Danziger Gallery Exhibits "AI-generated color version" of Ansel Adams' "Moonrise, Hernadez, New Mexico" at AIPAD

[BrianShaw]

For some reason Brian, I can;t quote your post. It says the requested post can no longer be found.

I left the tea party; don’t do well in rabbit holes. Enjoy…

 

[Don_ih]

Danziger clearly states his process. There is no subterfuge. It's clearly conceptual.

The exercise didn't generate an artwork conceptually distinct from the original. Conceptually, the original and the colourized one are identical.

Here. I "uncoloured" the AI version.

This is the original (from Wikipedia):

 

[warden]

That’s fascinating. Thanks @Don_ih

 

[gbroadbridge]

The exercise didn't generate an artwork conceptually distinct from the original. Conceptually, the original and the colourized one are identical.

Here. I "uncoloured" the AI version.

View attachment 425960

This is the original (from Wikipedia):
View attachment 425961

Well, that's all it was asked to do.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Well, Alan, if the copyright begins when the photograph was taken, in my case, the heirs of my estate might have only 10 or so years left after inheritance before it is hypothetically in the public domain and free for anyone to pirate as they please. Thankfully, I'm not on anyone's radar. But what if you or I, or anyway else, was? How would you feel? And there have been three times in my own lifetime when a dedicated gallery was serious proposed by others
than myself, including relatives with the means. Nowadays pirates don't even seem to care about the visual quality of their ripoffs; they just want a piece of the monetary pie. They could offer a discounted "copy" online or whatever, and at the same time, ruin the quality reputation of the original if people had never actually seen it.

I already told the story of how one of my aunt's works was plagiarized just ten years after she painted it. Nobody back then spoke about some "transfomational" appropriation; they just stopped giving that particular artist new commissions, since he hadn't bothered to coming up with his own composition anyway. Who can trust someone like that? It ended his career, and should have.

In this Moonrise incident, the offender should at least be made aware he smells like a skunk.

Copyright for photos produced after 1978 are in effect for 70 years, not 10, after the death of the artist. Congress extended the protection to protect heirs. That seems a considerable amount of time. It will protect your photos for your great, great grandchildren into the 2100s.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Lol ethics/congress.

Even funnier:

It's ok to express your disagreement with the 70 year after death copyright protection. But political and personal attacks on me or the US government are not allowed here and are offensive.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

If you argue that doing these things to photos that are in the Public Domain are wrong, then you’re arguing that Copyrights should exist in perpetuity. Currently, photos are protected 70 years after the death of the artist. Should patents be treated the same way and be protected in perpetuity? (Currently, they're 15-20 years, depending on the type of patent.)

The whole point of having patents and copyrights is to encourage the public to create new things for industry, medicine, science, and art. However, never allowing protection to end would limit creativity. No one could build on the work of those who came before. No one could adapt a Bach or Beethoven symphony. New drugs couldn’t be improved, as other pharmaceutical companies couldn't build on the existing research patent if it didn’t end. Even the company that holds the patent would not bother improving since they already own the market. Perpetual protection would limit creativity and advancement, defeating the whole purpose of having patents and copyrights in the first place.

 

[gbroadbridge]

If no one else is going to bite I guess arguing with yourself is the thing to do.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

If no one else is going to bite I guess arguing with yourself is the thing to do.

Interestingly, Australia and the US have the same limits. As a general baseline, the standard term for most original works is the life of the creator plus 70 years. This 70-year standard was adopted in 2005 under the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), raising it from the previous 50-year rule

 

[Dr. no]

In a somewhat ironic jesture, here is what AI has to say about Sherri Levine's series:

Sherrie Levine’s After Walker Evans is not simply a copy—it is a conceptual intervention that:

• dismantles the myth of originality
• critiques patriarchal authorship
• exposes the constructed nature of documentary images
• mourns the loss of modernist ideals
• interrogates the art market’s fetish for uniqueness

In my opinion, this type of post modernist work does several things, as above, but generates content worthy only of comment, not appreciation. Most especially something like hers, which is straight appropriation of the images with any "reinterpretation" as conversation after the fact, not in the making of the image.

It remains a landmark of postmodernism precisely because it forces viewers to confront uncomfortable questions about authenticity, ownership, and the politics of representation.

It may serve as a nidus of discussion, but it is not "art", which derives from "to create".

What moron would pay $183 million for a Jackson Pollock?

An investor, not necessarily an appreciator.

Here's my transformative art - on sale now for the low, low price of $9,999.99.

That is transformative. Loaded with irony and critique of an interrogation of the market's fetish for uniqueness.


