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British Museum Rides the Great NFT Wave with Hokusai Digital ‘Postcards’! - WB 1st Oct 2021
84 Plays3 years ago
Welcome to Watching Brief. As the name implies, each week Marc (Mr Soup) & Andy Brockman of the Pipeline (Where history is tomorrow's news) cast an eye over news stories, topical media and entertainment and discuss and debate what they find.
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/archaeosoup
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0:00 Introduction
02:05 Rolling News…
18:14 British Museum Hokusai NFTs
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Link of the Week:
‘Hi-Res Hokusai for Free’:
***
Links:
Stewartby Historic Brickworks Chimneys Demolished:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-58665319
Listed Birkenhead Bath Reopened to Public After Restoration:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-58679332
Grant Shapps Unchallenged on A303 Judgement by Transport Committee (Stonehenge Alliance):
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=333856325159981
Transport Committee - Weds 22nd September 2021:
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/3685f89e-91a7-4ca4-ac9f-bcc328bd1744
***
British Museum Enters World of NFTs with Digital Hokusai Postcards:
The British Museum is Minting NFTs of its Art - Because of a Cold LinkedIn Message from a Start-Up:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-industry-news-september-27-2021-2013772
What are NFTs, and What is their Environmental Impact?
https://earth.org/nfts-environmental-impact/
Dr. Bendor Grosvenor Twitter:
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/1441445985230655492
The Reproduction Fee Hustle:
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2017/11/20/the-reproduction-fee-hustle
The End of Museum Image Fees?
https://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/5362_The_end_of_museum_image_fees
Hokusai’s Imagination Leaps off the Page At British Museum:
https://londonist.com/london/museums-and-galleries/hokusai-at-british-museum
Sutton Hoo: Photos of 1939 Excavation Digitised:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Soupcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Soupcast, coming to you from Archaeosoup Towers. By popular demand, we're taking selected videos from the Archaeosoup back catalogue and bringing them to you as convenient podcasts. As the name implies, with Archaeosoup you get a bit of everything thrown into the pot. Archaeology, discussion, humour and debate. You can find out more at archaeosoup.com.
Birthday Celebration and Watching Brief
00:00:28
Speaker
So sit back, relax and enjoy our hearty helping of Archaeosoup.
00:00:38
Speaker
Oh, and welcome back to Watching Brief for the week of the 27th of September 2021. I'm joined this morning by an, as ever, industrious and hard-working Mr. Andy Brockman. We're up early so that we can celebrate Mrs. Soup's birthday today, so we're recording a little bit earlier than perhaps we're both comfortable with. We're sort of like newborn puppies blinking in the sunlight, aren't we, Andy?
00:01:06
Speaker
To call in a phrase that we used elsewhere in a different context, me being up early, it's the first of October, so it's a bit of an October surprise. Exactly. You're like the inverse budget punks of Tony Phil, the groundhog.
00:01:26
Speaker
Actually, it's just, it's just stopped doing it. Pugs to Tony Phil would have loved it, it's just stopped pissing down here in London. So yeah, whether we're in for another 40 days or the goodness knows, I hope not, we're as gloomy enough as it is. But anyway, indeed we go. Anyway, regardless of how awake we are, our watching brief continues, does it not? Our ongoing mission to examine the archaeological news of the week and present it here for you guys for continuing discussion below.
Celtic Films News Teaser
00:01:52
Speaker
And what we should say is that the big or one of the big
00:01:56
Speaker
news stories of the week is with regards to a company called Celtic Films and we're not ignoring that but we're saving them for for the muppet of the month I think there's going to be an extra special little little something coming out of that story but also you know I mean as it stands I have to stop you we can't talk about this we've all been blocked
00:02:23
Speaker
Exactly, we have all been blocked. Whether you know it or not, you probably have been blocked, folks, at home by Celtic class. But we will come to that, don't worry. We have not missed that story this week.
00:02:35
Speaker
But actually we're going to start today's watching brief with a few news lines.
Historic Chimneys Controversy
00:02:40
Speaker
One of them initially actually is relevant to what we were talking about last week with the Dorman Long Tower collapse, well sorry demolition, it didn't fall down by itself. And this actually has a little hint of irony doesn't it Andy?
