Ariel Pink used an artist’s image on an album cover without her consent. She responded with a series of blistering NFTs

When Jill Miller found a photograph of her face had been used without her consent on an Ariel Pink album cover, she could have addressed the breach in a number of ways. Call it out online perhaps, or even bring a suit. But why do that, she reckoned, when as an artist she could respond with an art project?

In 2006, musician Ariel Pink released Thrash and Burn, a 36-track compilation of his late ’90s lo-fi experiments, the cover featuring a close-up of Miller’s face. Above her forehead was written his name ‘ARIEL’ and next to her face was the word ‘STINKER’. The cover art was credited to visual artist Michael Rashkow; the subject remained unnamed.

During lockdown, Miller came across his own face on Pink’s record sleeve, and was confused. She had no idea how he had come to own the photograph – and certainly had not given permission for her image to be used on his album cover.

In subsequent DMs with Pink over Instagram, the LA-based singer simply directed Miller to Rashkow, who turned out to be her former classmate at UCLA. Back in the early 2000s, Miller earned her MFA at the university and hosted regular visits to open studios, where Rashkow likely took her picture.

That image would somehow end up in the hands of Jason Grier, the director of the music label Human Ear Music, who released Thrash and Burn (reissued it in 2013). He claims his “next-door neighbor” designed the album’s cover, before seeking and receiving Pink’s sign-off on the artwork, but not Miller’s authorization.

“My first thought was, ‘how rude,'” Miller told Artnet News of her reaction to seeing her face on Pink’s album cover. “And my follow-up thought was, ‘how predictable.’

Her next move? Create 50 alternative album covers Thrash and Burnmeant to replace – and parody – the original.

Generated using AI software and released as NFTs, these digital works are grouped into four themes, which largely center Pink in a series of absurd scenarios. It’s Ariel Pink as a sad clown, as a TSA agent, working at Walmart, with a pet skunk and on a field trip to DC (a scene referencing the riot in the US capital on January 6, where Pink was present), his face often distorted by the algorithm. Each cover bears the phrase “ARIEL STINKS” for its added “comedic potential,” according to Miller.

The first installment of Miller’s “Ariel Stinks” NFT series has been released on the crypto art marketplace Taex i one-to-one editions, priced at 0.39 ETH (approx. $624) each; a second release is planned for February 2. A cover has also been made available for free as a digital download.

“Making a series of NFTs felt like the right response to a 16-year-old album cover with my stolen photo on it,” said Miller. “I wanted the series to exist in a form that resonated with 2023 – which is digital music.” Buyers of the NFTs will also retain commercial rights to the work.

The medium of NFTs further suits an artist, also assistant professor of art practice at the University of California, Berkeley, whose practice has been intertwined with new media. In her work, she has sought to challenge contemporary perceptions with the help of technologies from augmented reality to 3D rendering to the internet. Her foray into NFTs, she said, expands those explorations.

“As an artist who experiments with new technologies, I was curious that NFTs exist as art without the physical object,” she explained. “I see them as conceptually linked to early photography, video and other art forms that confused (and later delighted) the art world.”

And AI, for that matter, is “another tool in the artist’s box,” Miller said. “I think it can be used as part of a studio practice, but I don’t think it’s essential.”

For “Ariel stinks,” she used a text-to-image generator to “imagine a number of ways Ariel could literally stink,” before editing the output in post-production. A generated image of Pink on a For Wanted poster, for example, was reworked to include a quote from Mary Wollstonecrafts A confirmation of women’s rights.

The technology also acted as a mediating layer between artist and subject, according to Miller. “Making a portrait is quite an intimate exercise,” she said. “I used the AI ​​to run interference between Ariel Pink and me… The AI ​​acts as a buffer between us so I don’t have to watch too closely for too long.”

Miller is of course well aware of this copyright litigation swirling at the moment generative AI, and has covered her legal grounds. According to her attorney, MJ Bogatin, an intellectual property attorney based in California, “Ariel stinks” falls under the fair use exception in US copyright law, as the work will be considered a parody. “She certainly has the creative license to use Pink’s image, to spoof it the way she has,” he shared Billboard.

All 50″Ariel stinks” cover will be compiled and released as a coffee table book, the culmination of Miller’s project to reclaim her image, while examining the limits of appropriation. The act, she said, “questions outdated values ​​or cultural assumptions.”

“The record predated the #MeToo movement,” she added, “and back then men were still getting away with things that wouldn’t be allowed today.”

Grier, for his part, has apologized for “unwise [choosing the photograph of Miller] as cover art for the release.” Pink — who, aside from Jan. 6, has long courted controversy by spouting statements that have been considered racist and misogynistic– called the project “a joke” and “kind of a snarky bit of revenge”, adding that it exists “to make me look bad”.

“I didn’t realize he called it a joke!” Miller said of Pink’s response. “It’s funny, but not surprising. He can’t really recognize it as art without accepting the underlying concept behind it, which is that he authorized his record label to use my image without my permission.”

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