This interactive billboard in Time’s Square made by space150 is very cool. The crowd is first presented with a live video of themselves, followed up by a Forever 21 model walking on to frame and taking a Polaroid picture of the crowd and then showing it to them. In some cases the model picks up a person and puts it into her shopping bag. space150 used high tech video surveillance equipment to create the real time masks of the people, and allow for the on the fly digital manipulation of the real time crowd.

Pretty cool right? I thought so. But things got a little more interesting for me when I took a look at the original Vimeo page for this video. Check it out for yourself. It seems this marketing effort has flamed a huge debate over inspiration and copying…

In short it seems a digital artist, by the name of Chris O’Shea, did something similar a while back (Sept 2009). Take a look at his work titled “Hand from Above” here

The debate over on Vimeo is interesting and brings up a lot of thoughts. I have not yet been able to figure out my own thoughts on this project. I think writing this post is kind of a way for me to think through some things. Chris himself starts out the debate in a very polite way. It seems in his response that he would have been open to the project, if it was presented in a better manner, and credit was given, even just as inspiration… Later in the comments space150 comes out and says they contacted Chris in the early stages of the project, and he declined. Should they have dropped the digital “pick-up” part of the campaign? Is the work a complete rip-off or an inspired derivative?

A couple quotes from Chris in the Vimeo post:

Was there any mention of my piece in their press? No. Should there have been? Well, that’s the part of the debate isn’t it?

Ad agencies claiming originality and innovating new tech becomes transparent when its clear where ideas were borrowed from or which programming open source frameworks were used (without acknowledgement).

Advertising agencies are often lifting/borrowing/using the ideas of artists, and there are many examples online. The amount of content on youtube makes these sort of situations common now. It is easier to sell to a client something that has been done before, rather than invent something completely new. However such is the creative community, that people will notice and call an agency on it if the idea is too similar.

So if the creative community are tired of having their ideas lifted into commercials, what are the issues up for debate?

1) originality of ideas and ownership of those. If no ideas are truly original, where does the grey area of originality sit?
2) Should artists be credited for inspiration? Should ad agencies claim to be original knowing they will be told otherwise by social media later?
3) What should an ad agency do in an ideal situation in terms of working with artists?
4) What do artists want from ad agencies?

So what should we think about this? Copyright issues are not new, and I would say they are more and more prevalent these days. As more ideas are generated, do new ones just become that much harder to create? Are creatives just becoming lazy? Do ad agencies need to start hiring artists, and pay them accordingly, to play and experiment on their dime? Do we need to listen less to our client base when they say things like “I want something just like that…”?

Chris’ comment about artists using advertising as a flip…

If an artist had copied an advertisement on tv for example, making it into a video installation, then becoming popular, wouldn’t the advertising company sue the artist for copyright? Would be interesting to hear if there any examples of this.

…confused me a little. I think artists have taken ideas, images, and thoughts from culture since the early days of time. Andy Warhol would be a good example of this, taking logos and advertisements, and making them into art. Pop Art revolves around the concept of taking something from pop culture and re-purposing it for artwork. Is this different? I think so. I suppose the artist isn’t really trying to hide where they got the idea from. A more recent example would be the work: “Untitled (300 x 404)” by Greg Allen. This is what Greg has to say about the work:

The original of Untitled (300 x 404) is a thumbnail-size jpeg of Untitled (Cowboy), 2003, Richard Prince’s rephotograph of a Marlboro ad, which I grabbed from the web. An online magazine had (ridiculously, I thought) been denied permission to reproduce Prince’s version so, following his example, I declared the copy my own work and offered it to them.

You can read more about this debate here:

• 20×200
• Blake Andrews
• dinosaurs and robots

So what are the differences between an ad agency being inspired from an artist work, and an artist being inspired by a work that already exists? They are both in ways making money, but does the artist have more “rights” to copy, as long as they attach a meaning to it? Or a different meaning than the first meaning? It is hard either way, for me, I think. Sometimes a copy or derivative can be clever, and sometimes get marked as a rip-off? Who are the ones to decide?

I guess for me it comes down to a “gentleman’s gesture” of sorts, and transparency. In any world; art, design, ad, photography, fashion, etc – there will always be inspired ideas. If the product of an idea comes too close to an already existing product, give that person credit, change something, team up with the original creator to make something even better, find a way for the original creator to not only get credit, but share in the profit of the idea. Credit is great and all, but being paid for an original idea is even better. Just be honest and open.

This blog post started as a finding, something cool I found, and turned into a lot more than that. I would love to hear what other creatives, of any sort, think of this subject. I am still trying to sort through my own thoughts…