00:02:57
Speaker
irony in Goldie and Bronzy. It's a story that broke a few days ago. It involves another demolition of historic industrial heritage. In this case, it's a place called Stewart B in Bedfordshire. Stewart B was actually named after the family that owned probably the biggest brickworks in the country. The site of the former
00:03:24
Speaker
Rick works is now going to be redeveloped as 1000 homes in a business park. It's which is which is fine. You know, as we've said many times before, archaeologists aren't against change and we need home and we and people need homes. However,
00:03:47
Speaker
that the issue here was that of the many chimneys that were once part of the brickworks, we know again which formed the identity basically in this place, four were left and they have just been basically blown up.
00:04:05
Speaker
The argument was that they were a potential danger in high winds. There were four of them left. One of them was branded Stewart B with the place name. The argument was that they were a potential danger in high winds and a potential danger to a railway line that passes nearby.
00:04:23
Speaker
Um, historic England said that there was no need for complete demolition, but the local get council gave planning consent, um, for the destruction of the chimneys, uh, on the provider that quotes a replica was built as part of the new development. Okay. Okay. Um, it's interesting because looking at the one that the main one, the one with Stuart be written on it, that that's in the video, for example, on the BBC news article here, there's even a video drone footage of
00:04:52
Speaker
of the demolition. I think we have to stress to our view that this wasn't done in the middle of the night like the Dorman Long Tower, which they claimed it had to be done at night for safety reasons. On a Sunday morning, it had to be done. In this instance,
00:05:13
Speaker
There's absolutely no consideration of the fact that it might be generated, for example, protesters who might have turned up and attracted the attention of the TV crews. No question of that whatsoever. However, in this instance, this one actually reminds me of a chimney
00:05:29
Speaker
on the site of what is now a Tesco supermarket just up the road from me in a place called North Shields where it was a former factory site as far as I'm aware. Some of the factory buildings are now have been converted into, actually they've recently been reconverted, they've been updated into a series of industrial spaces so people can have garages and workshops in them. But the chimney itself is actually, it's a small local landmark
00:05:57
Speaker
which the supermarket have taken advantage of. They've actually put the letters for Tesco down the side of the chimney, which is quite cool. So actually these things can be used in that instance in a highly commercialized way. But also I imagine that the Stuart B chimney, the reason why they're looking to replace it with a replica, is such an icon that it's going to be
00:06:19
Speaker
probably used as a symbol of the housing estate, if not the town, it continues to be part of the town itself. Very, very possibly. Anyone
Dynamite Doris and Heritage Decisions
00:06:30
Speaker
that knows Croydon in South London, the IKEA store there, the former factory chimney on that site is actually branded with the IKEA blue and yellow. Yeah. And it's a huge marker and it's an icon for the area. Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
So I mean, is there any sort of irony here in terms of its location and the connection to the Dormand Long Tower? I see what you did there. Gentlemen, you'll understand that we do operate here and we do actually structure these apparently meandering chats because the irony is
00:07:09
Speaker
that the former London Brit company works at Stewartby in Bedfordshire is in the constituency of our esteemed Culture Secretary Nadine Doris, whose first action in office was to authorise the delisting and blowing up of the Dorman Long Tower. I think we're going to have to nickname her Dynamite Doris.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, I like it. I like it. Let's go with it. Yeah, dynamite Doris next next next. Yeah, it's it's it's it's official tick stamp approved and now
Stonehenge Tunnel Legal Challenges
00:07:46
Speaker
in a lot along with that story, but we've included a link to And this is a less tall less potentially wind vulnerable structure but unless it's an interesting example of an old structure being kept and restored and this is from six days ago the story of of a public
00:08:05
Speaker
a bathhouse reopened to the public after it was listed in Birkenhead. And it shows that these structures can have a life. You realise it just alienated all our viewers' family on Merseyside? Not entirely. That wasn't a million miles away. And I have family in Birkenhead, so it's fine. I can do that. I'm allowed to. Anyway,
00:08:35
Speaker
These sort of structures, they can have a life after they are decommissioned and listed. And I can think of, again, there are some local examples. There will be examples like this across the country, especially of old swimming pools and swimming baths. One, for example, that was mentioned when I shared this story on the RQSoot Facebook page was the Durham City swimming pool, the old city swimming pool. I used to walk past it all the time, so I used to live
00:09:03
Speaker
beyond it. I used to have to get home when I was going to and from lectures. And it was in use when I was a student, I think since it's become not in use perhaps, I think. But unless it was still a very interesting building. And so these things can have a life beyond. And do you think, I suppose, just to end that particular story, do you think that this sort of a site like these chimneys
00:09:34
Speaker
Do you think that rebuilding a facsimile is enough? Do you think it's okay to do that? And how close do you think that facsimile will have to be? Will they build it as tall? Will they build it brick for brick, forgive the puns?
