have a clip. Because it's like, you know, I'm going to show you a clip, but I'm going to show you a clip. And it's like, the whole thing is seven minutes, and that's obviously too long.

Lee Schnaiberg

And it's sort of a, my, the paper that really moved me a lot back then in the 90s was a woman named Sharon Sandusky. And it's called Towards an Appreciation of the Archival Art Film. And she has these amazing terms like junksmithing, like going through the TV commercials and the public service announcements, or she used the word cretinizing a lot, sort of to convince people to do, like how to be a good neighbor, you know, stuff they'd seen in the Perlinger archive. And now, when I look at this, when I played the video back, I looked at it today and I was like, wow, in the 90s, this was so fast. The editing was so fast. People were like, oh, this is making my head spin. And now I look at it and it's like, it's so slow. And how did that happen? We're just so used to this stuff now. But I think it still has some relevance.

Lee Schnaiberg

But at the same time, I kind of toss, because when I looked at Renata's work and the wonderful use of an homage, I went to my old computer and I pulled up a memory stick and I put it onto this new computer, because I was like, maybe I should just show the most recent piece that I did of appropriation, which is a small series, which ironically came because we've been trying to do the Canadian node of Techspressionism.

Lee Schnaiberg

And a joke that happened when Renata and I were talking about it was, how could we make the website have more of a Canadian feel? And I don't know if you remember this, Renata, but I was like going a little bit, I was getting a bit goofy. I was throwing up all these like Canadian memes that you guys probably don't understand. But I was like, maybe we should have like Bob and Dub McKenzie, you know, Tim Hortons in a bowl of poutine. And I was like, what's Canadian? What does that mean? And then I went, what about if we just reappropriated some of the great Canadian works? And then I was like, wait a minute. And I got into this thing when I did this series, which I put out as a, I put out these calendars every year. And yeah, maybe I shouldn't do the video. That's too long. But I'd like to show these pieces as long as I can share my screen.

Lee Schnaiberg

Let's try sharing the screen. When I share screen, it could ask me if I want to share the whole screen or just one thing. All right. Just one thing. I think this is going to work. So these are, I call them the CanCon nipdicks. That's what we, CanCon is the word that they use all the time, Canadian content. If you're doing a radio show or a television series, they're called CanCon.

Lee Schnaiberg

So I call these the CanCon nipdicks. Like a lot of my other works, which have like the stuff behind me, they fit together. And I have these ones when I do nine canvases, I call them nipdick, kind of like a triptych or a dipdick. And so this one, as you see on the screen right now, this is a fellow named Frederick Varley. And each one of them is titled After the Artist. So this is Varley IX.

Lee Schnaiberg

And he was a war painter. And if you see, it looks like a big abstract piece. But then if you look closely, and I don't know if you can see the details, but there's a whole bunch of soldiers, POWs coming through this piece. So I find this one really strong. Now how can I get to my other ones? Let's see.

Lee Schnaiberg

Sorry. Okay. Let's see if I can just scroll through them. Yes. Okay. This one is a fellow. Oh, now we're going too fast. This is Mark Prince. He's another big 70s painter. This one blew my mind. This painter, and this is nine canvases. So five of them are the right way. Four of them are inverted. And they all sort of nest together. This guy, I wish I had my notes with me.

Lee Schnaiberg

I'll just pull out the calendar. This guy, and each one in the calendar, each month, like here, is the same one. And his name is Bertram. Bertram Brooker. The piece is from 1900. His birth date was 1888. So each one I reference in there, and they're all named after the artist. And this one blew my mind that a guy from 1888 would produce a monument. Now it looks pretty crazy and trippy because I did nine of them. But still, to do this work blows my mind.

