ABSTRACTIn this paper I critically analyze the work of Shepard Fairey, the street artist better known as OBEY, as a multimodal discourse. After introducing the notion of street art, I analyze Fairey’s aesthetics, inspired in Pop Art and Soviet Constructivism, as well as his accounts on his own art, in order to unveil his ideology. I then discuss a particular case, concerning the pastiche of the Che Guevara’s image. I will show that the seemingly subversive nature of OBEY’s work, is (...) nothing more than marketing. Consequently, by industrially producing and commodifiying dissent, OBEY banalizes and deactivates it. According to the dichotomy between oppositional and emergent discourses, I conclude that OBEY enacts only an oppositional behavior. Moreover, by ‘manufacturing propaganda dissent’, OBEY performs protest, but in doing so he contributes to perpetuating the system he says he fights against. (shrink)

3D printing has surely come of age. Widely available, and integrated into many computer-based design and animation curricula, it almost seems to have become a simple extension of what we already had in 2D printing. A 2D image acts as the basis of a sign, which, perhaps upon further twists of the semiotic spiral, may lead one to cognition of a 3D physical pipe. But then, perhaps not. And only in a rare case would the physical pipe in turn find (...) use as a sign of the aforesaid 2D image. With 3D printing, this order of semiosis no longer applies. Since 3D printing mainly occurs as a non-mass-production manufacturing technique, a 3D-printed artifact acts as a physical object – and generally it is printed to act precisely in that manner. It is a being that has an ontic difference from its digital source. The case of 3D printing provides an intriguing, complex, case study for semiosis, since the printables move in and out of the virtual and physical. (shrink)

This article aims to outline the fundamental concepts that characterize blockchain technology in order to allow for a better understanding of how it is structured within the protocols which govern the internet, but also to portray the devices which allow its re-appropriation by capitalist culture. The theoretical foundations of this article are supported by a medio-archaeological position that allows us to acquire a technical look at the blockchain, but also to weave historical and aesthetic parallels in order to understand the (...) NFT phenomenon, at the core of current economic issues and speculations. (shrink)

The word ‘genius’ is often associated with the idea that artistic creativity is entirely a matter of an involuntary sort of inspiration visited upon the individual artist. My aim in referring to cinematic genius is not, however, to defend that dubious thesis, but to direct attention to the remarkable artistic achievements that some film-makers, working individually or in collaborative teams, have managed to bring about in their intentional and often painstaking creation of cinematic works. Genius, as I understand it, is (...) the exceptional ability to do something difficult, such as the intentional making of an innovative and valuable work of art. My central claim in what follows is that our longstanding and legitimate interest in manifestations of this kind of skill has important implications for a number of interrelated issues in the philosophy of art, and in particular, for some of the questions taken up in the ever-expanding literature on the ontology of works of art. (shrink)