A little about copy art

Last week we had a presentation about copy art. I didn't understand some of the information that was presented so I decided to research a little bit about this topic.

What is Copy Art?

Well, I had originally thought that copy art refers to anything the artist copies based on an existing piece and calls it his own, kind of like appropriation. Apparently I had misunderstood this concept...Copy Art is apparently something that is made using a photocopier as the main medium. The artist makes use of the light and distance of the original piece along with other modifications to create a 'new' image when photocopied.

What I think about it...

I remember in class, Carol posed the question whether the artist or the machine is the main creator of Copy Art. I would say that the artist remains as the main creator of the piece although it is the machine that does the physical manipulation. This is because the decisions made in the process are by the artist. Without these decisions and instructions, the machine wouldn't be capable of producing a meaningful piece (takes us back to the question of meaning).

Another question that was posed by Carol is whether Copy Art would live on in the future. My answer to this is definitely because its method is interchangeable with many types of technology that are present today, providing artists with new ways to experiment. In addition, all art is Copy Art in a way because art itself is a copy of our experience of the physical (and sometimes virtual nowadays) of the world. Copying something that is already copied is right in every way as it expresses our experience of the copied object. However, my ideas about cloning remain reserved as it is too complicated to discuss it right now.