In the age of internet connected media, new and original concepts for design are no longer the most prevalent. Old concepts are re-used and recycled in new ways. It is not about what we can make that is completely new, but more what can we make with what we already have.
More and more artists are using the techniques of re-appropriation. These forms of media and thinking shows how production and consumption in this era meld together, so no piece of art can be considered truly 'authentic' or 'original', as the idea of something being entirely 'new' is nearly always derived from other ideas, themes and images.
More and more artists are using the techniques of re-appropriation. These forms of media and thinking shows how production and consumption in this era meld together, so no piece of art can be considered truly 'authentic' or 'original', as the idea of something being entirely 'new' is nearly always derived from other ideas, themes and images.
Pop Art - a 1950's screen printing art movement which heavily used remixing and re-appropriating themes. The works created often had the artistic concepts of celebrity worship and brand identity. Cultural icons and political figures often feature heavily in these Pop-Art works in the form of mass produced and glorified visuals.
Campbell's soup cans - Andy Warhol 1962
http://m6.i.pbase.com/o4/89/198089/1/114804886.oqmKj52L.DSC_2713.jpg
Marilyn Monroe - Andy Warhol 1962-67
In this piece, the repeated and slightly altered canvases give new perspectives to the same image till the repetition creates a sensation of overexposure.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/88/83/06/88830647399c111fdc2bb31bdeae8c5e.jpg
Andy Warhol - Orange Disaster #5 1963
There was much controversy at the time of the creation of this piece over the use of the electric chair, as what would be the two final electric chair executions were held around this time. Questioning and challenging the viewer to think of the death penalty by using an unoccupied and empty space as a metaphor for death. The image features repetition to reinforce the themes of duality of life and death.
When a gruesome image such as this is viewed over and over, it loses much of its initial impact. The notions and concept becomes watered down and removes much of the intended meaning and feeling from it. This creates a death through repetition of the original subject.
http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2012/03/andy-warhol-on-international-display/afpgetty-508650555/#PhotoSwipe1492621599648
"Art is what you can get away with" - Andy Warhol
Richard Prince pushed the boundaries of what is can be considered art, theft and copyright infringement, when he created an art exhibition in which he would write a comment on a Instagram image, print screen it and then have it sent to be printed in a large format and put in a gallery. These stolen Instagram images from strangers sold for $90,000 in this perverted scenario of appropriation. None of the original models for these images received anything from this work and it gives an interesting perspective into privacy and copyright laws within social media.
"To create is to insert an object into a new context or scenario; to consider it an element of a bigger narrative" - Marcel Duchamp. The act of taking an image and re-appropriate it through placing it in an unnatural setting can often give the images a new meaning. However keeping the original source image unchanged, the same arises an issue of art theft rather than appropriation or is the new artistic interpretation and dialog enough to make it a new piece?
http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2014/09/23/23-Prince-New-Portraits-2014-14.w1200.h630.jpg
“Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal.” Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.
This quote I found to be an interesting correlation to the above quote by Andy Warhol or even a similar quote by Salvador Dali. This shows the concept of re-appropriating goes across multiple forms of creative media.
Plunderphonics is a term coined by John Oswald which means audio piracy as composition. Any music created by taking one or more existing audio recordings and altering them in some way, such as resampling to make a new composition can be considered to be part of this genre. Some musical genres were born and developed through this method such as hip hop. The re-appropriation of sampling songs and looping them to create new content is something that has grown alongside other media forms through media exposure.
Pitbull - Feel This Moment ft. Christina Aguilera used a very obvious sample of the classic eighties hit a-ha - Take On Me.
I think that the ability to borrow and appropriate is now a part of our modern culture. We take images and out of desire not necessity and most content we use is at our disposal to alter as we want. Design that already exists already has cultural connotations to them therefore it is easier to give meaning to a reproduction of the same image.