Lee Schnaiberg

And so it was in a way. I tried to do an homage to the Canadian art history. This is Tom Thompson, one of the group of seven. And if you look really closely, you do see the actual work. Ironically, as I did these, originally I did them as a joke. And then I posted them. And like this one sold faster than my pieces usually sell. And it's big, too. It's like 40 inches by 45 inches. And it's really a nice piece. And the guy's name is Jackson. A.Y. Jackson. And so this one's called the Jackson 9. Kind of like the Jackson 5. But A.Y.

Lee Schnaiberg

Jackson. This is Paul Riopelle. This is talk about cultural appropriation. This is Emily Carr. And she would go to the West Coast and do the totem poles. And she just loved them. And it wasn't stealing their culture. She thought this was amazing. And of course it's a little bit busy when you see nine of them piled up. That one's called the nine car pileup.

Lee Schnaiberg

And let's see. I'm having a hard time here. This is a brand-new computer here. So I'm learning. I seem to have gone through all of them. I have a dozen of these. But. Unfortunately, I think I'm. Caught into. Into the. Technological problem we always have. This is Harold town. Another. Pretty well-known Canadian painter.

Lee Schnaiberg

And so this was. A way that I could. They're all dead. But it's not about them being dead. And it's also. I just wanted to. You know, I wanted to. To have a little bit of freshness. With these works. I wanted to create something that. Had a little bit of a freshness. And as soon as when the person. When I posted one. And a friend of mine from Seattle.

Lee Schnaiberg

It was like, I need, I want that. He wanted down as well. And I was flattered. And I went through a little. We call it here. A lack of faith. I was like. I'm not sure if it's true. But I was like, I'm not sure if it's true. But I was like, I'm not sure if it's true. And I, and I called up a good friend of mine. Who's. In Montreal. He's by the most. Well, he's young. He's in his. Fifties. But this guy shows. In Paris in the same month. He has a show in Manhattan. And then a month later, he's in Brooklyn. Like he. For a Canadian, he's doing pretty good. And I was like, am I a phony? Like, do I suck? Like I should, these are, are these. Like, these aren't. Mine.

Lee Schnaiberg

And he was like, Lee. Like he knows my other pieces. He knows that I often do nines. He knows that this is a thing for me. And he was like, Lee. These are totally you. And, and, and each one's named after the person. So it's not like you stole anything from them. When I was younger, I used to like to.

Lee Schnaiberg

Appropriate steel. Or sample. To usually in like for media activism arts. You know, like. I, I, to me, it would be. Take something and use it. To create something. Almost in a social. Point. And here it's just, I love these works and they're part of. In a way, I guess they are part of my culture as a Canadian artist.

Lee Schnaiberg

But so. I don't know. I don't know if, if these are thievery or not. I don't know. I don't know. But I thought, why don't I show them here? And I apologize. Stop share. Things that are on the bottom of the screen turn onto the top of the screen. So those are. Series that have been that I did this year. And I had a lot of fun with it. And in the context of appropriation.

Lee Schnaiberg

I hope you like him. Thanks. Thanks so much. Lee. Thanks for sharing your experience with us in this interview. That works really, really cool and interesting. Did you ever save any of the. Like the media activism like video stuff. That's what I was going to show actually. Maybe in the after party. Yeah.

Lee Schnaiberg

Did you ever look at. Do you ever listen to or look at emergency broadcast network by any chance? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love DBN and I was doing stuff around the same time and Patrick's ad busters way before they did the Occupy Wall Street. To me, this was like, especially in the 90s, to take these images that are forcing their opinion on people and turn them upside down and, you know, make them a little bit funny. And ironically, my climate change movies did use a lot of appropriation in my early ones, they were kind of mashups. And back at the end of the 90s, we had the Canadian version of Much Music, we had MTV, we had the Canadian version of MTV here, Much Music. And those people saw my movies, and they hired me for the election campaign. And I got to do all these mashups as bumpers in between.

