Art Catalog | Data Doctor

The Art of Information Will Be Free

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Fred Pierre made his first digital collage in 1993. Since then he has made dozens of digital composites that combine representational and abstract elements that focus on humanity's relationship with the natural world. Fred's goal is to bring awareness to the value of our environment and to enable sustainable permacultures through biomimicry and other innovative design techniques. Fred posts close-ups of his larger pieces to instagram under the moniker "Information Will Be Free," which is a restatement of Stewart Brand's famous quote from the first Hacker's Conference in 1984.

On the one hand...information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

This was later reformulated by Richard Stallman, who wrote:

I believe that all generally useful information should be free. By "free" I am not referring to price, but rather to the freedom to copy the information and to adapt it to one's own uses...When information is generally useful, redistributing it makes humanity wealthier no matter who is distributing and no matter who is receiving.

Internet activist and coding prodigy, Aaron Swartz, took this to heart. Aaron helped found Creative Commons and the Internet Archive's Open Library project which provide free access to huge amounts of scientific, social and literary information. After Aaron hacked and publicly released the JSTOR academic database, he was hounded by the government and threatened with long prison sentences. Aaron died before the case went to court. After his death, he received the James Madison Award for encouraging citizens to participate in government and advocating for free, public access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles.

When Fred uses publicly-available photos and artwork in his collages, he is thoughtful about their use, cropping and altering the images to create unique digital landscapes. Fred uses his own photos and drawings whenever possible and employs masking and compositing techniques that he has developed over thirty years of creating digital art.

All of the artwork you see here is available for purchase and can be mailed anywhere in North America. Payments are accepted online through Paypal or Venmo. Use the number code when ordering and reference the print size requested. Framing is available at an additional cost which varies by size and prints to light canvas can also be arranged. Please include your e-mail or phone number if you have questions or inquiries.

Visit @informationwillbefree on Instagram