00:09:47
Speaker
The precedent here is Battersea Power Station, when the redevelopment that's just coming on stream there, it's just that one of the four iconic chimneys was deemed to be in two poorer states who conserve and was demolished. But again, the planning condition there was that it was rebuilt exactly. Right. So there is precedent for this.
00:10:14
Speaker
you can make all sorts of arguments that, in heritage terms, the rebuilding, the making of a facsimile is appropriate. I think it's up our cows in Sussex that burnt down national trust property was again rebuilt as a facsimile. The really famous one, of course, is the the Amber Room in Saskia Salo.
00:10:39
Speaker
the Summer Palace in St Petersburg, which was famously stolen by the German army and the Nazis in the invasion of Russia and disappeared in 1945. And it was reproduced exactly by the current Russian government.
00:11:01
Speaker
So, you know, it's strange, obviously, I've heard of them, that that hunt is often brought up in the sort of satirically named History Channel documentaries about the hunt for the Amber Room, this kind of thing. But I've never
00:11:16
Speaker
Oddly enough, I've never asked myself how they got footage, colour footage of the amber room before. And yet the answer is that there's a facsimile. I've never connected the tube in my mind, I don't know why. But yeah, that's, yeah, I see what you mean, absolutely. So there's a precedent for it. But unless it's a little continuation of Dynamite Doris's explosive... Repusation. Yeah. Explosive repusation, yeah.
00:11:44
Speaker
Now, next we come to another government minister, it seems, and he's getting a grilling with regards to the, deemed to be thrice, was it thrice, illegal decisions? Twice. Twice illegal decision to go ahead with the tunnel development under Stonehenge. I take it that Grant Shapps was given a really hard ride and he came away with a very slapped wrist and he has to go away and think very carefully about what he's done. Is that correct?
00:12:14
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely not. So what happened then?
00:12:25
Speaker
He was appearing giving evidence before the House of Commons Transport Select Committee, which is, we've talked about parliamentary select committees before, they're groups of MPs that are allocated on places on the committees of allocated on party lines, according to the number of MPs a party has. And they look in more detail at government business, at government activity, at government policy. And they're meant to be one of the checks and balances and critical friends that ministers have.
00:12:55
Speaker
Simon Jupp MP, who's a conservative MP on the committee, was less a critical friend than a waiter serving up a lovely cocktail of sweetness and delight. Basically, Chaps was asked by Jupp about the... I'll just read the question.
00:13:25
Speaker
The chair of the committee introduced him and said that I know Simon Jupp would like to ask about the A303. And Simon Jupp said, I certainly would. The A303 is a constant source of point of frustration for people in the southwest and anyone who ever travels in the southwest, especially during the summer months. A couple of weeks ago, we had the, if I may say so, very disappointing high court ruling regarding the Stonehenge Tunnel. What's the latest on that? And how much of a setback to the improvement of the A303 that we all want to see is this?
00:13:53
Speaker
You can see it wasn't exactly probing. No. Like Minister, why was your department found to have breached the law twice on the consent order for the Stonehenge Tunnel? Yeah. And how much has the delay cost? Yeah, it was closer to Minister, how inconvenient is it for local people that the law got in the way of your wonderful plan to build a tunnel?