Lee Schnaiberg

So I'd take like, I take the debates, and I'd find that, you know, now it seems normal. But back then, I'd find like, they say the word jobs about 25 times or 30 times. And so, boom, here's a minute, like, rapid fire. And it just looks so, it shows how stupid they are, that they're just saying a word, they don't even mean anything. And sort of a way to pull back and look at this instead of, instead of just following it, like, you know, and I, I feel so sorry for you in the States, because I've been watching like the latest kerfuffle. And it seems like there's like these non issues that they get dangled in front of people like, like punching Judy. And they're like, oh, now I got to feel about this. Now I got to be angry about this. And you're gonna shoot a beer can or you're gonna drive over.

Lee Schnaiberg

This doesn't matter. Does this matter to your life? Do you even drink that beer? It's media. And so yeah, I love to like, I really like to turn it upside down and! Fight with that. Like my climate change movies, I interrupt climate scientists, like some of the top people from, from like, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and I cut them with McDonald's McDonald's ad, where they're like, they had like, some giveaway, they're giving these plastic toys. And they said, we're here to save the world, you know, and like, just this kind of like, rapid thing so people could, you know, use these pieces of content that are that are used and like, you know, if it's free, you're the product.

Lee Schnaiberg

Right. So, and now people know that with like with Facebook or Instagram, that we're the product it's not. That's not the product. But back then, when it was on television. People didn't really think about this as much so I really enjoyed doing that. Anyway, I'm going to get off my soapbox but thank you so much for letting me chat. And now I gotta go hang this back up. But thanks, thanks very much. Thanks Lee. And there's a reason they call it television programming right.

Lee Schnaiberg

But, alright so we'll open the floor up. And the control room and master control. Yep, there you go. So we'll open the floor for discussion I don't see anyone else who's presenting unless I'm missing anybody. Unless

Anyone else wants to jump in. And present sort of in an impromptu way. Mark, you want to show something. Just, good show I'm in Treadwell New York, about 300 miles up in the middle of New York State. I did live on Long Island, and I did make it, I want to make it out to the gallery I never made it.

Mark Strodl

I am a little bit stuck at this point. So this was kind of an interesting talk. Appropriation. I think, ideally my ego and pride wants to say oh I never, you know. But in fact I love the history of art. And if you do it's like it happens all the time. Da Vinci, he's very famous. Proportion of man was appropriated from his friend. And it's gone down on a you know, with, in terms of Picasso. And it's gone down on a you know, with, in terms of Picasso. And it's gone down on a you know, with, in terms of Picasso. He used it as a dialogue. Going back to the past and speaking to.

Mark Strodl

What was going on in Africa and appropriate it and using it his own work and then educating the rest of us as to what primitive is and was. And it's kind of this dialogue that I think we got to remember and it's yes you credit and that's kind of the fun it's the conversation of where you're going and because I think fundamentally we're all like these revolutionaries who. Yes, we are. We might learn from someone else but I'll be Dan if I'll stay there. And we're going to take that move on further.

Mark Strodl

And so just like some fun stuff I don't know if you could see my screen how do I do this. You do share screen. Okay. And, okay, I got you so let me go here. Well, I'll start here. This is not seeing anything yet. This is not seeing anything yet. You share screen. Oh, there we go. Okay, so I'll start here. This is probably about eight years old. I fundamentally hate appropriation. And I take all my own photographs, or try to that has been involving since on because I'd rather communicate on another level and certain times I can't be at certain places so this is a great example of an appropriating an idea this is after the very famous Van Gogh prison yard. But I'm photographing it. And just talking about our insanity.

Mark Strodl

Oh, here's the DaVinci piece. So this is my version. And I just thought it'd be humorous to do it with skeletons, instead of. I forget how we did it but it was it was kind of fun but I absolutely you know what credit to Vince you on this even though he wasn't the original original but it's good enough. And is that discussion on this. I'm doing this digitally.

Mark Strodl

Photoshop show you're all pretty much aware. And just where I'm taking it. This is some other works. I'm very much, you know, I've heard so many little references Yes, I was very. When I was coming together with all this I would go to occupy Wall Street, quite a number of times and this was actually at the Halloween parade, probably three years ago.

