.

In his opening line of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, Jon Gertner states that “This is a book about the origins of modern communication as seen through the adventures of  several men who spent their careers working at Bell Labs” (p. 1). Gertner goes on to explain that the Bell Labs environment was an incubator of innovation and offers a narrative documenting many of the transitional technologies of the twentieth century that were created from within this culture. Among the best known are the transistor, developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light, Charge Coupled Device (CCD) semiconductor imaging sensors and the discovery of the predicted level of background cosmic radiation left over from the Big Bang. It is often stated, and Gertner reiterates this, that creativity thrived at Bell Labs because the leaders of the company set up an arena that encouraged employees in different fields to work together. Another reason Gertner expounds on is that the Labs’ success was due to the way that employees enjoyed significant freedom in pursuing projects. This was possible because Ma Bell’s monopoly and the guaranteed income it generated meant that there was little pressure to restrict the projects to foreseeably moneymaking innovations.

AT&T’s monopoly, which ended in 1982, was put in place when the US Congress passed the Willis-Graham Act of 1921. This legislation exempted the company from federal antitrust laws, allowing the company to function as a government-mandated “natural monopoly.” The premise behind the law was that AT&T inhabited a problem-rich environment because they needed to invent from scratch everything that we associate with the telephone industry (dial tones, hang-up hooks, telephone ringers, etc.). This unique set of circumstances allowed the monopoly to develop a manufacturing entity, Western Electric, the sole provider of equipment and a research and development arm, Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs). Gertner takes us through various inventions and episodes of history of the Lab, which still functions today. Topics include how the design of the Murray Hill campus aided interdisciplinary exchange, the laying of the transatlantic cable, Echo and Telstart, and more. The chapters unfold along the lines Gertner outlined in his opening sentence, with the focus centered around a few especially significant people who thrived within Bell Labs (e.g., Claude Shannon, Jim Fisk, Melvin Kelly, William Baker, John Pierce, William Shockley).

Overall, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation reads more like a narrative documenting the rise and fall of Bell Labs, which I assume was the author’s intention, than a study of how the work at Bell Labs was a part of a larger revolution in the twentieth century. Because Gertner focused on the Labs’ story through looking at the “heroes,” rather than adopting a more systemic approach, the labs impact on the culture as a whole is underemphasized. He mentions that at its peak in the 1960s, Bell Labs employed nearly 15,000 people, including some 1200 PhDs, but fails to fully capture the scope of the projects these people conducted at this intellectual utopia. Thus, the end result of his study is less a definitive history than a narrowly conceived perspective. Given Gertner’s extensive use of interviews and primary documents it seems extraordinary that he missed so much of what I’ve always thought was an important part of Bell’s creative legacy.

For example, development of the transistor is one achievement of Bell Labs that is detailed extensively. (It is clear that Gertner read Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson [1].) Gertner explains that John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, who worked in a Shockley led research group, demonstrated the “point-contact” transistor on Dec. 23, 1947. They built their transistor with little help from him. Shockley, who does not come off as a “team” player throughout, then broke with the Bell Labs’ collaboration policy by separately inventing a second, more reliable, “junction” transistor in secret. This created some tensions, as Gertner outlines. Finally, in 1954, Morris Tanenbaum invented the third, “silicon” transistor (the previous designs were germanium) that is the basis for the vast majority of today’s transistors. One point the book reiterates is that Shockley left Bell Labs in 1955 and that his Shockley Labs in Mountain View, California laid the foundation for what would become Silicon Valley. In this sense, the legacy of Bell remains evident in the technology environment of today.

On the other hand, it seems strange to me that, although A. Michael Noll and Max Matthews were interviewed by Gertner, the book doesn’t convey the convergence of art, science and technology at the Lab. Some of what is missing is evident on Noll’s Bell Labs page [2]., where he notes:

“There were often interesting diversions from daily research. When the acoustic failings of Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center were acknowledged, Bell Telephone Laboratories was asked to investigate. My boss Manfred Schroder was a physicist with a strong knowledge of acoustics and headed our team . . . There was a steady flow of interesting visitors to the Labs. Roy Disney came by to see our early work in computer animation—but saw no relevance then to his company! We invited Leopold Stokowski to visit to hear our work in computer music. Max Mathews had many composers and musicians who visited to learn of his research into electronic music. Bela Julesz and I exhibited our computer-generated patterns at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City in 1965—the first exhibit of digital art in the US.”

