On Fri, 27 Oct 2017, Julian Le Saux via NetBehaviour wrote:
Ruth and all,
I've been doing some more thinking. I kind of agree with Alan that you don't
actually want to make any money out of selling shares in nothing - otherwise
you're participating in the process you're pretending to satirize. On the
other hand the whole point of the satire is that the artwork itself doesn't
exist, the only thing that exists is its value; and you can't make this work
without having value involved, and ideally some kind of market-style
transaction, or a satirical version of a market-style transaction. And the
other thing I was thinking is that I don't know how to code any of this
stuff myself, which means that some other poor sod has got to do it,
probably Rob, who I'm sure has got lots of other things to do - unless I'm
prepared to actually learn how to set something like this up, which would
probably take a good few weeks, or maybe forever...
Coding/mining etc. is where the labor value comes in.
The obvious solution to the making-money conundrum is just to give the money
to a 'good cause'. That would be fine, but it's not particularly satirical.
So then I started to wonder whether it would be possible to have a built-in
refund with every transaction? I think it probably would be, actually, from
what I know about the code (not much), because every transaction seems to
take place between identifiable blockchain addresses: so if you can send
them a share in nothing, you could also send them back the money they paid
for that share in the first place. That would be quite a good joke, but even
better would be if every time someone bought a share, it had the effect of
creating a load more shares - let's say another trillion, just to make it
completely absurd. So that the whole idea of buying shares for the sake of
their scarcity, because scarcity enhances market value, would be completely
turned on its head. If you started off with a trillion shares, and a
trillion people bought one share each - or even if one person bought them
all - not only would they own a trillion shares in nothing, and not only
would their money be refunded in any case, but the effect would be to create
a trillion trillion shares, so that their portion would be almost infinitely
watered down. Now, whether you could actually code that I'm not at all sure,
and I've been hesitating about whether to suggest it in case it's completely
impractical; but assuming that it could actually be done, something like
that would be a rather nice way to play the blockchain at its own game, I
think.
This wd work in an ideal world, but with computer limitations, wouldn't a
pyramid scheme eventually clog things (not to mention the problematic of
such a scheme, given how many people have been hurt by them in irl. So
some of the interest in this might be that no one's getting hurt. Are
they?).
As regards your suggestion of giving nothing exactly the same boundary as
Finsbury Park, I like it. In one sense it doesn't matter where you put
nothing, of course, but in another sense it would be nice for people to
arrive somewhere and think to themselves 'There's nothing here'. Of course
there's always something, anywhere you go, but you very often don't
appreciate it because you've got other things on your mind: expectations,
wishes and so forth. Giving yourself a chance to appreciate what's actually
there, instead of what you are expecting to be there or what you would like
to be there, is an aspect of mindfulness. But so is focussing your mind on
nothing: trying to free your mind from the thoughts and concerns that
usually keep going round and round inside it. The classic mindfulness
exercise is to concentrate on your own breathing, and set everything else
aside apart from that. Another one is to close your eyes and listen to
whatever sounds are going on around you. Or you can concentrate on relaxing
the different parts of your body, one by one. But all of these exercises are
supposed to get you closer to a state of receptive emptiness, an attunement
to nothing. So I think of nothing as having two aspects: there's a satirical
aspect, which is all about the way market values first get attached to art
and then supplant it, and how the blockchain threatens to kind of amplify
and enshrine this process; but then on the flipside there's a spiritual
aspect, which is about freeing your mind from all that kind of nonsense.
Finsbury Park can be categorized as a Jordan curve which is something;
what the naming does is create a psychogeography reminding me of Pokemon
Go (forget what it's called)!
Best!, Alan
What do you think? Does this move things forward?
Edward
On 23/10/17 15:52, ruth catlow wrote:
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?
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). 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 of ************ 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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