Les Voleurs (the thief?)

[WordVirus23]

transcribed by me from William S. Burroughs' The Adding Machine:

Les Voleurs

Out of the closet and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, ,bookstores, recording sudios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief. All the artists of history, from cave painters to Picasso, all the poets and writers, the musicians and architects, offer their wares, importuning him like street vendors. They supplicate him from the bored minds of school children, from the prisons of uncritical veneration, from dead museums and dusty archives. Sculptors stretch forth their limestone arms to receive the life-giving transfusion of flesh as their severed limbs are grafted onto Mister America. Mais le voleur n'est pas presse' --- the thief is in no hurry. He must assure himself of the quality of the merchandise and its suitability for his purpose before he conveys the supreme honor and benediction of his theft.
Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! a bas l'originalite', the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons as it creates. Vive le vol-- pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight.

..william s. burroughs...

[many2]

from Picasso :

"A good artist borrows, a great artist steals! "

Many-2

[Anyone]

If someone wrote a book and said It's OK to kill, would you do it?

[unjulation]

lots of people who have read books that say its allright to kill cirtain people have indeed killed those people now wether that is good or bad is anouther question intierly

[eXhale]

Originally posted by Anyone
If someone wrote a book and said It's OK to kill, would you do it?
what does killing have to do with sampling? is anyone harmed when you take a small part of what someone else made and then proceed to recontextualize it for the present? why do we always have to learn about great artists from the past but are never allowed to make this past our own?

i think this kind of comparisons is really disgusting when you know the amount of people who die every day of problems which could be easily solved if only we cared about them. think about the amount of money which is spent every year on copyright-related legal battles, you could easily eliminate hunger from this planet with this money.

enough said.

[holly]

Picasso didn't work with video. When he said "great artists steal", he was refering to ideas, philosophies, and intellectual property. Cubism would not have become a movement unless others learned and copied from him and he from them. Besides, as one of the greatest artists who changed the perception of art in the 20th century, he's allowed to have a laugh at his own expense. The 60s pop art samplers: Warhol, Rauschenberg, and Lichtenstein were still decades away, but even they were not using direct digital duplicates of original work. Their "samples" (if they can actually be called that) were heavily processed, recontextualized, and (with the notable exception of Warhol's Mona Lisa) were not derived from the work of other artists. (Lichtenstein is accepted: advertising is not art.)

Sampling as we are refering to it means taking a direct media copy and incorporating it into your performance and claiming it as something new ? whether processed by effects into something obviously distinct from the original, or trans-contextualized into a new setting (the VJ's set) thereby becoming something new in intent and perception, but not different in appearance.

The romanticism of Ali Baba, bohemian bread-stealing, and philosophies of great painters like Picasso has nothing to do with VJing. If you say that sampling is ok as long it is from a bigger guy with more resources, then where is the cut-off? The "bigger guy with more resources" could just as easily be the pro-VJ you opened for last week. Sampling as an artform is valid, but profiting from sampling (without giving back to the original owner) is stealing. Are you making money from showing the works of others? Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He didn't steal from the rich and parcel it out to the poor at discount prices.

[unjulation]

[QUOTE] Sampling as we are refering to it means taking a direct media copy and incorporating it into your performance and claiming it as something new [QUOTE]

ahhh........
but i would never claim that it was something new, the only thing that i could poss claim is that i put it within a new context or enviroment that it was not origionaly intented for

[Anyone]

Originally posted by eXhale

what does killing have to do with sampling?


The point is : It's not because you read in it a book, in an article or saw it on TV that it should be OK. Form your own opinion.

Having said that, I'm not a copyright freak. if the law puts rules down my path, I could also see how far these rules bend, so I can still folow the path I've given myself...

Otherwise, I would copyright my face and charge anybody taking a picture of me...Stike a pose :cool:

Ne1

[holly]

originally from Unjulation
...i put it within a new context or enviroment that it was not origionaly intented for...

Then it is still something new. Maybe for arguement's sake we say it is a new use for an old thing?

I guess then the question is: "Is it really a new context/environment?"

