In 2013, New Museum presented “Jeremy Bailey: Famous New Media Patent Office” as part of the First Look online exhibition series in collaboration with Rhizome. This exhibition was commissioned in conjunction with Rhizome’s annual Seven on Seven Conference, in which Bailey was a participant.

Contemporary debates around patent law, sparked by lawsuits among major consumer technology companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung, bring to light crucial issues affecting artists, entrepreneurs, and consumers alike.

One such issue, arguably the most pressing, is whether the patent industry inhibits, rather than nurtures, innovation; another relates to the new modes of physical behavior, related to touch and interaction, that corporations seek to own. “Jeremy Bailey: Famous New Media Art Patent Office,” a new commission for the First Look series, satirizes these complex issues by creating patents for the artist’s performance works—each one a genuine innovation of augmented reality that is, simultaneously, too idiosyncratic and abstract to actually require protection.¹

Established in 2012 and co-organized by the New Museum and Rhizome, First Look is a digital art commissioning and exhibition program representing the breadth of art online—from interactive documentary, to custom-built participatory applications, to moving image-based works, and art for mobile VR. Encompassing a substantial array of work that continues to expand, First Look explores the formal, social, and aesthetic possibilities of emerging technologies on the web.

In 2018, the site was archived by the New Museum Archives using Rhizome’s Webrecorder tool. The archived copy may be viewed via Webrecorder.io, here: https://webrecorder.io/NewMuseumArchive/first-look-jeremy-bailey-famous-new-media-art-patent-office/