4 ms·
As art, it doesn't seem particularly interesting or clever or striking. Which is really too bad, because Davis of all people might have appreciated a roughened
by chernevik 15y ago
As art, it doesn't seem particularly interesting or clever or striking. Which is really too bad, because Davis of all people might have appreciated a roughened, technially imperfected image that somehow did something new.
But this looks to me like a very low-resolution duplicate. Only on inspection do I see elements that say "pixel", and these aren't particularly important or interesting. All the examples cited by the OP are considerably more different from the original than the image in question.
To get more clearly into the category of "fair use", I would think the art would need more significant differentiation. To an unexpert eye, these might be things like:
- Variation of the palette into something typical of an NES game
- Revisit the perspective to make it more two-dimensional, as an older video game would (the image clearly depicts Davis at an angle in a way we wouldn't have expected in an 80s game console)
- More exaggerated usage of "pixelized" elements
- Introduction of elements / themes /motifs from other pixel art pieces
- Turn the image upside down, put curious, "where the hell am I?" look on Davis' face
- Pixelized chipmunk
- Pixelized Thelonious Monk
If the idea here wasn't to invest a lot of time into the image itself, and have some that plays the marketing role of 1950s cover art, then do something evocative but more clearly distinct.
Finding the line between "derivative" and "creative" is not a computable problem. But it gets a lot easier with the quality of the art. But it seems to me the photographer has a point. Especially when I consider that the image real does look like a low-res JPEG -- if he tolerates that, the next question will be the difference between this and an actual low-res JPEG.
Now, could he have been nicer about it? I would certainly think it better to start with "hey knock it off". But maybe I don't everything that went before the settlement.