Copywrong?
Butterfly image: Robert Lang, Origami Insects Vol 2, ed. Makoto Yamaguchi
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One might wonder whether Lang is the genius, or mathematics? Does he borrow from God, from some principle immanent in universe?
His diagram depicted, left, below, “will, when folded by him, turn into a convincing Rhinoceros Beetle”
Of the Rhinosceros beetle or of the butterfly one might ask, as William Blake asked of the Tyger:
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Science, naturally, somewhat believes it has the answer…
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Compare and contrast:
image: Kevin Kelly, from the Technium
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Inappropriately appropriated? The very concepts battle each other into oxymoron fatigue.
The painter Susan Morris borrowed Robert Lang’s beautiful design, itself a WoA — useful bureaucratese devised by a friend of mine for filing Works of Art in a category of their own – to make the painting, also a WoA, depicted above, right.
Morris, it seems to me, takes Lang in a direction pioneered by Frank Stella:
image: Frank Stella, Harran II
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It was Kevin Kelly who juxtaposed Lang and Morris in the image above — in what I’d have claimed was a WoA in my DoubleQuotes format if I’d done it myself — so as to discuss copyright.
Or more precisely, copy — right or wrong?
Nature copies, without apology, with beauty – and, in the case of certain poisonous spores, without remorse. And are we not nature?
Here’s Leonardo again:
Don’t underestimate this idea of mine, which calls to mind that it would not be too much of an effort to pause sometimes to look into these stains on walls, the ashes from the fire, the clouds, the mud, or other similar places. If these are well contemplated, you will find fantastic inventions that awaken the genius of the painter to new inventions, such as compositions of battles, animals, and men, as well as diverse composition of landscapes, and monstrous things, as devils and the like. These will do you well because they will awaken genius with this jumble of things.
To study, to copy, to derive: this awakens genius. Who am I to disagree?
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Curtis Gale Weeks:
June 29th, 2012 at 11:14 pm
Would be of some use to contemplate the modern obsession with originality with the same detail you use here for copying.
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And then, the obsession with proper names, unique individuals associated with “an originality.”
The Smell Test. | The Image:
June 30th, 2012 at 5:25 pm
[…] A friend would give me a Search Engine Friendly URL, such as my CMS does, instead of an unfriendly one like: https://zenpundit.com/?p=10300. […]
Charles Cameron:
June 30th, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Hi Larry:
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There are benefits and drawbacks to both “search engine friendly” and “unfriendly” URLs. I’ve been thinking lately how glad I am that our URLs are simply post numbers (zenpundit.com/?p=####) rather than post titles (zenpundit.com/2012/06/29/William_Lind_on_the_Taliban’s_Operational_Art), because I like the ability to edit my post titles in my overall editing process (which is often many layers deep), and the supposedly “friendly” date_and_title_with_all_the_word_spaces_underlined system makes that more difficult, since I have to edit not only the title itself but also the URL with its pesky underlines each time.
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On the other hand, I can see that if search engines base their results heavily on post titles and not on the contents, the system I like for ease of editing may be less than helpful in terms of SEO.
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I’ll go with whatever Zen provides…
Charles Cameron:
June 30th, 2012 at 6:38 pm
Curtis:
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If I run across the right materials to shape something up along those lines, I surely will. FWIW, I tend to favor the old idea of “genius” as something one listens to or ignores, rather than something one is or isn’t.