The work of art in the era of

the digital appropriability

By Andr Gunthert - November 14, 2011 - 7:41
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In his famous article "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction," published in 1939, Walter Benjamin drew the
opposition of two cultures paradigmatic one . Opposite the old
bourgeois culture, supported the model of the uniqueness of the
work of art, new media such as photography and cinema impose
the reign of the reproducibility of the cultural industries.
Half a century later, the revolution of digital tools confronts us
with a new radical change. The dematerialization of content
provided by the computer and Internet dissemination Universal
gives creative works fluidity overflowing all existing channels.
While the circulation of cultural productions set allowed to
maintain control, this option encourages new ownership and
remixabilit content outside any legal or commercial. In the
context of the globalized economy of attention 2 , appropriability
is not only as the basic characteristic of digital content: it is also
necessary as the new paradigm of post-industrial culture.
Mythology of fans
This trend was first seen in a confused way. In the mid-2000s, the
distribution of software to support creative hobbies 3 , the
development of platforms for sharing content 4 , as well as
promotion of interactive web accents happy messianic 5 fuel the
idea of a "Coronation amateurs 6 ". Relied on the statistical drop in
the consumption of traditional media and corollary to the growth
of online media consulting, this vision of a new division of
attention predicts that the production of disinterested lovers will
soon compete with the cultural industries .
Optimistic in this mythology, the amateur is designed primarily as a

producer of video content, in ways that have hints of new

primitivism. In the movie Be Kind Rewind! (Be Kind Rewind, 2008)
by Michel Gondry, who stands out as an allegory of revolution in
amateur videos cobbled together by the heroes instead of erased
tapes meet a phenomenal success with the local audience. This
reception imagination while reflecting the widespread belief that
the production of naive amateurs can create interest comparable
or superior to professional productions.
Bought by Google in 2006 to 1.65 billion dollars, this new YouTube
exemplary embodiment Grail. But the platform does not promise
signified by the motto "Broadcast yourself". It quickly becomes
clear that the video hosting services are mostly used to
redistribute copies of TV programs or DVD to share rather than
original productions. Guided by the automatic promotion of
sequences most often, the response of the search queries of users
increases the value of mainstream content.

In the late 2000s, despite a few isolated examples, we must admit

that the "user generated content" or UGC, have revolutionized the
cultural industries has not created a sustainable alternative.
YouTube has been invaded by the clips of successful singers,
released by its publisher as advertising, which are among the most
watched content of the platform. The auto-production line is still
present, but is not highlighted by the press, whose curiosity has
moved to the uses of social networks. Built in contrast with the
professional world, the very notion of amateur seems a relic of the
era of cultural industries - which firmly hold the distinction
between producers and the public - rather than as an appropriate
term to describe the new ecosystem.
The mythology of fans, which is a special case of the general
dynamics of ownership, is now out of fashion, along with the
slogan of Web 2.0. She did not leave a footprint less profound
symbol of the ability of digital practices to review the social
hierarchies, but also the passage of the democratization of access
to content (described by Walter Benjamin), in the interactive and
participatory characteristic of the post-industrial culture.
Ownership as a social fact

