louise

Louise VanDenburgh I am currently a Sophmore My hometown is New Orleans, LA. I have yet to declare a major :/ My favorite artist is most likely Klimt and a photographer who I adore is David Spielman. I enjoy spending a great deal of my time in museums whenever I travel and here in DC. Something interesting about me is my love of old music and also my left handedness. I have taken two art history classes here at GW, regretfully however, never a fine art class.


 * Homework #1 **

The study of public domain in the US is clearly a very complex field. Prior the Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins’ highly detailed graphic work on “rights culture,” I admittedly knew next to nothing about the difficulties documentary film makers face dealing with copyright laws. In fact, I did not even know what the ‘cc’ or ‘creative commons’ symbol found all over the place referred to. The complexities of copyright law’s difficulties imposed on documentary film makers, was particularly striking given the nature of their work- shedding light on important social issues ignored or grazed over by media, often with incredibly low budgets.

In the past, I have participated (circa 6th grade) in the illegal downloading of music via LimeWire. I continued using LimeWire, even after our school had a talk about the illicit nature of the application, because the product was so useful and the I did not feel as though I was doing anything wrong, since I was not directly hurting anyone. Services such a LimeWire, pray on naïve individuals such as myself, to steal millions, if not billions, from artists who rightful deserved those royalties as compensation for the art they give everything to create. LimeWire was undoubtedly stealing from those who rightfully deserved compensation for their creative efforts.

Illegal software such as LimeWire certainly deserve to be prosecuted with the full force of the law, while other areas remain more grey… The use of very well known television shows, such as ‘the Simpsons’ being used incidentally in documentaries of an unrelated genre, seems to be perfectly valid in my opinion. The choice to seek out payment for such use appears incredibly greedy. However, the point could be made that the network was simply trying to set an example out of the filmmaker in question (Jon Else.) I do believe there should be more extensive laws allowing low budget filmmakers to freely use material from well known media.

One point made in the comic I found to be ironically accurate was how digital technology was supposed to provide certain democratic freedoms and opportunities for filmmakers and has instead become a mind field. I believe that it is unjust to all, but in particular those filmmakers without the budget to pay the skyrocketing prices for material (deliberately used or not) and the costs of finding the rights owners.

In conclusion, I found the comic, entitled “Tales from the Public Domain Bound by Law? Trapped in a Struggle She Didn’t Understand. By Day a Filmmaker…” shed a great deal of light on the seriously flawed system of clearing rights and the implications it has on our media. I greatly enjoyed the comic and will be extra vigilant in terms of my future work for this class, in terms of creative legality.

'america fading' - featuring a highly opaque american flag.
 * Presence Absence**

'dilution vs pollution' an edit of a smoke stack emitting pollution.

'tanks in the square' removing the famous protestor from tiananmen square.

'plain planet' earth minus the continents.

'bye bye baby' a headless baby... because basically babies don't have a mind in a traditionally useful sense... lol.