From The IP Kat:
Do the viewers of digital contents have a reasonable expectation for verisimilitude, namely something that has the appearance of truth, in what they observe on-line? I am not referring to the genre of “reality shows”, where this Kat assumes that viewers recognize that “reality” is a relative term, and the ultimate result is fashioned by those who create and produce the program. Rather, I mean a situation where the viewer is attracted to these contents precisely because he or she believes that that they are not being mediated.
. . . .
Consider the story of Amalia Ulman. In connection with the publication of the book, “Excellences & Perfections”, a blog post recently published on cnn.com, written by Alicia Eler and entitled “Amalia Ulman’s Instagram art hoax exposed the flaws in selfie culture”, recalls for us the great stir that Ulman created in 2014 in connection with her presentation of “Excellences & Perfections” on Instagram.
What Ulman, a young artist born in Argentina and having later lived in Spain did, was to present via postings on Instagram, largely through selfies, her life as a young woman ‘on the go’ in Los Angeles. Ulman’s project began innocuously enough, with her first post, which consisted of the phrase “Part I” together with the caption, “Excellences & Perfections”. The post received 28 likes. She went on to recount her day-by-day trials and tribulations, chronicling such things as the trauma of a lost boyfriend, pole-dancing classes, breast-enhancement surgery, posing in skimpy lingerie, escorting, this and more, augmented by emotive textual commentary, all against the background of being an “It girl” in Los Angeles.
In doing so, Ulman was being told that she was destroying her career as a “serious” artist. Au contraire–nearly five months after the first post, Ulman uploaded one last post, consisting of a black and white image of a rose, which was captioned—“The End”. During that time, she had attracted 90,000 avid followers to her Instagram site, enthusiastically waiting for each next installment of her personal saga. Far from destroying her career, she had succeeded in drawing more and more attention to herself.
Except that it was not really her personal story. Soon after her last post, Ulman announced that it had all been one great staged performance. In Ulman’s words—
“Everything was scripted. I spent a month researching the whole thing. There was a beginning, a climax and an end. I dyed my hair. I changed my wardrobe. I was acting: it wasn’t me.”
It was all (or nearly all) either made-up or staged.
. . . .
But when it was all over, and the truth of her project came out, the response to Ulman’s performance took a bifurcated route. On the one hand, the art world saw it as a pioneering form of performance art within the context of social media, so much so that The Telegraphdescribed Ulman, in an article entitled “Is this the first Instagram masterpiece?”, as now being “feted as one of the sensations of contemporary art.”
. . . .
All well and good, no? Not exactly, because while Ulman had become the darling of the world of art commentary, she also became the object of anger among at least some of her Instagram followers. They, having become so invested in Ulman’s Instagram narrative, now felt deceived, like a consumer who becomes an avid fan of a certain brand, only to find out that the branded product is not what it had appeared to be.
. . . .
Surely there was no partnership between Ulman and the on-line viewers of her Instagram performance. Indeed, this was the very point of the project—to gain the audience’s trust and enthusiastic emotive involvement with her largely make-believe narrative, where the final punch line was— “Just kidding”.
In Ulman’s own words—
“The idea was to experiment with fiction online using the language of the internet.”
Which brings this Kat back to a version of his original question. Do users of on-line contents have any legitimate expectation of verisimilitude and, if that expectation is not met, do they have a legitimate claim that they were deceived?
Link to the rest at The IP Kat
PG’s version of the question in the title of the OP and this post: “Do people walking down the street in Manhattan have any legitimate expectation of verisimilitude from the panhandlers who approach them, asking for money?”
He suggests that “online” and “on the street” are equivalent in many more ways than one.
My first day on the job as a lawyer, they sat me down for training, and the first thing they said was, “Everybody lies. Including your client. Your job is to make sure your client’s lies do not affect your case.”
That was the most important thing I learned at the firm.
Whether viewers are entitle to anything or not will have no bearing on whether they get upset with the artist for playing them for a fool. It’s much like the right to free speech. You have the right to say almost anything you want, but can’t make other people listen. As the saying goes: burn me once…
Viewers of some woman’s daily diary are entitled to nothing.
Why would anyone expect any truth in what they read, see, or hear on an unsupervised internet?
Grow up. Learn to discern. Check sources. Ask the question: “Does it make sense?”
This is the era of ‘reality’ TV and fake news. No reputation is standing behind the ‘content.’
If this past year hasn’t burned that into your soul, you’re not paying attention.
Just so. I save my annoyance for the grocery store, where I have to search for the fine print to discover whether something is made out of critters with hooves (as it should be), or out of critters with wings (horrible stuff). Or worse, not even critters, but stuff they dug out of the ground or chopped off the stalk.
Oh, and I suppose I’ll need to start watching for “food” made out of creepy-crawly things too – they are really pushing the “insect replacements” in some places.
Don’t ever believe that “bacon” is actually bacon until you’ve found that fine print.
PG, your comment about panhandlers is dead on. I’ve come across all forms of street theatre in my life.
– What she did was no different than this.
How this artist fantasyland became a New Mexico moneymaker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ldy8EbKQU
What is deeply disturbing about the original article is the nonsense that the copyright should extend to the user as well.
[quote]
The question that arises is whether, as a performer via the Instagram platform, Ulman owed something more to her audience. In the related context of copyright, Professor Niva Elkin Koren has argued for the recognition of a user’s rights. She writes (in the Abstract to “Copyright in a Digital Ecosystem: A User-Rights Approach”) —
“A user-rights approach holds that permissible uses under copyright law should be articulated and treated as rights…. [T]his approach shifts the locus of copyright analysis from author’s rights to the creative process, emphasizing the role of users as partners in promoting copyright objectives. Rather than being “parasites” that benefit — unjustly — from limits on the just rewards of authors, users actively participate in promoting the creation, dissemination and use of cultural works. A user-rights approach further suggests that to achieve its goals, copyright law should be drafted, interpreted and applied in ways that consider the rights and duties of both users and authors.”
[/quote]
– The audience has no rights. Not even to be entertained. HA!
Over the decades we have all seen how Shrill Fans have felt “entitled” to the author’s time and attention. There is many a time when some Shrill Fan has declared that, “We made you successful, so you owe us.”
When I watch the special features on DVDs, they often go to some convention where people are doing Cosplay. They will dress up as characters from books and movies.
I can think of nothing so terrifying as coming across people dressed as the characters from the books I publish.
No. You have no expectation of honesty or truth from anyone. Not your spouse, not the news, not the people you meet on the street, and certainly not random Instagram people you follow. You may want the truth, but you can want in one hand…