? Clips from an old 50's sci-fi movie = yes, pretty much in the clear. The viewer doesn't need to know the original movie to understand that the clips are from another time or media.

? Videotape of an animated billboard in TimesSquare = yes. Different context, and advertising has no sacred status.

? Opening credit animation cut from SPIDERMAN THE MOVIE = well..., the intent is not to evoke another time or another media, the intent is to grab some "catchy graphics" that were set to music and use them as "catchy graphics" in your own video set to music. I'm hesitating to say that's re-contextualizing. What exactly is the difference between paying $10 at a movie (and watching abstract visuals) and paying $20 at a club (and watching the same visuals)...?

? clips edited from another VJ or video artist's work (unpaid/uncredited) = stealing, not sampling. Clearly there is no re-contextualization. Unless you are flashing "this work is by So-and-So" or you paid a fee you are claiming authorship of that work by using it as your own. As a writer, a credited paragraph from another author is a quote. An uncredited paragraph is plagerism.

How long are the direct samples that you are using, If I can ask just for arguement's sake?

[unjulation]

generaly my samples dont last more then a few seconds, i think the longest loop i have is about 15/20 seconds but generaly about 5 seconds long

[WordVirus23]

I'd have to say that in general, my average clips is *just* under 2 seconds, smallest being around a 1/2 second. I don't generally remove watermarks, I've done this exactly once, and I removed it by kaliedescoping the mark away. my favorite source material is commercials from TV and science related materials. I'm quite sure using fractions of a second of educational films and commercials is entirely outside of the original context of their original intent. As far as "stealing clips" from other VJs, I've done this a couple times (may have 4 clips out of a thousand that were edited out of another VJ's mix... funny thing is, that when I purchased a firewire HD from Dave (audiovisualizers) (BTW, damn that thing rocks! I highly suggest the 8meg cache) I'd traded my archive of clips for clips off of the Loop Server he runs, and wouldn't you know it, but every single sample I'd "STOLEN" was freely available for trade. go figure. so perhaps you can now see why I don't see what the huge issue is about. according to my source at moonshine music, as far as a live performance is concerned you can pretty much get away with copyright murder... it's when you RECORD and then try to SELL your work that you run into problems. this is str8 from one of moonshine's copyright people, if you all have a more reliable industry source, would love to hear what they have to say about copyright in a LIVE context. drats, life interupted my train of thought... oh well, that's my 2 cents. I'm glad I started this thread :)
..james...
[QUOTE]Originally posted by holly
originally from Unjulation
[B]...i put it within a new context or enviroment that it was not origionaly intented for...

Then it is still something new. Maybe for arguement's sake we say it is a new use for an old thing?

I guess then the question is: "Is it really a new context/environment?"

? Clips from an old 50's sci-fi movie = yes, pretty much in the clear. The viewer doesn't need to know the original movie to understand that the clips are from another time or media.

? Videotape of an animated billboard in TimesSquare = yes. Different context, and advertising has no sacred status.

? Opening credit animation cut from SPIDERMAN THE MOVIE = well..., ? clips edited from another VJ or video artist's work (unpaid/uncredited) = stealing, not sampling. Clearly there is no re-contextualization.:nod:

[brain]

i totally agree to hollys definition what may be done and what not. but again, this does NOT follow the copyright rules - at least not about the old scifi movie and the dry statement "advertising has no sacred status".

holly, you have drawn personal lines what you think to be legitimate. so do i, so do others. these lines vary and i hope this discussion (that by now has spread all over the board) will help to make people think more about what they do, before they go out and grab "anything they can get their hands on". thats why we need this lenghtened discussion, to set up ethics people may agree upon (or not, after considering things).

the only thing that will keep people from using other contemporary artists / VJs work is that other people will point at the screen saying "man, this is taken from (...), what a bore. this guy has no own ideas!".

personally i take a lot of loops from old movies (up to the 80s). no, NOT starwars, because its overused, boring and not funny. i'd rather use STAR CRASH - a italian clone which stole half it's ideas itself AND has tried to cash in on the markt generated by others... so this movie was thievery in itself... is it thievery to steal from a thief? i don't care. if i use the shot of someone looking puzzled and silly in some lycra spacesuit, sitting at some cardboard control panel pushing flashing buttons - intercutting it with totally unrelated things happening in "reaction" to that... man, i love that :)... silly? sure. funny? ask the people watching. legal? no. legitimate? to me yeah...

