Online image theft is one of greatest concerns for artists in this digital age. How do we protect our intellectual property once it’s uploaded onto the Internet? One solution is not to upload it at all — to not put your work out into cyberspace. Does this solve the problem of piracy? Yes. However, connecting through social media, websites and blogs is, for many of us, a fundamental part of our creative expression and how we do business.

Prior to the World Wide Web, an individual, organization or publication had to find the artist in question and get usage permission because there was no other way. Even today, contacting the holder directly is still the best practice and easy to do. A message through Twitter, for example, or sending an email only takes a few minutes, with an answer usually forthcoming within a business day.

But the temptations of our got-to-have-it-now culture compels people to go to a search engine, find an image or content, rightclick, hit “save as” and transfer it onto an electronic device without any form of permission or credit. While this is often innocent, it can also be done for commercial gain or as a malicious action.

Your online ownership rights are defined and governed by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Websites such as Facebook provide a DMCA takedown specialist for copyright
disputes. This provision is part of the Safe Harbor Act, where the website itself cannot be held liable for the alleged violation, but supports the suspension of such activity. While Facebook highly encourages a direct communication to the individual who appropriated your work before filing a DMCA claim, it is in place to protect you.

Your online ownership rights are defined and governed by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Websites such as Facebook provide a DMCA takedown specialist for copyright disputes. This provision is part of the Safe Harbor Act, where the website itself cannot be held liable for the alleged violation, but supports the suspension of such activity. While Facebook highly
encourages a direct communication to the individual who appropriated your work before filing a DMCA claim, it is in place to protect you.

These same online ownership rights are limited by Section 107 contained in Title 17 of the U.S. Code of the Copyright Law of the United States of America. It states that the “fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use in reproduction of copies … for purposes such as criticism, comment, news, reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” Case in point: This prior quote fits into the Fair Use Act. The source is acknowledged. Its purpose is for reportage; therefore, it is legal to

Laura Shabott

People collect everything! Really! Everything! Pokémon. Famous peoples’ autographs. Bars of soap from all over the world. Historical peoples’ hair. Toasters. Happy-Meal toys. Penises (honestly, a man in Iceland has a museum). Dalmation-spotted items. Coca-Cola cans (8,000 different cans).

The collections included in the “Open House: A Portrait of Collecting” at the Lamont Gallery on the Phillips Exeter Academy campus are fascinating. Director-curator Lauren O’Neal said that over 10 private collections are part of this exhibition that includes hand-carved sculptures, antique radios, African artifacts, prints from the gallery’s archives, photos of “crowdspotting,” paint-by-number pieces and a site-specific installation that engages multiple senses.

As a psychology undergrad, I must admit the psychological profile of collectors has always intrigued me. I, being more of a minimalist — well, we do have a dozen or so occasion-related wine glasses, and yes I have way too many t-shirts from road races I’ve participated in spanning three decades — fall into the “less is more” camp. But to understand why people collect is half the fun of enjoying what they’re collecting.

People usually collect for emotional value rather than monetary reasons. Collections may be associated with a meaningful aspect of their childhood

Linda Chestney

JULIA ZANES EMBRACES CONTRADICTIONS

There is a magical realm of flora, fauna, celestial bodies and mystical beings at the Dianich Gallery in Brattleboro through January, brought to you by sorcerer and painter Julia Zanes, whose show, “The Blue Prophetic Alphabet,” consists of 52 (as in a deck of cards) paintings on plastered board mounted to screen printing frames.

Do not think Picasso’s Blue Period or blue as in “the blues.” Zanes’ blue is light-emitting. She shared method: “If you use apure blue,” [my guess is its most often ultramarine here] “and surround it with more neutral colors, even though it is the darkest color in the visible spectrum, it glows.” She demonstrates this again and again in these remarkable paintings. There is to them almost an other-worldliness.

The artist told me she’d like to think her paintings are “about language.” In some ways, though, they are anything but … at least not language in the everyday sense. She cites Chinese as an example of the kind of alphabet she is thinking of. That is, elements of the alphabet are symbols, or pictograms, and when several are put together, the “collision of simple images” creates a new, possibly unforeseen, idea. Thus, the intention is that the collection of work shown is more than the sum of its parts. That may be the hope of most artists for their shows, but it is seldom undertaken with so much forethought. Nevertheless, each painting in “Blue Prophetic Alphabet” is compelling in its own right.

Zanes made a list of images she wanted to incorporate. They included visual puns, such as “Starling,” the first painting in the show. The bird’s feathers have shiny dots that seem to duplicate the surrounding stars. Trees double as a branching network of veins. Visual puns and wordplay abound, as in the concept of “medium” being at once a channeler of the spirit world, the role of the artist in creation, and the substance used in a work of

Arlene Distler

THE GUILD OF BOSTON ARTISTS’ LEGACY CONTINUES

The radioactive land cemetery that is Fukushima may have been overshadowed in recent years as news outlets have trained their lenses on other human and natural disasters, but in
Japan, a country only 50 years removed from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fallout is psychological and physical — and ongoing.

“More than three years have passed since the meltdown, and the ruined facility is still spilling radioactive waste into the ocean. A recent article in The Guardian appeared under the somber headline, ‘Fuku-shima Cleanup Progresses, but there is No Cause for Optimism,’” writes Wesleyan University professor Andrew Szegedy-Maszak in a compelling essay that will accompany “A Body in Fukushima,” a combined photography, video and performance art work that will make its debut on the Middletown campus in February.

The exhibition features the photographs of Bill Johnston and the performance art of Eiko Otake, Wesleyan faculty who have collaborated for a number of years on seminars that examine the human cost of environmental degradation. Otake has just begun a three-year appointment as visiting artist in dance and professor in the College of East Asian Studies, while Johnston is a longtime professor of history and East Asian studies. This exhibition is an expansion of an enterprise entitled “Bodies in Places,” which began with Otake’s solo performances in Philadelphia’s bustling 30th Street Station. Fukushima offered a parallel universe that she hoped she might illuminate, she said.

In two separate trips last year, Otake and Johnston toured the evacuated region, traversing the now-abandoned rail line and taking in sights of ravaged vacant towns and fields. Immersed in this modern-day Pompeii, they found the detritus of lives that had been uprooted, with the only remaining human enterprise the cleanup crews in hazmat suits, bagging contaminated soil in a perverse kind of busywork.

In more than 70 photographs, Otake takes on the character of everyman/everywoman, channeling the devastation all around her through gesture, emotion and the barest of cultural references. “By placing my body in these places, I thought of the generations of people who used to live there. I danced so as not to forget,” she said.

Kristin Nord