Copyright Apologies

I’m Sorry, 2010. Angie Waller. Copyright 2010 Angie Waller.

New York City based artist Angie Waller has produced many great art projects, among which are two dealing directly with copyright (God bless her!).Waller will be exhibiting these two projects in New York at the Center for Book Arts‘ 2010 Artists-in-Residence Workspace Program. The exhibition runs from April 15, 2011 – June 25, 2011, and was organized by Sarah Nicholls. Waller was also a 2010 Art & Law Residency fellow.

One of Waller’s projects, I’m Sorry (2010),

explores originality in the context of appropriation and plagiarism. The text of the book consists of excerpts from public apologies for plagiarism composed in hand set type. Each page includes errors inherent to the hand set type process, such as damaged type, upside-down and backwards letters. The apology is re-printed on each page until all technical errors have been corrected. The repeated texts play with the idea of exposure to other’s ideas and the slippery slope between influence, appropriation, and outright “theft.”

The other project, Originality Compass (2010), is a

[b]ook and volvelle (wheel chart) that reconfigures twenty copyright infringement cases based on the objects in question. (For instance Art Rogers v. Jeff Koons becomes Puppies vs. String of Puppies.) The book includes a wheel chart, Originality Compass, which abridges the cases to the essential judgments about originality. The court decisions presented in the compact scale of the disk provides a birds-eye view into the subjectivity of the arguments that vary on a case by case basis. In contrast to this, the wheel chart as a measuring device suggests that definitive answers are being provided. Originality: Cases and Materials, the accompanying book, presents the case research for the Originality Compass wheel chart. The book consists of copies of the source material court cases with underlining and margin notes that highlight aesthetic contemplations in the court.

For those wishing to hear more about this project, you’re in luck. There will be an artist talk regarding this exhibition on Wednesday, May 18th, at 6:30pm at the Center for Book Arts.

Tags: art, art projects, conceptual art, fair use, intellectual property