00:14:16
Speaker
Absolutely. And it gets worse. The first one, Shapps was very careful to stay on the right side of the law, in this case, and not comment in detail on what is still a life planning issue. It's a decision that he now has to remake, although I think the subtext and the body language was that when he remakes the decision, if he possibly can, unless he's forced into a
00:14:46
Speaker
And I'm not by the treasury and told he can't have the money. I suspect we can predict which way the decision is going to go. But he, in general terms, he said, the
00:15:06
Speaker
They got on to talking about judicial review and the chair again of the select committee said, do you think that the cross government knew the Ministry of Justice will have to reform the judicial review process? It's the judicial review process that found that the minister had acted unlawfully. And this is what Shapp said in response. And I think this should ring alarm bells for anybody in the heritage world and particularly anybody in the heritage world who tries to hold
00:15:34
Speaker
organizations to account, particularly the government to account, as the Stonehenge Alliance and their colleagues did here, because what Shapps said was, yes, and now we're not talking about any particular case at all, nudge wink. He said,
00:15:57
Speaker
As I hinted before, the public elect their representatives, many of whom speak up very clearly and vigorously on behalf of their constituents. That's a pat on the back for Jupp, who asked the Dolly Drop question. Ministers make decisions. They do so with the power and authority of Parliament.
00:16:17
Speaker
There has to be a point to which those decisions are able to proceed. I'm concerned on occasion we allow as a country these processes to get tied up in knots with democratic elected people have made perfectly proper decisions that are endlessly questioned and undermined on matters of extreme technicality costing the taxpayer sometimes hundreds of millions of pounds in delay and frustrating this government's goal to level up the country. So the answer is yes.
00:16:45
Speaker
In other words, the fact that he was found to acted unlawfully over the fate of the World Heritage Site was a matter of extreme technicality. And his perfectly proper decision wasn't unlawful on two counts. I see. Yes. Really worrying comments. Yes. I'm just hitting myself in the hope of the phone cricket bet. But sorry.
00:17:10
Speaker
I see, so the law is extreme technicality, interesting, isn't that a lovely way of referring to your bungling of due process when it comes to potentially ruining a World Heritage Site, in fact probably the most famous archaeological site in the world, following the pyramids maybe.
00:17:31
Speaker
Okay, yeah, but we could, we could wax lyrical about about Grand Chaps all day. It's probably worth. Oh, Michael Green. Actually, to be fair, this time he was appearing as himself, as opposed to the persona he had famously adopted for his online, make yourself rich quick schemes, which was Michael Green. Sorry, I was just going to just retrieve my cricket bat once more. There we go. Okay, thank you.
00:18:00
Speaker
Michael Green, really? Is that his nom de plume or nom de? He famously adopted an alter ego for a part of his business career, yeah, and denied it for ages until people came up. Those mischievous people in the media came up with the proof that Michael Green was in deep workshops.
00:18:21
Speaker
But what, what, what, what a gross extreme technicality that they were drawing on to prove that he was someone else. You know, these details, man, details. I mean, they're just inconvenient. Oh, that poor man. Absolutely. He's much, he's much produced. It's terribly sad. Anyway,
British Museum NFTs Debate
00:18:46
Speaker
Let's move on to our main headline this week, and that is that the British Museum is breaking into new worlds, new ventures, new exciting realms of possibilities by creating so-called NFTs, non-fungible tokens of artwork that it holds in its collection.
00:19:12
Speaker
In this instance, the work of Katsu Shika Hokusai, most famously known for a selection of prints produced for a 19th century encyclopedia, the most famous of which is The Wave, have been
00:19:32
Speaker
put up for sale in this new digital format, following what appears to have been a quote, cold message on LinkedIn. The CEO of a French company called La Collection messaged the British Museum, who apparently are up for cold messages. Maybe we should try sending a random message to them and proposing how they can make money.
00:19:57
Speaker
Well, actually, that's a good point. I already talked that press office quite a bit. Yeah. But you know, just send the end. Yeah. It's called message suggesting that they created an FTs of works in their collection. Prices are set to start around $500 for what they are calling postcards.
00:20:21
Speaker
This also comes in the context of back in March at NFT by the digital artist Mike Winkleman selling for 69.4 million dollars. So you can almost hear the ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching going off in someone's head at the British Museum to monetise, further monetise, I should say, elements of their collection.
