When cryptoart and physical art collide

In the past couple of months, Indonesian illustrator Kendra Ahimsa who goes by the name Ardneks received more than 20 reports from his friends that a crypto artist who goes by the name Twisted Vacancy is plagiarising his work. It led him to confront Twisted Vacancy through direct messages on Instagram.

“There are elements taken from my illustrations without modification,” Kendra told The Finery Report (TFR). For instance, the mountain and cloud elements in the illustration below. When asked about the similarities, Twisted Vacancy said, “Yes, I admit we missed that one. There are 28 people in Twisted Vacancy. Mistakes do happen sometimes.”

According to Twisted Vacancy or M, Twisted Vacancy is an online persona he is building on the blockchain ecosystem. He is the brain behind the persona. “At first, Twisted Vacancy [existed] when NFT first branched out to the creative industry. Some say that an artwork can live on blockchain forever. Blockchain can store data forever,” M explained to TFR in an interview.

NFT stands for non-fungible token. It is one of a kind token and a class of cryptocurrency assets. In short, there is no exact copy of an NFT. It is impossible to plagiarise or alter NFT once it is encrypted in the blockchain.

Unlike formally trained artists or designers, M doesn’t produce the elements of his artwork from scratch. Instead, he outsources all of the elements from the internet. The elements are then outlined or traced and saved in his asset banks where he and 28 other people in his team can choose and use for artwork.

“Our workflow is actually we work using asset banks. Everything is outlined. There are contributors. There is no fixed contributor or role in our organisation structure because it is a decentralised system,” said M. The artwork they produce is a collection of assets they store in their asset banks produced with collages technique.

“It’s similar to collages, but technically, collages have plenty of elements that cannot be duplicated by others. We use outline, not shading because it’s easier to create artwork. As for colour, we have our own process too. There is never a Twisted Vacancy colour [scheme]. It is the master swatch from our files. We have several different tones of red colour, different tones of blue.”

Interestingly, none of the team members behind Twisted Vacancy comes from art backgrounds. “Basically [we are] tech guys who understand software. [They] Can design because [they] can use Photoshop, not because they are illustrators or artists,” said M.

In an interview with fellow crypto artist Josephine Bellini in 2020, M said on the 4:42 mark that he had been creating art for five to six years. He also shared how he learnt drawing on the 28:30 mark. “Actually she’s a friend of mine. She’s one of the famous illustrators in the country. I actually started working in her company before. Back then I can’t really draw. During lunch break, I asked her ‘sorry, can you teach me how to draw?’ ….Basically that’s how I learnt how to draw during lunch break.” TFR has reached out to Bellini, but hasn’t received any reply.

At a glance, both of the artwork on the article cover may look like they come from the same artist. They have different objects, but the colour combination, composition and art direction are identical. Both could pass off as a series of artwork under a theme. However, M begs to differ.

“I don’t see how it’s similar. The hair is different, the blue is different. How to explain that our identity will not be mistaken for Ardneks’, this is Twisted Vacancy,” said M. As for the plagiarism allegation, M said that he doesn’t understand how an artwork is similar or different from one another. “While I look at some designers that I found - they have different bodies of work, but they give similar vibes,” said M. Some of the artists he mentioned are Toma Vagner and Yuko Shimizu. “This is tricky.”

When it comes to the Copyright Law, M said, “We play with slashing, remixing. When we first developed it, we had dug enough about the Copyright Law itself. That is why we never use an entire artwork as reference for the bank. We put it in the bank, we spread and we break around 10% of the elements. There is an art of appropriation behind collages. Okay, you split 30% but try to compose differently. It falls into the art of appropriation itself.”

The statement is somewhat similar to his statement to Kendra. “He told me that it is not against the Copyright Law as it allows 10%-20% of similarity,” said Kendra.

According to intellectual property lawyer Dani Saraswati, even though Twisted Vacancy doesn’t directly infringe the Copyright Law since he reproduced Kendra’s artwork, taking Kendra’s signature style and created new artwork. However, the new artwork is against Kendra’s moral rights as an artist. Article 5 of the Copyright Law stipulates that the moral right of an artwork will always be attached with the creator permanently.

“We can see that the signature style of Kendra’s artwork has been publicly known, therefore the public can identify the illustration style as Kendra’s. If we look at Twisted Vacancy’s artwork, there is substantial similarity with Kendra’s work. It can lead the public to believe that there is copyright infringement and that Twisted Vacancy’s artwork is not an original artwork,” she explained.

Moreover, the 10% to 20% of similarity addressed above is based on a copyright infringement case about music. The same formulation cannot be applied to illustration since the elements of artwork are incomparable to the number of notes and bars in a music sheet. On top of that, there are not many copyright infringement cases involving illustrations brought to the court, hence there is still no jurisprudence or legal theory to serve as the guideline.

Article 44 of the Copyright Law stipulates that duplicating, taking an entire or substantial portion is allowed as long as it is not for commercial use. “However, the fact is that Twisted Vacancy uses those artworks for commercial use,” said Dani.

Twisted Vacancy’s artwork is sold on various platforms, such as SuperRare, Known Origins and Async. One of the bids on the artwork came for more than $46,000. Recent artwork includes merchandise drops.

“We are still evolving. When the issue was addressed, we took care of it seriously. We don’t want to hurt people. When it happened, we took [the assets] down,” said M. “We never use Ardneks’ work. We reproduce with different narratives.”

The next step for Twisted Vacancy is expanding to 3D work. Hiring an illustrator or designer is in his agenda when being asked about the possibility of extending the team. “Our goal is to not just be a 2D artist. We want to be artists who could live on the internet.”