copyright presentation

At April this year, I installed two chairs in the grassy area near the pregnant woman statue for three hours, I sat in one of them while anyone can sit opposite me, and we stare at each other's eyes in our utmost presence. This is the performance art that I made for my art design class, and  it had an unexpected and heartfelt effect on both me and my audiences.  Wait a second? what are you talking about?  Well, I know we the topic is copyright. Just like your reaction, I never associated my performance with the copyright infringement before last EIT class.

This performance art is called Artist is Present, originally performed by Marina Abramovic.  According to law, the copyright law first takes effect over an intellectual work when it is fixed in tangible medium, which pushes me to the verge of copyright infringement. But in my case, it's trick to tell whether I violated the rule or law. While it's virtually impossible to get permission from Marina Abramovic, I have two factors that may justify myself. 

The first factor is whether it's my own content. Everything becomes ambiguous and trick in the art. While the form of my performance art was inspired by and identical with that of Marina, it's largely different. Now I understand why the art professor asked me to write a paper to address differences between mine and Marina's. In that paper, I drew seven sound differences. 

The second factor is whether I am under fair use. Marina's art is a spiritual and educational work, and my intention was the personal experience, in another word, the self-education. The nature of original work and copying is far from profitable. 

Jason commended copyright as the stimulus to the intellectualism,but the confusion of whether an copy is infringement and the strict rule of infringement can prevent people from the experience and learning. For example, if I knew my performance art was on the verge of infringement beforehand, I may re-consider whether to do it and probably missed the profound experience. 

my experience of Copyright by Will Lin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.