Copy/culture

Copy/Culture Beijing was organised on September 27th during the Beijing Design Week, focusing mainly on cultural aspects of copying. During Copy/Culture Berlin, held during the DMY International Design Festival on the 4th of June, the emphasis layed on political economy and we discussed attitudes to copying and industry's responses to it. Copy/Culture Istanbul will take place in the spring of 2012. All locations are connected through their hybrid geographical position and by their diverse design fields, dealing with both influences from East and West

Copy/Culture Beijing was organised on September 27th during the Beijing Design Week, focusing mainly on cultural aspects of copying. During Copy/Culture Berlin, held during the DMY International Design Festival on the 4th of June, the emphasis layed on political economy and we discussed attitudes to copying and industry's responses to it. Copy/Culture Istanbul will take place in the spring of 2012. All locations are connected through their hybrid geographical position and by their diverse design fields, dealing with both influences from East and West.

Copy/Culture Beijing was organised on September 27th during the Beijing Design Week, focusing mainly on cultural aspects of copying. During Copy/Culture Berlin, held during the DMY International Design Festival on the 4th of June, the emphasis layed on political economy and we discussed attitudes to copying and industry's responses to it. Copy/Culture Istanbul will take place in the spring of 2012. All locations are connected through their hybrid geographical position and by their diverse design fields, dealing with both influences from East and West.

Copy/Culture Beijing was organised on September 27th during the Beijing Design Week, focusing mainly on cultural aspects of copying. During Copy/Culture Berlin, held during the DMY International Design Festival on the 4th of June, the emphasis layed on political economy and we discussed attitudes to copying and industry's responses to it. Copy/Culture Istanbul will take place in the spring of 2012. All locations are connected through their hybrid geographical position and by their diverse design fields, dealing with both influences from East and West.

Copy/Culture Beijing was organised on September 27th during the Beijing Design Week, focusing mainly on cultural aspects of copying. During Copy/Culture Berlin, held during the DMY International Design Festival on the 4th of June, the emphasis layed on political economy and we discussed attitudes to copying and industry's responses to it. Copy/Culture Istanbul will take place in the spring of 2012. All locations are connected through their hybrid geographical position and by their diverse design fields, dealing with both influences from East and West.

Copy/Culture Beijing was organised on September 27th during the Beijing Design Week, focusing mainly on cultural aspects of copying. During Copy/Culture Berlin, held during the DMY International Design Festival on the 4th of June, the emphasis layed on political economy and we discussed attitudes to copying and industry's responses to it. Copy/Culture Istanbul will take place in the spring of 2012. All locations are connected through their hybrid geographical position and by their diverse design fields, dealing with both influences from East and West. Premsela conducts research on attitudes to copying in design and industry's search for new ways of dealing with it. Learn more about Copy/Culture and stay up to date at premsela.org and on iTunes, Facebook, Vimeo and Twitter.

Copy/Culture Beijing was organised on September 27th during the Beijing Design Week, focusing mainly on cultural aspects of copying. During Copy/Culture Berlin, held during the DMY International Design Festival on the 4th of June, the emphasis layed on political economy and we discussed attitudes to copying and industry's responses to it. Copy/Culture Istanbul will take place in the spring of 2012. All locations are connected through their hybrid geographical position and by their diverse design fields, dealing with both influences from East and West. Premsela conducts research on attitudes to copying in design and industry's search for new ways of dealing with it. Learn more about Copy/Culture and stay up to date at premsela.org and on iTunes, Facebook, Vimeo and Twitter.

Bas van Beek is head of design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. As an anti-designer, he criticises branding and intelligent marketing mechanisms, poor conceptualism and uncritical designer cults.

What will the future bring relating to Copy/Culture?

Trust, responsibility and reciprocity are important ingredients in an open, sharing culture. They have been discussed in relation to software development; the debate has been revived in the context of society’s ongoing informatisation. Design will have to develop a strategy of reciprocity, particularly when objects become “smart” elements in a "web of things". It will have to identify fundamental questions superseding clients’ design requirements. Marleen Stikker is the founder and director of Waag Society, a media lab that develops creative technical applications for social innovation, concerns itself with the social effects of the Internet and actively promotes open data.

Jeremiah Tesolin will investigate ways to develop company cultures and open them to new ways of working from the inside. On the basis of Marimekko-examples he will talk about the need to be selective where one wants to be and the need to be open in order to make a difference through the effort one puts into an initiative. Jeremiah Tesolin is a designer and brand development manager for Marimekko.

Copying is a design method. Through the combination of different archetypal forms and light-hearted shapes and their subsequent transfer into unexpected contextual settings, FAT's practice creates its own unexpected relevance and meaning. Sam Jacob is an environmental designer and founding director of FAT Architecture.

What is Philips' perspective on copyright? Paul Gardien will tell us about design protection and patents at Philips and give us a peek at the Shapeways project, which lets consumers design their own products. Paul Gardien is head of design strategy and design innovation at Philips Design.

Kueng Caputo explore the limits of plagiarism with great respect and a touch of irony. The designers argue that the dialogue between original and copy represents an homage to the author. Conceptual designers Lovis Caputo and Sarah Kueng have been working as a duo since 2006. They are based in Zurich.

Copyright is dead – long live sharing! The second decade of the new millennium ushers in a new era in how we view the protection of intellectual property. In the future, work will be freely available for download. After all, copying is so '80s. Janne Kyttänen is the founder and creative director of Freedom of Creation. He began his industrial design studies at Elisava in Barcelona and graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where he lives.

Design museums have restyled themselves from collecting, research and cataloguing institutions into dynamic, gallery-orientated organizations. Exhibitions focus on industrial and mass-produced objects evaluated by the art world’s standards. Opening a new design museum raises the fundamental question of how to define a design original versus a copy. Gaon will introduce a new perception of the exhibition itself as the new intangible design original. Galit Gaon is the creative director of the Design Museum Holon and the founder, director and chief curator of the Israeli Cartoon Museum. She has initiated and curated design exhibitions all over Israel.

The West sees copying as inferior to originality. In Asia, it is an acknowledgment of tradition. The West valued the past and the collective less than the future and the individual. But its attitudes changed when Asia began displaying astonishing innovation. Oosterling will situate the phenomenon of copying in an intercultural perspective, approaching the tension between copy and original from a relational philosophical perspective. Henk Oosterling is an associate professor at the Center for Philosophy and Arts at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Understanding China's "copying problem" entails thinking beyond conventional wisdom and clichés. Not to do so would be to incorrectly view culture as static, China as peculiarly idiosyncratic, and authenticity as a nonnegotiable concept. In fact, China's copying culture may harbour the seeds of innovation. Aric Chen is an independent design curator and publicist. He is also the creative director of Beijing Design Week 2011.

"If you want to make financial gain out of somebody else his work, that's nasty shit, that's rip-off." Erik Spiekermann co-founded MetaDesign in 1979 and later FontShop International with Neville Brody, which has grown to be one of the largest manufacturers of digital typefaces worldwide. Spiekermann received numerous awards for his work, including the German Design Prize for Lifetime Achievement 2011.

Appropriation-based art forms, such as sampling, collage, remixing, modding and mashups, have gone mainstream in recent years. While many in the business and legal communities frame these cultures as "piracy" or "infringement", practitioners are developing a more nuanced ethical framework. Sinnreich will present new research analyzing these emerging ethical codes and explore their significance for law, industry and society. Aram Sinnreich is an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University.