Shepard Fairey

Opening night at LIVE from the NYPL kicked off with a sold-out event featuring Lawrence Lessig, Shepard Fairey and Steven Johnson discussing Remix. Check it out!

Watch the full length version of the LIVE from the NYPL program here.

Before the conversation in Celeste Bartos Forum got underway on Thursday, lawyer and renowned copyright expert Lawrence Lessig launched the evening with his erudite Remix / Copyright presentation. Lessig also exhibited several Barack Obama photographs, pointing out that they too could have been versions referenced by the artist Shepard Fairey when designing the iconic "Hope" image. After Lessig's impressive case against (old) IP law, Shepard Fairey took the stage and shared work from his collection, spoke about the Obama poster (acknowledging Mannie Garcia) and the significance of its creation and elaborated on phenomenology, a philosophy with which he identifies much of his work and creative process. Read Shepard Fairey's Manifesto.

Lawrence Lessig and Shepard Fairey took their seats next to moderater Steven Johnson and the three delved into a discussion that examined remix culture (both modern and of days passed), the concept of originality, copyright laws, the alleged infractions of sampling work, intellectual property rights, and played several clips of remixes -from Beyonce's Single Ladies' music video and its parody on Saturday Night Live to a piece created by Filmmaker Andrew Filippone, Jr. titled "Charlie Rose by Samuel Becket." Filippone, present at the program, contributed commentary.

Just before opening the conversation up to the audience, Steven Johnson read selected questions that had been submitted by the public via e-mail, like this one from DJ Spooky (aka Paul Miller):

Do you think technology has democratized the creative process and made it more of a social process? Can people ever be original again, or will everything be about sampling - graphic design material, video material, and sound?

Hear the answer, and the live audience Q&A here.

For more extensive recaps on the evening, check out: The New York Times, Blackbook, PSFK, Fast Company, Cause Global, X Reference, Public Library Association, Consumerist, WebMetrics Guru, Kenyanthropos and Time Out Magazine. Watch a pre-event interview filmed with the participants in the Green Room by WNYC.

Among the diehard fans of Shepard Fairey at the program, this guest takes the cake. And, yes Shepard Fairey signed her back (which she will make permanent with her next tattoo). See photos of Fairey's work on Flickr by HARGO.

Special Thanks to the Brooklyn Brewery for generously sponsoring the public reception at this LIVE from the NYPL Remix evening. LIVE from the NYPL would also like to thank our bookseller,192 Books, photographer, Peter Foley and our Artist in Residence, Flash Rosenberg.

Continue the conversation! Please post your commentary and questions. You can also direct questions to Lawrence Lessig, Steven Johnson and Shepard Fairey on this blog.

Photo of Leigh Bond taken by Peter Foley

At the LIVE from the NYPL Sold-Out event on Thursday, February 26th, the artist Shepard Fairey will be in conversation with Lawrence Lessig and Steven Johnson about Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. He'll speak specifically about his extensive body of work and share highlights of his collection with the audience.
Fairey, known for his influential street art and strong political messages, has been drawing even more attention recently for frequenting the headlines. The core of a swirling controversy is Fairey's battle with the Associated Press over the AP's claims of copyright infringement connected to Fairey's iconic Obama image, of which Fairey immediately responded to with a countersuit. The dispute continues to garner reactions from the press, where every facet of interpretation seems to be covered. Writer Robert Pincus examines the issues with his piece, An artist turns a photo into an iconic image- but is it fair use? and the public is summoned to weigh in on the issues with their comments and arguments on Lawrence Lessig's blog.

Shepard Fairey's first retrospective exhibition, Supply and Demand opened on February 6, 2008 at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. On the same day of his ICA kickoff, things for Fairey were stirred up with an arrest made by the Boston PD who presented him with warrants accusing him of tagging and graffiti. The art critic, Peter Schjeldal, wrote his response to the exhibition in the article "Hope and Glory" printed in the New Yorker this month.

Join in on the Fairey Frenzy by posting your comments here, on the LIVE from the NYPL blog. And, OBEY by making a Shepard Fairey portrait of YOURSELF.

