Stealing from Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey built his career on appropriation. He took an AP photograph of Barack Obama, transformed it into an icon, and sold prints. He took a wrestling photo, transformed it into the Andre the Giant "OBEY" campaign that made him famous. He has been sued for it, settled for it, and kept doing it — because the argument is that transformation is the point. The work becomes something new in the act of taking it.

This project takes his work.

A Python script scrapes a random image from Fairey's print archive at obeygiant.com, converts it to the 7-color palette supported by a color e-paper display, and renders it on the screen. The next time the script runs, a different print. His catalog as a passive rotating art display, displayed in the home without a subscription, without a transaction, without his knowledge.

It felt fitting.

The display

This is the second of two e-paper displays gifted by someone who'd never gotten around to using them. The first became the Tome Reader. This one had a 7-color palette — black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, and orange — which suited Fairey's work well. His prints lean on flat color, bold separations, and high contrast. The e-paper aesthetic amplified that rather than fighting it.

The build

This was a speed project. The goal was to go from idea to working display as fast as possible using only what was already on hand — Raspberry Pi, display, a Python script, no additional hardware purchases. The script handles scraping, image conversion, and rendering in one pass.

• Hardware: Raspberry Pi · Waveshare color e-paper display
• Language: Python
• Method: scrape → convert to 7-color palette → render to display

Source on GitHub.