Although the term appropriation to refer to legitimate forms of

transfer of ownership such as purchase, bequest or donation, it
covers more broadly the whole field of transmission and means in
particular its applications irregular forced or second, as the
conquest, theft, plagiarism, misuse, adaptation, quotation, remix,
etc.. Bounded by the modern codification of property rights, the
practices of appropriation seems inherited from a less
sophisticated social interaction.
The most apparent aspect of ownership is the business of digital
private copying. Before the dematerialization of media, the
tedious reproduction of an audiovisual work holding back its
expansion, its circulation was necessarily limited to a restricted
circle. The state digital scans of these constraints and stimulates
the copy in unknown proportions. The content industry, which saw
falling sales of physical media, CD or DVD, decided to fight the
consumer side it refers to as "piracy 7 ". In France, the Minister of
Culture Christine Albanel charge in 2007 Denis Olivennes, then CEO
of FNAC, to develop a legislative proposal to sanction the
suspension of the internet subscription online sharing of
copyrighted works copyright.
The bill "Creation and Internet", or Hadopi law, based on the idea
of automation of the penalty which the process should be carried
out to legal proceedings from the reports made by service
providers on the pattern of violations sent from radar tapes
exceeded the speed limit on highways.
In June 2009, this aspect of the draft legislation is censured by the
Constitutional Council. A revised scheme, which will be finally
adopted in October 2009, bypasses this obstacle by requiring the
customer is responsible for securing their internet access. In July
2011, the newly created institution reports that it received in nine
months more than 18 million observations from the authors'
societies (SCPP, SACEM, etc..), Or 75,000 referrals / day 8 . These
figures explain the choice of treatment "industry" of fraud, the
only possible response to the magnitude of the phenomenon.
The same information could have led to question the nature of the
practices complained. Can we still qualify as deviant behavior as
massive? Is not it more legitimate to consider it as a social fact?
Other approaches attempt to integrate the contrary appropriative

practices within the cultural landscape. Proposed in 2001 by

lawyer Lawrence Lessig on the model of free software, Creative
Commons licenses are as contracts allow the author of a work to
define the degree of appropriability 9 .
These conflicting legal elaborations illustrate the tensions caused
by the use of digital works in the world of the mind. Publication in
the fall of 2010 Map and the Territory, a novel by Michel
Houllebecq, quickly followed by a controversy over loans to nonsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia, which leads to a brief on-line a
full copy of the book under a free license. An agreement was
finally reached between Flammarion and editors of the
encyclopedia, which shows the existence of a power relationship
between appropriability and Digital Conventional IP 10 .
The appropriation against property
There are varying degrees of ownership. Cognition, which is the
basis of the mechanisms of cultural transmission is the most basic
stage of ownership. The reporting of an online resource came out
of the conventional mechanism of the quotation, which must be
noted that the formal possibility is only permitted exception to the
rule of monopoly exploitation by the author, that characterizes the
intellectual property 11 . The collection of memories and
photographs, as is usually done as part of tourism, heir to a
tradition that goes back to pilgrimages, preserves the memory of a
fleeting experience and is a form of appropriation replacement
particularly useful when property ownership is not transferable 12 .

Rome, display of souvenirs, magnets.

These three examples belong to the category of appropriations

immaterial or symbolic. The use of property, and more
modification, are, however, the ownership or operational material,
which can mobilize all or part of its powers conferred by
ownership. It is in this second register that meet most creative
practices of appropriation.
The symbolic appropriation, which does not presuppose any
transfer of ownership of property and is a common good, is a tool
of incorporation of cultural practices. The operative ownership,
however, is problematic since it takes place outside of a legitimate

right, and calls for special conditions to be accepted.

The debate aroused by the recurring appropriations of an artist
like Richard Prince (who recently lost a lawsuit against a
photographer whose work he had taken 13 ) attest to 14 . Although
they have gradually commonplace since the 1960s, appropriative
practices of contemporary art have not lost any character scandal.
Marcel Duchamp's gesture offering exposure to manufactured
goods, the famous ready-made, was an act of provocation that
would be paradoxical. This could be tolerated in the extraterritoriality of the art world, and the condition of proceeding
according to a vertical, which elevates the dignity of work
production from industry and popular culture , considered the
equal of the negro art without permission and without conscience.
Rather than bottom-up ownership of contemporary art, the
observed line proceeds according to a horizontal, along the lines of
the musical practice of remix (modified version or assembling
several pieces), popularized from 1970s by the popularity of disco
including the progressive integration in the commercial standards
is the result of a long process of socialization, resting on the
economic interests of publishers.
If they blur the line between symbolic and property ownership of
operation, the digital practices are not necessarily exempt from
the constraints of intellectual property. Created as a game in
October 2007, a site that allows users to change the title covers
the children's series "Martine", created by Gilbert Delahaye and
Marcel Marlier, a huge success, before being closed one month
later at the request of Casterman 15 (see below).

