Hi Edward,
See this sculpture <http://www.2ra.co/tmiwfull.html> by Rachel Ara
along similar lines, although it does exist and it doesn't use
blockchain technology so far (but she's developing it all the time).
Sophia
On 22 October 2017 at 14:26, bjørn magnhildøen via NetBehaviour
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Edward,
Would you consider submitting it to http://noemata.net/aphantasia/
<http://noemata.net/aphantasia/> ??
I think it would fit the project well - it concerns
existence/non-existence as an 'attribute' of an art-object. for
example, an art-object may have existence as an attribute but
without existing itself. blockchain is used as a form of
attribution/verification/documentation technology.
Best,
Bjørn
On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 2:40 PM, Edward Picot via NetBehaviour
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear all,
See what you think of the following:
Works of art offer unparalleled opportunities for
investors, both individual and corporate. They have proved
their worth time and again as hedges against inflation.
The only disadvantage is the physical work of art itself.
Valuable art is increasingly bought, not to be displayed,
but to be hidden away in warehouses in ‘freeports’: tax-
and customs-free spaces where objects are, legally,
indefinitely ‘in transit’ between countries.
Shares in valuable works of art are now being offered for
sale online, for example via Maecenas
(https://www.maecenas.co <https://www.maecenas.co/>).
Investment in art is thus being spread out from the
privileged few to the slightly-less-privileged
not-quite-so-few. If you’re not rich enough to buy an
entire work of art, you can buy a fraction of one instead,
without ever seeing or touching the original.
You don’t even have to know what the original work of art
was like. All you have to understand is its market value.
The more successful online investments in art become, the
more likely it becomes that the works of art themselves
will be permanently hidden from view. They will cease to
have any meaningful existence in terms of physical form,
expressiveness or aesthetic quality. All of this will be
dissolved and sublimated into their market price.
The next logical step in this process is for the artwork
itself to disappear completely, and for the market value
of the work to be the only thing that actually exists,
right from the outset.
Therefore, today, we are offering you a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity. You are invited to buy shares in nothing.
Nothing is a completely unique work of art. It’s
uniqueness lies in the fact that it doesn’t exist. It is
an absence, wrapped in a negation, buried in a nullity.
Even though it has no physical dimensions, nothing does
have a precise geographical location. For the sake of
security, to preserve value and avoid taxes, it will be
held in permanent storage. The location of this storage
may vary from time to time.Nothing is currently stored at
*51.57057,-0.09667**- **the Furtherfield Gallery, Finsbury
Park, London. *
*The method of storage is itself unique. In Flann
O'Brien's novel **/The Third Policeman,/**one of the
policemen (MacCruiskeen) has a hobby of making tiny boxes,
each tinier than the previous one. He keeps them one
inside the other. When he unpacks them, the **last
five**are completely invisible, and in fact there's really
no way of telling if they exist at all. 'The one I am
making now,' he says, 'is nearly as small as nothing.' *
*Nothing is being kept inside MacCruiskeen's tiniest box,
and anyone who would like to visit the Furtherfield
Gallery to view it in storage is welcome to do so,
**during normal opening hours**. *
*Please be aware, however, **that nothing, and the box in
which it is stored, are both**completely invisible.*
*In keeping with Furtherfield’s copyleft philosophy,
nothing is being licensed on a creative commons basis.
Anyone is welcome to reproduce and display nothing,
provided they give fair attribution to Furtherfield.*
*Also in keeping with Furtherfield’s open and democratic
principles, we are making **one**trillion shares in
nothing available, at a price o**f **************each.*
*Questions: Firstly, for Ruth and Mark, would you be happy to
have nothing on display at the Furtherfield Gallery? An empty
room, an empty plinth, an empty box, or even a pin with
nothing balanced on its tip?*
*Secondly, for Rob, is it practical to offer a trillion shares
in something? And what's the smallest cryptocurrency amount
that could practically be charged for each share? In my
innocence I was thinking that you could charge one BitCoin for
each share, imagining that a BitCoin was probably worth about
50p, but when I looked it up on line I see that a BitCoin is
now worth about four and a half thousand pounds. Is it
possible for people to pay for things in fractions of a
BitCoin, for example a thousandth or a ten thousandth of a
BitCoin? In order to do so, if they didn't have any BitCoin
already, would they have to buy at least one, ie. stump up
several thousand pounds?*
*It looks as if the cheapest of the cryptocurrencies is the
Doge, which is about 46p at the moment, and you can get a few
of them free as a starter deal. So I suppose the cost of a
share could be one Doge: they're less well known, but more
fun. Is that practical? Could you make a trillion shares
available via the BlockChain and charge one Doge for each of
them?*
*The other alternative would be to make very few shares
available, and charge a lot of money for each of them, which
would be more like the proper elitist art market, and
therefore perhaps a bit more satirically pointed... But
probably nobody would buy them. And if anybody did buy them,
you might end up feeling as if you were endorsing the whole
art market system.*
*Edward
*
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