Nerdler@13,

I don't particularly care about Fairey or his art one way or the other, so I don't think I could be called an apologist for him.

Not every borrowing of someone else's content is plagiarism (there are lot's of examples of perfectly legitimate quotes & remakes in music, film, art, & literature). Especially if the person doing the borrowing is not trying to same the image is their original creation.

You're perfectly welcome to object to appropriation (but it would be nice to hear a more in-depth & interesting argument... not "it's horseshit, you apologist!"), but Fairey is hardly the only artist to do so... it's been a mainstream legitimate artistic technique for quite a while, especially in Pop and Postmodern art.

Where appropriation crosses into plagiarism is an interesting issue and the boundaries are not always clear.

I followed the link and glanced at the photos that show where Fairey sourced his images... I think the charge of plagiarism may be misplaced in this situation--it seems to me that Fairey's intention is for the viewer to realize that the images are ones that have been appropriated and then modified to subvert/change the original message.

For example, the Yellowstone/Iraq poster wouldn't be nearly as poignant if the the Fairey used an original image--it's the very connection between tourism & military adventurism that makes the artwork what it is.

Xeni@115 said: [i]So, with regard to the commenters who want to be unpublished -- We're not sure how to handle that, either. Technically, or procedurally, or what the right thing is to do. Do we come up with some way to flag what's been altered in an explicit way? How much of that is helpful, from a user interface POV, and how much is just extraneous detail?[/i]

I think it's a debatable point whether creators (and commenters) have the right to unpublish their earlier works/statements. Once something is released to the public, in some ways it belongs to the world.

That issue aside, removing comments does damage the thread of discussion. If it does (whether for moderation or because the commenter is deleting the comment), I think the comment number should be left in place with an indication that the comment was removed. That way, at least, people will realize that there has been a disruption... Also, I believe that the comments are re-numbered when one is removed (am I misremembering or has this been changed), which can cause all sorts of confusion... so leaving in a stub would solve that issue as well.

Glad to see this posted! I haven't been paying too much attention to comments lately, but when you first allowed them I do remember feeling that the ground rules needed to be a bit more explicit.

Something else I think you should consider is having dedicated user accounts for moderation. Ah, but I bet you think you already do! Nope, sometimes the moderators are simply participating in the discussion thread... I think that's a bad policy because it blurs the line of when they're just stating an opinion and when they're laying down the law.

Ideally, I think moderators should simply moderate and leave the discussion to the groundlings. But at the very least, I think have two accounts for the moderators (one for taking part in the discussion, one for moderation) would be a good idea.

The film includes a seemingly pointless shot of a woman using a payphone... but I think the phone's push buttons (as opposed to rotary dial), must have been novel.

Yep, I just checked... apparently the push button phone had just been introduced a couple of years earlier at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

I recall rotary dials being pretty common while I was growing up in the '70s, so it must've taken a while for push button phones to completely take over.

Golan Levin & Andrea Boykowycz were invited to contribute some work to a Dutch exhibition on humor.

They did a series of Dutch master re-creations using finger puppets. I think the photos are pretty amusing, but the curator cut them from the show saying that they "weren't funny".

The best part is that you can get $10 back if you pay with a MasterCard:

"(Enter US $3,000,000.00 or more)
Get $10 back on this item See Details"

It could be a variation of red-cooked chicken, in which case the sauce might be dark soy (tastes like regular soy sauce mixed with molasseses).

My friend Lee Moyer was put off by the contest's submission agreement and did a couple of provocative covers in protest of it:

http://www.annaliesemoyer.com/amsterdamer.jpg
http://www.annaliesemoyer.com/ultraviolence.jpg

Here’s what Lee said to me in an email:

As you know, I was sorely tempted to have a little fun with The New Yorker Contest that you found on Boing Boing.

But before I got started, I read the fine print - and it happens that this is a well-disguised Conde Nastygram.
They believe it's really their art - we just make it for free - and for their largely unknown and unseen website into the bargain.
And credit - forget it!

"8. OWNERSHIP AND LICENSE. All entry materials become the property of the Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned. Entrant agrees that the submission shall be a work-made-for-hire within the meaning of the Copyright Act, and that Condé Nast Publications shall own all rights, including copyright, therein throughout the world. In the event any submission is deemed not to be work-made-for-hire for any reason, Entrant hereby transfers and assigns the entire copyright (for the full term of copyright including any extensions thereto) throughout the world, in any and all media and forms of publication, reproduction, transmission, distribution, performance, adaptation, enhancement or display now in existence or hereafter developed in such Submission to Condé Nast Publications. Entry into this Promotion constitutes entrant’s irrevocable and perpetual permission and consent, without further compensation or attribution."

I admire the new Yorker's history, erudition and long-time support of the best the arts has to offer. But they have become a cog in a very wicked machine. So rather than send them some loving covers, I thought I'd send these to you instead. Please share them with your fellow New Yorkers.

Gibson's mention of importance of the first visual in a movie reminds me of when I saw The Madness of King George (which, incidentally was called The Madness of George III in Commonwealth countries, but the title was changed in the U.S. for fear of moviegoers thinking it was the third in a trilogy).

