David Guetta And Nicki Minaj Criticized Over Burning Man Ripoff
Musician David Guetta and Nicki Minaj were a hot pair at this year’s Billboard Music Awards with their memorable performance of Guetta’s hit “Hey Mama.” But critical reception of their showing has grown chilly over the course of the past week as allegations have surfaced that elements of their onstage show borrowed heavily from another artistic medium. To be sure, it’s not the typical kind of accusations that musicians face regarding overuse of samples, similar lyrics, and ripped off riffs. Rather, it’s the scenery from the stage show that has some fellow artisans claiming that their intellectual property was unabashedly copied for the BMA performance.
Guetta and Minaj took the stage for the May 17 BMA show backed by a set festooned with intricately cut, shimmering geometric structures. The orb-like objects were quickly recognized by some art enthusiasts as bearing a striking resemblance to a series of sculptures popularized at Burning Man, 2014.
Artists Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu are the artists behind the Burning Man sculptures, which are known to aficionados as HYBYCOZO, an abbreviation of the phrase “Hyperspace Bypass Construction Zone.” According to the official HYBYCOZO website, the pieces are laser-cut sculptures comprised of steel which stand around six feet tall and weigh over 600 pounds. The site explains that the project was created “to take a passion for design, technology, geometry, and installation art to the next level through thought provoking objects.”
#hybycozo from last year at Burning Man…
A photo posted by HYBYCOZO (@hybycozo) on
Earlier this year, the HYBYCOZO creators told Boing-Boing that the Burning Man project had transformed their lives by bringing them notoriety and critical acclaim. But after seeing unauthorized doppelgangers of their work on the stage during the David Guetta and Nicki Minaj segment of the BMA’s, the HYBYCOZO duo is miffed at the notion that they have received no acknowledgement or attribution for their original concepts and designs.
“We received several calls in the evening on Sunday telling us to turn on the TV to watch the David Guetta performance because our design was popping up all over the stage,” HYBYCOZO designer Yelena Filipchuk told Thump. “It was so egregious that people who weren’t even that familiar with the project sent us messages asking us if we did the stage design!”
Filipchuk expressed particular frustration at what the pirated polygons might mean to her future endeavors as an artist and designer.
“The part that hurts the most is that we are young artists doing festival art and stage design. Now it feels like anything we do will just be copied by one of these huge corporate teams,” Filipchuk further noted in her conversation with Thump. “If they wanted this aesthetic they should have contacted us to discuss the options rather than [create] what a appears to be blatant rip off of our art without our permission.”
While it is unclear how much input Guetta and Minaj personally wielded regarding stage design for their BMA performance, Thump notes that Guetta’s “Hey Mama” video — released well prior to the BMA broadcast — appears to have a strong Burning Man influence, hinting that the theme may have carried over to the unattributed use of the HYBYCOZO structures. While neither David Guetta nor Nicki Minaj have commented publicly on the flap thus far, it would seem that artistic integrity might ultimately propel one of the performers to provide some kind of explanation for the dittoed dodecahedrons — even if it’s just to pass the buck and blame the show’s art director and production team.
[Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images]
