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

Interface Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond Buttons
by Christian Ulrik Andersen & Soren Pold, Editors
Reviewed by Ellen Pearlman

The Filming of Modern Life. European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s
by Malcolm Turvey
Reviewed by Jan Baetens

In Praise of Copying
by Marcus Boon
Reviewed by Amy Ione

Lumo: One Woman’s Struggle to Heal in a Nation Beset by War
by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Nelson Walker III
Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg

Paris 1919: Inside The Peace Talks That Changed The World
by Paul Cowan
Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg

Octopus Time: Bellmer Painting
by Herbert Lust
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher

A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-Siècle Art
by Alison Syme
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher

U-n-f-o-l-d: A Cultural Response to Climate Change
Museum of Contemporary Photography and Glass Curtain Gallery
Reviewed by Elizabeth Straughan, Deborah Dixon and Harriet Hawkins

The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction
Arthur B. Evans, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Rob Latham, and Carol McGuirk, Editors
Reviewed by Enzo Ferrara

New Materials Received – May 2011
Compiled by Martyn Woodward

You may also access it via Watson Library’s catalog by going to the Digital Collections link:
http://library.metmuseum.org/screens/opacmenu.html

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Leonardo Reviews is the work of an international panel of scholars and professionals invited from a wide range of disciplines to review books, exhibitions, CD-ROMs, Web sites, and conferences. Collectively they represent an intellectual commitment to engaging with the emergent debates and manifestations that are the consequences of the convergence of the arts,
science and technology.

Leonardo Reviews publishes all reviews received from the panel monthly at www.leonardo.info. In addition, four times a year a selection of reviews is printed in Leonardo and now in this first issue of Leonardo Reviews Quarterly will be publishing an even larger selection as a PDF together with introductory material and overviews essays.

Now online here

Reviewed by Amy Ione

The idea that context is an important component in both the presentation and nature of empirical studies became popular at the end of the twentieth century and is often considered an outgrowth of Kuhnian paradigms.  With the elevation of paradigmatic perspectives, however, came the quandaries of what contextual research “means” in practice.  Precisely how does the creative mind make the leaps that take us from one way of seeing (and “being in”) the world to another? Case studies, such as Phillip Prodger’s recently released Darwin’s Camera: Art and Photography in the Theory of Evolution, offer an opportunity to come to terms with this dilemma as we consider a creative mind at work and walk in the shoes of an innovator.  Indeed, the importance of context is a defining theme of Prodger’s study, in which he examines Darwin’s strategies for illustrating his books, his interest in art, his studies of book illustrations related to expression and this scientist’s overall approach to the Expressions project, a component of theory of evolution.  As the book outlines the progression of Darwin’s thinking, the reader perceives how this scientist played with ideas, technologies, and information to bootstrap the details of his presentation and, in doing so, made visual artifacts an effective part of his toolbox. More broadly, Prodger shows that when we sequence historical exemplars associated with key moments we can visually weigh how our understanding of the world changes from era to era.  He also explains that images are a legitimate form of documentation in analyzing the problems thinkers faced, evaluating the evidence of how innovators solve the technological limitations at each stage and defining the elusive process of creative accomplishment overall.

More specifically, Darwin’s Camera proposes that Charles Darwin revolutionized the use of photography in science with his publication of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872, building on three separate but related traditions:  physiognomy treatises, passion manuals, and anatomical studies.  Toward this end, the book demonstrates that Darwin was looking for pictures at the threshold between what could be seen with the unassisted eye and what could be seen only photographically.  While what he wanted became routine a decade later with the invention of speedy gelatin dry-plate chemistry of the kind used by Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) and Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (to analyze the gaits of galloping horses and motion), it was more of an aspiration in Darwin’s time.  [Coincidentally, one of the photographers Darwin worked closely with, Oscar Rejlander (1813-1875), experimented with sequential imagery for the Darwin project, but was unable to produce sequential pictures suitable for his purposes.]