Mark Strodl

And it's pretty much a straight shot. And it's pretty much a straight shot. But I think I had the t shirts. This is just some of my works. And I've been getting very, I have to be honest, AI has been screwing me up. In the beginning I was a very big fan of it. And then I now I just see it as an excuse my don't read into just my personal feeling.

Mark Strodl

For me it's fake, and, and probably I have to, it's going to be pushing me even further and harder to be better because it's extraordinary. I think there are aspects of me that are not. I think there are aspects of AI that are absolutely tremendous. And, and, you know, you got to keep pace. This is just some of my other works I'm actually represented in Chelsea. Oh, it's not worth much these days.

Mark Strodl

Everything's changing online. I've been reading into NFTs and then, and all the corruption going on I don't know if you get the New York Times, but I was just reading about all that today all the money's being stolen and just it. I. There was a time someone wanted me to do NFTs and I, I started a portfolio of them. And as I got more and more educated at it added I saw that, again, personally, the individual artists as very little as very little hopes, you know, ever achieving any of that because this is actually actually corporations who are hellbent on doing this and you had to promote it, and the guys swap and they promote each other and you really. If you're not in the mix you just not going to be there. This is actually last week.

Mark Strodl

I, I have a love affair. It started with what I heard like the original NASA images which were brought back in black and white and then colored and I went, Well damn I could do that. And so I started making my own images. I was gonna know the difference. I mean I'll tell you, it's definitely my. So this is just it's just a little bit of a. It's kind of a game or a joke. This is only at the college and it's their older telescopes which I thought was just very humorous image imaging.

Mark Strodl

And this is so I wanted to say I don't appropriate. And then there was this I was doing the week before, which is I love taking old fashioned maps. And that. And they're wonderful to just absolutely the treasures, and I'm not literally taking it, but it's just the idea of the border. You know, sticking an alphabet in there. But it really could be anything. This was actually appropriate I forget where from. And I'm just having fun I'm, I'm, I'm making my own maps, and because one of the other things I do is I take these photoshopped into After Effects and I animate them.

Mark Strodl

Because I have been doing projections on the sides of buildings, and, but just to get enough material to make a movie it's just a lot, a lot of work. And so you have to be very efficient making lots work so that's, I just, I love going back to the old style, you know maps. I think they're just very humorous.

Mark Strodl

So, I'm just taking it all of what I do have more yeah who knows. It's kind of what I'm up to, I, I'm getting a little lost I have to admit AI is really kind of thrown me for a loop. I really. I really. In a certain level I think it's great but I'm having a hard time accepting it. And, and it's taken me to go back to more primal things more handmade things more things that have my soul within them, versus this, this pure world with dirt and dust doesn't happen.

Mark Strodl

And it's just where I'm at. So, I don't know what that means to anyone. And I'm just, it's just nice to say hello and I love your little meeting here. It brought up a lot of stuff, and it's very interesting. Some great work too. Thank you. Thanks Mark. Although, from a personal perspective I have to disagree about NFTs.

Mark Strodl

My personal feeling is they're actually something that's completely changing the structure of the art world. In the fact that individual artists can mint directly without having to have any representation. And the fact that secondary sales generate residuals for visual artists is something that's never existed before. So I'm not exactly sure what corporations are benefiting from NFTs I would say probably platforms benefit to some degree because they get maybe 3% or a small percentage of sales. But as far as corporations using NFTs I mean, most of those campaigns to my knowledge are not very successful, you know, the things that actually have generated a lot of revenue have been things like crypto punks board apes which were really formed initially by collectives of artists are organized under companies that were groups of artists initially.

Mark Strodl

So, I mean, that's just my two cents is. If you want to learn about NFTs it's not in the New York Times it's on Twitter, or on foundation open see, you know, the actual NFT space, not sort of a corporate or media worldview, that's just my two cents on the NFT thing, but anyhow. I should read about some of them getting busted. And it's whatever.