00:20:47
Speaker
Now, the immediate response on line was quite passionate, shall we say, some people were very I think we should be I need to be clear. Most people don't talk over it. Yes. Yes, they did. Yes. And they did don't pull over it because this is most people would switch to sphere. This is barefaced profiteering and, and
00:21:12
Speaker
I think that one of the most hilarious aspects of this though is the pretense that it is making the artwork available to new, exciting audiences. It is so important, said Craig Bendel, licensing manager at the British Museum,
00:21:31
Speaker
that as a museum we continually adapt to new markets, new markets, what markets? You wait, sorry. I need my cricket bat again. Find new ways of reaching people that may not, we may not reach through traditional channels because Hokusai's work really needs NFTs in order to reach those people who
00:21:59
Speaker
It hadn't been made aware of one of the most iconic prints in human history. That's what we need. We need NFTs that start at $500 so that people can share a link to an image with their friends.
00:22:16
Speaker
Yes. Shall I put the other point? Go ahead. I'm kicking the bat away from me. I don't want to hurt myself so I'm just going to put it over there. It is one of those weeks. I'm not an art historian although obviously
00:22:37
Speaker
probably pretty much everybody out there, but the Hokusai, the great wave, is one of the most iconic images in the world. It's reproduced endlessly, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's elegant, it's exciting. And it's also played with, I mean, I shared with you yesterday a photo of an image I have just up there on my office wall, which is a version of Hokusai's wave with elements from the Legend of Zelda computer game inserted into it.
00:23:04
Speaker
So it's well known, it's parodied, it's played with, it's beloved, it's a foundational image for much of Eastern and Western iconography and graphic design. And to be fair to the BM and Le Chalexion, they're not just digitising and turning into a non-fungible token.
00:23:30
Speaker
It sounds like a non-fungible token. It's something you can't grow mushrooms on.
00:23:48
Speaker
They are digitising many other Hokusai works, Hokusai prints, but the clue is in the word prints, these things exist elsewhere.
00:23:59
Speaker
in more than one copy, in many cases. But I mean, you know, I'm not an art historian, but somebody who is is Dr. Bendall Grosvenor, who many people will know from his work on TV series, like Lost My Heart, Forgotten Masterpieces.
00:24:17
Speaker
And he has, that's him. So yeah, now I know who he is. Britain's lost, Britain's lost, Britain's lost masterpieces. Yeah. Where I say he's a recognised art historian. And he has been waging a
00:24:35
Speaker
personal campaign against the monetisation of public collections in the art world for some time now. And I'll come on to that in a minute, but his immediate reaction on Twitter to the non-fungible, those things that the British Museum is going to be turning out.
00:24:55
Speaker
is quote, this is desperate. Please don't fall for it. And at British Museum, if you really want to quote democratize art and attract a younger audience, end quote, then don't ask them to pay for what they already own. Yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
His particular beef is that, for example, public collections like the British Museum, like the British Museum in this case, or the National Gallery or the National Portrait Gallery, will charge a fortune in quotes, reproduction rights for images from their collections, which the public already own.
00:25:38
Speaker
And he argues this has a particularly damaging effect on, for example, professional art criticism and research, because it prevents particularly newly established early career art historians from, for example, from publishing on certain set notes, because they simply can't afford the reproduction rights, which can run into hundreds of pounds or more.
00:26:02
Speaker
He makes the point that on TV programmes that he works on, they restrict the use of certain images because they can't afford what the galleries are asking. Well, it can run to the hundreds of pounds per instance of the use. And more, if you're talking about electronic media, about television and so on. Yeah. Oh, because it's easily reproducible and broadcastable. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a mass audience. Isn't that the mass audience that they're desperate to reach, though?
00:26:33
Speaker
That's the argument, absolutely. I mean, I do urge people, we'll post the link to Bender Grosvenor's Twitter thread on this because it is beautiful. Another thing he says is, when I was an art dealer, the snooty pomposity from nationals like the British Museum when it came to, quote, the trade, like the art trade, was endless. But now they think that when they think they can make a few quid, they're jumping into a market
00:27:02
Speaker
in the most polluting and morally dubious way possible. And I think it's also worth saying here that these non-fungible tokens exist digitally. They exist as a link. And the point's been made in a number of cases here that there's no guarantee that having paid you hundreds of dollars or whatever for your non-fungible token, that that link will last as long as the Hokusai print, which is 200 years old.