While Darwin’s Camera does a splendid job in conveying how the images Darwin used offered insights on multiple levels, what sets the book apart is that when Prodger shows how Darwin used photography scientifically in presenting his theory of expression, he compels the reader to think about what we mean by evidence, illustration, and objectivity in a larger sense.  Taking us through Darwin’s effort to find suitable prints for the scientific study, Prodger reminds us that Expressions was produced at the cusp of a change in attitudes toward photography.  One reason the time frame is important becomes clear at the end, when the author directly turns to questions about “evidence” and “illustration” in relation to Darwin’s work. Taking on some researchers (e.g., MaryJo Marks, Carol Armstrong and Jennifer Green-Lewis) who have criticized Darwin for fabricating gestures and scientific positivism, Prodger explains that these critics are anachronistic because they apply current views of photographic objectivity to Darwin’s work, rather than understanding the mind and technology of his age. Darwin, of course, wanted his readers to find his photographs convincing. Yet, as Prodger argues, the distinction between “evidence” and “illustration” is blurred in Expressions because there was no precedent for the use and acceptance of photography as scientific data. There was no protocol for the use of empirical photography, precisely because photographers often found it necessary to manipulate their work to enhance not only the visual appeal but also to add clarity to their images.  Indeed, this urge toward clarity and the perspective Darwin brought to his work may have derived from the ethos of drawing for scientific illustration, since drawings have an inevitable degree of interpretation, however objective the artist may attempt to be.

One of the most potent aspects of the study is its sensitivity to the artistry of scientists and the methodology of art in the nineteenth century. Prodger provides a particularly compelling window through which to ponder cross-disciplinary problem-solving and, in this respect, Darwin’s Camera is remarkably unlike and yet curiously similar to Prodger’s earlier Time Stands Still: Muybridge and The Instantaneous Photography (see my Leonardo Review at http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2003/Time_Ione.html).  Similarities include the fact that both books offer insight into photographic innovation, the creative imagination, and experimentation in the nineteenth-century. Time Stands Still captured the history of the quest to translate action into still photography, how it related to Muybridge’s innovations with sequential stills to record action, and provided insight into the trajectory that led to the invention of cinema. Darwin’s Camera, in contrast, focuses in on how Darwin used photographs to tie his theory of evolution with his theory of expression.  With Darwin, Prodger is analyzing an aspiration to combine motion and still photography that dealt with a different set of problems.  Each perspective offers a viable reference point in the development of photography as a scientific tool and a means to consider how both photographers and scientists were wrestling with their desire to portray that which is fleeting. The kernel of the argument in the Darwin study is that this thinker’s examination of how to portray humans and non-human animals expression is an important part in the story of how photography came to be seen as “objective.”

Many of the book’s details add to its value. Comparative photographs from the Darwin archive are used to help us get inside Darwin’s mind and allow us to see what he did to emphasize particular points Prodger wants reader to focus on when reading the text.  Discussions throughout the book also help us look at Darwin’s relationship to Charles Bell, the Scottish anatomist, surgeon, physiologist and artist.  Darwin drew several of his anatomical examples from Bell’s work on expression and took a class from Bell when he studied in Scotland.  I was particularly taken with the discussions related to Darwin’s rejection of Bell’s idea that expressions were given by God, an idea quite popular among nineteenth century scientists. Prodger also is well versed on Oscar Rejlander, a photographer unknown to me before I read this book.  While it is clear that Rejlander’s tendency to embellish photographically is now seen as controversial, it is also clear that his work for Darwin included experimentation that Darwin valued precisely for this reason. Darwin did not see it as deceitful, but rather as an effort to push the technology beyond what it was capable of achieving then, at least in a basic sense. One notion related to the Darwin/Rejlander relationship stood out:  Prodger’s suggestion that Muybridge may have read a publication of Rejlander’s outlining his experiments to capture motion.  If Muybridge incorporated ideas published by Rejlander when developing his own motion study techniques, then he is directly linked to both Darwin and Muybridge.  Another notation that showed Prodger’s attention to detail was a reference to Rejlander’s self-portrait Surprised Man, where the author points out that the photographer’s stained fingers show the effects of the silver nitrate used in photographic processing.

Reflecting on the book when I finished it, I debated whether more information about the broader history of photography was necessary for some readers.  Will those who are unacquainted with photographic history conceptualize how important Prodger’s insights are?  When we look at the photograph today, it is easy to overlook the trajectory that has led us here. One iconic image of early photography that came to mind was Louis Daguerre’s “Boulevard du Temple,” taken in late 1838 or early 1839. It is generally characterized as the first photograph ever taken of a person, and it shows the early problems photographers faced in capturing movement. We are told that this lone figure on the deserted street is a deceiving image because what was normally a busy street was “lost” due to the long exposure times of early photography.  In other words, in Daguerre’s image the capture of a person was serendipitous because everything else was moving too fast to register during the ten-minute exposure time needed to imprint the photograph.  The reason the man in the bottom left corner of the plate registered is that he was standing still, getting his boots polished during the entire time the photograph was taken.   This is perhaps the first example of the “motion” problem.

