Borderline | Stranger in a Strangeland

The purpose of these pages is to demo many of the development stages in the 'Borderline | Stranger in a Strangeland' multiscreen presentation and to help resolve creative and technical issues

NO IMAGES WERE HARMED IN THE CREATION OF THIS PRESENTATION

a KALEIDOSCOPE of 12144 images

this wasn’t mean’t to be no sad song . . . .

Factors and Reasons behind Borderline project

• The diagnosis of multiple developmental differences and non-neurotypical behaviours of Ian Fleming

• The existence of a border on the island of Ireland and it's impact upon Ian Fleming and everyone else who lives on ‘the island’

• The tendency of human beings to use violence as a way of settling disputes

Concepts and ideas underlying Borderline project

• Diagnosis of BPD (Borderline Personality  Disorder) - where and how exactly is this border delineated?

• Impact of DysBorder Syndrome (the addiction to or rejection of specific international borders)

• Lack of understanding that the reasons and causes for many of today's problems began before we were born

Intentions behind Borderline project

• To develop awareness how much the past can influence our lives today

• To understand how incomplete our knowledge is and yet just how strong our opinions can be

• To question borders - are they restrictive barriers or useful boundaries?

• To pose 'awkward' questions rather than provide a series of easy answers

Please note:

This video’s soundtrack has a 1 min excerpt from Paul Brady’s “The Island”.

The purpose is to enable Paul Brady and any other copyright holders to either approve or disapprove of the use of this music as an accompaniment to the presentation

Follow this link for the full lyrics of the Island and an insight into the reasons for using this song. Also a YouTube video performance of The Island by Paul Brady in 2013 at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire

Some of the lyrics from Paul Brady’s song ‘The Island’ that have been inspirational in the development of Borderline | Stranger in a Strangeland multiscreen project

I want to take you to the island

showing pictures on the television

in the evening when the sun goes down

the worn-out dreams of yesterday

twisted wreckage down on main street

marching down the road to freedom

Women and children dying in the street

make love to the sound of the ocean

reach the future through the past

I only want to be here with you

young boys dying in the ditches

peace and love's just copping out

bring us all together in the end

dying will lead us into glory...

 Borderline | creative/technical issues

Each individual device in the multiscreen presentation has the 12,144 images loaded into the photos folder and will play a random slideshow, depending upon it’s orientation and screen-size

Borderline exhibit - concerns to address with RUA

• Clarify whether the RUA considers that the FairShare Principles under which the presentation has been created will satisfy concerns they may have over copyright issues

• Enquire about Health and Safety regulations that need to be adhered to for exhibition in Ulster Museum

• Tech issues, can the devices be left on 24/7 during the exhibition? If not how would the presentation be re-started each day?

• Enquire about dimensions/fixings for the presentation to meet RUA entry requirements, should the installation be free-standing or wall-based?

• Audio track - if it is considered to be inappropriate to have an audio track playing in an exhibition setting, does the use of tethered/wired head-sets cause any difficulty?

Borderline exhibit - standards/guidelines

• All screens, tablets, phones, connector cables and power supply equipment have been exhaustively tested and documentation for items that require a PAT Test Certificate will be supplied

• No image will be displayed for more than 4 seconds which mirrors regulations about sampling of audio clips when re-mixed into a new creative work

• Although imagery has been included under FairShare Principles a supplementary commitment has been made to respect the wishes of anyone who does not wish their intellectual property to be included. As such any ‘disputed’ image can be edited so as to reduce the image to a collection of blurred pixels, rendering the image beyond any possible recognition

• Example of how any ‘disputed’ image can be rendered unrecognisable

CopyRight
Versus
CopyWrong

ok Ian…
its Confession time

• Currently Ian Fleming has not sought permissions for many of the images used in the ‘Borderline | Stranger in a Strangeland’ multiscreen presentation

  • However, general notification posts have been made on the social media platforms where images have been sourced, offering take-down options to anyone who wishes

• Ian Fleming acknowledges that generally speaking ‘transformative use’ falls under possible copyright infraction and is prepared to take action to satisfy reasonable objections

• The paragraphs below site reasons why Ian Fleming contends that the use of images within the presentation fall within fair use (USA)/fair dealing (most of the rest of the world) parameters

where do you draw the CopyWrong borderline?

As lines go Borderlines are a very thin moral tightrope that require an extremely delicate balance to walk across

The reason that images are being used in ‘Borderline | Stranger in a Strangeland’ is as an 'aide-mémoire', a memory prompt, a mnemonic device

No single image in the multiscreen presentation is 'important/crucial' in itself, instead it is the collective stimuli - the 'flashback/flashforward' that Mnemosyne: the Greek Goddess of memory, Mother of the Muses uses to invoke feelings within us about what it is to BeHuman

At any point in the presentation, the viewer is simultaneously confronted by 40-50 images. It isn’t possible to see them all, nor even to concentrate on the images on more than 2 or 3 of the devices

Further yet…, the ‘origami’ style of presentation often results in substantial cropping of the images, so as to make them almost unrecognisable from the original

None of the images have been used directly as they were acquired. Each image has been cropped , often substantially. All images have had their colour saturation/vibrance removed. Exposure, contrast, brightness, definition and sharpness has been altered in virtually every image. A vignette (a light fall-off effect) has created a central light focus within every image.

