GIANT INFLATABLE BOUNCY STONEHENGE

GLASGOW ARTIST CREATES GIANT BOUNCY STONEHENGE. KATIE HOSMER FROM MY MODERN MET REPORTS. I AM ALL CAPS ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!! (via Dangerous Minds)

I’m sure that anywhere between 3,000 BC and 2,000 BC, the constructors of Stonehenge definitely didn’t envision it as a bouncy playground for adults and kids alike! This inflatable version of Stonehenge, entitled Sacrilege, is the vision of British artist Jeremy Deller. "It's something for people to interact with, it's a big public sculpture," says Deller. "It is also a way of interacting with history and archaeology and culture in a wider sense."
The installation, placed in Glasgow Green for the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Arts, is Deller’s first major public project in Scotland. The festival website explains, “Visual art happens all year round in Glasgow but for two weeks every two years, [the Festival] puts it firmly in the spotlight. From artists’ studios through to major museums, by way of a vast range of venues new and old, the Festival is the perfect moment to get to know more about contemporary art and how and where it takes place in Glasgow.”
It takes just minutes to deflate the bouncy Stonehenge every evening and re-inflate it every morning, just in time for participants to toss their shoes aside and climb onto the fun and playful public installation. Sacrilege will be at Glasgow Green for 18 days of the festival and then will be shipped off to ultimately arrive in London for the Olympic Games.

SATISFIED CUSTOMERS.

Rice Krispie Stonehenge

Looks delicious. By Laser Bread, from the Boing Boing Flickr pool.

Copyrighting Stonehenge

Nice stock photo, eh?

English Heritage put its trowel in its mouth last week, when it sent a vaguely threatening email to blog Photolibra asserting that it owns exclusive commercial rights to photos of Stonehenge:

We are sending you an email regarding images of Stonehenge in your fotoLibra website. Please be aware that any images of Stonehenge can not be used for any commercial interest, all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage.

Fotolibra rightly asks about the legitimacy and enforceability of this idiotic claim:

Firstly, what legitimacy do they have for this claim? Is there any law that states that it is illegal to use images of Stonehenge for any commercial interest? Can someone direct me to it?

Secondly, if an image of Stonehenge is so used, how could they possibly police the usage?

Tax this, ye fookin quango

Boing Boing, Techdirt, and Slashdot all went to town on this foolishness, prompting a clarification from English Heritage, which basically says whoops, sorry, we were just talking about the fee you're supposed to pay for commercial photography at the henge:

if a commercial photographer enters the land within our care with the intention of taking a photograph of the monument for financial gain, we ask that they pay a fee and abide by certain conditions. English Heritage is a non-profit making organisation and this fee helps preserve and protect Stonehenge for the benefit of future generations.

Photoradar reports this fee is about £75. A Boingboing commenter joked that Egypt would try to claim ownership of the US $1 bill, since there's a pyramid on the back, but it's not too far off - Egypt has in fact made moves to copyright its antiquities and try to control them through licensing.

This is all part of the diseased copyright extremism currently gripping society - not too far from the RIAA's claim that you should pay them a fee every time you sing a Lady Gaga song in the shower. The idea that everything we reference something in our culture we should pay a fee to the 'rights holder' is not only absurd, but sick - it's the free exchange of ideas that will make everyone freer, happier, and richer. And people are attracted to cultural heritage precisely because it's a huge, free database of ideas that can be freely remixed into our lives and identities. Trying to control that will never work - but it could definitely produce a lot of hostility toward heritage agencies that try.