"Uniqueness" isn't a qualification for determining whether something is "art". Most art is not unique, and certainly not most photographs.
Calling the pixelated version a "flippant" capturing is disingenuous, as it seems to be a reflection of your (apparent) dislike of pixel art rather than the artist's intentions.
Uniqueness is a qualification of artiness as far as I'm concerned. Merely reproducing something is not art, it's direct reproduction. Introducing unique style would be art. This slight pixelation is insufficient to qualify as such.
I never called the pixelated version flippant. Rather, I called the treatment of the original flippant. Also, don't project a dislike of pixel art onto me.
> Merely reproducing something is not art, it's direct reproduction. Introducing unique style would be art.
One could then argue that photographs are merely reproduction of reality, and therefore not art. I fail to see why you think photographs introduce unique style but pixel art does not.
> The photo in question was beautifully captured, and the flippant way it's being treated is rather sad.
I apologize for suggesting that you dislike pixel art, but that's how I this sentence reads to me.
One could then argue that photographs are merely reproduction of reality, and therefore not art. I fail to see why you think photographs introduce unique style but pixel art does not.
Because that photography does not merely reproduce reality. The camera, lens, film type, lighting, everything produced an entirely unique image[1]. Furthermore, if you were sitting there, observing his playing, you would not have seen what came out in that photograph. That's what makes photography something other than mere reproduction. That's where the art comes from.
Regarding pixel art, I don't really consider this piece to even be pixel art. It's just a somewhat blocky rendition of a photograph. Great pixel art is more akin to Picasso's deconstruction of a bull:
Great pixel art deconstructs an image into the minimal set of elements necessary to convey the original idea. The 'pixel art' in question really does just looks like a few photoshop filters applied to a very well-known photograph. Or a bad resizing of a thumbnail.
[1] I get the impression that the "photography is reproduction" crowd don't understand technical aspects of photography, like lens selection, aperture, dynamic range, the effect that film selection makes, etc. Yes, a midday, f/16 snapshot of "The Bean" may not entail meaningful artistic qualities, but that sort of distinction tends to be along the fuzzy line we draw between 'snapshots' and 'photography'.
If we are lazy for a second and combine the concepts of art and originality/copyrightability (which I'm guessing from your comments is broadly your position), why would gallery shots of fine art accrue their own copyright, and not this pixelated example?
" In terms of artistic works, if the artist is alive, or has been dead for less than 70 years, there will be a separate copyright in the work itself that is additional to the copyright in the photographic reproduction."
Here you have a gallery stating that there is copyright in the photograph of a work of art, distinct from that in the work of art itself. As I understand it, this is standard for reproduction photos.
In that photo, the gallery art in question occupies less than 1/4 of the frame, and is partly obscured. The photo is composed primarily of green background, contrasted with a blonde girl in red.
I don't understand how that is a 'reproduction' photo at all.
I don't understand how you can have read the page I linked to and have come away with the impression that I was in any way referring to that specific photo.
See the "Digital image (c) Tate, London" watermark on the image? Given that the original painting is 122 years old and therefore well out of copyright itself, the gallery are asserting that there is copyright in the photograph of the painting.
Having a quick google around, there's an interesting short article at http://www.museumscopyright.org.uk/bridge.htm about a US case brought by a UK company which seems to clarify that the position is different in the US and in the UK: in the UK, there is still presumed to be copyright in photographs of artwork, while there is not in the US, so it's a little more complicated than I thought (who knew?).
If a painter and a photographer both depict the same scene, your argument seems to be suggesting that the "degree of 'artistic' creation" from the photographer would somehow be greater than that of the painter? How would that work? Although painting from real life allows for perhaps better capture of a scene, it is arguably similar to painting from a photograph of the same scene.
There's a much higher degree of creativity / variability inherent in drawing / painting / pixelating over than in photography simply by the mechanical process alone.
> "There's a much higher degree of creativity / variability inherent in drawing / painting / pixelating over than in photography simply by the mechanical process alone."
I'd argue you don't understand photography at all if you're making this claim, particular when one is talking about fine art photographers (as opposed to, say, sports). This is especially true today, where photographers are making pixel-level adjustments after squeezing the shutter.
Photography is not as simple as pointing the camera at something and pressing the shutter. Hell, just off the top of my head:
- What sensor size/film size? Your choice influences the depth of field, resolution, sharpness, and dynamic range of the result.
- What film? Your choice influences the color balance, reproduction opportunities, dynamic range, grain structure of the final image.
- What lens? Your choice determines the perspective of the image, as well as the requisite warping or flattening that comes with it. It also determines contrast (both macro and micro), sharpness, not to mention specialty lenses where you're determining the shift and orientation of your plane of focus. Lens selection also determines the look of bokeh (out of focus areas of the image) and flare - controlled by the size and shape of the diaphragm.
- What filters? Polarizers alter your composition significantly by eliminating certain forms of reflections. Neutral density filters allow for longer exposures to increase the effect of motion blur (or other creative uses). Colorized filters allow for a conscious control of particular tones in monochrome images (think of it like a transfer function).
- What shutter speed? This controls the amount of blur you have, the sharpness of the final image, and creative use of it can be used to isolate subjects in motion, freeze them, or any combination of the above (and that's just one common use of fine shutter speed control).