[holly]

Yeah! Yeah! Brain! Yeah! WordJames! Yeah! Definitely when you are live you can honestly (dishonestly?) get away with anything. The first step of legal action is a letter saying "Don't do that again." You can always plead ignorance the first time.... That's not advocating, just reality IMO. According to some other threads, our kind of sampling has never really been tested by the law, so how you interpret the law is meaningless because a judge could interpret totally differently. I think I am safe morally (if not legally) but I didn't mean to say that everyone should follow my personal lines, just bringing up examples for discussion.

originally from Brain
the only thing that will keep people from using other contemporary artists / VJs work is that other people will point at the screen saying "man, this is taken from (...), what a bore. this guy has no own ideas!".

Yay! Exactly! This is probly what keeps me from using as many samples as I could. I'm always scared that people will say "Ugh! Barberella, again? More of those purple-haired women from U.F.O.? Can't that boring VJ rent some new movies?!" It's a conflict. When is it "cool", when is it "tired"? I have a ton of music that uses samples but sometimes it's definitely overdone.

[MoRpH]

Just wanted to say I would like to appluad the maturity and good nature of this thread (compared to other on similar topics), great to see ppl finally understanding each other (even agreeing to disagree!!).

Well done all :)

[brain]

there is this taoist principle of WU WEI meaning "if the right man at the right time does nothing, this may move mountains"

:cool:

[unjulation]

quote from holy:-Yay! Exactly! This is probly what keeps me from using as many samples as I could. I'm always scared that people will say "Ugh! Barberella, again? More of those purple-haired women from U.F.O.? Can't that boring VJ rent some new movies?!" It's a conflict. When is it "cool", when is it "tired"? I have a ton of music that uses samples but sometimes it's definitely overdone.

i agrea that images can be over used but i would also like to make the point are we playing to V.J.'s or are we playing to punters?

which then touches upon the point that hanging around vj's to long can be bad for your perception of what the punters whant for we as vj's have a tendancy to allways try outdo ourselves, a bit like d.j's and musos allways trying to find that rare record but again we should always strive to better ourselves, bit of a visious circal that on and totaly of topic so i'll stop, lol :rolleyes:

[holly]

No, no, I totally get it. You're right. Can't take it too seriously. Am I trying to impress or entertain? Lil' of both ? but more important, who are the visuals for! Thanks, Unj!

[brain]

Originally posted by *****

they played "one flew over the cookoos nest" complete with the copyright warning and trailers and simply looped the disc all night.
G

whooa! what kinda party was THAT?? did the DJs play Prozac AdClip Soundtracks all nite ??? :D

let's have it that way: there are bars playing music CDs all the time, others have DJs. since visuals pop up in almost every bar nowadays, some may play tapes... hopefully the audience will notice the difference and appreciate good work. its a kind of visual education we're doing. help the people to get some taste!

no good VJ should be threatened that he can be replaced by a tape, the same way no DJ should fear being made obsolete by CDs...

[rossco]

ahh yes... now as this appears to be a philosophical question and thread...

> who can claim to 'own' anything?

> As artisits do we do nothing more than represent/project what we experience in this life - through the medium we choose?

>and if we merly project what we experience....how can we claim an ownership to what we have seen? (other than our own relationship to that experience!)

ha, what fun to be had with what we each think is the answer.....:cool: ...

but

watch out for those who claim exclusive ownership to anything, they're probably just a feeling a little :evil: -

[unjulation]

absolutley rosco, this is and has been my whole point of veiw, its about an inderviduals perception of the world around themselves expresed within whatever medium that thay have chosen to use wether that be the writen word, music, art, theatre, film, and now V.J'ing has become a medium of expreshion for a cirtain group of people useing whatever tools and influances that move them to express themselves

[Primebase3]

I wrote this one for a thread long ago about a similar thread (sampling/original) I didn't want to get in these threads because actually it is something that will never go away. there will be bad record executives in this world dishing out old formulas from the past in a new style , they don't care about originality but succes I think the greatest example these days would go for a certain man called like a PUFFY cloud.

