Information Wants to be Free! a News Item by pluta (jane curtis) Amber Webster, creator of Cliptart, an E-works clip art website, talks about how issues of copyright, consumer culture and mainstream media representation of our bodies inspired her to make a collection of alternative images to share. Cliptart (submitted by pluta.) everyday chick (submitted by pluta.) fabric scraps (submitted by pluta.) barcode the world (submitted by pluta.) What is a clip art site? A clip art site is an electronic library of images on the world wide web on the internet. Because it's on the world wide web, theoretically, anyone who has access to a computer and a modem can get images. What inspired you to make a clip art site? I was introduced to the idea by a friend, and it seemed like a really good one. Firstly, I collect things, and pictures are one of the things that I collect. I have folders of crap lying around not getting used , so the idea of having images like photos that i'd taken, that i can then scan in and then give away to someone was really good. I dont' have to hold onto them anymore, and i really believe in things being useful. Secondly, a feeling I've had for ages is that marginalised people, like young people, women, whatever, are people whose bodies and ideas don't tend to get represented by dominant culture accurately. We really need a source of images that are accurate of ourselves and are inspiring. This is thinking of the clip art site as being something that is devised to solve a problem. When you're doing layout for a zine or a student publication or something like that , you might look in magazines and go "but all these women look the same" , they're all skinny, and have high cheekbones and stuff, and think "i don't really want to reproduce these images". There is so much more to what women look like and to what men look like. Lots of very attractive men don't have washboard stomachs, and they have this physical beauty that's really different from that, just being a human being. The notion of the Cliptart site is to produce some images that speak to this reality of how beautiful different bodies are, and to share those images with the rest of the world, to get other people to send their images, which leads to the other motivating factor of creating community through sharing images, and making connections with people in different parts of the world, which is one of the strengths of the internet. It's not so much about information, but also about meeting people in that space. Did you see the Cliptart site as also filling a gap in respect to other clip art sites on the web? Absolutely. Most of the other clip art sites contain pictures that people have drawn or digitally created, which I think is cool, but I really like real people, which is why there's lots of photographs in there. I hope that there'll be more photographs that people will send in to the site. There is also a sensitivity that people who send us photos should really ask the people whose photographs they are, because they could be used anywhere, for almost anything. I did a whole bunch of research as to what the legal situation with photographs was, and legally if you take a photo you can do what you want with it. If someone models for you and you pay them, then they need to sign a release form for you to use it, but then the situation is for them to sign away all their rights with no knowledge with what happens with their image. I'm not sure if it's different with snaps that you take, but definitely the feeling is that it's the rights of the photographer, in terms of copyright, that's really important - not the subject of the photo, which i think is really off, and is an issue which is important to be sensitive to. Cliptart is explicitly anti-copyright, what does this mean? I'm not really in love with that term, I use it because it's reasonably easy to understand, and anyone would have an intuitive notion of what "anti-copyright" is - the notion of being opposed to the idea of ownership, the type of ownership that leads to the control of images, and as an extension of that, ownership of ideas and information. The feeling I have behind anti-copyright is about what it's for, because I don't really like thinking of things like "I'm anti-this and anti-that", I like to think of what I'm in favour of - sharing and the ways that community is created through sharing... And exchange without money involved? Exchange without money involved and building non-cash economies. It's very important to understand that anti-copyright doesn't mean fucking people over. In fact, to negotiate in a non-cash economy requires a certain level of sensitivity that's not provided in a cash economy. Needing to negotiate and get clear that it is ok to use something from the people who own the pictures. Once you have that permission, anyone can come and use that image, as long the images are credited if necessary, such as with artwork. Did you encounter other legal issues regarding copyright when you were making Cliptart, such as in regard to using images from magazines and zines? Yeah, it's quite interesting that there are lots of things that are in the public domain, like advertising, that people can't actually use. To do something