Dear Edward an all!
Love the context setting here - the physical artwork as a tiresome
encumbrance for investors and its eventual disappearance as an
attractive feature for potential collectors.
Then some responses to your proposal
Re: presentation - Furtherfield would consider presenting nothing as a
permanent public art display in a site that maps exactly to the boundary
of Finsbury Park where Furtherfield Gallery is based - in a column of
the same height as the nearest mobile phone mast. An artwork that people
move through and animate with their presence and indifference.
Or presentation methods could be forkable.
Re: pricing of shares- we need an elegant and considered way to set the
price of shares. I don't know what that would be
You can buy fractions of cryptocurrencies. My whimsical feeling is that
all cryptocurrencies have something like personalities - that are
expressed through their market value and volatility, hyper or anti
inflationary natures, initial distribution protocol (Venture Capital vs
Air drops), and the nature of the products or services provided (like
prediction markets, provenance and proof of identity), where applicable.
I think that Ed Fornielis explores this beautifully in his work Finials
<https://vimeo.com/206410037>
These are tamagotchi style creatures which are kept alive and either
thrive or die according to the performance of data generated from
specific "large structures" - companies, currencies, football teams,
rainfall etc
I’ve always had a penchant for pyramid schemes - we could look at a
system that makes nothing collectible via Maecenas and then accrues
capital via resale rights - distributed to Netbehaviour contributors -
who could choose to split the profits (or not) with Furtherfield
Hmmm
Cheers
Ruth
On 22/10/17 13:40, Edward Picot via NetBehaviour 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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Furtherfield
www.furtherfield.org
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Furtherfield is the UK's leading organisation for art shows, labs, &
debates
around critical questions in art and technology, since 1997
Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company limited by Guarantee
registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205.
Registered business address: Ballard Newman, Apex House, Grand Arcade,
Tally Ho Corner, London N12 0EH.
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