Then there are the record execs that don't go for succes well... they are but in there own way. they use orginal ideas to put something down.

as with all these stories: puffy wins, why for some reason I do not know but his succes came with ripping and not as his peers with sampling

for vj's I guess the same is true: one kid will have this great /idea to rip (I emphasize the word rip here) pillman 00-kaaps faves and so on getting props for work he didn't make but simply stole from the great crate of vj heroes ..and in theory his succes is gold

Then another kid wil see a vj hero and say to himself hey that's a cool idea!!! but what if???? <-----the example of a sampling mind>

both will reach acclaim in different ways and it's up to the person what he wants to do : if your succesful the skeletons in your closet can be bought away. in any case : do what you will it's your set but like del the funky homosapien once said: misstakes will come back to haunt you, I'll leave this threads with that oldie quote: catz, think about it and think about it hard


peace,

(Till goldie has a hit again , make mine beaming)


a wise man for from china had blossoming flowers in his garden the scent was once told could emulate the heavens. the neighbouring man from the wise loved the smell so much he decided to steal some seeds from the flowers to grow his own.

however as the man kept trying and trying the smell came closer to rotten eggs then his favourite smell. after many years the man gave up.

Defeated as he was he went to the wise man end explained his deed. The wise men smiled and gave the seeds.. .try again he says. the man goes home confused but tries again He woke up a few months later from the smell of the heaven. Excited he went to the wise man and thanked him immensly. but why he asked didn't it work? The wise man looked at him and said. The sweat of the fear and evil of your stealing hand gave the smell to the seeds you stole. rather then the joy and excitement sweat that you had when I gave it to you.

[Anyone]

Originally posted by brain

no good VJ should be threatened that he can be replaced by a tape, the same way no DJ should fear being made obsolete by CDs...

thing is, the DJ might sometimes be replaced by a CD, but if he's famous enough, it's probably his own produced CD that's playing, then he's getting some royalties off it.

What we need to do is not to say
"in principle that's not going to happen"
but
"if and when it happens,
we should have saturated the market with AV products
so that the DVD being played is still from one of us in authorship,
and should lobby the legal infrastucture
so that we're still getting some form of payement
if and when venues choose not to use a live VJ"

Ne1

[WordVirus23]

who do we need to impress? the promoter... the punters will almost always be impressed, just cuz they're punters. Always make yourself available (ANYtime) to your promoters, they're the ones paying you at the end of the night. If necessary, track them down, it only takes a few minutes to point out the new title graphic that took you hours to make... does your event have sponsors? have your promoter bring the sponsors up (they always love to see gear, who doesn't?) throw up their logo, do some nice effects on it while they're there... let them know you'll play it every so often. I guess what I'm saying is, we've all got copies of photoshop, or some 3D text program, make your shows distinctive, date them in some nifty way if you have to... like PRODUCT ID# 01-07-03... whatever. if there's a featured band/DJ/act make up a title (or hunt theirs down on the net) if your show is too Arty, it can end up being lost/wasted on what are generally drunk/intoxicated/dancing fools, corporate gigs are an entirely different story...

Originally posted by *****


Who do Vjs need to impress? and who do Vjs need to entertain?

Promoter, and audience.
Impressing the promoter (if the promoter even gets time to notice) is slightly diffrent than entertaining an audience, and the hatefull truth is that the VJ is the first person to be AXED when a promoter gets squrmiy about ticket presales.
perhaps the biggest danger is that a corner cutting promoter may decide its acceptable to replace the Vj with a selection of TV higlights compiled by his runner.


G

[eXhale]

Originally posted by Anyone
the DJ might sometimes be replaced by a CDhmmm i've never heard of any serious club replacing DJs by a CD player. the most difficult at the moment is to persuad promoters that what we do live has more values than a video tape. once this is done this is pretty much guaranteed that they will always choose a VJ over a video tape if there's enough money.

