The impetus behind the Free IP hotline are several stories and trends influencing me during the last few years. There has been a trend in the industry of artists making

artworks with neon text, or designs in neon, showing them, both on social media platforms and in person. Typically these artists do well. Occasionally they have prospective clients or patrons who may want to work with them and when learning that they can get the neon made somewhere else for cheaper, they take the design to ten

different sign shops to get the lowest bidder to make it. That lowest bidder usually has never heard of the artist and that artist will never hear from that client again after receiving their price-list. Sure imitation is a nice form of flattery, but the rent is due and that artist needs to eat!

Then there are the online rip offs. Neon design hawkers who sell designs cheaply made in small, easy to bend tubing and even cheaper components. If they aren’t made

overseas, then they are seriously underpaying their benders. They will sell your designs that they see doing well on social media. That social media is where peoples eyeballs are. As artists are told in school- if you want to be seen, better put your stuff online. Better get posting. No one is paying you for this publicity work.... Yet the company your posting it through is profiting off of you.

Stunt radio shows, writers and comedians were on the archived radio that played during a 2020 summer in pandemic lockdown working in still busy production neon shop. The work was nice, as was the soliditude. I was fascinated by how a writer could offer their services, or be in a writers room contributing jokes to a routine and be involved with generating ideas. Even more fascinating was how jokes, and ideas for movie and TV show pitches were generated, commodified and shopped around to different movie studios or used as incentives to donate money.

Looking at social media and the broader tech industry over the last few years and you will see ideas tested, “borrowed” and deployed at a rapid pace. The last US patent system overhaul designed to loosen a system of “patent trolls” seem to have overhauled things in favor of the companies with the largest budgets for lobbyists and lawyers. These days, a rich, market dominating venture capital backed company can notice a feature they like as a part of a small competing service, develop a copy of the idea, and deploy it to a select audience or system wide. If the competing service decides to sue, by the time they reach patent court, the course of habituation to the “borrowed” feature over the companies giant user-base will have set in. The prediction insights generated by the novel streams of user data generated by these new features will pay for the legal fees to keep the patent courts tied up. User data in part generated by artists looking to advertise their work and control their image using the platform. An artist or small business with a patent doesn’t stand a chance.

Bruce Nauman, Sol Lewitt. The dreams of the eternal artwork, able to be endlessly reproduced when necessary to the artists original specifications. The exhibition copy can be made and destroyed at the end of the show. Only the idea is sacred along with perhaps the certificate of authenticity. As artists on social media, what does “originality” mean when half of what you see comes through a feed algorithmically tweaked to keep you and your peers personally engaged and fixed to the screen.

When Bob Dylan recorded “Mr. Tambourine Man” at a studio in Laurel Canyon, California in 1965, he sang out of tune and threw the track away. Later that week the

Byrds re-recorded “Mr. Tambourine Man” and it help launch them to superstardom. Dylans songs have been and continue to be covered by countless artists including Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Adele. Rather than going after everyone for stealing his ideas, Dylan takes the role of “artist as idea factory”. Dylans masterpieces are reinterpreted by others who make them big.

New York City offers an interesting environment for an idea factory. It is certainly more expensive to live here than in Knoxville, but there are also more people with money as

well as access to some of the finest materials available. As a cultural and culinary hub there is plenty of brain food. My hands are kept busy by a river of bending work. Production neon pays bills and sharpens skills. Some of the most skilled neon benders come out of the highly demanding wholesale, commercial neon field. As a neon craft nerd with an appetite for commercial neon challenges, my skills continue to be refined on a weekly basis. With material costs always rising, the room for mistakes is continuously shrinking, and people always want things cheaper. The grind is real.

The Free Intellectual Property Hotline sign uses the most premium materials with the cheapest, wholesale, old school bending techniques. Inspired by the lowest bidder neon shops, The Free IP sign is designed to fit right in at a gas station or “premium luxury deli” convenience store. The ideal location would be a high traffic area near a big tech company office. Areas where the ultra wealthy and poor are side by side are good, but no bars- I don’t need late night drunk callers. The phone number at the bottom of the sign is a direct line to the artist (or the artists studio).

Callers to the Free Intellectual Property Hotline are given a free idea just for them. This is probably a throwaway idea, one that will not be made by the artist. Depending on how the phone call goes the idea could be tailored to fit the callers needs. Ideas given away will be recorded in a sketchbook to document the phone calls and to ensure duplicate ideas are not given away. No warranty is given to the quality or even to the originality of ideas received. Ideas received ARE from the artists studio/ workplace, powered by expensive lattes, account draining rents, deli sandwiches, avocado toast and taxing train rides. Our hands are busy, too busy to send emails, but our headphones are in, mouths are occasionally free and minds are racing. Callers can get premium ideas for FREE.