American Society of Contemporary Artists

Entries from April 2008

Is creativity somehow related with meditation?

April 25, 2008 · No Comments

I was sent this the other day.

What is objective art?
Is creativity somehow related with meditation?

Osho:
Art can be divided into two parts. Ninety-nine percent of art is subjective art. Only one percent is objective art. The ninety-nine percent subjective art has no relationship with meditation. Only one percent objective art is based on meditation.

The subjective art means you are pouring your subjectivity onto the canvas, your dreams, your imaginations, your fantasies. It is a projection of your psychology. The same happens in poetry, in music, in all dimensions of creativity - you are not concerned with the person who is going to see your painting, not concerned what will happen to him when he looks at it; that is not your concern at all. Your art is simply a kind of vomiting. It will help you, just the way vomiting helps. It takes the nausea away, it makes you cleaner, makes you feel healthier. But you have not considered what is going to happen to the person who is going to see your vomit. He will become nauseous. He may start feeling sick.

Look at the paintings of Picasso. He is a great painter, but just a subjective artist. Looking at his paintings, you will start feeling sick, dizzy, something going berserk in your mind. You cannot go on looking at Picasso\’s painting for long. You would like to get away, because the painting has not come from a silent being. It has come from a chaos. It is a byproduct of a nightmare. But ninety-nine percent of art belongs to that category.

Objective art is just the opposite. The man has nothing to throw out, he is utterly empty, absolutely clean. Out of this silence, out of this emptiness arises love, compassion. And out of this silence arises a possibility for creativity. This silence, this love, this compassion - these are the qualities of meditation.

I did some research (wikipedia) and Osho is an interesting guy. Sometimes known as the sex guru or the rich mans guru. It seems he was a wee bit persecuted.

He has some interesting meditation methods where for ten minutes the person jumps up and down with their arms raised, shouting Hoo! each time they land on the flats of their feet. OSHO Mystic Rose, comprises three hours of laughing every day for the first week, three hours of weeping each day for the second, with the third week for silent meditation.

anyways…

What struck me most was that my latest art pieces looked divisive and hostile.
It looked like I threw up and now want you to look at it.

Here look.
Beveridge_NHT418081436.jpg

I removed the pieces from entry in to the Now Here This exhibition and set out to create a meditative piece for the show. It’s not like me to make a piece like this. My friend said “I didn’t know you felt that way” and i don’t. I told him if I wrote about a serial killer it doesn’t mean I am one but still its out of character for me.

i do stuff like this;
godis.jpg

or this

softlight.jpg

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U.S. Copyright Office ORPHAN WORKS

April 21, 2008 · No Comments

U.S. Copyright Office   ORPHAN WORKS

Orphan works are those copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to find.
The U.S. Copyright Office has raised concerns regarding orphan works and the uncertainty surrounding the ownership of such works might needlessly discourage subsequent creators and users from incorporating such works in new creative efforts or making such works available to the public. On January 23, 2006, they issued a report regarding Orphan Works and a Congressional hearing on the new bill was held in February 2006 and was subsequently called back.
The following is an article from the Illustrators Partnership, written on March 14th, 2008 by Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, regarding the proposed legislation:
Yesterday the House subcommittee on Intellectual Property held their first hearing on new Orphan Works legislation. Note the title: “Hearing on Promoting the Use of Orphan Works: Balancing the Interests of Copyright Owners and Users”
Balance, however doesn’t seem to be part of the Orphan Works juggernaut. Indeed, after this hearing, we can no longer assume that the U.S. Copyright Office is an advocate for protection of creators’ rights. they wrote on page 14 of their original Works Report:
“If our recommendation resolves users’ concerns in a satisfactory way, it will likely be a comprehensive solution to the orphan works situation.” (our emphasis)
But how can any copyright law be
“comprehensive” if it makes millions of copyrights, no matter how valuable, available to users, no matter how worthy, under a system that would introduce permanent uncertainty into the business lives of creators?
Private Sector RegistriesSince the last bill died in committee in 2006, the advocates of this legislation have promoted the creation of private commercial registries. On January 29, 2007, a lead attorney for the Copyright Office warned us that under their plan any work not registered with a private sector registry would be a potential orphan from the moment it was created.

This means you would not only have to register your published work, also:

∑ Every sketch or note on every page of every sketchbook;
∑ Every sketch you send to every client;
∑ Every photograph you take anywhere, anytime, including family photos, home videos, etc.;
∑ Every letter, email, etc., professional, personal or private.

This Would End Passive Copyright Protection:Under existing lawthe total creative output of any “creator” receives passive copyright protection from the moment you create it. This covers everything from the published work of professional artists to the unpublished diaries, letters and family photos of the average citizen.
But under the Orphan Works proposal, none of this material would be covered unless the creator took active steps to register and maintain coverage with a commercial registry. Failure to do so would “signal” to infringers that you have no interest in protecting the work.
The Registration Paradox:conceding that their proposals would make potential orphans of any unregistered works, the Copyright Office proposals would lead to a registration paradox: order to “protect” work from exposure to infringement, creators would have to expose it on a searchable registry. This would:

∑  Expose creative work to plagiarists and derivative abusers;
∑  Expose trade secrets and unused sketches to competitors;
∑ Expose unpublished and private correspondence to the public on the Orwellian premise that you must expose it to “protect” it.

Yet registries will not be able to monitor infringements nor enforce copyright compliance. Even after you’ve shelled out “protection money” to a commercial registry to register hundreds of thousands of works, you still won’t be protected. registry would do nothing more than give you a piece of paper. You would still have to monitor infringements - which can occur anytime anywhere in the world; embark on an uncertain quest to find the infringer, file a case in Federal court, then prove that the infringer has removed your name other identifying information from your work. Meanwhile all the infringer will have to do is say there was no such information on the work when he found it and assert an orphan works defense. This will be the end result of trying to “resolve the users’ concerns” at the expense of time-tested copyright law.
Coerced registration violates the spirit and letter of international copyright law and copyright-
related treaties. And because this bill would effectively eliminate the passive copyright protection afforded personal correspondence, family photos,
etc. it would tear one more slender thread of privacy protection from the fabric of fundamental rights we currently take for granted.
We urge Congress to carefully reconsider the unintended consequences of this radical copyright proposal

Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner,
illustrators’’ Partnership

via Hank Rondina

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