Anyway, the first shot in the movie has the camera tracking forward towards a door. The door was graffitied with some date (perhaps 1809) scratched into the wood. I thought "wow, what a cool way to establish the year the movie takes place in"). But no, the movie was set in an earlier year--it was just sloppiness that the movie crew didn't catch & cover up the anachronism.

Note, though, the kid isn't contesting the suspension (which he agreed with), but rather the citation from the city for reckless conduct.

Probably easier to clean than most easy chairs--just take it outside and pressure wash it.

I sure hope whoever made this wore a vapor-quality respirator--burning plastic is nasty stuff to breathe!

#10, a fourth dimension doesn't have to be anything in particular... certainly not time. If I were inclined to do 4D pon, I'd be inclined to use the alpha channel as the fourth dimension. The player could adjust the paddle's transparency and the more it diverged from the ball's transparency (which would vary), the less effect it would have on the ball (or something like that).

Ok, by ProMenuMan#20... How, in your experience, do the menu guys get into the building? My experience is once every week or so I get a ring and told "Delivery." If I buzz the person in (or if someone else does), about 7 minutes later a menu is slipped under my door.

If you do this perfectly legal thing your employer has asked you to do, I will attempt to injure you.

Well, it isn't actually perfectly legal... as I mentioned above, the menu-guys usually gain access to private property on false pretenses. (Of course, threats of bodily harm are also generally frowned upon).

For the me the annoying aspect of the menus is less the fact I need to pick them up as the manner in which the menu guys get access to the building. They ring all the doorbells at once and then claim to be making a delivery.

Cute, but it would be interesting to see if a simple "No menus please" would work just as well.

Yikes, Fnarf#73! I thought you must surely be wrong, so I went to tsa.gov to check it out. You're right... this is from the list of screener job qualifications:

2. You must have a high school diploma, GED or equivalent; OR at least one year of full-time work experience in security work, aviation screener work, or x-ray technician work.

Well, I think it's clear that Boyle visual style is distinct from Krafft, whereas Lie Xue's isn't.

You seem to be suggesting that the visual similarity doesn't matter much because the presumed conceptual intention is so very different. Again, if Lie Xue is working from such a different set of concepts, why not use a more original formal way of expressing it? If the formal manifestation is so unimportant, then why use a visual gimmick that is so closely associated with another artist? What you suggest as the conceptual underpinnings of Lie Xue's work seem much more profound than the resulting image (which, again, is a bit of a visual pun).

If I decided to create laptops, iPhones, & other bits of computer technology in ceramic with English willow patterns, would I be comfortable? I'm using a different ceramic pattern and it isn't weapons or drinking vessels and I'm sure I could explain why my concept is different. Again, perhaps you or others would feel differently, but I would think that it is a case of being too derivative and would scrap the idea (even if I made the artwork before being aware of Krafft).

It may seem like I'm advocating unbridled originality, but I generally think originality is over-rated... anything worth doing is worth doing more than once. If an idea is so fragile it loses its specialness upon being explored more than once, then it really is just a shallow novelty. I think Krafft's Delft work falls in this category--that's not to say it isn't worthwhile, just that it's limited in how often it can be repeated and still be interesting.

Appropriation/influence/originality/etc. is certainly an issue that have to continually grapple with... we all run into situations where one of our works is evocative (perhaps overly evocative) of something someone else has done.

Generally I put myself into the position of the artist doing the more recent work (Lie Xue, in this case) and ask myself would I be comfortable with the similarity... in this case I wouldn't. Perhaps the contextual avenues these two artists are exploring are different, but the roads have ended up in the same place: works that are most striking in their ostranenie niftiness. Look at it this way, there's many, many different ways Lie Xue could explore the issues you mention--why choose one which is formally so similar to someone else's work (especially given that the work ends up being a visual pun)?

Here's a recent blog post I did on a similar situation (i.e., one work of art being, perhaps, overly similar to another).

Looks like Charles Krafft's work... or, if not, someone being very derivative of his art.

If it's latex paint, just take the lid off and let it dry out... then no worries about spillage. Last time I was at the paint store I noticed there's now a powder you can get to speed up the latex solidifying (though that's not really necessary--it will crud up pretty quickly on its own).

ThruthFictions(#51), I was wondering if something like that might have been happening. Years ago I had an online game that used hard drive serial numbers as a way of identifying users. It seemed clever (setting aside issues of privacy) since many users had dynamic IP addresses and couldn't be identified that way.

After banning a number of innocent people we learned that Gateway would initialized large numbers of hard drives simultaneously, resulting in them having identical ID numbers. Oops!

I have a suggestion for a new community management tool for handling suspected sock puppets. Rather than deleting all the posts from a suspected sock puppet, how about having a tool that would update them so they're identified as coming from the same user? If a post is offensive it makes sense to delete or deemvowelize it... but if it's just an issue of identifying who is the true author a lighter touch seems preferable.

I was thinking more about the two reasons you don't mud-wrestle a pig. One, you just get muddy, and two, the pig enjoys it.

