Impressive!

Vimeo cartoon version

YouTube cartoon version

The original version on Vimeo

I made these videos for the exhibit “Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms,” which just opened at the Wexner Center for the Arts on the campus of The Ohio State University. It’s the only US showing of this fantastic collection of Andy Warhol’s works.

ArtDaiiy review

Columbus Dispatch on how Wexner got Warhol

Wexner Center information

News: YouTube has launched a new feature called “annotations” that allows user to write text overlays in videos, as well as enable linking within videos to allow you to click through to several different videos. Val’s Art Diary uses the annotations to discuss the Arnolfini Marriage painting. Check it out!

Video here

Valentina’s painting is being auctioned off on ebay to support Aid to Artisans. Bids end on Sunday. Valentina (who is “valsartdiary” on YouTube) reports that she was selected as “Miss YouTube” (unofficial). Here’s the video showing Val creating the painting.

News:  Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout gives a forceful defense here of YouTube, against copyright detractors, all in the name of art and allowing snippets of old footage of great jazz artists on YouTube. 

“In recent months, jazz-loving friends have been sending me YouTube links to videos by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and other celebrated artists, most of them drawn from films of the ’30s and ’40s and TV shows of the ’50s and ’60s. Some of this material is available on DVD, but most of it lingered in limbo until Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, YouTube’s co-founders, made it possible for anyone with a computer to post and view video clips at will. Fascinated by the links unearthed by my friends, I spent the better part of a long weekend trolling through YouTube in search of similar material. When I was done, I’d found hundreds of videos, some extremely rare and all compulsively watchable, posted by collectors from all over the world.”

Teachout recognizes that some of the video clips may be copyrighted, but argues that copyright holders should recognize the benefit of allowing the short clips to be shared.  “As any economist can tell you, supply creates its own demand. Disseminating high-culture TV and radio programming for free via the Web is among the simplest and most cost-effective ways to expand the audience for the fine arts. Every time a Web surfer in South Dakota or South Africa views a YouTube video by Louis Armstrong or Arturo Toscanini, he’s making a discovery that could change his life — not to mention his concert-going and record-buying habits. I can’t think of a better bargain.”

Teachout has created links to the videos on this website.

Analysis:  Dealing with works that are over fifty years old presents an interesting issue.  My guess is that millions of people haven’t ever seen some of these videos, and probably don’t even know they exist.  To the extent that brief clips from these older works on YouTube can make them known, Teachout’s argument has greater purchase.   I wonder if the copyright holders sitting on all these old videos that are probably collecting dust would think to release at least some of them freely to the public, even before the copyrights expire.  Probably not, but it’s worth thinking about.