Remixing Found Imagery – Cassandra C. Jones
Every so often, you come across something and say to yourself “that is so simple and obvious, why didn’t I think of that?” That’s how I felt this morning after discovering the work of Cassandra C. Jones.
Jones deconstructs online found imagery, though available stock or amateur photos, to create new meaning through subtle combinations. She does this with a variety of styles as well, some resembling stop-motion animation, others a kaleidoscope.
Some of the works included are constructed by compiling hundreds of professional and amateur snapshots of the same subject taken by different people. Ranging from full-color lightning bolts to old black and whites of horses jumping over a fence, she links them in ways that depict motion, line and non-linear narrative. Other pieces are made by deconstructing single photographs, removing their backgrounds and reducing them to isolated shapes. Jones then duplicates and arranges these forms to create compositions where singularity and multiplicity exist simultaneously. There is both an order and a chaos present in the body of work, which overall asks the question, what does it mean to organize and interpret imagery in the digital realm, where the archives of visual information are in a constant state of growth and evolution?
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she “pays for some images” and just takes others? Someone please explain what the difference is between “remixing” and infringement?
Quoted from the video: “A lot of times I buy the photos, sometimes I just take them”.
Another example of the Shepard Fairey school of thought – that if I take someone’s work and change it then it becomes mine, and somehow that is OK. It is never OK to steal.
Yeah, she doesn’t clarify if the amateur photos she chooses fall under Creative Commons, or if she just finds photos via search with no care towards the copyright status.
Certainly not a new controversy in the art world. Think Duchamp. Think Warhol. Jones keeps much of the original photos she finds intact (her art is in the mashup of different images, not so much in the altering of each image) which means her source images are more recognizable. And thus, makes this question a good one.
I have seen Jones lecture. She was fairly clear that whatever she doesn’t buy from stock or ebay she gets from creative commons, public domain or government agencies (which is essentially PD). She definitely talked about her sensitivity to other peoples work. So maybe that is what she means by “take”. It makes sense. There is so much of that stuff out there. Although I am curious, most people who have a creative commons license on their work ask for credit, even the ones who say it is ok to modify. How does she deal with this? Does she have a long running credit list somewhere or does she skip the photographers that ask to be named? If there are really an endless number of photographs out there, I suppose she has plenty to work with. It just seems like a lot of sifting.