Mark Strodl

But, no it's it. It has great opportunity I'll give you that. It's just something that's really interesting. So, in the its more than an hour. Arena and there are not nice people across the world and it can be very tough and I think I'm just personally taking the simpler path because it's just too it's kind of nuts for me that's true but I mean there's plenty of art dealers out there that just basically rip off artists and that's just part of the culture yeah unfortunately so yeah I don't really think it's that much different you know but I haven't been able to find any representation where I've really received any benefit from it personally but I guess that's just my own personal experience so I mean I've enjoyed more sales of nfts the last couple of years than physical work I mean I like making physical work it's just if you're not established or you know have adequate outlets are able to it's pretty difficult to sell it, you know?

Mark Strodl

I mean, NFTs, I think, are difficult to sell too, but, you know, it's like anything else. Like, you have to be involved in the community, and I think that's one thing where, you know, being involved in the community is a different, it's a different art world, you know? It's separate from the art world, and the galleries now that are the blue chip galleries are trying to get in on it, but ultimately, like, the people, I think, that are the most successful aren't people that have made their names already, like Damien Hirst, and these people are making NFTs now, but it's like the people who are native to the space that are coming in, you know, as NFT artists. It's a different culture because the majority of the collectors, a lot of the collectors are actual other NFT artists who are just ahead in, you know, the sort of the culture of it, you know?

Mark Strodl

It'll be interesting to see it evolve, I think. But you should read some of the articles in the Times. It's very good. They busted a lot of these people. I mean, and like the Koreans stealing, what was it? I forget, $6 billion worth of, you know, stuff, and blockchains, and finding them, and the whole organization, you know? Well, crypto and NFTs are not the same thing, you know? I mean, NFTs are based on crypto. There's certainly a lot of, you know, theft and corruption in crypto. Anyway, this is sort of, this is sort of off topic, but we could get into a whole other salon about crypto and NFTs, which I think, you know, we've done a few already, but it is something where I think there is, you know, there was never really much of a way to monetize, say, artists who create short animation, you know, which is very difficult to sell it until, you know, blockchain-based NFTs evolved, and now people actually do that, you know?

Mark Strodl

It has allowed people to publish their work as artists, you know, in a different way. That's sort of, I think, what is revolutionary about it in many ways. You know, I was definitely a skeptic myself, but having seen firsthand, you know, the changes in what's happened, even within this group, people like Anne Spalter in the beginning, you know, she curated a show of NFTs for Techspressionism, and there's definitely a couple of people that were in that show.

Mark Strodl

Who's that generative artist? He's like, Renata might know who I'm talking about. He's like on art, I forget, but there is, you know, a bunch of people. And I think, you know, I think, you know, I think, you know, there's a bunch of people that really came up. Who is it, Lee? I think you're muted. It's not Andrea Bonaceto, is it? No, but he was in there.

Mark Strodl

Let's see. But she, you know, definitely, I mean, she's right now doing a lot of stuff with Sotheby's and, you know, it's definitely becoming more and more involved. They're entrenched in like the institutional art world, I think. One thing I noticed just the other day about the platform object, it's a far less expensive platform for artists to mint on. You can mint something for $10 or less. And they're working with Sotheby's now, which is a real, that's kind of significant.

Mark Strodl

Absolutely. And it's a great platform for artists to get involved with. Oh, Tyler Hobbs. That's the guy's name. So like his NFT collection Fidenza. I mean, you know, the word, every single work in there is, I don't know what it sells for, but some astronomical amount. You know, and he was one of the artists in NFT now.

Mark Strodl

Which was like a pretty early curated exhibition. You know, but I think it's, it's, it's something that we'll use as an opportunity to try and consider some more of these kinds of projects that are sort of organized. I'm not sure how that directly relates to appropriation. Other than appropriation does occur in that there is theft of intellectual property in the NFT space. You know, where people appropriate other people's work and mint it under their name. So there's definitely risks involved. Involved.