00:27:26
Speaker
Well, yeah, there's a DRM, or digital rights management issue here. In the realm of, for example, computer games, I've certainly lost purchases by only having bought them digitally. Rights are lost for the library to host them and the game no longer exists. I ended up recently
00:27:46
Speaker
when a game became available physically because of this issue. Actually, it was a fairly famous example. It was the Scott Pilgrim versus the World computer game. I bought the physical edition because the digital one did disappear. But also, as you touch on there, there is an environmental cost as well, according to earth.org.
00:28:05
Speaker
I'll just read this little paragraph here. It is difficult to estimate the carbon footprint of minting an NFT because many steps in the process do not have a known carbon footprint and there are a few scientific peer-reviewed studies on this topic.
00:28:20
Speaker
However, it has been estimated that the carbon footprint of an NFT can be between 33.4 and 48 kilograms of CO2 per transaction.
00:28:35
Speaker
For example, to put that into context, it's approximately 14 times the cost of mailing an art print in terms of environmental impact. So if I was shipping an art print from me to you, or presumably me across the world to the US, as I sometimes do in fact,
00:28:56
Speaker
that still wouldn't have the same impact as a single NFT being produced because these are computerized, mathematically determined pieces of code that can't be faked because of the complex mathematics involved in them.
00:29:11
Speaker
And that takes up computing power. So they're involved in this new market which has a questionable future in terms of digital rights management. They're involved in this new market that has questionable credentials in terms of the environment. But also as well, isn't there an interesting angle coming in from the European Union on this, Andy?
00:29:35
Speaker
There is, and that is a new European copyright directive, which would appear to make copyright free a work that involves no creative input.
00:29:54
Speaker
In other words, if you exactly reproduce something, which is what these non-fungible tokens of the Hokusai appear to claim to be, if you simply reproduce what an artist has created previously from a museum collection,
00:30:14
Speaker
For example, in a book, so if you're trying to just show the art. Absolutely. For example, in an art book or a journal of record, the outside of the copyright expired items can't then be copyrighted. They become copyright free.
00:30:42
Speaker
So, for example, the example has been cited if you went to the Louvre and took a photograph of the Mona Lisa and didn't play around with it in Photoshop, the Louvre couldn't come after you because you've made no creative input. The creative input was made by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s.
00:31:06
Speaker
presumably there's going to be an area there in between because you can also have a transformative element can't you so if you fully transform an image you can actually go it moves beyond copyright
00:31:16
Speaker
And there are already exemptions which you exploit very often for parody and comment. Yes, exactly. The point being though, it's probably going to be easier to get hold of an image from soon from a European museum.
00:31:38
Speaker
at certainly far less cost, depending on how you acquire it, than from the British Museum. And that's before the National Gallery or any of the other museums and galleries that act in this way. And that's before we take into account the extra costs, environmental and economic and in terms of uncertainty of NFTs. It's short-sighted, it seems, from such an apparently venerable institution.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the argument is that by carry on, and it's not just about the NFTs, it's about the general attitude to their archives, that they're a resource to be exploited, rather than a resource to be shared with the public that already owns them. And now, okay, that goes to a fundamental question of how do we fund our museums and
00:32:32
Speaker
galleries, and there has been a move to see them as businesses that act as businesses into exploiting new markets. Absolutely. And, you know, we have to ask, you know, is that what we want? Now, again,
00:32:52
Speaker
to be fair to them, the major British museums and galleries are still free to enter. But obviously that's a limited audience for people that can get their physics. But that's also a very different argument from suggesting that you're trying desperately to make this art available to new and hitherto unreached audiences. So if they were saying that we're doing
Public Art Monetization Issues
00:33:18
Speaker
this because we want to keep the museum open for everyone for free forever,
00:33:23
Speaker
I might just about understand why they're doing it, as opposed to just seeing them seek dollar signs. Absolutely. I think just to wind this up, this venture has been pretty much panned across the board. I mean, another name that people will recognise, historian and art critic Simon Sharma just tweeted, terrible idea.