I bought the book because of I was hoping to learn more about this side of Bell Labs, so I was particularly disappointed by its omission. Leonardo folks are probably asking what else was missing? Well, there was the early exhibition of computer art in 1965 called Computer-Generated Pictures, in New York City that featured work by Bela Julesz and A. Michael Noll, mentioned above. In this case, the name of the exposition did not include the word ‘art,’ because these ‘generated pictures’ were not yet seen as such. Shortly before the book came out Christopher Tyler, who did his post-doc at Bell Labs under Bela Julesz and had an office next to Max Mathews and across the corridor from Lillian Schwartz, mentioned the excitement surrounding a Stevie Wonder visit to the Lab to see the state-of-the art sound studio developed by Mathews. Lillian Schwartz, who is often characterized as a creator of 20th century computer-developed art, wrote a book that includes a sampling of the work at the Lab.

Another key figure from this time was Billy Klüver, the founder of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), who began his work in this area as an electrical engineer at Bell Labs. In the early 1960s, his first project was with kinetic art sculptor Jean Tinguely on his “Homage to New York” (1960), a machine that destroyed itself and was presented in the garden at MOMA. Klüver also collaborated with Jasper Johns, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Andy Warhol. One of Klüver’s best-known projects (in 1966) was with Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman. They organized 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, a series of performances that united artists and engineers. Other key figures included Emmanuel Ghent (electronic music); Ken Knowlton (Beflix , or Bell Flicks animation system), which was used to produce dozens of animated films with artists like Stan VanDerBeek); Laurie Spiegel (electronic music), and Jerry Spivak (a pioneer in interactive graphics) [3].

Strangely, the book that frequently came to mind as I read was A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn [4], which has nothing to do with Bell Labs. Zinn’s book, published in 1980, sought to present American history through the eyes of the common people rather than political and economic elites. He did this because he felt that placing an emphasis on the “great men in high places” perspective, which was taught in most schools up until this point, missed many aspects of the events that actually shaped the United States. Indeed, because Zinn looked at the struggles of those who fought slavery and racism, labor unions, and war makers, some critics pegged the book as leftist, multicultural, anti-imperialist historiography. Although the omission I noted in this book were not political, they were nonetheless apparent.

Gertner notes that Arthur C. Clarke said (in the late 1950s), “At first sight, when one comes upon it in its surprisingly rural setting, the Bell Telephone Laboratories’ main New Jersey site looks like a large and up-to-date factory, which in a sense it is. But it is a factory for ideas, and so its production lines are invisible” (p. 4-5). The art, science and technology community benefitted immensely from this “creative factory” and, ironically, this research arm of the AT&T monopoly funded the research that helped develop a new set of tools for artists. This book does convey some of the interdisciplinarity that thrived at the lab; thus, although not definitive, it is quite informative. Gertner’s knack for telling stories makes the book easy to read. Some segments of the story come through well, such as why many people say Marvin Kelly, who was the head of Bell Labs when Brattain, Bardeen and Shockley developed transistors, deserved to be the fourth recipient of their 1947 Nobel Prize in Physics (because of his way of bringing talent together and encouraging creativity). There is some discussion of the venture capital model and how it compares to the Bell Labs model, despite the way the former requires an end product and the latter allows basic research to thrive. In addition, figures like Claude Shannon are dealt with deftly in various stages of their careers. Still, as noted above, the reach of the book is an evident limitation in the narrative. While The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation is definitely worth reading, I would recommend that readers recognize that the volume omits key episodes of Bell Labs’ legacy.

REFERENCES

[1] Riordan, Michael. Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age (Sloan Technology Series) New York: Norton, 1997.

[2] See http://noll.uscannenberg.org/.

[3] The EAT lectures are now on YouTube, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoxuzPPstXc. More information about the Bell Labs history is available at  http://retiary.org/ls/btl/btl.html and http://retiary.org/ls/btl/btl.html.

[4] Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. Rev. and updated ed. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995.

