Copy-Paste Creativity
Collage: a creative practice that has played a starring role since the dawn of Modernism
Cubism: from the papiérs collés of Georges Braque to the mixed-media collages of Pablo Picasso
Dada: champions of experimental collage who dubbed themselves monteurs (mechanics)
Futurism: the inventors of Parole in Libertà and creators of dynamic, combative collages
Constructivism: collage and photomontage used as propaganda and to praise the proletariat
The Bauhaus: the art and design school where modern photomontage techniques were taught
Surrealism: the trend that used collage and assemblage to create disorienting associations
Neo-Dada: artists that embraced assemblage and printed canvases, bridging the gap between Dada and Pop Art
Nouveau Réalisme: the masters of décollage who critiqued modern consumer society
Pop Art: from the collages of Richard Hamilton to the silkscreens of Andy Warhol, the world’s greatest “recycler”
Xerox Art: the creative technique that exploited the distorting effects and colors of modern copy machines
Fluxus: the deeply experimental art movement which gave rise to electronic décollage
Conceptual art: the advocates of a cerebral, immaterial kind of art with a soft spot for collage and photo-collage
Postmodernism: an art form that mixed old and new, high and low, tradition and camp in a collage-like framework
Appropriation: claiming the work of others as your own to question concepts such as originality and authorship
Postproduction: the opportune label coined by Nicolas Bourriaud for art based on reusing and remixing
Net art, new media art and Post-Internet: when copying and pasting practically becomes religion
Remix culture: the paradigm with which Lawrence Lessig challenged the myth of authorship and originality
Prosumers: the new protagonists of the online creative scene in the Web 2.0 and social media era
No-copy creativity: the taste for appropriation shared by creators and avant-garde artists alike
Copy-paste creativity: the technique that makes it possible to create original works of art by remixing and recycling materials
Closing the circle: professional artists and web creators together for a web-based circular economy
Summary and conclusion: from the origins of copy-paste creativity to its Web 3.0 future