REMIX re • mix
Pronunciation v. ree-miks; n. ree-miks
verb, -mixed, -mix ing, noun
–verb (used with object)
1. to mix again.
2. to mix and re-record the elements of
(a musical recording) in a different way.
–noun
3. a remixed recording.
Origin: 1660–70
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

→ Steven Johnson will be moderating next week's LIVE from the NYPL event, "Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy" — Thursday, February 26 at 7pm at the Celeste Bartos Forum at The New York Public Library

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The great thing about next Thursday's NYPL event on remix culture is the fact that the topic is at once incredibly timely, and yet at the same time it has deep historical roots. It's timely for the obvious reasons. We're going to be talking with the artist Shepard Fairey, whose work has explored the possibilities of remixing images and ideas, and pushed the boundaries of where exactly art is supposed to happen. I think many would agree that Shepard's Obama "Hope" image--which embodies so many of the values that we associate with the remix culture--became the defining image of 2008. And of course we're going to be talking with Larry Lessig as well, whose new book Remix is really the definitive study of both the legal and cultural issues at stake in this new paradigm. But I think the topic is timely in a broader sense as well -- not just that it's in the headlines and on the new non-fiction table at the bookstore. It's also timely because we seem to be at a turning point in the public discussion about the flow of ideas; that after years of emphasizing closed systems, proprietary data, and secrecy, there is a new sense that innovation and creativity and understanding are often undermined when we lock up ideas or artistic expression, when we put up walls and barricades instead of making new connections.

In a real sense, this faith in the power of open information networks -- where art and science are encouraged to mix and re-combine in all sorts of surprising ways -- is a core part of our intellectual roots as Americans. I've spent the last year or two tracing those roots in writing my latest book, The Invention of Air, which tells the story of the friendship between the British scientist and polymath Joseph Priestley, and Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. What's so striking reading through all their correspondence is how committed they were to the open flow of information, and to the importance of allowing ideas and innovations to move across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. The Enlightenment happened in large part because the systems that we now use to police and regulate the flow of ideas simply hadn't been invented yet. I actually start the book with a quote from Jefferson that I first came across as an epigraph in another of Larry Lessig's books, The Future Of Ideas. It's a perfect introduction to the worldview that we'll be exploring next week:

"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation." (source)

I look forward to mixing it up at the NYPL on Thursday!

What is the future for art and ideas in an age when practically anything can be copied, pasted, downloaded, sampled, and re-imagined?

LIVE from the NYPL and WIRED Magazine kick off the Spring 2009 season on February 26th with a spirited discussion of the emerging remix culture.

→ Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy ←
February 26th, 7pm (buy tickets)
Celeste Bartos Forum
The New York Public Library
5th Avenue and 42nd Street (enter on 42nd St.)
$25 general admission and $15 library donors, seniors and students with valid identification

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Our guides through this new world—who will take us from Jefferson's Bible to André the Giant to Wikipedia—will be Lawrence Lessig, author of Remix, founder of Creative Commons, and one of the leading legal scholars on intellectual property issues in the Internet age; acclaimed street artist Shepard Fairey, whose iconic Obama "HOPE" poster was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery; and cultural historian Steven Johnson, whose new book, The Invention of Air, argues that remix culture has deep roots in the Enlightenment and among the American founding fathers.

Stay tuned for most posts about this event!

Shepard Fairey, often described as a street artist, first began to appear in the news for wheat pasting (adorning public spaces with the artist's own posters with a water and wheat mixture), sticker tagging, and the numerous accompanying arrests. His portrait of Barack Obama that came to symbolize the historic campaign of the president is now on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. His artwork is also in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A retrospective of Fairey’s work opened in February 2009 at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art.

Steven Johnson is the author of The Ghost Map; Everything Bad Is Good for You; Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life; Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Cities, and Software; and Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate. He is also the founder of several influential websites, including FEED, Plastic, and, currently, outside.in. His most recent book is The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America.

Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Center for Internet and Society. He writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, and the law of cyberspace, especially as it affects copyright. Lessig was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online." He is the author of Code v2, Free Culture, The Future of Ideas, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. His most recent book is Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy.

Photos of Shepard Fairey by Jill Greenberg and Steven Johnson by Nina Subin

This event is co-sponsored by Wired Magazine.

Buy Tickets: Smarttix or call 212-863-4444

Stay tuned for more posts!

In looking around for a keepsake to remind me of this historic election for President of the United States, I came across a pin of the Obama Progress poster. I was surprised to learn that the poster was done by a street artist named Shepard Fairey.

It is amazing to see how graffiti artists have come up in the art world, from Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring to Banksy and now Shepard Fairey, who will have his first museum retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

I came across the website ‘Pictorial Americana’ by the Print Division of the Library of Congress, which has presidential campaign images from 1836 to 1908. A number of these images were done by important lithographers, such as: Currier & Ives. Here is one for Abraham Lincoln’s candidacy for the sixteenth president of the United States…

For further information on political campaigns in the United States go to CATNYP, the Libraries online catalog and search ‘Political Campaigns United States’

To learn more: Check out a video discussing New York City’s role in presidential campaigns on the Museum of the City of New York website: Campaigning for President: New York and the American Election

http://discussions.mnhs.org/collections/?p=31

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/atm-objects-200811.html

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/default.htm