Steal this chair: present & future issues on intellectual property rights

There is no ambiguity whether the stealing of physical objects or virtual data is considered an illegal act, but what if we steal an attribute of something that we didn’t know was there to take.

With the rise of open source technology and the ever present question of authorship, ownership and copyrights concerned with the physical, the question of piracy is inevitably arising more often.

Artist/Designer Christian Cooper uses this opportunity to question and create relationships between physical objects and our understanding of data piracy by using rising trends of new technologies and questioning the legal perspectives of them. His project is set to antagonize and stimulate reactions from brands as a way to force an outcome that may change the way in which we view our ownership over the physical world.

CHRISTIAN COOPER STOLE A CHAIR FROM IKEA

Objects are often undervalued in the attributes they possess other than their value.

An object is more than its physical presence, it has been crafted which takes time and skill, it was thought about, planned and designed, it, by being physical maps the invisible space that would be in its place and consumes and reflects the light around it.

So when we consider the idea of stealing an object do we undervalue the object by its own definition. To pick this chair up and walk out without paying is an illegal act, to replicate and sell the object is too, but capturing its presence though digital methods poses a new realm of loopholes that are far harder to justify as an act of disobedience.

To take a picture in a shop is entirely legal, but how about many pictures, what if we took so many images of an object that is physical presence can be entirely mapped in a digital 3d form that we would own ourselves.

Is this form still a chair, and more importantly, is it still Ikea’s chair.

Further more, what if I replicate that form and bring it into the physical World, am I breaking the law and stealing someone’s design even when I didn’t use design input to replicate it. And what if I called the object the same name as the previous form and tried to sell it? What if this project was so successful that I sold the chair for 10 times the price that it cost in Ikea, just because this object is used to make a statement?

This project looks to challenge and bring together physical objects and data piracy by adding a contextualization to both.

Tabula Rasa / Eitan Rieger 2017

We are living in a world where media is losing its importance to platform in an exponential speed.

We are using more and more devices which were generalized. We interact less and less with buttons and knobs, but more with flat screens that change their appearance.The idea, to create a unified holistic solution is penetrating out entire surrounding.

Which direction will our interaction with technology take next step?

Tabula Rasa is basically a simple platform. A 100 LEDs screen and an arduino board. A non disclosing yet flexible one..

Tabula Rasa takes the concept of generalized platform to a different direction. It controls the programs installed on it with gravity.