A common problem with net art is its immateriality. It only exists online in a digital state—unlike the material nature of traditional art, which is valued both for the skill involved and its tangibility (so you can impress the Joneses with your fine collection of 18th century horse portraiture). You can hang a painting on your wall, but you can’t hang a digital file on your wall, can you? Still, that doesn’t mean to say a file shouldn’t be a collector’s item just like a painting, and the latest project from Kim Asendorf aims to give the digital file some monetary value in the collectible art world. Taking a small step towards a future where online art is as collectable as offline art, he’s created GIF Market, which lets you buy a GIF file to be kept online with the patron’s name next to it.The files are numbered from 1 to 1024 and show a black line with 1×1 pixels rotating around it. #1024 has 1024 pixels rotating around and #1023 has 1023 and so on all the down to #1 which has just one pixel floating around it. Each GIF’s price is calculated by the following formula: PRICE = SALES / NUMBER * 16. So as more GIFs are sold the price of the others increase, with the end result (if all GIFs are sold) resulting in the cost of #1 (the most unique) being $23269. Not bad for a rotating pixel. You can go treat yourself to one here, but get in quick before everyone’s doing it. As Asendorf says, “It is just a matter of time when digital art in its original format, as file, will be in every significant art collection. And then the GIF will be the most important file type.”It’s an interesting trend we’re seeing of late where Young Internet Based Artists (YIBAs) are creating digital platforms to sell their wares or display their art, rather than relying on a third party. We’ve seen Rafael Rozendaal selling websites as unique artworks by giving the buyer the domain name so they get exclusivity to the piece. There’s also sites like Commissioned where artists (abiding by a set of rules) are commissioned to make an artwork—the favored works getting displayed on the site. Just last week we saw the opening of online exhibition Il Labirinto di Cristallo showing work from a variety of artists centered around certain themes.As well as these showcases there’s also critiques on the current schism between buying and selling traditional art, compared with that of net art, like Jerome Saint-Clair’s Invest in Art online bookmarklet that allows casual web surfers with money to burn patronize web art by putting a red dot next to pieces they’re interested in, just like in the “real” art world.
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