[brain]

Originally posted by Anyone

"if and when it happens,
we should have saturated the market with AV products
so that the DVD being played is still from one of us in authorship,
and should lobby the legal infrastucture
so that we're still getting some form of payement
if and when venues choose not to use a live VJ"


well i thought about live use only, cause i do it live.

but you are right - if you can make some money selling mixes, fine! better than have them playing MTV...

but it's important to have no illusions - if you have your stuff out there on DVD or tape, it WILL be copied/ripped. no crackprotection will help.

laws will be of little use. getting a lawyer to sue some broke kiddie VJ who used your stuff? having stoned clubbers as witnesses? sue a club which MAYBE played your DVD that was MAYBE a copy? if you sell it, public showing must be allowed (why should a promoter/club buy one if not?). so you have to proof he has used a bootleg... i'm afraid it's a almost hopeless case.

i guess you can make exactly the amout of money you get by selling your stuff the first time - little use trying to protect it. expect your visuals to pop up everywhere, without control, without payoff.

it's a sad situation, but i think its just like that.

when going public with something like a DVD, you must already have done the next thing - different and better, so you have a new product to set yourself apart from those using your old stuff! :)

[eXhale]

anything you release or broadcast is not yours anymore. it gets interpreted and integrated by the public, who then, in an ideal situation, communicate back this idea by telling their friends about it or, god forbid, by lending or copying the DVD to their friends (lending is still illegal).

if you're lucky and do the right thing at the right time, then it will spread like a virus, inspiring new people to imagine new ideas and create new artforms, which may have earth-shaking results in several years or decades or centuries. in that perspective, copyright laws essentially act backward by slowing down this information-spreading process, because copyrights are 100% about money (don't kid yourself, they are not part of the human rights) and, in this civilization, money = time.

so:

(1) if you're only interested in getting rich, famous, hip and/or powerful, copyright all your work, patent your "original" ideas, and sue anyone who dares to recontextualize what you do.

(2) if you're only interested in spreading an idea, copyleft all your work so that "your" ideas will always be free (like freedom) or, even better, release all your stuff anonymously so you don't have to carry the myth of the "original" author (which goes hand-in-hand with the myth of self-reliance).

(3) if want to make some money (since there is currently no other solution to survive) but also don't want to act "backward", then do a bit of both, copyrighting what you need to make a living and copylefting it once you don't need it anymore.

[Anyone]

Originally posted by brain

laws will be of little use. getting a lawyer to sue some broke kiddie VJ who used your stuff? having stoned clubbers as witnesses? sue a club which MAYBE played your DVD that was MAYBE a copy? if you sell it, public showing must be allowed (why should a promoter/club buy one if not?). so you have to proof he has used a bootleg...

I'm not against VJs playing my stuff in clubs.
just like a music producer is not against a DJ playing his music.

HELLO! Clubs pay monthly licencing fees for their DJs to play
their records to the audience.
At the moment, clubs pay nothing for visuals in clubs.
But who says that wont change?

It is changing...For example:

If you buy a Hippotizer, it will come with an initial set of clips
a good portion of those clips have been produced in my studio, and also at Many-2's.
Hippo paid us a licencing fee to be able to play these whenever they want...

copyright issues are really last century if you ask me.
licencing is the future, oups! sorry, I meant :
licencing is the present...

Ne1

PS X, nice logo BTW

[KillingFrenzy]

Originally posted by WordVirus23
who do we need to impress? the promoter... the punters will almost always be impressed, just cuz they're punters. Always make yourself available (ANYtime) to your promoters, they're the ones paying you at the end of the night. If necessary, track them down, it only takes a few minutes to point out the new title graphic that took you hours to make... does your event have sponsors? have your promoter bring the sponsors up (they always love to see gear, who doesn't?) throw up their logo, do some nice effects on it while they're there... let them know you'll play it every so often. I guess what I'm saying is, we've all got copies of photoshop, or some 3D text program, make your shows distinctive, date them in some nifty way if you have to... like PRODUCT ID# 01-07-03... whatever. if there's a featured band/DJ/act make up a title (or hunt theirs down on the net) if your show is too Arty, it can end up being lost/wasted on what are generally drunk/intoxicated/dancing fools, corporate gigs are an entirely different story...



