A Terabyte of Piracy Ain't Art

[Rawne1980]

While I agree with you that this maybe shouldn't have been posted as an article, as it more seems like an opinion piece, the fact remains that he's linking to a source material, which in turn links to piracy. If I quote Fox news as a source for an article that does not mean I agree with everything they've ever stated.

Point taken, I may have got myself a little carried away.

I just thought to myself, with how vehemently Escapist seems to act against piracy, it seemed a tad strange that there would be a link that took you to a page where you could get direct access to pirate software.

I'll tone it down a bit.

 

[PlasticTree]

Ok, so the point he makes is that such a valuable, possibly culturally significant collection can fit in such a small box. I get that.

But why make it a small box with pirated content? He could just as well have borrowed games and tv show collection boxes for the same cause.

 

[AngryMongoose]

I like it.

I figure it's about consumerism without limits? He's able to download all this stuff, most of it he won't even use, with little effort or loss of funds. Advertisers make him want this stuff, and now there's no cap on what he can take.

Personally, I think he could have tried harder on the display. A terabyte hard drive doesn't really convey much, even knowing what's on it (Though all the alternatives I could come up with are really cheesey. Maybe the soullessness of the drive is aprt of the piece). However, I don't think it's a bad idea, and I reject the assertion that it cannot be considered art.

You're also extremely stretching the definition of stealing here. He was clearly never intending to buy this stuff, it was pirated for art, not to be consumed, so you can hardly argue that he's brought about loss on the part of the company.

 

[Akytalusia]

i don't know about art, but there's definately a few potential comments about our society in this display. the interpretation of which is debatable.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

I would be wiling to call this art. He intends to make social commentary with his work. Whether or not you agree with the message of the piece, Manuel Palou did create a item that creates discourse about a contemporary subject.

THAT BEING SAID, I also think that Palou should bear the consequences for his art. He illegally downloaded the intellectual properties of various groups and companies. If he wants to make his artistic statement,; fine, all the power to him; but that doesn't mean he should be allowed to display it without consequence.

If I set a car factory on fire to decry the effect of the auto industry's effect on the environment, guess what, I'm still going to jail for arson.

If Manuel Palou wants to use stolen intellectual property as a means for social commentary, then he should still pay the consequences that such actions receive regardless of whether his work has artistic merits or not.

 

[GeorgW]

While I agree with you that this maybe shouldn't have been posted as an article, as it more seems like an opinion piece, the fact remains that he's linking to a source material, which in turn links to piracy. If I quote Fox news as a source for an article that does not mean I agree with everything they've ever stated.

Point taken, I may have got myself a little carried away.

I just thought to myself, with how vehemently Escapist seems to act against piracy, it seemed a tad strange that there would be a link that took you to a page where you could get direct access to pirate software.

I'll tone it down a bit.

Fair enough. Thanks for a nice debate.

 

[insanelich]

Why wasn't he arrested?

Because copyright law is a civil, not a criminal matter.

Unless the companies sue him, he won't face consequences.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Something that takes time, skill, and effort.

How much of each? Is an incredibly detailed caricature that takes a minute art? Or a rubbish drawing that took an hour? Is it considered greater or lesser art if it took hours of welding, sawing, sanding and chisseling, or if it was made with a simple brush and watercolour paint on a piece of paper? How can you quantify it? If I sing acapella, is it any less of a song than if I had a band accompany?

When I was a kid, my class went on a school trip to an art gallery (Centre Pompidou, Paris). I was looking at a picture that consisted of an entirely white canvas approx. A3 in size. All it had on it was three black dots, in a rough line starting at the centre and heading towards the upper left corner. It looked to me like someone had flicked a cartridge pen and those three small blots were the result of the ink flying from the nib.

That picture had a price tag of 15000 francs (£1,500 at the time) and I couldn't for the life of me understand why. I asked my teacher why it might be, that something which took so little skill to create could be so valued. He told me it wasn't what we saw or how hard it was to create but the thinking of the artist behind it, what it represented and/or the thoughts/feelings it evoked in the viewer that mattered.

It took me years before I understood what he'd been trying to tell me. I discovered in my early 20s that I loved going to galleries where before I would have never considered it. I'm not an artist but I gained the understanding to look and try to see what an artist is attempting.

I'm not by any means saying this is a magnificent showpiece or in the same category as Michaelangelo's amazing sculptures or Monet's oil paintings. But that black box does showcase an idea. He's got us talking about it on this forum, discussing its merits, discussing the issue of piracy, discussing how a small box can hold a $5mill value. While it may have been easy to create and looks a little plain and boring (though I suspect that's intentional), he's the first to present this idea in that way, and he has succeeded. That's why it's art.

 

[Tiger Sora]

People can choose either side or just not bother to join one. Art is what an individual perceives it in their own standards to be. A flower growing out of a crack in the ground in New York, can be art. A piece of trash floating in a river too. They have no significance as an object, but the message they can represent can make them so, should one believe in it. A terabyte hard drive, so what. A terabyte hard drive with 5 million dollars of stolen properly thats portraying a message, sure it can be art. But think that your own arse can be art, but you don't see people gawking at it.

"Each to their own" as the idiom goes.

 

[ZiggyE]

EDIT: Note to self, don't browse two threads at once.

Mods delete this please.

 

[weirdee]

I see this as a piece that does in fact either show our blatant disregard for value, or our ability to place too much value on something in the first place.

Yes, the artist was lazy. But that ends up working itself into the statement. If he had actually cared, it probably would have detracted from the overall theme, which would have changed so that only the "notable" software would have been worth trying to protect, while making it okay for us to forget about everything else.

Is this piece actually worth anything? That's always subjective. Is the topic that was reduced to one trite physical embodiment still worth thinking about? Probably.

 

[Traun]

Ok, nice for him.

Now sue him, for 5 million dollars.

EDIT: Actually, no, sue him in an Australian court for 12 million.

P.S. This is why people don't respect artists.

 

[Versuvius]

Shoulda been a whole 1TB of solid porn.

 

[zehydra]

So? I have 2 terabyte hard-drives full of hentai and you don't see me bragging, although I think my tissue collage is art, its coming along nicely. *nudge nudge*

Ten bucks this gets a million quotes by the end of this thread.

Post it on /b/ and screencap the reaction

 

[zehydra]

Oh yeah, I guess it's art. It's not high-quality visual art, but that doesn't make it not art.

 

[MindBullets]

No better or worse than any other modern art.

As for my general opinions, I favour traditional art but I've no problem with modern art if it's interesting or if the artist is genuinely trying to make a point. The problem, though, is that it's easy to bullshit your way into justifying something lazily thrown together as being modern art.

 

[GigaHz]

I'd say this is art for several reasons.

5 million dollars worth of several people's hard work and ideas condensed into a small little hard drive. All that, taking up a seemingly insignificant amount of space.

Maybe it's a statement about consumerism devaluing art? Maybe it's a statement about how easy it is to acquire hundreds of dollars worth of stuff? Maybe it's a bleak look into the future of the art world?

Art is meant to provoke thought and debate. I can say it has made me think so I WOULD call this art.

 

[newwiseman]

LOL, I love the conceptualism of it. Is it lazy, certainly. Is it unethical, yep. Is it fucking genius, DAMN straight.

I'm not going to go all pretentious art-douche and explain it's awesomeness, but I will say title "$5 million dollars" is just perfect; and it's almost as funny as what the RIAA claims to have lost to piracy.