Documentation BA Thesis
Maël Erlenkamp


Bootlegs, Counterfeits and Knock-Offs: From Medieval Artifacts to Digital Culture


This is the documentation of my Bachelor’s Thesis in Visual Communication at Hochschule der Künste Bern (HKB). 

Bootlegging and appropriation have been part of my design practice for some time now. However, I have often only dealt with the topic superficially. In my bachelor's thesis, I set myself the goal of investigating the practice of bootlegging and the various motives behind it. 
1. 
Collecting, Research & Searching for mentors


> I started with some research, I created a collection of images in which I gathered everything I could find on the subject. From Elvis impersonaters to appropriated logos and high-fashion references. > I knew quite early on that I’d like to do an audiovisual thesis. I chose James Langdon as my mentor, who does video lectures himself. 

> The basis of my literature research was the book "Unlicensed" by Ben Schwartz. 

> For example, I found a project by MSCHF, “The Global Supply Chain Telephone” in which they asked various factories to make bootlegs of a high-fashion bags, to show hidden creative labour. 
> Another reference were Hans-Rudolf Lutz’ covers for “Typografische Monatsblätter” where he appropriated styles from other magazines.
> I also got to grips with cover songs, or rather AI cover songs, which ultimately led to the choice of my characters, which I will explain later.
> An article i can highly recommend: “The Umami Theory of Value: Autopsy of the Experience Economy” by NEMESIS.
> And another one: “My Collectible Ass” by McKenzie Wark.
2. 
Organising, Arranging, Categorising & 
even more Research


> In the first mentoring sessions, we discussed the references together and tried to organise the material. At the same time, we discussed new potential approaches and references. > In a first attempt, the examples were divided into two categories. 

> In addition, I collected more and more material, as I now knew more precisely which references were interesting to deal with. I was mainly looking for contemporary examples. I researched across all disciplines.

> In the end i had about 60 references gathered on my board. It was important to bring a certain structure to the material.
3. 
Reading, Writing & 
Structure


> I kept reading articles and publications, such as “Forgery Replica Fiction” or “Is A.I. the Death of I.P.?” which later turned out to be one of the most important questions for my practical project. 
> After more research and a lot of mentoring sessions, I started writing short text fragments. First, short captions for all references, in which I tried to focus on three criteria: Where does tension arise? Is the original treated with respect? Is there a form of violence?
> I made my first decisions about what content I wanted to work with. I was very interested in Shanzhai right from the start. I can highly recommend the book "Shanzhai: Dekonstruktion auf Chinesisch" by Byung-Chul Han.
> When choosing the material we wanted to use, we were careful to ensure that they were different and that we dealt with as many different examples as possible. 
> Another interesting reference was the copied costume from the film "Dune 2". I invested a lot of time in researching this, as there were no official statements on the subject from either Rabanne or Dune. I had contact with the PR department of Paco Rabanne, but my questions were never answered satisfactorily.
> We have also often met about accessibility and readability. As a specifitc example, we discussed the Vêtements x DHL Bootleg Shirts, which are only read and understood by a small audience. 

> As a last step of the writing process, i made final decisions for the main references. The main References are: 

1
Dune 2 and Paco Rabanne 
(The respectful approach)
2
Tchibo and The Beatles 
(The problem of legibility)
3
Shanzhai
(A counterperspective)
4
The Swiss Banknotes 
(A counterfeit-resistant original)

> I made the decision as to which references to treat very carefully. The aim was to present as wide a range of examples as possible in order to illustrate the various forms and provide an overview. 
> In addition to the main references, I worked on the introduction and the intro parts of the characters. 

