Sorry about the delay in getting back online here. I had a very busy few weeks, with my literature review, report on child perception, tutorial essay on eyewitnesses, and last but not least, a statistics exam. Horrible awful thing that it was. Anyway onto happier, things.

It looks like I'm in the clear as to the intellectual property infringement charge, no banning. So I'm happy and content this christmas. I would really hae hated to loose DeviantArt membership, as I've lurked here for many years previous to my research project. Yay, and thanks to eerybody who sent me a nice comment, or telling me to not take too much notice of the whole thing; you were correct.

I'm currenly reading a book called 'the gift' by Lewis Hyde, as it relates to how value and price is alloted to artworks. A good layman's text on the creative product's cultural value and commercial/ economic value duality in modern art world. He also deals with myth and fairy tales as a type of 'sychological commerce'. I had never thought of them in that way before, the moral or lesson of the story as possessing a mental and educational value, outside of entertainment.

The second book I'm reading is a very good psychology text, 'Human judgement: the eye of the beholder' by Donald Laming. Accessible for a psych book, with some really interesting experiments peppered throughout the theory, really loved the opening chapter where a classic art piece increases in value 2200 times (£170 to 380,000) in a few months, after being attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo, as a portrait of Pope Clement VII, who refused King Henry VIII an annulment to Catherine of Aragon. The lesson: context is worth a few hundred thousand sterling. I love the art market, it makes me smile.

II'm in the process of ordering the images at the moment, trying to get a good spread across media and tiem frames. Tedious and hand cramping task that's turning into Starting the introduction section of the thesis. Enjoying the reading for it, as I have no classes at the moment, so no interruptions. Delightful.

Have a merry christmas and a happy new year!

ps. if you notice a typo involving the letter 'V', sorry, but my keyboard's v key is sticking.

I have been reported to the staff of DeviantART by a cautious artist for infringement of intellectual property. I sent the following response to the artist and now post it here, so that there are no further accusations of illegal action. They are referred to as Blank because I feel they contacted me with the intention of protecting their intellectual property, and I believe that naming them would be innappropriate.

Dear [Blank],

I am sorry to have offended you so much. This was not my intent. I feel that I should have been more pro-active in my efforts to notify artists as to the potential use of their works in my thesis.

My undergraduate qualification is in fine art, so I understand your issues perfectly. But people do use both art works and academic works without getting absolute permissions. In art it is called the fair use rationale, if ‘Inclusion is for information, education and analysis only.' In academia it is citing and quoting peoples work. At no time have I said that credit will not be given, and of course anybody has the right to withdraw. I have a suspicion that you are one. But I'm not making any money at all from this; I am infact loosing money, as ethically I have to pay people to participate for the half hour. I am obtaining other museum works through Scala images and am in communication with them at the moment as well, as no project has been undertaken like this before, and even they (who hold the permissions and copyrights for the MoMA, the Louvre, to name but a few) are having to tread new ground on this one. I have promised them that no offset printing of the works will happen, that all ownership and rights are protected at all times for their clients. And this has satisfied them, and their huge legal teams.

None of the images I plan to use (which has not been confirmed or finalised at this time) are ever going to be printed out. They are going to be displayed for a few seconds only (at most) at a low resolution (again, under fair use rationale: 'The image is a low resolution copy of the original work of such low quality that it would be unlikely to impact sales of the work'.

Again I apologise for not notifying you outright, it was very stupid of me in hindsight. I hope that you can now see that no attempts at infringing upon your intellectual property were intended. I will update my page to clarify my legal position, and to ensure that no other artists feel as you have felt. I hope that this experience has not unduly affected your opinion of psychology as a field, as I am only a student at this time, and still have much to learn (this is why I am in college after all). I am not registered or practising, as I am a student, and never intend to work in the conventional sense of counselling or therapy, but as a perceptual neuroscientist.

I am going to send a copy of this to the staff also, so they can evaluate the whole situation and decide as they will. Finally, I wish you luck and success in your creative career and for the future.

Olivia Rohan
D-ciz-N

Hi all deviants,

I'm a final year post grad in psychology, hoping to find out how fast we like what we like in art. I'm collecting contemporary art here, to be used in my research task. All images used will be properly credited.

I hope you'll be happy to help further our understanding of perception and aesthetics, but if your work is in my favourites and you don't want to have it used in the research base of images, please let me know, and I will remove it without any fuss.

If you have any comments, questions or just wanna have a chat, please drop a comment or mail me. I'd love to know what all the deviants think about why we like what we do, or why don't...