More Support for Giving It Away
I was in San Francisco this weekend to help my mom out with her exhibition at the Ceramics Annual of America. It was a beautiful show, with many talented artists, and I noticed a lot of the visitors taking photos of the work on display. I asked my mom if it bothered her when people took photos of her work. She said that some artists get really upset about it, but that she personally doesn’t mind at all.
Her reasoning is this: the work she does is so uniquely hers, that there’s really no way anyone could copy her. She can’t even duplicate her own work. There’s no way the photos that are taken are good enough to be of commercial quality, so really, the images are for personal use. There is an off chance that someone might post a photo of her work online, but really that’s just publicity.
So there’s another artist’s vote for giving it away. While I’m sure there are exceptions, it seems that most agree, the benefits of exposure far outweigh the risks of piracy.
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It’s a difficult question, and clearly (I think) one that exposes the distinction between the artistic side and the business side. From the art point of view, the more viewers/listeners/readers the better. But obviously it would be nice to make money doing the work, and piracy eats away at the existing revenue models. Maybe those models inevitably need to change anyway…but perhaps the fear shouldn’t be on an individual basis, but for the “industry” as a whole.
I don’t know if that made sense — I’m only here for the gift card.