Imagery in the 21st Century
by Oliver Grau, Editor; with Thomas VeiglAs I began this review I began to think that the refrain “we are surrounded by images today” has lost its impact (despite my being among the guilty users of it). On the one hand, it seems that many of us notice the imagery.

Yet, on the other hand, as we increasingly engage with our visual culture certain norms for our critical investigations are also developing. I’m not sure where this leaves us. To be sure, the nature and complexity of our image-abundant culture is extraordinary. Images are no longer sparse and highly treasured. Rather, we have visual social media, scientific imaging tools, and even static objects like paintings populate the ever-changing screens of our mobile and desktop devices. Even those among us who have resisted some of the broad spectrum of electronic options (think Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, thousands of television channels, digital games, and virtual worlds) cannot escape this new world.

Overall, the book offers systematic and interdisciplinary reflections on expanding and novel forms of images and visualization.  Drawing on a number of experts, the twenty chapters highlight new efforts to visualize complex ideas, structures, and systems. In today’s information explosion the question of where what digital images represent and where they fit in the scheme of things becomes quite prismatic.  As a whole, the chapters are quite strong; they do not suffer from the unevenness so common in collections of conference papers, which this book is.  Of particular value is the breadth of the essays.  Researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities explore the wealth of diverse functionality that images have evolved to offer to our lives, that includes lab applications, social commentary, humanistic questions, and experimental art projects.  The spectrum of topics include: database economy (Sean Cubitt), telepresent images (Martin Schulz), ethical boundaries (Eduardo Kac), the emergence of a future web-based video aesthetic (Thomas Veigl), brain research (Olaf Breidbach), medical illustration (Dolores and David Steinman), interdisciplinary practices (James Elkins), the role of source code (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun), the interface (Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau), the museum (Peter Weibel), cellular automata (Tim Otto Roth and Andreas Deutsch ), cultural analytics (Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass) and a digital version of the Warburg Image Atlas (Martin Warnke).  Even this abbreviated list offers a glimpse into the diversity of efforts to expand visual competence through providing cross-disciplinary exchanges among the arts, humanities, and natural sciences. While this range makes the volume a valuable tool for examining this subject across disciplines, the title, Imagery in the 21st Century, is likely to seem a rash overstatement in a few decades, given that the century has hardly begun.

Chapters focusing on applications and innovations offer the most of substantive value, in my view. “Toward New Conventions for Visualizing blood Flow in the Era of Fascination with Visibility and Imagery” by Dolores Steinman and David Steinman falls into this category. Well written and comprehensive, these authors set the stage by pointing out that medical images (drawings, woodcuts, engravings) have always played a key role in educating practitioners and knowledge development. They then follow with case studies that illustrate their efforts to represent blood flow in the context of the living body and conclude with some commentary on medical imagery as art and in popular culture.

James Elkins’ chapter, “Visual Practices across the University: A Report,” also stood out. Elkins presents a brief summary of a book called Visual Practices across the Universitythat was published in German in 2007 and is little known outside of the German-speaking world. The essay summarizes an exhibition project that was initiated by sending email to faculty in the sixty-odd departments at University College, Cork asking for exhibition proposals from anyone who uses images in their work.  What stood out in his commentary is how differently scientists, humanists and artists think about images and imagery. In this case, he found that while most visual work in the university is done outside of the humanities, most of this work is invisible because the routine image making and image interpretation is not considered as important to the goals as what the images represent and the science that they make possible.

Oliver Grau, the editor, is a Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies at Danube University, the author of Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (2003) [1] and the editor of MediaArtHistories. His collaborator, Thomas Veigl, is on the scientific staff of the Department for Image Science at the Danube–University Krems.  Their opening chapter, Introduction: Imagery in the 21^st Century, sets the stage well and is available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262015722chap1.pdf . Grau’s concluding section on “Media Art’s Challenge in Our Societies” offers an overview of image studies today.  Parts of the chapter are useful but, because some sections in it are so focused on his professional efforts to meet today’s challenges rather than the challenges overall, the text read like an infomercial at times.

