[-empyre-] Intellectual property and the space of net art

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

Hi Melinda et al,

The criticism of the conditions of the artist in the states is true enough
as far as it goes.  Certainly the net art space is a zone of action wherein
a kind of metacriticism viz a viz the mainstream art cultural production can
be imagined and performed.
> your practice is not supported by the culture and you do need to get a day
> job to survive unless you are a compliant art star manufactured by, or very
> very good at playing, the system (and playing the system then of course
> becomes your whole practice) .
> this ensures that artists can never devote thier full attention to thier
> practice, that diversity and critcal practice  remain marginal  - which is
> hardly different from regimes that are seen as fascist or dictatorial..
> which only approve, allow and promote a certain kind of art practice. it
> treats art as simply part of a commodity market .
 The idea in art precedes and evades its commodification.
 This is as true of traditional media works as it is in new media; it's more
obvious in the case of net art. I try to take care of the intellectual
property issues of my work, and its provenance, and its accessibility to the
world, but I would have to commit to selling a specific product if I were to
expect to get paid consistently.  I don't want to give up freedom of mind
and speech to that extent.
  The promise and threat of intellectual culture in cyberspace lies
precisely in that dialectic of power between those who would like to set the
limits on what can be said and how it can be said (like some who think that
Flash based works aren't net art, or the legislators who would like to
define web based pornography according to whatever community standards
prevail in their hometowns); against the irrepressible human desire to push
a tool further, to advance an idea, or to express a complex and difficult
feeling.  I will go further-- net art space, in its immateriality and
evanescence, resembles a kind of condition of poetry;  and thereby hangs the
tale. If that is the case, the intellectual property in question might be
something that can be handled via royalties rather than by 'ownership' of an
'object'.  I agree that we should be paid: but by whom and at what cost--the
political conditions that prevail in my country  support a range of
technological innovation and less regard for content. It is a kind of
amnesia, a forgetting of content, that contributes to a malaise just under
the surface in the states.