Examples of false pretenses performed using the Martine Cover

Generator, October 2007 (screen shots).

Whether the creation of false trailers on YouTube, satirical remixes

of political, anonymous 4chan threads 16 or traffic viral memes (set
ownership of decontextualization pattern) whose traces will be
erased after use conditions do not allow themselves appropriability
digital expedients that tolerances and fragile: the protection of
anonymity or the collective expression, the nature of advertising
content, volatility, or the invisibility of publications, ignorance of
the rule, especially the areas of the game, satire or second

degree, which, as before the time of the Carnival, are social

spaces of the exception and transgression tolerated ... Creativity
remix s' installs in the gray zone formed by the gaps in the law,
omissions of control or playfulness. But these conditions make the
web one of the few public spaces where collective ownership is
possible, commonly accepted and even encouraged.
On November 9, 2009, the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin
Wall, the services of the Elyse shall post on the Facebook account
of Nicolas Sarkozy a photo showing him attacking the concrete wall
with a hammer and incorrectly dated this image of the November
9, 1989. Faced with protests from several newspapers, the
government camp tangled up in his confusion and increases the
allegations to justify this operation. In 24 hours, the response of
the web-cast in the form of a meme called "# sarkozypartout".
Hundreds of retouched images portray the president in situations
the most famous in world history, from prehistory to the first steps
on the moon through the Battle of Poitiers, the storming of the
Bastille, the coronation of Napoleon or the Kennedy assassination
(see below). Like most viral phenomena, the collective creation of
parody, distributed in a dispersed manner across multiple sites and
social networks, is an ephemeral event without archive, all
contained in the experience of an instant response.

Examples of the same "# sarkozypartout", November 2009 (screen

shots).

Less creative than reactive, ownership digital displays to infinity

remixes and parodies, in a perpetual game of the second degree,
which ends up being seen as the signature of the media. When
Clement Chroux, Joan Fontcuberta, Erik Kessels, Martin Parr and
Joachim Schmid choose to celebrate the new visual design with the
exhibition "From Here On", presented in 2011 at the Festival of
Photography in Arles, they naturally select the work visual artists
who recycle, and remix content samplent collected on the canvas,
in a bidding war appropriation, happy fun, designated as the
principle of numerical ecology 17 .
The appropriation of culture to the culture of ownership

Ownership is the mainspring on which the assimilation of all

cultures, formed by all the practices and assets recognized as
constituting a group identity. It provides from time immemorial the
key to the viral cultures, their mechanism of reproduction. As
shown Vincent Goulet is their appropriability and conversational
uses the popular media that exist in public 18 . There have been
several times when the legal architecture of the legal transmission
of cultural gave way to momentary phases of ownership, more or
less wild, like the early days of cinema, which are characterized by
the theft and plagiarism shapes, technical content 19 . In the
context of the digital revolution, for the first time, the essential
instrument of cultural construction is in turn recognized as a
culture, a new dominant paradigm.
Ecology Digital does not encourage the production of remixes. It
establishes the appropriability as a criterion and character of
cultural goods, which are worthy of attention only if they are
shared. Offside, a non-appropriated content will be excluded from
reports of social networks or indications of search engines, ousted
editorial circulations that are the architecture of this ecosystem
20
.

Even "The man with the baton" original photograph (Fred Dufour / AFP,
January 18, 2011), trimming the main reason, examples of diversions
(screen, select iconographic Vincent Glad).