How far does this attitude extend?
Will we be taken seriously as artists if every five minutes we put logos in our work? Doesn't putting the DJ's logo in the visuals automatically destroy any sense of artistic equality or individuality on the part of the VJ?

I'll answer my own question by saying that I think flashing a logo or name here and there is a sign of respect to a fellow artist... or the club as the case may be. But for my own self-esteem, I maintain a position of creative control. I choose to control what goes up on the screen. I take requests, but ultimately I'm responsible. Hire me or fire me, the promoter is not going to get me to zoom in on that "hot chick" and have me put it up on the screen with "nice ass" in shiny text. I prefer to create a clean set of visuals, just as I would prefer to have a clean set of music. This tends to occur at smaller events with more critical listeners, and I assume viewers.
I generally find persistent logos and such to be the idea of promoters and the club staff, not the audience. Audience members want to know who the DJ is, what song is playing, what time it is, and where the bathrooms are. I can throw the first one in now and again, I can often tell them the second and third ones if they ask, and the last one usually has a sign I can point at. Everything else is usually perceived as advertising, or an "in" joke.

[fluchtpunkt]

since the topic of this thread is 'les vouleurs' i'd like to throw in a thought:

many of those advocating a restrictive handling of the copyright & sampling issue seem to regard others who do produce content (among other techniques) by means of sampling as thieves & accuse them of stealing.

but most laws in power today, as well as public understanding of thief/stealing originate from times when taking something (a 'good') from somebody else automatically implied DEPRIVING the victim of it.
in other words: a thief did not only take from others - but he took AWAY from others. -> if something gets stolen from me i automatically do not have it anymore!

this 'eternal truth' has changed fundamentally with the advent of digital technology (in anologue technology there is always information loss in copying).
thus a rippper/pirate would only fall into the 'old' definition of thief if e.g. he stole the lone master copy of a work (thereby depriving the original owner of that good). making an illegal copy of something however imo should be considered as something new & different from 'stealing' since the original owner does not suffer any DIRECT loss (incidentally 'ripping' or 'pirating' are words that have already closed this blind spot in language & convey precisely that meaning). ...as far as more general pejorative words are concerned regarding this issue (other than pirate/ripper) i would argue 'imposter' & 'fraud' (*) are far more precise & honest than 'thief' & 'stealing'!

...what still remains to be debated (...no precedents in court & outdated laws!!) is how to handle this new phenomenon. most will agree that an owner should also be protected from INDERECT loss he could suffer (-> copyrights)! ...

this leads to a whole bunch of questions that cannot be answered easily:
what exactly should be considered inderect loss?
should the original owner have rights that extend beyond protection from inderect (material) loss?
to which extent is it at all possible to enact such laws? (audio-tapes, vhs-recorders, cd-burners, mp3, peertopeer,.........)
is there also rights/interests of the potential ripper (sampler?) that deserve protection? (-> e.g. 'fair use')
is there new & positive possibilities of the underlying technology that could be hindered or slowed by old or restrictive legislation?
...etc. etc. (that's just what sprung to my mind)



(*)...in fact i would find an analysis of the legitimacy of sampling much more valuable & interesting if the INTENT of the sampler were scrutinized rather than his getting permission (imposter/fraud<->thief/theft).

[vjpixylight]

I think most of you are taking this thread much too seriously..

What ever happened to playing what you want for the love(and fun) of it...
Don't let your ego's dictate your ability to just go out and entertain ppl...
Beg, borrow, or steal if you want to, and then ask yourself...does this feel good? if it makes you feel good about what you are doing, then who is to judge that..

[Anyone]

Cool Pixy,

I completely agree with what you're saying.

My first post on this thread was about that but not in so precise words.

but what it comes down to is
do what you do and enjoy it,
you dont need to justify it with someone else's writings or comments
or even find out if you're following anybody else's footpath

Ne1