That comment was made on the "Making Light" and I thought it was well put. BoingBoing is certainly entitled to have the the community tone it wishes... but I would wish for it to be moderated with a restrained, professional, & polite tone (or via a private email if that isn't possible). Arguing over who is a sockpuppet seems destined to lower the level of discourse :-/

Given how recently BoingBoing has added comments, we (the users) should be generous while they absorb the impact of having a truly interactive reader community. It'll probably take some time for them to work out the community's standards, processes, etc.

I do hope that the moderation of the community takes the high road of politeness (which Cory's response is admirable example) and doesn't make a habit of getting down into the trenches with the trolls. A moderator has a big impact on the tone a community. Taking a snappish tone legitimizes its use.

[Apologies if this gets posted twice... I was logged in when I started writing, but somehow ended up submitting it anonymously when I pressed "Post". So I decided to rewrite and resubmit it]

I used that scream when doing the sound f/x for the online collectible card game Sanctum. If I remember correctly, it was for the Beast's Embrace spell.

I think someone has a trust fund...

I'm trying to think of a response to this that isn't too finger-wagging or humorless but am having a hard time coming up with what it will be. So I'll just be sincere and straight-forward:

Maybe you're right... the people who are doing this might be independently wealthy. But it's much more likely that they're not and are choosing to spend hard-earned money in order to make their art.

I have an art show that's opening this Saturday and I've emptied my bank account (that was filled from working, not from inheritance) to make it happen. In all likelihood, the sales from the show won't cover the costs. I do this because I think what I'm doing is worthwhile... It makes me cringe that art is dismissed as trust fund art simply because it was made without an eye towards profit.

Hmm... I'd probably would call it a "mechanical reproduction" or a poster rather than a "fine art print." A fine art print implies that the work originated as a print (e.g., a lithograph, silkscreen, woodcut, etching, etc.) rather than using a machine to reproduce something done in another medium (e.g., acrylic). That's not to say that this isn't an interesting attempt at art democratization and forging a new business model for a gallery... just that the blog article's title is a little inaccurate.

If I'm not mistaken, these guys (MotoArt) are the same ones that were featured in DiscoveryChannel
's "Wing Nuts."

Hmm... I don't see the intentionality unless you think the cows care about the aesthetic.

Agreed, Elbee at #37... Buried at #12 mocked up something like you describe:

Buried's mockup

It's not as nifty as the clock/pie-chart... but's it's a lot clearer.

Again, again... to those of you who found the clock/pie-chart immediately perfectly clear--that's not the point. The point is that a good percentage of people don't (and in usability, a significant minority who finds something confusing trumps a majority who don't).

Basically you're either arguing that we're wrong about finding it confusing (which is a silly thing to argue) or it doesn't matter that we find it confusing (probably true it the greater scheme of things, but if the discussion is data presentation and/or usability then it does matter).

The question is, do a significant percentage of people find Buried's mockup confusing? If not, then it is the better presentation of of the data.

The confusion about Saturday open/close times doesn't matter. No one shops then.

LOL, but Tommy that's the entire point of the graphic--to display the times when the store isn't crowded!

Again, the argument that 1/2 the readers don't find it confusing is actually pretty damning. That means 1/2 of the users do find it confusing--surely we can have higher usability standards than that!

Oops... the other days open at 10am, so the reader doesn't have that to go on. S/he must simply assume/guess that it's 9am.

For those of you who are of the "it's-clear-to-me-so-what's-your-problem?" frame of mind... when discussing UI you have to step outside yourself. The point isn't really whether it is perfectly clear to a given person--the point is whether the graphic is generally the best way to present the info. I'd be surprised if this graphic came out of usability testing with good marks.

For example, what time does the store open on Saturday? Not obvious at a glance... it's easier to figure out the other days because they have a "closed" slice of pie, but Saturday doesn't. So the reader must look at the other days, notice they open (presumably) at 9am and then make the assumption that Saturday is the same.

kuanes,

I see your point about hyper-criticalness... but for me, and I suspect many BB readers, it's a productive exercise and not just nit-picking. Many of us are involved with presenting data to users/readers/or-what-have you. For those of us in this situation, it doesn't matter so much that someone can figure out the info--it's a question of whether this is an interesting, clear, & efficient way to communicate the data

It's cool in the sense that it overloads info (i.e., uses a pie chart both as a clock and to indicate which days have what percentage of the various volume types.

However, that's also the problem with it... it's both a pie chart and a clock and it takes the viewer a few moment of the data flipping back & forth in the mind like one of those faces/vases graphics.

It isn't a criticism of by David Pescovitz, rather of the original text. (I thought that was implicit).

Yeah, Down Syndrome would be the correct term. Here's what Medterms.com has to say:

Definition of Mongolism

Mongolism: Obsolete name for Down syndrome.

Down syndrome refers to the 19th century English physician J. Langdon Down who described the condition in 1866. In great error, Langdon Down attributed the condition to a "reversion" to the "mongoloid race." He held that evolution had been reversed and there had been a sort of backslide from the superior Caucasian to the inferior Oriental race. The misnomer "mongolism" is incorrect and racist and is to be avoided.