Slides for a short lecture presentation I gave on selling internet art (both commercial and alternative economies). Salon 1 "The Art of Success" with co-presenters Jeff Stark and Zach Blas, Abandon Normal Devices Festival in Manchester, UK on August 30, 2012.

1. From Browser to
Gallery
(and Back):
The
Commodification
of Internet Art

2. Some ideas…
Do as you would in the old days
1. Spatialization
2. Commissions
3. Commercialization
Monetize online
1. Just make the work
about money: Create
“alternative economies”
for work to exist in
2. Adapt to online shopping/virtual museum…etc.

3. Artie Vierkant,
Monochrome Arc, 2010.

4. Ryan Trecartin, Any Ever, PS1,
2011.

5. Vuk Cosic, Documenta X,
part of the exhibition Net-art
per me at the Slovenian
Pavilion of the Venice
Biennial, 2001
Documenta X,
Kassel, 1997

6. Oliver Laric, Kopienkritik, 2011.
Skulpturhalle Basel

7. Postinternet Survival Guide from Survivaltips.tumblr.com,
curated/compiled by Katja Novitska, 2010

9. Spatialization

10. Success in net art Success in
Contemporary Art
• Winning a webbie • Winning Turner Prize
award!
• Interviews and good
• Lots of traffic, Likes, reviews
Reblogs and sitehits? • Museum/festival
• Mentioned on distribution
Rhizome, Furtherfield • Gallery representation
or VVork
• Commissions. Art Fairs.
• Klout score of over 50
• Nice documentary on
•Museum distribution your life’s work
•Going viral • Your name in textbooks
•Nice documentation
•Net-famous but poor

11. Teo Spiller-Megatronix (1997)
sold to Municipal Museum of
Ljubljana for 85000 SIT ($500 USD)
Image not available :[

12. Let’s talk about AURA
• Linkrot and URLs on a unique domain name
• Documentation of the internet exhibits
some “aura of the digital”, or “looks like it
exhibited somewhere”
• Versions

13. Rafael Rozendaal 2011
www.artwebsitesalescontract.com
/
Specifies sale by:
- a disc with website, files and online
content
- five successive collectors
-Rights to resell domain as long work
is kept as a whole
- transfer of domain name to
collector

14. Commissions/Support
Turbulence.org
Rhizome
Daniel Langlois Foundation ($$$)
Whitney Museum Artport (gone)
TATE (gone)
Guggenheim (gone)
Walker Arts Center
Ars Electronica
Institute of Networked Cultures

15. John F. Simon, Every Icon (1997)
http://www.numeral.com/eicon.html
Given:
An icon described by a 32 X 32 grid.
Allowed:
Any element of the grid to be colored
black or white.
Shown:
Every icon.

16. Eduardo Kacs, Genesis, Ars
Electronica, 1999 /2001

17. Various platforms made just
for selling the artz
• Art.sy (domain name change pending?)
• VIP Artfair (just for collectors/dealers)
• Art Micro Patronage (buy credit/membership
and pay for art)
• S-editions by Rafael Rozendaal
• Kickstarter
• Deviantart.com
• Artobjectculture.net (previously artobj-cult.biz)

18. LUCY CHINEN & EMILIE GERVAIS
ARTOBJECTCULTURE.NET
http://artobjectculture.net/PastArt
Objects/

19. “Our “art object tax” is a
logistical term for making
something more expensive
because its art…We are
playful with the idea of
money and buying.
Art commerce is a culture in
itself.”
Artobjectculture.net 2012

20. “I prefer to use technology when it is mainstream, when everyone has it,
because I want to reach a large audience. If you work with brand new tech
your audience is limited.” Rafael Rozendaal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2nKns9_fM8

21. Kim Asendorf & Ole Fach
Gif Market 2011
http://www.gifmarket.net

22. Jonas Lund, thepaintshop.biz/,
2012
“The Paintshop Rank™ is calculating the price by analyzing a set of
criteria, such as Artfacts ranking and Google Ranking of the author,
the quality ranking in relation to the amount of views, the amount of
Facebook likes and Tweets. The underlying assumption is that two
general things matter for the price, the reputation of the artist and the
popularity of the painting itself.”
Jonas Lund, 2012

23. Commodity Critique!
http://history.etoy.com/

24. Conclusion
• Emerging artists more willing to adapt work to
sell/exhibit in offline spaces
• Nothing wrong with selling work. It’s time net
artists got some $$$ for free labor
• Models that adhere to traditional art sales
processes are probably more problematic in
an online environment
• I thought commodity critique was cool.
• Sell stuff as long as you get to keep making it
the way you wanted it to be

25. “Hyperbranding”
-Brad Troemel 2012
Everything you post can be seen as a
performance contributing to a persona-
as-brand on the internet!
So carefully curate your Facebook posts…
i.e. Man Bartlett, Petra Cortright, Ryder Ripps,
Parker Ito, Netochka Nezvanova…etc.

26. Thanks for listening!
• You can find the first manuscript of this article
on:
www.jennifer-chan.com
Pool Postinternet Critical http://pooool.info/
• Ofluxo.net volume 1
• jennifer7chan@gmail.com