Archive for May, 2009
Evan Roth’s “Intellectual Property A$$hole Competition”
May 26th
This is AWESOME!
I just happened across this site and quite obviously, the title sucked me in. Evan Roth, self-proclaimed Bad Ass Mother Fucker is an American artist based out of Hong Kong. His bio states that he has interests in technology, tools of empowerment, open source and popular culture (definately someone I would like to have a beer with). Coolest of all, he is the number one result from a “bad ass mother fucker” google search. Impressive as I would have surely thought it would have been Samuel Jackson or this
So onto the competition. Evan has staged a competition to see who will deliver a cease and desist quicker… an artist who uses pop culture to become abundantly wealthy, or the Associated Press- who claims to own the copyright on the photo (of our president). To fuel the fire, Evan has painted canvas versions of BOTH the inFamous “Hope” poster and the actual picture and is now selling them on his site. I cannot wait to see what the outcome of this is…
Below is a link to the blog as well as the text from the “contest.”
http://evan-roth.com/
Who is the bigger intellectual property asshole? Is it the artist who has amassed a small fortune based on "appropriation" yet still sends cease and desist letters to other artists for appropriating his work? Or is it the largest (and only) US based nationally-oriented news service which fails to recognize "fair use" even when it literally stares them in the face? I have created hand painted canvases of Shepard Fairy's Obama Hope poster, and Mannie Garcia's Associated Press photograph and put them for sale on my website here and here. ..... stay tuned for updates on the winner.
(For those unfamiliar with the Shepard Fairy / Associated Press intellectual property battle over the Obama Hope poster, here is a good place to start.) (via evan-roth.com)
Intellectual Property Asshole Competition: OBEY vs AP
Thanks go to Evan for stirring it up!! At the very least, one could say he is “ballsy.”
Orchestral composition VS Band composition… what’s a writer to do?
May 3rd
Ever wonder about how composers feel about band music?? Well, read this from John Mackey:
“If you’re a composer who grew up wanting to write orchestra music, and you listened to Barber rather than Grainger, you probably start with the attitude that you should be writing orchestra music, and band somehow isn’t the goal. So, you marry Orchestra. Orchestra is hot. Okay, maybe not hot, but at least she’s the kind of hot that you know you should like. At the very least, she’s very pretty. And she’s really, really smart, and speaks, like, seven languages, and she knew everybody (but she only ever wants to talk about Beethoven). But you quickly realize that Orchestra thinks she’s better than you, and she acts like every minute she spends with you is come kind of charity work. You get her gifts, and shower her with attention, but you soon realize that she doesn’t appreciate you at all, and she’s neglectful, and at worst, abusive.
And then one day, you meet Band at a party.
“What do you do?” she asks. “Um, I’m a composer,” you reply, expecting little reaction, but Band lights up and exclaims, “oh my God, that’s HOT! Do you have any music I can play? The newer, the better! Let me get you a drink!”
Band is loud. She’s not quite as pretty as Orchestra, and she’s a bit, shall we say, bigger-boned, but she has that truly “hot” aspect to her that Orchestra never had. And most importantly, Band loves what you do. Whereas it was like pulling teeth to get Orchestra to look at your new music (and if she looked, she was generally not impressed, often comparing you unfavorably to one of her many ex’s — like Dvorak), Band thinks it’s awesome. Band tells you things like “you’re special and perfect and I’ll appreciate you and your music like Orchestra never has, and never will.”
What is Composer supposed to do?! Did I mention how loud and boisterous Band is? (Let’s say she’s a screamer. Totally your type.) You have a blast when you’re with her, and your friends agree that she’s a lot cooler than Orchestra, and they see how she treats you much, much better. How can Composer not be expected to stray?
Luckily for Composer, he figured this out around the age of 30, and not much, much later. He just feels bad for all of the other Composers who haven’t yet caught on and left their dysfuncional, abusive relationships.”
John’s great works can be heard on a number of my Naxos Wind Band Classics recordings… He also has a great blog that you ought to visit…