with the Coke symbol, like to change it to "crap" instead of "coke" would be technically slanderous, because they own that. This is a really good example of people owning things they shouldn't. Sometimes copyright is used to suppress critique of products which, considering there's so much crap out there, is a really important thing. There's some stuff on the site, like the "McMurder" images that legally could be problematic, but that's ok. What were the processes involved in making the site? Applying to eworks for some money because I really wanted to buy a camera and learn how to develop photos, because it's quite expensive getting photos developed, and it's a really beautiful form of image taking. I thought black and white photos would be really useful for zines, and for photocopied stuff. Then there was going through my photographs, deciding what i wanted to use, talking to other people about the site, and publicising it, collecting, scanning, scanning 3D objects and fabrics - i'm not sure what the copyright issue with fabric is, i'm sure there is one...well, it's out there now! I also organised workshops of taking photos which was really fun, getting people using the camera and posing for pictures. I'd like to do more of that, because when I pick up a photographic journal, like those glossy ones , I think "why have all the men got huge biceps?" and "why do all the women look like ballet dancers or runners?" They're all really athletic, and I just find that it's so boring, SO boring! There's heaps of different human bodies that are really beautiful. There were lots of time constraints because of stuff I was doing at the time, I think Cliptart is something that is like a little beginning - I have hopes and dreams for Cliptart to expand and get lots of other people to submit images, and if there's a CGI programmer out there who'd like to donate their time so that we can set up a system where people can submit images directly through the web, like in LOUD's Noise! site, please, please! Get in touch! Also, something i'd really like to do is to have photos of men and women's genitalia, i think they're something that is really underepresented in dominant culture. They're all different and quite beautiful within themselves. It could also be an educational part of Cliptart where male and female genitals could have appropriate labels, so people could check them out and go "oh wow, i'm really normal" and that's really beautiful. How do you envisage the site being used? When I was doing it I came to an understanding that because a computer screen is 72 dpi [dots per inch] which is really low quality resolution, that to save images in such a low resolution format may not be really useful to someone who has a 600 dpi printer and who can print really high quality images. I have a feeling that that not's really what Cliptart is about. Maybe we tend towards the low tech, low end of things, for people who will be photocopying, doing web stuff, who don't really care if it's a higher resolution. That's a limitation of the site. You can still do lots of interesting things with the images. Something i'm really interested in is low dpi, how grungy the image can be, and still be recognisable, like really grainy photographs. Sometimes an obsession with higher and higher quality is not that interesting, you can do interesting things with low quality images, as the image starts to break apart, you see really interesting stuff. How can people submit to the site? At the moment people can submit by emailing me and sending their images as attachments, as jpeg or gif files. If people already have images up on a website, they can send me the address and specify which images are for sharing. And please don't bother sending me stuff you don't have the owner's permission to use, because i just think it's rude. What appealed to you about applying for an e-works grant? I liked it because it just seemed easy, and I could just write down my aims and process fairly simply - I didn't have to get really paranoid that I wasn't sophisticated enough to get a grant. As a criticism of LOUD publicity generally, and more specifically regarding grants, I know I have access to the internet but I know I am a privileged person to have that. Most of the information about LOUD was distributed on the internet. It did say "please tell this to people you know" and that's fair enough, but it also would have been useful to have information in hangouts of youth culture, like music shops or whatever. I already knew about LOUD because a friend of mine was doing stuff with it, and I'm part of a youth arts organisation, but most people who make art aren't. Back to the grant, I like the fact that it was going to be part of a whole other program of stuff, because one of the main aims of Cliptart is for it to be used and for it to grow. I was really excited that it would probably get publicity from LOUD, it's really easy to make stuff for the web and no one knows it's there. Already people are emailing me with images to share which is so thrilling. It made me feel really happy! So, more sharing! Related Web Site Created on Fri, 9 Jan 1998 and last modified on Wed, 14 Jan 1998.

LOUDonline - http://www.loud.net.au - Fri, 10 Apr 1998