The Fight

“Quit copying me”

“I’m not copying you, you’re copying me!”

“You are too copying me, I was doing it first”

“I was doing it second, and doing it better, so you started copying me.”.

It was the same old story, drifting down the stairwell. I hoping hoping not to go up, hands on my hips, asking the same old question, “What’s going on here?” I knew what was going on. I hate asking the question when I already knew the answer.

Now, thirty years later I’m asking a different question. What is “copying”? I’ve asked Ai to answer the question…

“Good question—deceptively simple.

“Copying” sounds like repetition, but it’s closer to translation. You move a form, gesture, or idea through another medium—your own hand, your time, your understanding—and in that transit, it changes.

For the old masters, copying was apprenticeship: learning through emulation. It wasn’t theft; it was devotion—an act of seeing so closely you disappeared into the work.

For moderns, copying can be critique or conversation: sampling, referencing, exposing influence.

For frauds, it’s camouflage—using resemblance to hide intent.

At its cleanest, copying isn’t imitation but attention. It says, I’m willing to stand this near to truth and feel what it costs to match it.

How do you define it—learning, homage, dialogue, or test?“

Huh? Ask Ai a question and it almost always asks three questions in return.

I asked my Brothers copying machine, “What is copying? And it said, ‘Press here, how many do you want?’ Well, not really, but it implied that very strongly.”

The language implies there is an original, then through some process or another there is a copy, a duplicate, or many duplicates. They are nearly identical if the process is adequate. The term is also very loose, because I’ve copied notes from my classmates in the past, and at times they were far from adequate. Sometimes you must be in the room.

Why isn’t the original enough? Why do we need to copy? The answer isn’t always completely obvious, although it might seem practical. You could write a letter, form content, then send it to various groups with the admission “Send this along!” I’m thinking one of the great examples of copying might be the Gospels going out to the churches. At first glance you might have the idea that the original Gospel was carried from church to church. The obvious flaw is that it could be lost or damaged on the way.

So, instead, you make dozens of copies and send then all at once to the various churches. The danger here is that each copy must be accurate in content. Probably the oldest written copies were orders for military movements, you can’t have parts of the army arriving at different places at different times to fight a battle.

Then there are important works of history, comprised of details and facts. If a copy is made and sent to a different city, it must be accurate to be useful. It is important to always test the process. The profession of being a scribe was grueling in maintaining accuracy, and only replaced by technology centuries later.

 The nature of the original determined different paths in copying. The earliest of all copies were probably 3D. Pressing hands or objects into wet clay, firing that clay in order to press more wet clay. The mold was the answer. A famous sculpture example is from China, The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang,  200BC, was made from several molds of arms, heads, torsos… two halves then fitted together. 8000+ life size soldiers. The unique thing was the hand-shaping of the heads, so that each one is different and original.

On the 2D side, the written word turned to woodblock prints first in China and later in Europe. Letters were carved in wood, ink applied, and copies were made. Letters had to be fairly large and the ink softened the wood so not manu copies could be made. The Chinese tried casting bronze letters but they were even larger, the bronze would not flow into small molds accurately. Lost wax casting made multiply copies of trinkets and sections of larger bronze sculptures.

In this process, the mold was the original, which was the reverse of the produced copy. No one cared about the original, the copy was treasured, particularly if it was a small number.

When etching an image it a copper plate was developed (cut with a burin), it was the numbered short run that gave the value. If the artist decided only 500 copies would be made, they would take the same burin used for the etching, and cut a large “X” through the copper plate, forever ending the possibility of making more perfect copies.

Through the centuries, both sides, the 2D and the 3D processes made changes in accuracy, speed and cost. Chemistry, then electricity made even more changes, and continue to this very day. 

Except today in both processes there is another modifier. With Ai you can still use accuracy, speed, and cost, but now you can also have versions or different rendering. The copies can all be originals. Full circle!