00:33:50
Speaker
And it's, and our colleague, David Petts from Durham University tweeted out, if the British Museum is serious about democratizing and increasing access to its collections, it needs to stop its absolutely gouging reproduction fees for everything except the most narrowly academic publications. It's not just artworks, it's pieces from the archaeological record, from the archaeological archive of the British Museum as well, we're talking about him.
00:34:17
Speaker
So, you know, so in that case, I mean I know that David often works for example in the in the realm of Anglo section sculpture, for example, this kind of yes, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:34:31
Speaker
bottom line. And that's what we're talking about here, the bottom line. What we've got is the British Museum speculating on a new fad in the art market, which might be gone by this time next year, because there'll be another one. Yeah. And another, you know,
00:34:47
Speaker
another way of parting people perhaps with too much money from some of their too much money. Because they call these things postcards, you know, your normal postcard, you know, one pound 50 or whatever. These things we're talking about hundreds of dollars, hundreds of pounds.
00:35:06
Speaker
um and you have to ask why um and um you know we put it this way I think the whole thing is put in perspective by uh Bendall Grovener's final tweet in his thread which we will share below and he just writes um p.s
00:35:25
Speaker
Here's a high res for free over a copy of the Hakusai Wave. Yeah, absolutely. The image is available for free because it sounds like the artist's copyright. It is in fact the link of the week, so we'll have it available below. I suppose, I mean, that is quite rightly an end point there, but if you don't mind, go just add a little bit more to it, just a little bit. In so much as
00:35:51
Speaker
This feels a little bit like with proprietary file technology and other ways of sort of
00:36:00
Speaker
keeping the mechanism of access to otherwise available material within the boundaries and the purview of a particular company so they can profit from it. This feels like for many and it has been observed that it's another way that capitalism is trying to hold on to the relationship between going to a coal mine and getting some coal, buying the physical coal and then turning that into something, you know, using it to heat some ore and smelting iron or something.
00:36:29
Speaker
The fact that Apple can take music that's available in an MP3 and turn it into an MP4 so it only plays on their phones is a symptom of the need to
00:36:40
Speaker
to somewhat artificially control and therefore create a sort of scarcity or create a sort of currency in the literal sense of the word, I suppose, around certain digital artefacts which are otherwise freely and endlessly copy and pastable. And so, I can see why for some people it's so intangible that they just say this is a terrible idea.
00:37:08
Speaker
But it's also a symptom of where we're at in our economic system at the moment. People are trying to hold on to elements of economic control that previously were held by people who literally owned the factory in which something was built. That's no longer the case when you can literally copy and paste something automatically thousands, hundreds of thousands of times.
00:37:30
Speaker
But the other thing as well to bear in mind, and we've got a link here to a review of the exhibition that's currently underway. It opened yesterday on the 30th of September and is open until the 30th of January next year. Hokusai, the great picture book of everything, is an exhibition which is available for access in the British Museum.
00:37:52
Speaker
And even though they're selling prints or postcards of hock a size prints for $500 upwards, in fact you have to also pay 11 pounds per adult to access the exhibition. So actually they're not subsidizing access, they are also profiting from access to the exhibition as well.
00:38:13
Speaker
So exhibition access is a paid access, even though it's a publicly owned collection. Copying the image and putting it in a book is a paid process, even as a publicly owned collection. And now you can also buy an NFT, which may in a few years time be the MySpace of digital properties for $500 plus of an image which is owned in a publicly owned collection. And also, as I say, referencing the image on my wall,
00:38:42
Speaker
is also part of an internationally known basic library of graphical touchstone imagery. It's people dancing around and finding ways of manipulating ideas of ownership. I find this both fascinating and also a little bit tragic. I'll let you have a final, final word if you want.
00:39:08
Speaker
Yeah, since you've gone into this particular area, I would widen it out just a little bit, actually. The whole issue of the reproduction of material, obviously, it's hedged around with some very complex law. There are very highly trained lawyers and entire law firms that specialize in media law and reproduction rights and licensing and so on. It's an incredibly complex area internationally.