Throughout the book it is clear that there are the endless options for image manipulation and that while new media presents us with both interactive opportunities it also raises challenging questions (about human autonomy, entertainment, interaction, etc.).  The editors note:

“Images increasingly define our world and our everyday life: in advertising, entertainment, politics, and even in science, images are pushing themselves in front of language. The mass media, in particular, engulf our senses on a daily basis. It would appear that images have won the contest with words: Will the image have the last word?” (p. 6)

Perhaps images will have the last word.  On March 12^th of this year (2012) theEncyclopaedia Britannica announced “it will cease publication of the 32-volume printed edition of its flagship encyclopedia, continuing with the digital versions that have become popular with knowledge seekers in recent decades.”  The press release also noted that “[The Encyclopedia Britannica] was originally published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768 and has been in print continuously ever since [2]. When I grew up, like many of my generation, this book was like browsing the web.  I used to love to turn the pages, looking at the images and reading the articles that related to images that caught my fancy.

Of course, the Grau book itself raises another side of the question about whether images will have the last word. At this point in time it is not available electronically although sections of the text (without the images!) are on Google Books; moreover Google Books does not offer active links to all the many, many websites the Grau book references. Amazon’s page for the book does not link to a Kindle version.  Instead, Amazon has a link asking visitors to tell the publisher to offer a Kindle version.

So, will images have the last word? Perhaps. Or perhaps we need to ask: Is it a good thing for images to have the last word?  I did not think that the depth of this kind of question was fully addressed in the book since its focus was on the importance of understanding images as vital and dynamic parts of our world today. Thus, my primary concern about this volume, which I recommend overall, is that the reflections and analytical approaches offered did not seem to balance the euphony and cacophony of our experience today. While I’m not exactly sure how this relates to whether images will have the last word, I do know that at times all of the changing images surrounding me feel very cacophonic.  As a participant in the movement is to reverse the dominance of textual sources in our approaches to knowledge, as we celebrate our visual abundance, visualization methods, the distribution of images, and how imagery benefits our lives; it seems foreign to have evolved to the point that I think so much about the visual noise.  Even in this book I found that some of the projects seemed strikingly cacophonic, and thought that the theoretical assumptions of the authors overall are more biased toward euphonic reactions to our visual culture than the harshness and discordant qualities that are congruent with our visual culture?

Perhaps the next step is making sure we address that the cacophonic side is actively included in our critical analyses or imagery.  Grau does stress that using an historical lens is an aid in understanding our imagery today. This perspective opens the door for a balanced analysis of the visual and textual and I support him in this effort. Therefore, while the book is only a slice of the imagery picture today, I think readers will gain much from spending time with Imagery in the 21st Century.

References:
[1] See my Leonardo Review at http://leonardo.info/reviews/feb2003/GRAU_ione.html.

[2] “Encyclopaedia Britannica To End Print Edition, Go Completely Digital,” http://www.corporate.eb.com/?p=508.

The Franklin Institute also has an informative video on YouTube:

A recurring topic among those interested in art, science, and technology is the value of transdisciplinary approaches. In my view, those who gravitate to this area (or related areas such as interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and integrative studies) see broad-based thinking both as a creative tool and a means to innovatively address some of the complex issues of our world today. Among these people are some who value disciplinary boundaries and believe that those who can operationally span their narrow parameters have the best foundation for conceptualizing how to innovate and see beyond known territory. The tendency to cast Leonardo da Vinci in the role of the “historical archetype” of this type of person, the “Renaissance Man,” has perhaps allowed us to lose sight of the many other original thinkers who exemplify what creative minds can accomplish when paired with a far-ranging, inventive imagination.

Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience by Michel Meulders offers a reminder that we can identify a number of figures in the past who worked across disciplines. The book introduces us to Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), trained by Johannes Müller, and one of the most accomplished physiologists of his time. A key nineteenth century polymath, Helmholtz used a versatile toolbox for his co-discovery of the principle of the conservation of energy, his invention of several instruments (e.g. the ophthalmoscope, the ophthalmometer and the telestereoscope), and his many significant contributions to physics, physiology, physical theory, philosophy of science and mathematics, and aesthetic thought.