These substantial edits have served to significantly alter the original images, creating a uniformity of ‘voice’ thereby altering the intention and substance of the source images, and as such resulting in the derivation of an ‘original’ artwork

When is it fair to share?

FairShare

Is FairShare the same as Fair Use?

YES and NO. There are many considerations in determining exactly what the legal term ‘Fair Use’ covers. In reality it can only be determined when a Judge makes a pronouncement on a matter that is in dispute

Considerations surrounding the re-use of images

Altering/adapting imagery

| Derived from | edited | adapted | modify | crop | aspect ratio | reformat | resolution | image quality | combine |

Asking permission

| agreement | arrangement | appeal | GDPR | privacy | consent | entitlement | rights | demand |

Challenging Fair Use

| evidence | proof |

Harm caused by copyright theft

| contempt | disrespect | malice | offensive | allegation | blatant | flagrant |

Legal aspects

| lawful | legitimate | permissible | licensed | allowable | valid | above board | patent | trademark | damages | dispute | mediation | satisfaction | injunction | judgement | liability | lawsuit | unjust | crime | civil case | redress | percentage of use |

What are Fairshare Principles

Ideas behind FairShare

| creative commons | fair use | educational purposes | commercial purpose | exploitation |

Ian Fleming has been involved in digital image editing for 35+yrs

BORDERLINE Imagery

The ‘Borderline | Stranger in a Strangeland’ imagery was chosen to reflect three time periods, each of which is a distinct body of work.

• DestinationUnknown

  • Images in the DestinationUnknown series relate to the time period prior to Ian Fleming’s birth in 1961, which of course were entirely unknown to Ian…

  • Nor could he have been aware that many historic incidents and cultural trends might have an influence or bearing upon his life.

  • Ian Fleming was an entirely new journey, an uncharted path, an unknown destination… or was he?

• TerminalVelocity

  • Images in the TerminalVelocity series relate to the time period from Ian Fleming’s birth, but perhaps it’s not so easy to mark the exact endpoint

  • Was it after his first mental health breakdown in 2000 when he was found lying unconscious and taken to hospital or was it after his second breakdown in 2011, when he was located as a missing person

  • Was it the occasion of his last abortive suicide attempt, perhaps his discharge from the secure hospital ward, or was it the day he concluded twelve years of psychiatric therapy?

    The average speed of travel to that unknown destination certainly featured many instances of TerminalVelocity

• DeadAhead

  • Images in the DeadAhead series relate to the period of time when the velocity became less terminal and slowed to some kind of ‘semi-normal’ speed

  • BeingHuman became a more realistic prospect for Ian Fleming and becoming Dead now seemed like a less attractive prospect

  • So really these images are about now… and the future. They represent the idea of what is Ahead - for Ian - and indeed for us all

How were the images sourced/generated/curated?

• ‘Harvested/clipped’ from social media

  principally from Ian Fleming’s contacts on Facebook

• As the project grew… FB algorithms began suggesting similar pages, groups, posts and although Ian didn’t ‘like/join’ the groups, he did clip many images

• A very small percentage were selected through search engine enquiries

• Also from Ian Fleming’s own photo library

Creative Commons

Sharing that is contextual, inclusive, just, equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable

Check out more info Creative Commons

• 2 billion works and counting

• Open and public domain works

• Licensing and attribution information

Why has this work not used Creative Commons Licensed resources?

Currently investigations into how practical it is to license the images used are ongoing. A Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License seems to be a possible option

While it is desirable, it isn’t strictly necessary, however as a long term project and as a method of advocating the need for CommonUnity among those of us who are BeingHuman every day it may be invaluable

 a moment in time

TheArtOfBeingHuman

Borderline | Stranger in a Strangeland has been a 'spin-off' from a larger project entitled TheArtOfBeingHuman. In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks of Nov 13th 2015 many, many people world wide altered their FB profile pic, either with an overlay of the French flag or with one of many images that were created to commemorate these atrocities

At that time Ian Fleming was struck by this response and provoked to think about the wide range of ways that we represent ourselves and the things that touch our lives. In the meantime he has ‘clipped’ (or stolen) dependent on your perspective, over 250,000 images

It will be a number of years before the TheArtOfBeingHuman ‘project’ materialises, it's still very much in the development phase, but the Borderline project is in someways a test of concept

Neither project is about any specific image, but about the collective portrayal that we as a species who are BeingHuman tell as stories of who we are