In summary, Darwin’s Camera describes how he worked to capture expressions that happen to quickly for the eye to see and offers a glimpse into how scientific imagery and technological innovation developed hand-in-hand. What sets this volume apart is the discussion of why Darwin’s attitude toward crafting images to illustrate his scientific ideas may seem suspect to us today.  If so, it is because we now assume that the scientific method is about conclusions fitting the data, not about creating data to prove our hypotheses. [Still, even today, we find that scientists highlight areas of the data that support their work.  The false-colored images to which we have become accustomed are designed precisely to highlight what the scientists want us to see.]  Without debating the pros and cons of this development, it is fascinating to think about the introduction of photography in the nineteenth century and how the efforts to capturing fleeting expressions required some degree of contrivance.

Prodger notes that Darwin’s Expressions quickly went out of favor, possibly because the fashions of the models made the book look antiquated.  Nonetheless, Darwin’s contribution to scientific photography was revolutionary.  Even if Expressions did not have a transformational impact comparable to a book like Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which provided a foundation for the modern disciplines of human and comparative anatomy and physiology, Expressions was still is a remarkable achievement, as this pioneering study demonstrates. Both Darwin’s Camera and the recent publication of an annotated edition of Darwin’s Expressions by Paul Ekman, (which includes contributions by Prodger as well) attest to Expressions’ current relevance. All in all, Darwin’s Camera is well written and nicely produced. Prodger ably credits Darwin’s contributions to the history of scientific illustration and highlights this scientist’s creative mind from an unusual perspective.  He takes on a novel topic and ultimately says as much about creative thinking, experimental work, and an imaginative mind as he does about Darwin.

The Blender Gamekit, 2nd Edition: Interactive 3D for Artists
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/mosher_wartmann.php
by Carsten Wartmann, Editor
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher

Darwin’s Camera: Art and Photography in the Theory of Evolution
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/ione_prodger.php
by Phillip Prodger
Reviewed by Amy Ione

Cyberculture and New Media
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/baetens_ricardo.php
by Francisco J. Ricardo, Editor
Reviewed by John F. Barber

Eddy Loves Frank
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/mosher_cuneiform.php
by The Eddy Palermo Big Band
and
Fear Draws Misfortune
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/mosher_cuneiform.php
by Cheer Accident
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher

Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/harle_nusselder.php
by André Nusselder
Reviewed by Rob Harle

Migratory Settings; Thamyris Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race Series 19
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/speed_aydemir.php
by Murat Aydemir and Alex Rotas, Editors
Reviewed by Chris Speed

The Poetics of Space: Spatial Explorations in Art, Science, Music and Technology
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/reddell_altena.php
Sonic Acts XIII Festival
and
Sonic Acts XIII – The Poetics of Space
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/apr2010/reddell_altena.phpby Arie Altena; Sonic Acts, Editors
Reviewed by Trace Reddell

A similar set, ‘A History of Television’ is also available form Routledge. See http://www.visual-media.eu/publications_books_pre-film.html

On the latter webpage you will also find the previously announced ‘A History of Pre-Cinema’

These are great resources for academic researchers, university & museum libraries and private collectors.
More Routledge encyclopaedic works, ‘Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography’ & ‘Encyclopedia of twentieth-Century Photography’ where announced several years ago and can be found on the subsequent page.
http://www.visual-media.eu/publications_books_photo.html

The new book page, Related Popular Arts, is announcing an important study on the ‘The Victorian Marionette Theatre’.

http://www.visual-media.eu/publications_books_popular-arts.html

The additional page, DVD, CD-Rom & Video’s, announces the interactive DVD ‘KINOAUTOMAT, One Man and his House’. http://www.visual-media.eu/publications_media-used.html While Kinoautomat was created in Czechoslovakia by a talented team in 1966-67, it is generally considered to be the brainchild of Radúz Cincera. It was a performance, which combined a projected film with interventions from two stage moderators, which was shown for the first time at the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo ’67 Montreal, where it ran for six months as a one-hour show.

Using a specially constructed voting system, the audience members can change the trajectory of the film at several key moments by pressing red or green buttons.
The direction voted by the majority would then be followed by the projection team.

www.visual-media.eu <http://www.visual-media.eu/>