Mark Strodl

But again, you know, art counterfeiting is not a novel phenomenon, you know, so I think a lot of times people can vilify technology by blaming sort of corrupt activities on the technology where it's just a different manifestation of like, things that have been going on for, you know, a long time traditional media, I don't know. But anyway, anyone else have any, anything to bring up about appropriation?

Mark Strodl

Giovanna? I just curious because I heard like several times that when things talk about cultural appropriation is always use the Chinese as the opposite side of white guys or Western. Why Chinese? I mean, I never feel offended. I didn't say Chinese, I was quoting a Japanese American artist. So it's completely, but I mean, I never said Chinese, I never said it as an example. I mean, use Asian maybe that will be, you know, a little confused, you know, I don't know what others, but that make me confused. It was an essay that I quoted in the paper that I wrote 30 years ago. That was it.

Mark Strodl

And I included in the catalog for a show at the San Francisco Art Institute. And the topic of the show was third culture, whatever. So I can't remember that I don't, I'd have to look on my shelf I'm looking over there and try to find it. But, so it's, it's several layers down. And that was at the time 30 years ago. Pretty innovative for the San Francisco Art Institute to put on this exhibit, and then invite artists to contribute to it. And so I quoted from it in the paper.

Mark Strodl

Do I see that as the opposition? I know, I mean, I don't even know. I mean, I don't even know what my culture is. So I think that we live in a really different time, but 30 years ago, there was this idea that real art somehow conformed to these certain ideas of what art was. And so this show had been put on 30 years ago by the San Francisco Art Institute to fight against, to open it up, open the discussion up. And that's the essay that I was referring to.

Mark Strodl

So I think that you misheard what I was saying. And then I quoted a performance that I saw on Facebook, on a Facebook reel that I couldn't find. Because they disappeared, of an Indian, somebody from India, talking about what happens when works from his culture, cultural treasures are stolen and put on in a museum. And I think he was talking about British.

Mark Strodl

I think museum is a quite different story because most of the artwork we've seen from museum, they are owned by their own country. Because this may be some private collector, they brought it and they donate it. It's all like money things. They own by foundation and they contribute. So there's two different things. What one thing is, can all the museums they own other countries were? Well, this is not yes or no answer because they already did. Or they already did. Like when we go to Metropolitan Museum of Art, a lot of art, they not belong to the United States.

Mark Strodl

So my point is like, my point of view, especially this is a very personal opinion. The entire art history is always, always a mix and match. Like most simply, we are all influenced by the Western culture, especially Western. Okay. After Renaissance. Everything that we learn from the school. If you want to learn art, the way we learn how to draw, how to paint is all like a Western. We already influenced by the Western cultural and that's the thing. And it's not because about appropriations.

Mark Strodl

If you talk about authentic or appropriation, that means we shouldn't learn as Asian. We shouldn't learn anything from the West. We should use our own techniques to draw. But I mean, it's all like a mix already. You know, it's been passed for a few thousand years. You know, it's just like the entire even like an NLP or digital art that's mix and match. In like, like this, maybe the people, I don't know why that some people, they don't know that. That's what I'm trying to say. We're all just like a mix. So I don't know that I'm all like a mix. So I don't know that I'm not in the same place. And I don't know that I'm with the same people. And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people. And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people. And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people.

Mark Strodl

And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people. And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people. And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people. And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people. And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people.

