Dewey, Takem and Howe (Sampling Reflection)

This past weekend was essentially spent taking pictures, images and photographs not nailed down from the internet and combining them into visual expression. The results are found below.

The general argument, that a nasty side effect of stringent copyright law interpretation is plainly to keep large corporations in control of their respective industries, is accomplished much more easily (though quietly) in the first version of the project, in which uses images not truly considered "legitimate" for such use. Availability of a larger pool of images is the main cause for this. The use of a well-known image (you'll know it when you see it) makes a more acute impact on the viewer, despite the more subtle nature of the first cartoon in comparison with the second. With the second, I was forced to be both crude in artwork and blunt in argument, simply because of the restrictions placed on the range of available material. Thank goodness for the Creative Commons and their helpful search directories.

The added effectiveness brought on by the familiarity of that icon in the first image, as well as the photos from the "Think Different" Apple campaign, tends to raise new questions regarding the use of these images. If the pictures or icons are purposefully chosen for the audience's recognition of them, that would place the credit for the effectiveness of your work partially on the original creators and distibutors of those images. This, of course, you may wish to avoid, particularly under threat of copyright infringement suits. However, as that oft-mentioned artist using Campbell's soup can images seems to be telling us, what else have we grown to universally recognize that is not already a trademark or logo of some corporation? The very advertising campaigns designed to acquaint the general public with these icons has perhaps succeeded a little too well for comfort.
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Image 1


















Image 2