How Helmholtz brought his varied interests and education into his laboratory is one thread that runs through the book. We learn that during his formative years he was exposed to philosophy and strongly influenced by his father, a German teacher who cultivated an interest in science and philosophy. Although Hermann was strongly attracted to the natural sciences, his father urged him toward medicine because funding for medical education was available. After training in physiology, Helmholtz worked in many areas outside of medicine over the years. Indeed, a defining feature of Helmholtz’s work was the way he branched out in many fields as he sought to translate his biological insights through an empirical and mathematical framework. In this, he was aided by his keen observational abilities and his passion for experimentation.

I began this book expecting a biography that would offer a chronology of Helmholtz’ work, along with contextual material to help the reader place his work within the nineteenth century world. The author instead offers a quite variegated picture that made it somewhat difficult for me to see the man as a whole as I read. The challenge in ferreting out Helmholtz’ story was due to the amount of material the author included that contextualizes Helmholtz in terms of the people and ideas that influenced him. For example, the chapter on “Goethe and His Vision of Nature” is 13 pages and does not mention Helmholtz. It seems its purpose is to provide a framework for where Helmholtz’ views of color differ from those of Goethe, which is discussed eight pages into the next chapter. Long “asides” such as this are quite distracting and make it difficult to understand what the author wanted the reader to take away from the book. What was clear is that the author has great enthusiasm for the accomplishments of Helmholtz. In addition to the Goethe chapter, there are chapters on “Johannes Müller: “Man of Iron” and “Conclusion: The Wisdom of Alexander von Humboldt.” It is hard to say if this format was intentional or if the chapters began as stand alone articles and were later pieced together into this book.

The strongest chapters are the two that cover Helmholtz’ work on hearing and acoustics and the one chapter that summarizes Helmholtz’s theory of visual perception. Helmholtz’s introduction in his Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music says that this work aimed to bring together work in physical and physiological acoustics, music and aesthetics that had remained unreasonably far apart. The author explains that Helmholtz’s early musical education and cultivation of musical activities throughout his life provided a foundation as well as a motivation for the experiments with sound. We also learn that this scientist invented the “Helmholtz resonator” to identify the various frequencies or “tones” present in musical chords and other sounds containing by multiple tones. The bell was among the instruments Helmholtz studied. His attraction to this instrument says quite a bit about he approached his work overall. Helmholtz was drawn to the bell because it is difficult to cast a good bell, for one needs to obtain an equal thickness around the whole circumference. If the thickness is different at two different places, there is a spot on the edge of the bell that vibrates to give a certain tone, while the neighboring spot produces a different tone and the intermediate zone between the two produced both tones at the same time. Helmholtz wanted to understand the unpleasant dissonance of this phenomenon. Ultimately, he demonstrated that difference and combination (or sum) tones existed objectively, outside the ear. (Although, ironically, bells are characterized by anharmonic relationships among their tones, but they still sound good.)

Another disappointment with the presentation was that the captions for a number of illustrations were far too abbreviated. Many basically said what the image is and provided virtually no information about how the depicted equipment (or whatever) works. Because this was not always the case, particularly in the chapter on music where the captions were full-bodied descriptions, the captions, too, led me to wonder if the chapters were originally written as stand-alone articles.

All in all, once I adjusted to the book “as a collage” and absorbed it on its own terms, I found it an informative read. It developed Helmholtz sufficiently to send me looking for more details. When I read further, I realized that all the basics were covered. It was only because the book covered the territory in an unusual fashion that it was harder for me to see the geography, so to speak.

Finally, based on the title of the book, Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience, I thought I would find many references to contemporary neuroscience. This was not the case. Basically, at the end the book acknowledges Helmholtz’s contributions to contemporary investigations, saying:

“Neuroscience and cognitive science, as we call them today, owe numerous research domains to [Helmholtz}, as well as attitudes. No phenomenon of nature, life, or environment left his encyclopedic mind indifferent. He believed he could reconcile science and philosophy, notably by thinking that Kant’s a priori had in the last resort a physiological basis that would one day doubtless be discovered.” (p. 215)

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings brings together key documents related to institutional critique, a conceptual art movement that has raised questions about the workings of art institution (museums, galleries) since the 1960s.  Alexander Alberro (one of the editors of this volume) calls it a “gesture of negation” (p. 3) that was adopted by art world figures as they began to critically engage with the order of things within art venues.  The anthology presents the movement in four sections (Framing, Institution of Art, Institutionalizing, and Exit Strategies).  While the volume gives the impression that the critique is ongoing, the exit strategies section suggests that the initial concerns have morphed into something else.  Full Review

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings
by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, Editors
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011
440 pp., illus. 60 b/w. Trade, $21.95
ISBN: 978-0-262-51664-8.