Mark Strodl

And I don't know that I'm as different with the same people. Okay but like a Canadian or other countries they like to put like a pineapple or different they have a different toppings than Italy like even in the United States a lot you know they the people in Italy they still they don't like those American pizza but the thing is that we still eat it because that's the way it is you know it's just like all the history is all like a mix and match so there's no like a we don't compromise but we already get influence from others you know that's the thing that's a bit of what I was trying to show with the example of the Native American art that was historically influenced probably that was so long ago that it was not carefully documented but probably influenced by the India Indian art that was then was so popular in France and then the French nuns came to North America that there's been that flow but I think for me one of the questions that I raised in the essay and maybe didn't emphasize enough in the presentation I'm not sure is if you're drawn if you have to redraw something or if you have to manipulate it a lot in the computer you get to know it and what's at what point are you just like throwing it in as clipper without becoming familiar to the idea of what it is that you're doing and what it's like to be able to do it in a way that you're doing it in a way that you're not familiar with it without having it open your way of thinking or you know well do you have to cross that line do you have to redraw it or play with it enough I mean one thing that I was thinking about and I think I've thought about this when I was taking art history classes is how art history sort of within a capital A the western part of it is it's just implied that's art history and then in this chapter there's Asian art history and in this chapter there's African art history but actual art history is presented as you know renaissance impressionism expressionism you know what I mean so it'd be interesting to see it presented in a way where it's contemporaneous and you see multiple timelines happening on a global level you know what's happening on each continent at the same time which you very rarely see and I'm sure there's a lot of people who are interested in this but I think it's interesting to see if there's some cultural interchange going on you know that really isn't well documented but that would be something I'd be interested in you know seeing if anyone's done any kind of presentation like that Cynthia would you know of anything like that no I think there are some people working on that but I don't know of anything quickly I keep looking at my bookshelf to see what I can find I do want to say that the first time I went to western Europe to look at Hebrew manuscripts I wrote to the wrong curators the wrong biblioteca librarians I wrote to the medieval manuscript people but of course Hebrew manuscripts even though they were created in Spain in France in Germany in Italy they were considered orient they still are considered oriental manuscripts that's really interesting because you know so on my father's side of the family is Jewish my mom's side of the family is Japanese and I was always sort of interested in the fact that you know Hebrew was one of the first phonetic alphabetic languages where instead of pictograms you know your house was written in Hebrew and your house was written in Japanese and your house was written in Japanese so you know that's kind of interesting because you know there are letters that come together to form words and in Japanese language there's kanji which is like pictographic and there's thousands of characters and each character represents basically a word or a concept and then there's katakana which is essentially phonetic it's like the you know it's much later so I always wondered you know did those two things you know evolve at the same time were people you know culturally influenced to develop phonetic language which you know allows for us to have words that we read in books you know was that happening in both eastern and western cultures at the same time you know that'd be interesting to think about you know so that's something that was always brewing in the back of my mind is some sort of interesting art project to have letters morphing into each other or you know the aleph became alpha which became the letter a you know I mean on the western side it sort of stuff evolved that way aleph, beth you know a b beta a letter b so yeah I do know an artist working in Hong Kong who is combining Chinese characters and Hebrew letters I'll send you privately you might be interested in from us from a science and mathematics standpoint western European derived a lot from India from China from Islam much of what we take today as like the concept concept of zero came from elsewhere.

Mark Strodl

And in the Middle Ages, you know, we were deep in very backwards thinking and oppression. And the height of algebra and other things that we now use in modern day was happening in Islam. You know, take a look at the Alhambra, take a look at what was going on in China and India. I mean, there was just so much that was being advanced where Europe was in the midst of complete darkness and ignorance. So, yeah.

Mark Strodl

Yeah, algorithm. I see in the chat there. Yeah. Yeah. I think actually Paul Miller, like DJ Spooky, is writing a book about that right now, about the influence of like Islamic culture. And mathematics and algorithms and all that sort of stuff yeah I've got a few art pieces along that line as well so yeah it's fascinating yeah oh also you know cynthia I was thinking as you're sharing your paper we have a page on the site right now it's Techspressionism.com slash reading and that's where people like you know I set that page up to include books that were written by people in the group as well as books by helen harrison who's our advisor and then just some further reading by a bunch of different authors broken down into categories but I was thinking it might be good to have a section on the site where you can read about the history of the scholarly papers as well you know which could include your paper and anyone else who's published papers you know within the scope of text you know technology-based art or art theory that's relevant you know that might be something cool and I'm sure patrick Patrick has a bunch of stuff.