> Here’s a visual collection of the chosen references:


> Here’s a list of related articles (and different references) I’ve read in during my research both for the thesis and the project: 

> TAZ Germany, “Bootlegging in der Mode”
> SportsBangers (Project)
> “F for Fake” by Orson Welles (Movie)
> Hito Steyerl “The Wretched of the Screen”
> Kueng Caputo “Copy”
> Shanzhai, Disnovation.org
> Süddeutsche Zeitung about Lawrence Weiner
> Re-Magazine #9 – John
> Victor Papanek, “Design für die reale Welt”
> Tate, “The Banknote Project” 
> Experimental Jetset, Ellsworth Kelly 1:1
> SRF Dok about Fakes
> Shanzhai Lyric Instagram
> OMR about Drake and A.I. songs
> TAZ, “The ultimate anti-brand brand”
> Portrait Shanzhai Biennial: Fake It Till You Make It
4. 
Script, Planning Video & Voices

> During the first writing exercises, I wrote from different perspectives, including Drake's perspective, who wants to protect his voice at all costs and takes action against all fakes.
> This exercise gave rise to the idea of integrating Drake into the video as a character with a strong opinion. Since it was clear that Drake represents the contra opinion, I looked for a suitable character with a pro opinion. Demna, the creative director at Balencia, often worked with appropriation when he was still active at Vêtements and seemed to fit very well as a pro-voice.
> In order to understand as precisely as possible what Drake and Demna had to say about intellectual property and counterfeits, I watched hours of interviews.
> In addition to the two characters, there is a narrator who introduces the references.

> Since it was important to me that the characters were not only visually recognizable, but that the voice should also be as close to the original as possible, I used various methods to imitate the voices. 
> I wanted to not only deal with the practice of bootlegging theoretically in the thesis, but also to apply it. That's why I invested a lot of time in technical research into AI-generated voices.
> I’ve started to work with RVC which is an open source model and quite accessible if you’ve watched the right tutorials.
> Since I wasn't one hundred percent satisfied, I looked for alternatives. 
> In the end, I chose Eleven Labs because the quality is by far the best in terms of quality and functionality. I trained the voices of Drake and Demna myself by cutting together audio material and uploading it. The narrator's voice is a default voice from Eleven Labs. 
> I also made the first sketches for the video. See below.
> Design-wise (for the video lecture) i decided to work with a style i established working on my potfolio: Collaging and layering. I used this style to bring my process images, often of poor quality, into a presentable format. In short, images of different quality can be displayed very well. This low-effort aesthetic, as some might call it, is a suitable way for me to deal with a lot of material from different sources and to gather inspirations and ideas. 


5.
  Realisation Video, Final Voices & Sound
> As you may have already seen, I have often used screen recordings as well as images. I decided to work with moving images to maintain a certain dynamic in the video. Sometimes things are just moved around, sometimes I played with Photoshop tools to draw the audience's attention to what is being discussed.
> I also established a tactic which I’d describe as “Digital Greenscreen” to be able to get screen recordings with transparent background. That was fun! (See below).
:-)
Practical BA Project 

1.
Research, mentoring sessions & first ideas

> Lex and I have been meeting regularly since March to exchange ideas and thoughts. The research for the theory and the practical work took place parallel.
> I gathered many interesting references such as the Drake / James Turrell crossover.
> I have considered many different approaches, from fake football shirts to counterfeit money. However, I found it difficult to decide on an idea early on. 

2.
More mentoring 
sessions & more ideas
3.
Idea & concept

4.
Extracting, Prompting & Coding

> In a first step, I had descriptions generated from all 700+ images. The descriptions are extremely accurate and are probably just as detailed as if I had made them. The image descriptions were created with the new ChatGPT4. 
> My aim was to automate the processes as much as possible. I therefore made about 15 different attempts to completely automate image generation. 
> Also I tried many different A.I. tools for text-to-image generation such as Stable Diffusion, Dall-e etc. 

> Completing the automation was technically quite difficult and took a lot of time, but I saved a lot of time by automating this process. 
> I created the automation with the help of Copilot and ChatGPT in the form of a Python3 script. 
> The script is relatively simple, the prompts are loaded from a text file, then sent to Dall-E using the OpenAI API (programming interface) and an image is returned and saved locally.