From: technews <technews@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Artist 'Frees' Celebrity Images Used in Apple's Ads (Chro
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:53:01 -0500
An Anonymous Artist 'Frees' Celebrity Images Used in Apple's Ads
By SCOTT CARLSON
Famous people hawk everything these days, from sports cars to sports drinks.
But last month at the State University of New York at Buffalo, an anonymous
artist symbolically freed a few legends -- Samuel Beckett, Amelia Earhart,
and the Dalai Lama -- from a fate as corporate shills for Apple Computer.
For the past year, the mysterious figure known as Swimming Horse has waged
an artistic battle against Apple's award-winning "think different"
advertising campaign, which uses the images of famous artists, athletes, and
political figures.
Last month, while attending an art exhibit on the Buffalo campus that
displayed some of his works, Swimming Horse launched his newest piece, "The
Rafts of the Archetypes." He took the images of Beckett, Earhart, and the
Tibetan spiritual leader that had been used in the Apple campaign, removed
all of the ad copy, enlarged the pictures, and turned them into 10-foot
sails. He then attached the sails to wooden rafts that he set free to float
in the university's Lake LaSalle. "Their energy as archetypes cannot be
contained in the manufacturing and sales process," he said in an interview.
Swimming Horse left words of protest off the pictures. He said he wanted the
archetypes to stand alone, looking timeless -- neither pitching Apple nor
his own messages.
Swimming Horse's work hasn't always been so placid. His guerrilla art
troupe, known as Hocus Focus, has illegally altered Apple's "think
different" billboard ads across the country. For example, the group has
pasted the words "No machine is a moody genius" on ads featuring Miles
Davis.
No word from Apple Computer on whether the company approves of Swimming
Horse's decision to think differently.
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Copyright 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education