Suzanne Vega at Create 2011
on June 18th, 2011
Suzanne Vega at CREATE, a symposium on artist’s rights, and monetizing the internet. CLICK HERE for more info and videos, including the panel on which I appeared. Suzanne sang her new song Solitaire, an amusing piece about computer addiction (and boy could I relate,) her signature work Tom’s Diner, and delivered the keynote speech at the event.
Suzanne Vega is hosting the public radio series 13 Days When Music Changed Forever, a series about classical musical revolutions—about the composers, compositions, and musical movements that changed the way people heard, or thought about, music.
Her new albums feature reinterpretations of her extensive catalogue of songs. Available in several editions, including deluxe and MP3 download.
She is awesome!
Amazing question at the end about “collecting”. It really hits the mark and I’m sorry she really didn’t have a more thoughtful answer. It speaks directly to the “unique experience” part of the challenge. There is a distinct difference between “having” to fill your collection versus enjoying and appreciating the creator’s work.
Yes, there’s a good deal of hoarding of digital material on the internet, grabbing things just to have them as opposed to actually coming to an event, a human being, or a piece of work to have an experience. Some see music or books as content, all of it more or less equal…a book is a book is a book.
The artist (well, some of them anyway,) sees the final work as an extension of themselves, and a unique and personal experience.
That is why the phrase “It’s just 0′s and 1′s” wrankles. Nothing about the human experience is just 0′s and 1′s. The reduction of the experience to data is an attempt to dehumanize, which makes it easier to dehumanize everything associated with the web, from art and entertainment to the way we interact with one another online.
Every keystroke is a moment of someone’s life. Every item exchanged is a representation of life.
Respect it.
There is no data, no code, that has any meaning at all without the human element. It’s not just 0′s and 1′s, because we’re not, and we are the meaning.
And meaning has importance to us as humans.
I know it’s a drag to haul mentions of douches into discussions, but…. I think it is the significance of meaning that Rob Granito absolutly does not understand. He does not get why people are upset when they find out that the picture they liked objectively speaking and paid money to own is shown to be a copy of some noted artist. The knowledge of his copying changes the meaning of the picture (and in fact devalues it).
I could paint a copy of my favorite painting in the world, Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. I would then get some satisfaction and pleasure from it, because of the meaning of the original, and the time I would spend following Van Gogh’s strokes – because that physical actions I would make would give me a sort of experiencial connection to Van Gogh. BUT … anyone seeing my painting would know it was a copy (I certainly couldn’t afford to own the original). All they would see would be a copy of a famous painting – and I doubt anyone would pay as much for that copy as they might for any of my original artwork. And that is as it should be. The meaning of the copy to me is not transferable.
Those who deny meaning (“It’s just 0′s and 1′s”) dehumanize all of us… and for what? Money? Money is only a medium of exchange. It has no other value. To have money merely to have more money than anyone else is a worthless pursuit. (Of course, I admit I would like to have more of that medium of exchange.
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I love your comments here. Context is so important to art, and the dehumanization of art, the attempt to make it a value neutral data issue instead of an essential expression of humanity, is exactly as you say: an attempt to devalue humanity itself.
If you can reduce everything to 0′s and 1′s, then you play into the hands of billionaire corporations whose sole purpose is to acquire your work without paying for it, and to allow the consumer to distance themselves from the human who makes the work. The work isn’t important, the means of distribution is. Advertising supported browsers are more important than what they convey.
And if they can reduce art to data, with all data reduced to value neutral, they never have to worry about doing evil, because there is no evil.
Hence the hollow company motto.
Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters said that as part of the release of their new album, he cut up part of one of the Master tapes and put pieces into the case of the album to give fans a tangible piece of the music, to show where it came from. He actually used the phrase “it’s not just zeroes and ones”.
Scribbler, I have a print of “Starry Night” on one of my walls, next to a print of a page from Da Vinci’s notebooks. I agree that there’s more of a connection to seeing the copy of the artists’ work as opposed to if I had bought an “original” from someone passing it off as authentic.
I don’t buy signed books unless it’s from the writer/artist themselves. I know some want it for either bragging rights or to later flip for a higher price but to me, getting something signed is part of the experience of meeting someone whose work that I admire.
I’m the same way, most of what I have that is signed was made out to me personally by people I met or know.
I have a signed LOTR film poster, and almost every signature on it is from someone with whom I’ve socialized at shows, exchanged letters, or did some business. An ex acquaintance who was in serious financial and legal trouble tried to sell me a much fancier poster with signatures of almost the entire cast, director etc. It was worth much more than the $450 he was asking (and since he owed me money, I thought it was odd he was trying to get me to buy a poster, but whatever). Anyway, I just didn’t see any point to buying a movie poster when I had one with personal notes and signatures from people whose company I’d enjoyed.
One real treasure though, with no personal connection is an autographed copy of Raintree County. The author committed suicide shortly after he signed it. I bought it for a buck. I didn’t even know it was signed, I just wanted to read it. It took me forever to get the signature authenticated.
It’s almost impossible to get a signed copy of that book. I’m thrilled to have it.
I have two signatures that mean a lot to me. One is from Fred Rogers, who was dining at a hotel where I worked and was kind enough to not mind me being an idiot asking him for an autograph (teenagers, go fig)
The other is from Herb Caen, who was one of my first writing teachers by way of the fact that I read his column almost from the time I could read, and I wanted to be a journalist for the longest time before I settled on fiction. His personalization (on a cocktail napkin, of course) is priceless.
Those two autographs mean more to me than anything I could get off ABE or Ebay, because they were given to me.
I don’t get many things autographed. But when I do, it’s personal to me – at a particular event (Neil Gaiman autographed my paperback copy of American Gods at Mythcon when he was GoH, for instance), or because I know the author. When Christopher Tolkien was Guest of Honor at Mythcon … along time ago, most people had him autograph copies of The Silmarillion. I chose to have him autograph my copy of Unfinished Tales, because it (to me) feature his own work as editor, not just as stand-in for his father.
I have an original piece of Colleen Doran artwork. I love it because it’s a beautiful piece. I love it because of its subject matter (Thanduril). I love it because there are very pleasing memories attached to it — meeting Colleen at Comic Con, looking at it at her table for two days, until I couldn’t bear the thought that someone else would buy it and so I bought it myself! Those are meanings that just cannot be reduced to data.
Heh. I’m on such a kick about “meaning” right now – I’ve been writing some memoir stuff about my parents. Looking back on things I took for granted growing up that mean so much more now.
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(And thanks for the compliment, Colleen!
Oh! And Jeremy, I too have a print of “Starry Night”.
In fact, it’s getting a little bit worn, since I’ve had it since… gosh, I was in my teens. I need to get a new print of it, I think.
I try to get signatures on original art pages that I buy. That’s one of the reasons that I prefer to buy direct from the artist. I feel it gives me a connection to the artist and that it’s not just a financial transaction. Sometimes I forget to ask but most artists love to sign the pages that you buy from them.
A few years ago I bought the complete story to the Secret Origin of Shadow Lass from Tom Mandrake’s rep. I saw Tom at a convention a few months later and showed him the pages and asked for his signature. He asked ‘how many would you like me to sign’. I answered ‘as many as you feel like’. He answered ‘ Stack them up – I’ll sign them all’.
I will cherish each and every one of the signatures on those pages.