00:39:37
Speaker
What I would say, though, is that I think bringing it back to the individual researcher, individual artist, individual writer, as we may have mentioned before, I was involved in publishing a book last year.
00:39:55
Speaker
And as part of that contract, my co-author Tracy Spain and I were responsible for supplying the illustrations. A lot of people might not be aware that when you pick up a book, when you pick up a hardback with its standard sort of
00:40:12
Speaker
18 pages of pictures. Those pictures haven't been paid for by the publisher, they've been paid for by the author by and large. Unless you're the kind of person whose agent can demand a contract whereby the publisher pays for everything.
00:40:36
Speaker
So we were faced with, for example, an allocation of 18 images for the book, which we had to supply. You go to the commercial agencies, and I'm not naming them because they're particularly guilty. I'm just naming them because they're one of the most high profile, and that's Getty, the Getty archive, where you go for a lot of historical 20th century imagery.
00:40:58
Speaker
It was simply beyond our budget. We would have blown our entire advance and more had we provided images from commercial archives. That's how serious this is. And you don't get paid much in the first place for most non-fiction these days.
00:41:19
Speaker
let alone before we get onto academic publishing. So there are serious issues because a lot of those images in the Getty archive, for example, are from newspapers which are now out of copyright.
00:41:36
Speaker
So if you go to the newspaper, if you buy a copy of the original newspaper, you can actually reproduce an image. And in fact, a lot of historical authors do that. I've done it myself. I used to write for a certain military history magazine. And I'd hope I might write them again. But on those occasions, I'd actually make more from the images I supplied as part of the commission than I did on the wordage.
00:42:08
Speaker
And the way I was able to do that was I've got a collection of out of copyright books where the photographs are also orphan works.
00:42:18
Speaker
There are some things you cut, some photographs you can't technically use because if the photographer is named and they died within the last 75 years, then you know, it technically remains their copyright. Well, it might remain their copyright, depends on what the contract was with the publisher.
00:42:37
Speaker
And then we get into that really complex area of law again. But that's an interesting example in so much as what you're describing there. If you find the image in the original newspaper that's out of copyright, you essentially are on the same trading level than as Getty, in that sense. You're interacting with the image at the same point as Getty is. And if you wanted to, you could go on to sell that image. That's true. It's a strange world.
00:43:06
Speaker
It's a very strange one. It's a complex one. It's a morally complex and ambiguous world. But I think the thing that is clear, and I'm absolutely with Endor Grosvenor on this, is that I don't think that public collections should exploit particularly academic authors who are trying to share works with the public and explain them and so on.
00:43:33
Speaker
uh otherwise what is the point of a publicly held collection if not good precisely precisely the you can argue why should somebody going to see in a picture you know online uh a good quality copy of an image online have to uh and and and you know and share it why should they have to pay when you know um when when the public already owns it
00:44:04
Speaker
Exactly, well technically they already own it if they're a citizen of this country. That's the one, exactly. Oh it's certainly owned on their behalf. Well we have gone slightly over our intended time slot here but I knew this would happen because the NFT British Museum topic was such an interesting one and quite meaty so there's plenty to discuss there.
00:44:30
Speaker
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this at home. Please do add to this conversation below. We haven't even touched on the fact that, for example, it's difficult producing medium to large size documentaries and putting them out on YouTube because they can be freely viewed, freely downloaded, freely copied as well. So in that sense, that's something that the both Andy and I are operating within that realm.
00:45:01
Speaker
And therefore, what is the value of that work as well? There's all these, you know, in so much as, again, relating to this notion of literal capital in that economic system. It's an interesting one. I'm sure it's something that we're going to return to at some point in the future, but we'll leave it there for today. Thank you for your time this morning, Andy. I'm going to go away now and, well, quickly edit this and then enjoy the rest of Mrs. Soup's birthday. Until next time, guys, do take care. Bye-bye.
00:45:29
Speaker
Bye-bye and happy birthday to Mrs. Sue. Happy birthday Andy.
00:45:50
Speaker
This podcast episode has been produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network in collaboration with Archaeosoup Productions. Find out more podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:46:06
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.