Now, if the AI's synopsis of postmodern drivel above were true (and as a supposedly newly-generated blurb, I just got the identical words), any image, taken by anyone in any media, with or without focusing, with the right degree of intention, should be worthy of praise, admiration and sale. Any postmodernists here that agree with this?

************************

I think, technical copyright issues aside, what most of us are saying is the this is an appropriation of an image with minimal alteration (really, months of work by man and machine for that?) for personal profit, not for any real artistic or social addition or commentary. Additionally, it is an iconic image with a deep history of reinterpretation by its creator, already.
Addition of some more true icons of the southwest, like a saguaro (I know, they don't live here--I do) or somehow introducing gender issues to the image might be transformative and worthy of a new conversation. But this is not, other than the one we are having.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Alan - if people want creative visual inspiration based on prior works, all they have to do is look at a photo or painting. There's nothing particularly creative about pirating it and then adding a few superficial amenities in order to justify calling it your own production. This is NOT like Bach writing down music intending it to be played by posterity over and over again. Yeah, AA, himself a musician, likened the negative to a score, and the print to the performance; but whose print?

And AA hasn't been dead for 70 years already, if you want to factor copyrights. If you factor only a 50 year buffer from when he died in 1984, according to the former convention, that still doesn't give wiggle room for what just transpired with the colorization prank. I remember that date well. I was contacted by a curator for a retrospective timed right after his death, and had a number of my own prints side by side with his, including, if I remember correctly, a very large early Moonrise print, which was actually somewhat soft in its look.

 

[MattKing]

If you argue that doing these things to photos that are in the Public Domain are wrong, then you’re arguing that Copyrights should exist in perpetuity.

Clearly you equate right/wrong with the law. In this case, the Copyright legislation.
They overlap, but they are not the same.
I would argue that Anne Geddes' work is fundamentally a wrong against all of our sensibilities.
Others may argue the same for other's work.
But that doesn't make them illegal.

 

[MattKing]

I think, technical copyright issues aside, what most of us are saying is the this is an appropriation of an image with minimal alteration (really, months of work by man and machine for that?) for personal profit, not for any real artistic or social addition or commentary. Additionally, it is an iconic image with a deep history of reinterpretation by its creator, already.
Addition of some more true icons of the southwest, like a saguaro (I know, they don't live here--I do) or somehow introducing gender issues to the image might be transformative and worthy of a new conversation. But this is not, other than the one we are having.

Yep.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I think Jackson Pollock had an amount of genius. Let's see what your paint splatters look like, and compare them. I've seen some fake Pollock's, who did everything "right"; but the gestalt just wasn't there. Even the spacing between the splatters, as nervous as it all was, makes sense with Pollock, but not with his wannabees and counterfeiters.

Same goes for 90% of AA wannabees. They learn all the techniques and materials, try to go to the same places.
But the subtle details don't fit, if there even is any subtlety, and the same poetic feel is seldom there. Of course, not all of AA's work was up to the same level, and he did a hecka lot of sheer commercial photography. I have never tried to mimic him, though it is inevitable a few images came out that way. I have spent an awful lot of time in the High Sierra - that's where I'm from - but began as a color photographer instead, and in fact never even saw an original AA print until I had begun exhibiting my own work in his own town. But his health was already failing by then, so I never met him personally.

If you want to honor his legacy, he never could figure out what "Postmodern" meant himself. Just more useless drivel.

 

[BrianShaw]

... what most of us are saying ...

Especially if you consider that some opinions have been repetatively repeated. LOL

 

[DREW WILEY]

Are you implying something has been stutterified, like Pp-p-p-pre-pp-past -p-p-p-posthumous p-p-postmoderm?

 

[Don_ih]

Transformative:

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Transformative:

View attachment 426013

Pure genius

 

[MattKing]

Was not the label "Postmodern" merely the response to the fact that the label "Modern" had been used for an Art trend/movement that was now fairly old, and had been followed by some newer trends/movements?We see the same problem with thread titles that refer to "current" events - what was new, eventually becomes yesterday's news.
I do though like the tongue-in-cheek irony of this Postmodern Jukebox version:

 

[Dr. no]

Transformative:

Close but not quite...add lipstick.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Wax the head to increase the albedo

 

[Don_ih]

OK, I couldn't resist this one:

Remax Over Hernandez

 

[BobDavid]

OK, I couldn't resist this one:

Remax Over HernandezView attachment 426018

Funny!!

 

[DREW WILEY]

I like that one a lot better, Don. Sell the whole town off, why don't you?

But if you try to sell prints of your version, will you get sued for ripping off another ripoff?

Great irony!

 

[Don_ih]

I considered changing the headstones to For Sale signs.