- What aperture? This determines the sharpness of the final image, as well as contrast, and the depth of field (e.g., the blurry "out of focus" areas of the image). A skilled photographer controls depth of field precisely, including exactly the things he/she wants, and nothing that is unwanted.
Nooow we get beyond gear selection into composition:
- Perspective. Where are you shooting from, where are you shooting to?
- Exposure. How is the image lit? What is the dynamic range of light? (the range from brightest to darkest portion of image) - the decision here affects the look of the image in a huge way.
- Framing. This is self explanatory really. What subject(s) do we include and how?
- Focus. How thick is our depth of field? What do we want to include in focus? What do we want to exclude?
And nowadays you have the litany of tools (Photoshop being just the beginning) where photographers are exercising a great deal of control over their images, often at the pixel level.
I highly object to your claim that photography is inherently less creative/variable than drawing, painting, or pixelating. This reflects a complete ignorance of what is required to create a photograph. The fact that modern DSLR cameras have essentially thrown all of the above on full-auto doesn't remove the fact that professionals and serious practitioners are using all of these creative variables to their benefit.
Your view of photography is akin to looking at a photocopier and saying "well, drawing isn't that creative".
I understand your position, and perhaps I should have better clarified my own. I did not mean to imply that photography was not a technical or creative field, rather by "mechanical process", I meant the physical act of creation.
I put a brush to canvas, or a pencil to paper.
My gestures are effected by micro muscle movements,
the interplay between the grain of the canvas and the camelhair in my brush, the way I personally perceive my subject. No two lines drawn by my hand, no two drops of ink flecked from my pen will ever be the same. My emotional state at the time will felt in my brush strokes.
All your points I agree with, but ultimately photography (by its process) has less potential for a physically variable and personal experience (for example the connectedness that a sculptor feels with the work physically formed by their hands) specifically in the dimension that I am talking about.
Also, your points on composition (perspective, framing,focus,exposure) are present in other visual mediums (although focus and exposure aren't generally terms that I hear a lot of painters use, it's still there), and arguably more under your creative control.
Finally, with photography you are limited to that which exists already in this world (once you start getting heavily into post-processing, it's hard to call keep calling it "photography").
I would blame poor/lazy devs inappropriately using JS rather than the evolution of the browser for this. For the average web page, it's unnecessary 90% of the time to require JavaScript for any core functionality ( not so much with web applications ). I have a hard time understanding why people do this as it's often much easier to test and develop when you're layering on JS unobtrusively.
You are a much less cynical person than myself if you think that society is a reflection of its members' values. There is a mismatch between what people say/think that they value, and what people actually value. It takes only sidelong glance at the current political climate in the US to see myriad examples of people voting against their own best interests.
By and large, people expect the status quo, and as it has been, so shall it be. Had the internet been born in some corporate boardroom - restricted, tiered, filtered - people would expect nothing more.
I suspect we only a few rebrands from control be wrested away - look at Verizon/Google's net neutrality bill making a distinction between wired and wireless internet access. Certainly a reasonable person might agree that wired vs wireless internet access are conceivably "different" - and if the average person can be convinced that there is a difference, they will accept the terms of this difference as it is given to them.
I think that like most things in life, the internet will be controlled by a few people with a desire to shape it. The question is whether or not the people who value freedom, take a vested interest as well.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Mirah is what finally got me started with Android development. Coming from a Ruby background there's practically zero learning curve, plus you can install it from RubyGems (which when using RVM makes it dead-simple).
That being said, for my first application I decided to do it in plain old Java - since I had never worked with Java, I imagined that a rudimentary understanding of its workings would help me down the road in debugging issues that might arise when working with Mirah (somewhat like knowing JavaScript before working with CoffeeScript).
No one is questioning the existence of the patent - it's the validity of the patent that's being doubted. Given the current processes followed by the USPTO, existence says _nothing_ for its validity.
Why should one identify with a country they may have never been to, or a culture they may never have experienced? What's the point of romanticizing an intangible connection that only exists if you want it to?
As a person of mixed-raced descent, the idea that I should somehow be confused over where I "belong" always amused me. I am myself - the incalculable chain of events that led up to my existence are not particularly informative or suggestive of who I am or should be.
I don't think he seriously views Second Life as a real competitor - he was just using it to draw an analogy.
As for the community, I believe the "fakeness" he's getting at is the ability of the user to carefully cultivate their likeness and project a version of themselves that may or may not be truly reflective of "reality".
Of course, one could argue that we are always cultivating a "desired image" of ourselves. However, Facebook and similar platforms provide visual and textual clues that allow users to more concretely realize social relationships. This in turn may allow them to go above and beyond the normative level of image moderation. Whether that is "good" or "bad" is another question altogether.
While it may be "depressing", isn't it logically consistent with how the world appears to work?
One way to make a lot of money is to sell a lot of a product.
Most people are of "pedestrian" (average) intelligence; ergo, to sell a lot of product you must appeal to those of average intelligence.
As any industry grows you see this "regression towards the mean" - one only has to cock one's ear slightly to the side to hear the lamentation of readers, gamers and movie-buffs about how "everything has gone to the dogs".
Calling the pixelated version a "flippant" capturing is disingenuous, as it seems to be a reflection of your (apparent) dislike of pixel art rather than the artist's intentions.