The alchemical works have been used for a variety of reasons, from the inspiration for creating artwork to study by university students pursuing the topic academically.  But, you might ask yourself, why would a primarily medicinal botany library have such a sizeable collection of alchemical volumes?  First, the collection is not only eclectic, but also consists of many topics related to natural science and its history, including chemistry.  Another reason for the alchemical resources relates directly back to the library’s founders and their many interests.  John Uri Lloyd, in particular, did a great deal of chemical research, taught chemistry, and invented his own cold still.  His interest in chemistry and alchemy even extended to his fiction.  The first novel John Uri Lloyd wrote, Etidorhpa, included references to alchemical themes; and, upon examining many of these resources, one can find notes written by him in the margins of several indicating his use of these books while writing that novel.

To learn more about the Lloyd Library and Museum, please visit www.lloydlibrary.org.

Ione, A. (2100) “Multiple Discovery. ” In: Runco MA, and Pritzker SR (eds) Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition, vol 2, pp. 153-160 San Diego: Academic Press.

Please email me for a pdf of the article.

In Praise of Copying by Marcus Boon Reviewed by Amy Ione Anyone who followed Barack Obama’s popularity leading up to the 2008 presidential election in the United States no doubt recalls the iconic Hope image that seemed to become the unofficial poster of the campaign because many felt it defined Obama’s message so well. The poster itself was so powerful in a symbolic sense that the Smithsonian Museum acquired it when he took office, despite the museum’s usual policy of collecting official portraits of presidents as they are leaving office. As it turned out, the artist, Shepard Fairey, had used an Associated Press (AP) photograph to achieve the likeness. As a result, a question arose: Did Fairey’s use of a photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia, require permission or was it covered by fair use? The ensuing legal case, which was settled out of court, has stimulated enormous amounts of discussion because of the many examples of artists who have copied photographs to create their work. [For example, Gerhard Richter has conceived numerous series based on photographs].

More amusing are the Jeff Koons’ cases. Koons recently sent a ‘cease-and-desist’ letter to an artist he claimed was copying his balloon dog sculptures. Like Fairey, Koons settled this case out of court.  The Koons case received quite a bit of coverage because this artist has been sued several times for copyright infringement. The best-known case is perhaps Rogers v. Koons in 1992, in which the court agreed with Art Rogers, a photographer, who claimed that Koons had used Rogers’ material to model three sculptures he sold for $367,000.

These vignettes are among the many that touch upon the variety of questions concerning the nature of copies and originals.  While the computer, the Internet, and our global society has perhaps heightened awareness of what we gain and lose with copies, as Marcus Boon shows in his book, In Praise of Copying, the subject of copying is neither new nor simple.  Walking us through an immense volume of information, Boon argues that copying is an essential part of being human and demonstrates the complexity of the subject.

The strength of Boon’s book is his ability to write easy to read text and to simultaneously provide an erudite discussion.  In part this is accomplished by putting many of the nuances into the footnotes.  This is an effective approach given the breadth of the presentation.  Equally compelling is the volume’s originality, particularly in light of a thesis that validates copying.  I wondered if he would argue, like a Nietzsche quote he includes, that life itself is an appropriation and thus his work is more a compilation of material than an original perspective.  In any case, in my view, the presentation is novel due to Boon’s use of Buddhism as a touchstone to the broad sweep of Western ideas.

The author explains that his impetus to write the book grew out of the observation that copying is pervasive in contemporary culture, yet at the same time subject to laws, restrictions, and attitudes that suggest “copying” is wrong.  Proposing that we need to rethink how we see the tension between copies and originals, Boon suggests that Mahayana Buddhism, in its various historical forms, offers entry into the subject because it provides a way to rethink common duality of terms that have historically supported Western views.  While Buddhism may offer an alternative to dualistic types of ideas such as subject/object, I didn’t find the dualistic thesis convincing in terms of copies. Even before reading the volume, I found that the tensions between originals and copies did not strike me as a dichotomy.

