Article: Artist outraged at ‘plagiarism’ of his sculpture in China

Oh dear... 

Reports in China, including one from state-run media People’s Daily, say a ‘‘stainless steel sculpture in the shape of an oil bubble’’ will be unveiled later this month in Karamay, a city in the far northwestern region of Xinjiang known for its rich oil fields. Work on the sculpture began in 2013, at the site of the city’s first oil well.

Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor

If you follow the link above, you will see that this looks remarkably like "Cloud Gate" which is a sculpture in Chicago create by Anish Kapoor (right). Copying copyrighted works has been something that China has tolerated, but it is sad to see it done on this level.Kapoor is threatening to sue and I hope that he does.

The death of high fidelity?

I remember years ago when Sprint advertised its clarity for phone calls being so incredibly clear that you could hear a pin drop over the phone line (and that was a land line).  The idea was that high fidelity was important and we all wanted phone calls where we could hear everything.  This was also in an era, where people - who could afford to do so - invested in expensive stereo systems for their fidelity. Again, we wanted to hear everything.

The advent of the cell phone led us into an era of lower fidelity, where what we hear is governed by the quality of our phone (and the other person's phone), the telephone network, and the cell tower that the phone is using. The cell tower not only impacted the call quality, but also the features that the phone had available. Didn't get that voice mail message right away? It could have been the fault of the cell tower.

Over the years, our phones have gotten better and they do more including the ability to watch videos and listen to music. We can also stream that content onto our computers. Those streaming services have replaced our dependence on stereos and gotten us used to sound and videos that aren't high fidelity. In "Sorry, Neil Young, but you're wrong about streaming music", the author wrote:

Spotify and Apple Music aren't noticeably amazing when it comes to sound quality, but then again, not noticeably bad. And they're so far above the respectability threshold for music listeners that nobody really thinks twice about it. It's pretty much OK for almost everyone.

And from Jay-Z and Neil Young Won’t Make Streaming Music Better:

Numerous tech sites have tested the player, and have concluded that the average listener really can’t tell the difference between the Pono and other digital listening devices. Essentially, unless you have the right headphones, or stereo system, you’re paying $400 for a digital music player that’ll look weird in your pocket.

Yup...acceptable. We've proven that we don't need or want high fidelity, or at least don't want it all the time. We're comfortable watching a low quality video on our phones and when the content warrants we'll watch a movie in IMAX. (Hint, most people don't go to IMAX, so lower quality is generally fine.)

In 2007, the report Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get Into the Flow was released, which contained a recommendation about digitizing for access, which meant not being as selective about quality. Sometimes lower quality is good enough. Our use of photographic and video media since then has demonstrated that low quality can indeed be acceptable.

Is the death of high fidelity coming?  Nope. We do value high quality video, audio and photography...but not all the time. We do have times when that high quality is exactly what we want because we want the finer details. This is just like going to hear a band live, because we want to hear everything. So those people producing high fidelity audio, video and photography need to know that their market isn't totally going away. However, they do need to recognize that the market has shifted. 

Sorry, Neil.

It - Whatever It Is - Must Speak for Itself

San Francisco City Hall

I was speaking to a colleague last week about construction and maintenance that is occurring at Syracuse University. He noted that many people visit the campus when no one is around, and so the campus itself - the buildings and grounds - must be able to "speak" and tell a story. The more I've thought about that conversation, the more I realize that this is true for our digitization programs, our web sites, our brochures...in fact, everything.

Between 1998-2000, I worked on a small demonstration project, where we digitized material related to a group of suffragists in the Rochester, NY area. However, we did not include material from suffragists who had lived in Seneca Falls, NY, even though it was seemingly in the region. Why? Because the project sponsor (a consortium) did not have Seneca Falls in its region. We decided to (1) not directly address the absence of material from Seneca Falls and to (2) provide a description of the project's geographic location in a way that wasn't as informative as it could have been (especially to people outside of the U.S.). In essence, we created a web site that didn't say what people wanted to know and thus didn't truly speak for itself. It was a powerful lesson learned.


Today I find that we all still - intentionally or not - limit what our creations can say or explain on their own. We still do not fully describe what is or isn't available on a web site. We don't tell me how to contact us if they have  question. We put bad signage on our buildings and in our libraries. We figure that people will ask, but forget that people use our materials, sites and buildings (or campuses) when we're not available. (And what if they ask someone who doesn't know?) The inability for it - whatever it is - to provide information on its own could cause people to consider it not worthwhile, and to never come back. Informative descriptions and signage empowers people, and people like feeling empowered so they are more likely to come back.

Consider your project, your web site, your building, your neighborhood - whatever it is - and think about whether it conveys information that people need, even when there is no one around to answer a question. If it doesn't, then you have some work to do.