<nettime> net.art auction on eBay

[Richard Rinehart <rinehart@uclink.berkeley.edu>]

hello Net-timers,

For the first time, as part of it's annual fundraising art auction, 
New Langton Arts - an experimental media artists space in San 
Francisco, CA - is offering a symbolic portion of 3 net.art works for 
sale on eBay.

On the one hand; this auction follows the tradition of art 
organization fundriasing auctions by selling donated art works; but 
we are also updating that tradition with regards to net.art and 
commenting on present issues of how valuation happens with a 
intangible art medium by not selling whole or discrete art works, but 
by offering instead conceptual portions (points, pixels, chapters) of 
art works. So, yes, we need to fundraise; but we're also using the 
opportunity to play , just a little, with the idea of collecting 
intangible art. I would like to thank all of the artists for 
supporting New Langton Arts with this creative donation.

You can participate by going to the New Langton Arts website 
(www.newlangtonarts.org), or by following the links below directly to 
the 3 works on eBay:

Lisa Jevbratt
1:1, 1999
1:1 was a project created in 1999 which consisted of a database that 
would eventually contain the addresses of every Web site in the world 
and interfaces through which to view and use the database. Crawlers 
were sent out on the Web to determine whether there was a Web site at 
a specific numerical address. If a site existed, whether it was 
accessible to the public or not, the address was stored in the 
database. Because of the interlaced nature of the search, the 
database could in itself at any given point be considered a snapshot 
or portrait of the Web, revealing not a slice but an image of the 
Web, with increasing resolution.
eBay URL: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=928449839
Your bid is for one pixel which will be identified as your own within 
the database.

Sonya Rapoport
Arbor Erecta: A Botanical Concept for Masculinity, 1998
Chapter 3: Pandanus Dioecious: Male/Female Separate is an 
interrelated cross-cultural and scientific botanical concepts project 
the work?s intent to promote tolerance of differences. Arbor Erecta 
reflects on the intangible but real communication between tribal 
initiation in New Guinea, its indigenous Pandanus tree and sexual 
preference.
eBay URL: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=928450829
Your bid is for a single web page/chapter 3 of the project.

Richard Rinehart and Shawn Brixey
Chimera Obscura, 2002
Crossing the boundary between gallery installation and Internet art, 
Chimera Obscura is constructed around a telerobotic agent that 
Internet visitors use to navigate and decode a highly complex maze 
designed from a human thumbprint. The project employs a mutative game 
structure, allowing visitors to leave a virtual trail of media memes 
(video, audio, text, etc.) behind for others to read, duplicate, or 
delete in the search for a uniquesequence that will decode the maze. 
The ghost of the minotaur roams the maze in the form of random 
mathematical algorithms that yield mutative forces to the memes in 
the database, frustrating attempts at an easy, linear solution. 
Visitors over the Internet break through by assuming a newer hybrid 
form: that of telematic cyborgs simultaneously operating a robot in 
the gallery space attached to a continuously evolving database in 
virtual space.
eBay URL: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=928452110
Your bid is for a single virtual point within the maze (point 2031).


Thanks very much,

Richard Rinehart
New Langton Arts, Board Member and net.art Curator

-- 

Richard Rinehart
---------------
Director of Digital Media
Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive
www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
---------------
Digital Media Faculty
Department of Art Practice
art.berkeley.edu
---------------
University of California, Berkeley

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