Mark Strodl

I have a couple things from grad school that might be interesting about memes and memetics. But yeah, and Michael, I don't know if you have anything that you want to contribute, but certainly I think they don't even need to be published papers. Honestly, they could be any sort of essays, long or short form that might be, you know, informationally based. There's also. Pieces on there by artists like joseph mcquital where it's just completely free form poetry and other kinds of stuff that's related so yeah I think that's a resource that we could build out that'd be pretty interesting you know and certainly if any of the books are available the ones that are available on amazon you know there's links to and a bunch of the artists in the group have books that have been published Steve Miller just published a new one so anyway we're coming up on time does anyone have any closing comments you'd like to share cynthia yeah I just wanted to make a couple of comments first of all regarding this business of artists being influenced by art or reason being influenced by art I think it's kind of an interesting since the beginning of time, all artists have influenced one another.

Mark Strodl

Art history has influenced us. And as Giovanna said, there's this mix and match that's been going on for a long time. Shakespeare said that there's nothing new under the sun. When you're talking about writing, which is another form of art, the same story lines come up. Do we say someone has plagiarized someone else? Yes. I guess you have to look at what the story says and how it's said. So there's this fine line, there's this tension all the time.

Mark Strodl

The biggest elephant in the room is that AI is built on the foundation of appropriation today. And the appropriation, as we know, what's under the hood is the work of all of the data that's been collected from the web concerning artists' work. That has already occurred. I do understand and appreciate what people are able to get when they're working in AI, and that they do put themselves into it in terms of their prompts, and if they're putting in their own work, or maybe they're deciding to use the AI as one layer within a larger collection of layers so that in some way they have made it their own. So there's always, I think, going to be this tension, whether it's today with AI, or whether it's in the past, as to what is truly appropriation that's happening. And whether or not it should be allowed, should not be allowed, I think is one of the questions we'll wrestle with forever as artists.

Mark Strodl

Just my two cents. Cheryl, did you have something to add? Oh, you're muted. Okay. I was going to

Try to show you a few pictures that, after I read the book, Steal Your Art. Has anybody heard of that one? It's an interesting book, but I kind of decided to do some digital stuff, so I thought you might want to see. Okay, sure. I'll try. Stop on my board with the lightning. Hmm. Can you see that? Yup. Yeah.

Cheryl Audet-Lavoie

Well, you recognize it, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, Picasso, sort of manipulated? How about Gauguin? Picasso. As well as the next one. I think this was just a black and white photo. Yeah. You actually called this one Stealing Picasso. It's just another version of the first one. And... Oh, no. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry.

Cheryl Audet-Lavoie

I'm sorry. Not what I want to do. Okay. Why don't you show it to us in Photoshop? Yeah. As long as you have it there. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I think this is working a little bit better for me. And another version. Sorry, I didn't realize it was all so much the same. And then I really took it crazy.

Cheryl Audet-Lavoie

Do you still recognize it? Now, what do you do about that? Actually, I mean, some of these things can be just inspiration for... Your own piece. You know, if you don't like to start with the blank canvas. And this one, this last one is... Chagall. That's very obvious. Okay. That's it. That's it. All right. Well, unless anyone has any questions.

Cheryl Audet-Lavoie

I think we're a little bit over time, but that's okay. So I think we're going to close the session, but if anyone would like to stick around for the after party or the... Advisory board as... As it's... Sometime called. That is... Synonymous with the after party. We'll be picking out a topic for the next salon and just kind of general shooting the shit type stuff. So...

Cheryl Audet-Lavoie

Without further ado, I am going to stop recording in three, two, one, and cut.