I propose a minimal account of authorship that specifies the fundamental nature of the author-relation and its minimal domain composition in terms of a three-place causal-intentional relation holding between agents and sort-relative works. I contrast my account with the minimal account tacitly held by most authorship theories, which is a two-place relation holding between agents and works simpliciter. I claim that only my view can ground productive and informative principled distincitons between collective production and collective authorship.

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

This article surveys the current debate among analytic philosophers and film narratologists about the logic and phenomenology of cinematic narration. Particular attention is given to the question of whether every film that represents a fictional narrative also represents a narrator's fictional narration.

Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an assistant (...) or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. (shrink)

Does trust play a significant role in the appreciation of art? If so, how does it operate? We argue that it does, and that the mechanics of trust operate both at a general and a particular level. After outlining the general notion of ‘art-trust’—the notion sketched is consistent with most notions of trust on the market—and considering certain objections to the model proposed, we consider specific examples to show in some detail that the experience of works of art, and the (...) attribution of art-relevant properties or characterisations to works of art, very often involves the notion of trust; in such cases—perhaps most or even, implicitly, all—the question ‘Do I trust the artist (or art-maker)?’, is inescapable. (shrink)

The recent wave of generative AI (GAI) systems like Stable Diffusion that can produce images from human prompts raises controversial issues about creatorship, originality, creativity and copyright. This paper focuses on creatorship: who creates and should be credited with the outputs made with the help of GAI? Existing views on creatorship are mixed: some insist that GAI systems are mere tools, and human prompters are creators proper; others are more open to acknowledging more significant roles for GAI, but most conceive (...) of creatorship in an all-or-nothing fashion. We develop a novel view, called CCC (collective-centered creation), that improves on these existing positions. On CCC, GAI outputs are created by collectives in the first instance. Claims to creatorship come in degrees and depend on the nature and significance of individual contributions made by the various agents and entities involved, including users, GAI systems, developers, producers of training data and others. Importantly, CCC maintains that GAI systems can sometimes be part of a co-creating collective. We detail how CCC can advance existing debates and resolve controversies around creatorship involving GAI. (shrink)

Most mass-art comics (e.g., “superhero” comics) are collectively produced, that is, different people are responsible for different production elements. As such, the more disparate comic production roles we begin to regard as significantly or uniquely contributory, the more difficult questions of comic authorship become, and the more we view various distinct production roles as potentially constitutive is the more we must view comic authorship as potentially collective authorship. Given the general unreliability of intuitions with respect to collective authorship (coupled with (...) our general unfamiliarity with the medium), we must look to find a principle of comic authorship out of which authorship questions can be settled for comics simpliciter. Furthermore, any such principle found must also be capable of grounding a principled distinction between collective production and collective authorship; should this distinction be absent, any proper manner of framing the central descriptive and evaluative questions for comics must likewise be absent. Quite obviously we need a theory of comic authorship. To this end, I suggest how we should proceed and exactly what such a theory should look like. (shrink)

The multiple authorship view for film is the claim that multiple authors exist for almost any given film. This view is a recent development in opposition to the longstanding single authorship view which holds that there is only one author for every film, usually the director. One of the most often-cited reasons in support of the multiple authorship claim is that multiple authorship views more successfully explain the following fact about filmmaking better than single authorship views: filmmakers’ intentions sometimes conflict (...) with each other during the production of a film. However, since multiple authorship views cannot adequately explain how a single filmic utterance can result from conflicting intentions, I want to argue that the single authorship view should be reinstated in those special cases where two or more agents are involved in the production of a filmic utterance and where the intentions of those agents are incompatible. (shrink)

The dissertation explains the internet as an aesthetic medium, authorship in the medium and platforms’ influence on the medium’s aesthetic function. This is achieved by analysing the actual art that uses the internet as an aesthetic medium. The aesthetic function of the internet as a medium is different from its informative and communicative function. It entails manipulation of the medium defined by the permanent and instant interconnectedness of the digitalised instances or representations of people, things, artificial intelligence and information to (...) achieve a specific aesthetic aim. Internet as a medium, similarly to comics and film, allows for different kinds of authorship. A typical example of art that uses the internet as a medium is a meme. This is because memes involve meta-level discussions and group authorship, elements that are most easily facilitated by the internet as a medium. Art that uses the internet as an aesthetic medium can be single-authored if the sole author manipulates digital interconnectedness in an aesthetically significant way. Besides this general level of how the internet is characterised as a medium, there is a practical level that includes platforms on which artwork is made. These two levels are necessarily connected. Even though platforms also manipulate digitalised interconnectedness, they do not erase the internet’s potential as an aesthetic medium because artists manipulate this already manipulated content. (shrink)