| ------------------------------------ September 2003 FULL version - SHORT version The spirit of culture has been hijacked - or not, as the nature of communication is not to be proprietary. The uses of archetypical moments endow its possessors with the power and facility of shorthand communication thus creating the ICON. Images and myths as icons can be thought of as metaphors of the current strata in history as we know it. Exploring the nature of art and communication as a structure, artists create a language that transcends cultural barriers and consumes the effect of history and current socio-political structures as a fluid medium that is replayed/remixed in our daily attitudes. The structure of iconic history plays a large role in the need for familiarity. The appropriation of icons and myths recreate the icon's intrinsic power to communicate anything from one to a multitude of meanings. The action of copying, stealing, or sharing reconstructs information in a relative style to open up new ways in which a story is told. Considering that the Icon embodies the past, present, and future, the use of appropriation, editing, and distribution of iconic figures, situations, and mutating identities, allows each evolving icon to assume the "I", the self in the created or replicated narrative. Myth and tactical appropriation, which build the serial through repetition, create a context for the information being used to empower the icon. The use of ethnographic icons in relation to the "The idol"-an ornament of a person, pictorial study of a person, and image of a person-and its reuse of media by appropriating the signs, symbols and historical contexts, create a relationship with contemporary societies' associative use of myths and contemporary icons. In turn, this leads to the fusion of cultural mainstreaming through economic structures, personal fantasy and identity. ... ... Carlo Zanni pulls back and uses classical oil paintings of desktop icons and software logos to recall the renaissance of portraiture and landscape painting. Documenting the extended landscape of the net, the desktop, and software logos, Zanni examines the simultaneous meanings of the icon and the software logo, images used as tools to create the many social contexts we useto exchange information. In Zanni's "landscape, Napster logo" The icon paintings generate the uses of the product as a tool and the replication of the logo as a contemporary icons, the software itself used peer-to-peer software enabling us to down load freely commercial products, the rebel in the market, the rogue affecting the monetary value of information. Napster quickly became a celebrity a rebel with a cause, just like James dean or Marilyn Monroe, making reference to pop use of the celebrity as product and media devoted primarily to the circulation of products. Pop art made use of commodity in the celebrity; marketing of commercial product, and the celebrity implied the use of graphics design and socio-economic strategies in the art market. Now the commercial market uses art history to validate its products. An example of iconic art history used in the commercial market is Adobe software logo for "Illustrator" which uses Sandro Botticelli's "Venus" as a logo. The icon is very important, lending validity to the product in recalling classical art masters and using of mythological icon Venus to lend many entrances to the product, as if reassuring the user that you too could be Botticelli if you use this tool, or allow you to be seduced by the power of Venus. As is, the desktop icon is used to identify what is available to you. Zanni borrows back the commercial logo of illustrator for his painting "Landscape, Illustrator". All icons serve a purpose as tool to generate a starting point for the next phase of the story. Carlo Zanni's paintings are portraits and landscapes of the plastic reality. The software icons, desktop, and P2P platforms all set forth the questioning of society's placement of these icons in relation to the personal. As never before has the present been so loaded with the past and future. Considering the animated present we live in, Zanni and other artists of his school look at the icons as starting points for communication. The artists participating in COPY IT, STEAL IT, SHARE IT, claim the cultural transference of information as non-proprietary. Cultural icons as archetypical structures reflect the effects of cultural systems as a source of knowledge to generate an on going contemporary dialogue. No one, and nothing, is excluded as we and it are all part of this process of history. In that the gesture of borrowing is intact in the practice of communication as a transfer and exchange of ideas from one culture to another. My actions lend to yours, so continue to copy, steal, and share. Michele Thursz, Post Media Network * "Copy it Steal it Share it" Andy Deck, 2003,
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