Thus appropriability itself becomes viral. The meme is a typical

example of content that has all the ingredients of his remixabilit,
which aims not only as a document to repost, but as an offer to
participate in the game (see above). For a confirmation of the
power of these principles in attempts by industry to invest these
mechanisms, developing conversational forms around the general
public productions.
The market economy like the works of the mind have built their
operation on the value of innovation and exclusivity (which are
equivalent in art creation and auteurat), protected by armor legal
intellectual property. Digital fluency has instead fostered a
collective property that values remixabilit general content, satire
and the second degree. Presumably, the path will be long before
these forms are recognized as manifestations of a new dominant
culture. But the most striking today is how the crop is already in

practice, how the status of dominant culture stands out as an

acquired for the younger generation.
Citation: Andr Gunthert, "The work of art in the era of the
digital appropriability," Notes from BAL, No. 2, October 2011, p.
136-149 (online: http://culturevisuelle.org/icones/2191).
1. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1939
edition, trans. From the German by M. de Gandillac Rochlitz and R.), Works,
vol 3, Paris, Gallimard, 2000 269-316. [ ]
2. See Richard A. Lanham, The Economics of Attention. Style and Substance in the
Age of Information, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006. [ ]
3. Apple's iLife, which includes video editing software (iMovie, iDVD), photo (iPhoto)
and music (GarageBand), for example, is part of the standard equipment of
any Mac from 2003. [ ]
4. Including MySpace (music), created in 2003, Flickr (photos), established in 2004,
YouTube (videos), established in 2005. [ ]
5. Tim O'Reilly, " What Is Web 2.0. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next
Generation of Software ", O'Reilly Network, September 30, 2005. [ ]
6. See Andrew Keen, The Cult of the amateur. How internet is destroying our culture
(2007, trans. Of the U.S. Laberge JG), Paris, Scali, 2008; Flichy Patrice, The
Coronation of the amateur. Sociology of ordinary passions in the Digital Age,
Paris, Seuil, 2010. [ ]
7. I can not get here on the highly questionable reasoning that substantiates the drop
in sales of physical media with the rise of online sharing. See in particular:
Philippe Le Guern, Patricia Basti, "Crisis in the music industry and anti-piracy
in France. Hadopi: Internet civilized or repressive policy? "Contemporary
French Civilization, vol. 36, No. 1-2, July 2011, p. 141-160; Maya BacacheBeauvallet, Marc Executioner, Franois Moreau, Portrait of the musicians in
the digital age, Paris, Editions Rue d'Ulm, 2011. [ ]
8. Michael Martins, " Hadopi, numbers and Internet ", Electronlibre, July 11, 2011. [
]
9. See Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas. The fate of the commons in an era of
digital networks (2001, translation from the U.S. and A. Bony Soufron JB),
Lyon, Lyon University Press, 2005. [ ]
10.
Guillaume Champeau, " Houellebecq: Wikipedia thanks, but not sourced
"Numerama, May 19, 2011. [ ]
11.
Article L. 122-5 of the Code of intellectual property is that which governs the
exception of citation, which is not a right but the development of tolerance
duly framed. [ ]
12.
See Andr Gunthert " The photo in the museum, or appropriation , "Visual
Culture, February 18, 2011. [ ]
13.
Charlotte Burns, " Patrick Cariou wins copyright Case Against Richard Prince
and Gagosian , "The Art Newspaper, March 11, 2011. [ ]
14.
Randy Kennedy, " If the Copy Is An artwork, then what's the original? "New
York Times, November 8, 2007. [ ]
15.
Christophe Asselin, " The buzz of the month: the covers of Martine , "Influx,
November 18, 2007. [ ]
16.
See Patrick Peccatte, " The Making pictures on 4chan , "Visual Culture,
November 17, 2010. [ ]
17.
Chroux Clement, Joan Fontcuberta, Erik Kessels, Martin Parr, Joachim Schmid
(eds.), From Here On, Arles Rencontres d'Arles, 2011. [ ]

18.
19.
20.

Cf. Vincent Goulet, M edia and classes. The ordinary uses of the information,
Paris, INA, 2010. [ ]
Cf. Vanoye Francis, The literary adaptation in film, Paris, Armand Colin,
2011, p. 13. [ ]
See Andr Gunthert, " The video does not buzzit "Current research in visual
history, October 26, 2008. [ ]

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