The Creation of Conceptual Art
This month's Believer has a very interesting piece by Chris Cobb on conceptual art and the process by which it is created. The article is entitled "A Perfunctory Affair," referencing a quote by Sol LeWitt from his piece "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" from Artforum, published in 1967. The quote in question (which also kicks off the article):
When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.Really, the most interesting part of this process for me right now is the way it is affected by intellectual property and copyright/patent law. Currently, musical artists hold several different copyrights (assuming that they were not cheated out of them by their label) for each song they have written. When considering how one would go about the process of creating conceptual or procedural art, a patent can apply to the process by which you create the art, and a copyright would apply to both the artistic concept and the final product.
Arstechnica's Julian Sanchez provides an interesting analysis and discussion of these concepts in his article "Conceptual Art and IP." In it, he highlights exactly why I find this discussion interesting: Where does your work end and mine begin? Exactly how different in process and execution does my piece need to be for me to be free from liability? When your process informs my final piece, are both my property? Are either?
Interesting enough to warrant more discussion than we currently have on the subject, I think. Do these types of process patents apply when you're leading a player through your piece - is the way that the player experiences the piece open to patent, simply because it's a process by which a piece is created, when the piece is a space open to exploration?