Authorship remains an important concept in the digital age, though there is real diversity in its meaning.
- Elena Cooper
An apocalypse unfolds before the viewer’s eyes, as microscopic dots appear, combine and ‘consume’ a work of art: digital artist Joseph Nechvatal destroys digital representations of his paintings by unleashing a computer virus that ‘gnaws away’ at his creation in real-time and, to do so, he collaborates with programmer Stéphane Sikora.
Many artists like Nechvatal have embraced the benefits of working both digitally and collaboratively to create innovative pieces. The 52-member Intercontinental Music Lab, for instance, creates music that is inspired, arranged and written by different band members without them ever having to meet. “We all understand that the completed song can’t exist without this collective creative input,” explained founding partner Barney Brown.
But what are the implications of collaboration when it comes to deciding who the author of the work is, and who owns the rights to control its use? “The premise is that the digital world is changing both the way people create works and what they create,” explained Professor Lionel Bently from Cambridge’s Faculty of Law.
“While there have been many responses from copyright law to the possibility for copyright infringement, there has been very little in terms of rethinking the fundamental concepts – who is the author and what constitutes the work they have created?”
A team of researchers from the Universities of Cambridge (led by Bently), Amsterdam and Bergen is now reaching the completion of a three-year research project that is scrutinising these notions.
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Image: 'blackeye', Joseph Nechvatal, 2010; computer-robotic-assisted acrylic on canvas and screen with digital animation
Credit: Joseph Nechvatal, courtesy of Galerie Richard, New York & Paris
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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