2012-01-20

              This past Wednesday, Jan. 18, several of the internet’s most successful sites, sport­ing immense visitor volumes, “blacked out” for 24 hours.
Google’s ubiquitous multi-colored logo, known for whim­sically changing to reflect seasons, holidays and current events, censored itself with a large, black bar. Wikipedia shut down all of its English pages, dooming students’ research at­tempts. Wordpress, the popular blog-posting site, obscured the text on its front page with black bars, “censored” written across each text field.
This blackout was not due to any server failure or power out­age, but was, in fact, a protest organized by the internet giants to fight against the twin bills currently under consideration in Congress: the Stop Online Pi­racy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).
The acts were created in the spirit of protecting intellectual property (IP), as claimed by their supporters.
Generally supported by major IP owners such as the Motion Picture Association of America, each bill alone allows IP hold­ers to quickly and harshly shut down any internet site found to contain the unlicensed spread of copyrighted materials without any court trial or verdict.
The intention of this corpo­rate power is to put a stop to piracy as soon as it starts and deter its return.
But those who oppose SOPA and PIPA—the sites participat­ing in the blackout, along with other service-providers on the internet—believe that the broad wording of the bill will give too much power to large corporate IP owners.
These corporations would then potentially have the power to unceremoniously close down Youtube, Facebook, Imgur, or any other site with user-created content.
“The overly broad provisions we’ve seen in the pending SOPA and PIPA bills could be used to target legitimate U.S. sites and chill innovation at a time when it is needed most,” said Zynga, a popular browser game host and developer, in its official state­ment on the bills.
These two bills are the cause for battle among countless leg­islators and lobbyists who argue
blogs.iwu.edu/argus/
Volume 118 | Issue 13
January 20, 2012
FEATURES, P. 9
Cardinals snap Titan streak
after nine wins
TIA SPRENGEL
MANAGING EDITOR
Discover hidden treasures on
Main Street
SPORTS, BACK PAGE
SEE CENSORSHIP P.3
SoA’s Wakeley gallery welcomes new exhibit
Blackout forces students to imagine life without Facebook
CHRIS FRANCIS
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
SHANE MROZEK/THE ARGUS
Above: Sites such as Wired, Firefox, Wordpress, Google, and Wikipedia all “blacked-out” to protest SOPA/PIPA and give us­ers a taste of life with a censored internet.
GRAPH COURTESY OF BBC.CO.UK
Above: A work of Phillips’ “Dream State,” is exhibited by the School of Art’s Wakely Gallery.
CENSORED
As students returned for this year’s spring semester, a new exhibit titled “Dream State” by Jerry Phillips opened in the Illi­nois Wesleyan University School of Art’s Wakeley Gallery.
Phillips, who previously taught the School of Art’s print­making course as a sabbatical replacement during spring se­mester 2011, is both excited and grateful for the chance to return to Illinois Wesleyan to unveil his first solo exhibition.
“This is a huge step in my ca­reer as an artist, and I couldn’t think of a better place for it to happen,” Phillips said. “Some of my former students actually hung the show, and for me that was just a very sentimental no­tion that made this whole experi­ence come full circle.”
Phillips’ students are also ex­cited to see their former profes­sor on campus again. “The ex­hibit was a good opportunity to see his work and all the different techniques he taught us in class,” sophomore art major Kathryn Thomas said.
According to Phillips, the idea for “Dream State” grew from the sense of déjà vu he feels when he sees images from his dreams in his daily life. Inspired, Phillips ventures into the world of his own subconscious and attempts to collect and archive these im­ages visually through the me­dium of monotype with gouache and color pencil.
Unlike much of Phillips’s pre­vious work, “Dream State” is free of symbolic themes and was completed only for the pleasure of creating art. “I’ve learned to let go and have fun. Art doesn’t have to change the world imme­diately. Art can be whimsical and should reflect how I feel while making it,” Phillips said of his own aesthetic philosophy.
While he appreciates the School of Art’s exhibition of his own work, Phillips also be­lieves Illinois Wesleyan’s galler­ies serve an important role in the lives of both art majors and the entire student body.
Phillips describes the ben­efits Wesleyan students recieve through the presence of the gal­leries: “A space devoted to ex­hibiting work, allows students and the public to observe and in­teract with art on a more person­al level,” Phillips said. “School galleries allow art students to exhibit their own art and experi­ence art-making from the role of an artist as opposed to one of an observer.”
Gallery director Carmen Lo­zar agrees that the power . “Art has the power to enrich, inform, and expand the human experi­ence. The galleries at Illinois Wesleyan University serve not only as an educational tool for our students, but as a means of expanding our experience in the world today,” he said.
“Dream State” will be show­ing in the Wakeley Gallery until Feb. 2. Gallery hours are Mon­day through Friday 12 – 4 p.m., Tuesday 7 – 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 1 – 4 p.m.
Below: The beginning of the exhibit immerses the viewer into Phillips’ “Dream State.”
“A space devoted to exhibiting work, allows students and the public to observe and interact with art on a more personal level. School galleries allow art students to exhibit their own art and experience art-making from the role of an artist as opposed to one of an observer.”
-Professor Jerry Phillips
Feel the love
with Liam
OPINIONS, P. 13