Presence

You did! Crazy!

a little morbid...maybe? but, let's give credit...you did think of it Greg!!

Wow. Very odd that you had this idea. I am extremely interested in the idea of blogs as art, and am coming out with a manifesto on the subject, "Derivative Works Manifesto".

It focuses on the referential nature of blogs, with the central idea that copy/paste art is, in fact, real art-- the idea of using whole swaths of existing art (text from the NYT, for instance) to create new stuff (with links, juxtaposition, existing images, etc.) is valid and worthwhile. The links ARE the comments, instead of links and comments, the way most blogs work.

There are certainly a giantic amount of antecedents-- Andy Warhol, fan fiction, Duchamp, and anyone else who has leveraged pop culture to make new art.

I'd like to share a draft of the Derivative Works Manifesto with anyone who's interested. Lemme know if you are.

As a side note, my blog GoogObits started off as a Salon blog and dates back a year before your original Oct 2003 post:

http://blogs.salon.com/0001604/2002/10/08.html

Here are two other Derivative Works-style sites:

GoogOgraphy: Second takes on the original texts of our time.
http://www.googography.com

Letters to the Editor, By Jack O'Neil, Sewickley
http://juggernautco.typepad.com/jack_oneil_sewickley/

Daniel,

First off, I realize both your blog and blog of death predate my idea - I wasnt trying to claim prior art, just trying to be fateous.

I would say your assertion that copy/paste art is art is correct; meaning can be added to anything by viewing it in a specifc context. Walter Kaufmann's introductory essay to "Existentialism: From Doestevsky to Sartre" comes to mind, where he says that, not only is the book a collection of other's works, but he has arranged them in a such a way that reading them in order lends extra value and meaning to their understanding. Reading Kierkergaard after Dostevsky is different than just reading Kierkergaard.

I'd love to see your Manifesto. Thanks for the cool site, and the comments!

GoogObits is violating copyright. unless this site has permission to run other people's articles, he's stealing them. that's not art. it's illegal.

Violating copyright law? Probably, in the sense that I am creating a new work (a derivative work, if you will) from the original material without the owner's permission. It's certainly not generating any revenue for me, and not inducing any newspaper readers to cancel their subscriptions, so let's say that me and my little site are somewhat inconsequential in the overall scheme of things.

Stealing? Well, let's just decide not to use such language in this context.

Not art? False. There are many layers of new creation, adaptation, addition, contextualizing, juxtaposing, collaging, etc. in every GoogObit. Thanks for taking an interest-- the topic is extremely interesting to me.