One interesting aspect of the Buddhist perspective is that it allowed for a comprehensive overview and did not compel a “new” ethics, so to speak.  Rather the effort highlights the role of copies in our culture, largely through a weaving of critical theory, philosophical history, and cultural examples. Platonic mimesis is meshed with memes.  The history of copyright laws and patent laws is introduced in terms that look at both modern law and philosophical perspectives we can trace back to Plato and Aristotle.

Boon has an interest in what words mean and how they affect the discussion.  “Copia,” for example (as in “cornucopia”), is the subject of one chapter. Boon claims the nuances of the word, which originally referred to the abundance, multiplicity, and variation of copies that were not mere imitations, was lost due to a variety of reasons.  These include the development of the disdain people had for copying as imitation and how the printing press, copyright, and other societal values favored individual ownership. On the other hand, before the printing press “publishing” meant making an original available for scribes and students to copy. Through doing so they would glean a deep sense of the material and, in some cases, make it material to others as well.  Indeed, a book that remained uncopied was unlikely to survive.

Although there is much discussion on film, art, and literature, it still seemed to me that the book was weighted too heavily toward philosophical ideas and cultural products (e.g., counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags and bootleg Harry Potter products).  Academia is woven into the discussion, as is plagiarism, but in a generalized fashion.  He does mention that copying is a subject he teaches to students at York University. Many of the examples seem targeted to that cohort (e.g., comparing iTunes with tape mixing and Internet downloads).  There are also many examples related to education in the university.  These range from the fact that student readers are subject to copyright laws (that increase their cost) to the use of services such as Turnitin.com at universities to spot plagiarism.

Given how copious my copy (!) of the volume is, it surprises me that some of my favorite examples of the tension between copies and originals were not mentioned.  While art is not neglected, for example, he mentions the important role Andy Warhol played in making artistic copying a part of contemporary aesthetics.  I would have liked a chapter on art that discussed both the historical discussion and the trope of copies AS art, epitomized in the multiples of Andy Warhol and the mass production techniques. Warhol and other artists are discussed (e.g., Mike Kelley, Duchamp, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, etc.), but their work is blended in more than looked at in terms of the language of art.  Boon does note that Warhol turned the ethos of preciosity on its head to embrace the multiplicity of copies as an aesthetic in its own right and the use of appropriation as an artistic strategy.  What I felt was missing was a section that zoned into the tension between the original and copy in art in a larger sense, in terms of artists, collectors, forgeries, education, etc.

Historically, for example, there were many arguments about what constitutes “great” art.  On the whole, artists were trained by copying the work of others.  Yet, particularly with the Renaissance, the goal for the artist was to achieve recognition as an innovator, a genius who made original work.  This not only created a conflict in the studio/atelier, it also created an academic tension since good “technique” and the qualities that made works exceptional were not seen as the same thing. Moreover, with the invention of photography in the nineteenth century we find many fine artists using the ease of the photographic copy to “sketch,” which facilitated in the production of their work.  Nonetheless, as recent research has shown, they often hid their photographs because of the stigma attached to working from copies.  His contemporary examples, like Andy Warhol, seemed to buttress the cultural orientation rather than to look at art per se.

Finally, I also would have liked some integration of how the ideas about originals and copies interface with multiple discoveries.  For example, Darwinism is discussed in several places, but the attribution of evolutionary theory is not. It is well known that Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was thinking about ideas similar to Charles Darwin’s before Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 (1809-1882); yet, Spencer was accused of copying the idea. Similarly, there has been much research on the seventeenth-century calculus controversy between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. At the time it was said that Leibniz copied Newton’s work, although later research suggests the two approaches were independently developed.

Despite these minor limitations, In Praise of Copying is a splendid book. It will appeal to anyone who wonders about the nuances of how we think about copies and where copies “fit” in our world today.  The discussion ranges from what is a copy and copying as deception to montage and the mass production of copies.  The text moves quickly, and it is only upon closing the book that one realizes how much territory the author covered.

Published: http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2011/ione_boon.php

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