Authorship and Collaboration

The issue of authorship has never been so complex.  With the growing prevalence of generative artificial intelligence programs and services such as ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Sora, et al, we are increasingly exposed to text, images, and videos that are unattributed, unlicensed, and, I would argue, unaccountable.

In this era of uncertainty, our reflections this week on authorship and the degree to which our creative work has been shaped by others, is highly relevant.

In retrospect, my amateur photography has largely been a solo affair: self-taught, self-directed, and self-produced.  This is partly due to nature, as I prefer alone time for leisure, and partly due to circumstance, as my full-time career had me not only working odd and extended hours, but also travelling irregularly and moving around the country every two to three years.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a change to this solitary approach.  No longer able to travel, or at times even leave the house for non-emergency purposes, I looked for means to photograph around the house.  Of all things, I began taking portraits of LEGO minifigures in a table-top micro studio that I set up in a basement nook.  

I quickly learned that there was a thriving worldwide community engaged in this practice, and I became involved with the European-based toy photography collective Stuck in Plastic.  Their themed weekly challenges began to shape my work, as did submission calls for exhibitions.

I developed a whimsical pop art-inspired style, playfully featuring imagery based on contemporary mass culture.  I particularly enjoyed crafting mashups, blending disparate elements into a single piece of work.  For example, my image We Four Explore, which was included in the 2022 LEGO World Celebrate group exhibition, blends the Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road album cover with LEGO’s own Classic Space astronauts.

Another of my images, The Power of the Tweet, was featured in the 2022 LEGO World group exhibition, Rebuild.  In this case I presented the diminutive Tweety as a body builder, pumping iron in the image of a circa 1978 Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Artists drawing on the works of others must navigate a range of legal, ethical, and creative challenges.  How does one create a piece that add new expression or meaning to the source work?  In doing so, how to maintain respect for the original creator and to cultural sensitivities?  How to balance fair use doctrine with copyright protection?  The boundaries are unclear and must be evaluated case by case.

Let us consider the Distracted Boyfriend Internet meme, based on a 2015 stock photo by Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem.

Early in my toy photography journey, I attempted to re-create this scene in miniature LEGO form.  With only minor differences from the original,  my work feels derivative and lacking in creativity.

I revisited the image the following year, with an aim for greater originality.  A viewing of Ridley Scott’s 1982 dystopian cyberpunk film Blade Runner had brought to mind the title of the source material: Philip K Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? If they did,  I wondered, then could robots feel sexual attraction?  Or, jealousy?

A final iteration emerged very shortly thereafter, following consideration of other Harrison Ford-starring roles in franchises such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones.  This prompted a gender reversal in the scene, with a distracted Princess Leia eyeing Indy while with hand-in-hand Han Solo.

This is my favourite version, but not one that I would publish commercially without collaborating with both the LEGO Group and The Walt Disney Company, who respectively own the copyright for the minifigure, and for the aforementioned franchises. 

Such collaboration would aim to establish mutual consent, shared vision, proper credit, and formal legal agreements.  In cases where such collaboration does not occur, such as the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.’s (AWF) use of Lynn Goldsmith’s photographic portrait of the musician Prince as the basis for the “Prince Series” silkscreen prints, legal issues can arise.

Upon discovering Orange Prince on the cover of a 2016 Condé Nast special edition commemorative magazine, Goldsmith notified AWF that she believed her copyright had been infringed.  In response, AWF sued Goldsmith for a judgement of non-infringement, or alternatively, fair use.

The case rose to the Supreme Court of the United States, which in 2023 held that AWF’s derivative use of Goldsmith’s photo did not meet the standards of “fair use” as it was not sufficiently transformative with new meaning from the original to be used for commercial purposes.

The line between collaboration and plagiarism can be nuanced.  Ultimately, one much consider the artist’s intention and transformation of the original work, the credit and acknowledgement given its author, and the artistic context in which the derivative work was created.

Bibliography

21-869 Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith (05/18/2023)’. 2023.

APPEL, Gil, Juliana NEELBAUER and David A. SCHWEIDEL. 2023. ‘Generative AI Has an Intellectual Property Problem’. Harvard Business Review [online]. Available at: https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-property-problem [accessed 14 Jun 2024].

MCCORMACK, Jon, Toby GIFFORD and Patrick HUTCHINGS. 2019. ‘Autonomy, Authenticity, Authorship and Intention in Computer Generated Art’. Available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1903.02166 [accessed 13 Jun 2024].

MCKEOWN, M. Margaret. 2023. ‘Art, Music, & Mashups: A View from the Bench on Creativity and Copyright’. The Columbia journal of law & the arts 46(2).

Pop Art, n. Meanings, Etymology and More | Oxford English Dictionary’. 2024. [online]. Available at: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/pop-art_n [accessed 13 Jun 2024].

Topic 3: AUTHORSHIP and COLLABORATION: Presentation: Positions and Practice PHO710 23/24 Part-Time Study Block S3’. 2024. [online]. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/1311/pages/topic-3-authorship-and-collaboration-presentation?module_item_id=70218 [accessed 12 Jun 2024].

List of Figures

Figure 1. Antonio GUILLEM. 2015. Distracted Boyfriend. From: Wired. 2017. [online]. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/distracted-boyfriend-meme-photographer-interview/ [accessed 17 Jun 2024].

Figure 2. Scott MURPHY. 2022. We Four Explore. From: Stuck in Plastic. 2022 ’2022-LEGO-World-Celebrate – Stuck In Plastic’. 2024. [online]. Available at: https://www.stuckinplastic.net/Exhibitions/2022-LEGO-World-Celebrate [accessed 14 Jun 2024].

Figure 3. Scott MURPHY. 2021. The Power of a Tweet. From: Stuck in Plastic. 2022/ ‘2022-LEGO-World-Rebuild – Stuck In Plastic’. 2024. [online]. Available at: https://www.stuckinplastic.net/Exhibitions/2022-LEGO-World-Rebuild [accessed 13 Jun 2024].

Figure 4. Scott MURPHY. 2021. No title.  Private collection: Scott Murphy.

Figure 5. Scott MURPHY. 2022. No title.  Private collection: Scott Murphy.

Figure 6. Scott MURPHY. 2022. Distracted Princess.  Private collection: Scott Murphy.

Figure 7. Lynn GOLDSMITH. 1981.  No title. From: Supreme Court of the United States. 2023. ‘21-869 Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith (05/18/2023)’.

Figure 8. Andy WARHOL Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 2016.  No title. From: Supreme Court of the United States. 2023. ‘21-869 Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith (05/18/2023).