Slashdot Mirror
Artwork Re-Sells Itself Weekly On eBay
Lanxon writes "How much would you pay for a piece of artwork that you could only own for a week? A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009, is a black acrylic box that places itself for sale on eBay every seven days thanks to an embedded Internet connection, which, according to the artist's conditions of sale, must be live at all times. Disconnections are only allowed during transport, says the creator, Caleb Larsen. Larsen tells Wired UK: 'Inside the black box is a micro controller and an Ethernet adapter that contacts a script running on [a] server [every] 10 minutes. The server script checks to see if the box currently has an active auction, and if it doesn't, it creates a new auction for the work.'" Another condition of sale is that the artist gets 15% each time the piece is sold. Maybe the First Sale Doctrine works differently in the UK.
So.. each person who buys this will, in theory, try to do everything they can to make sure that the sale price tops their purchase price (including shipping) by 15%, so as to recoup all their costs. Sounds like a great scam for the artist.
If you can only own it for a week, then why the hell would you buy it in the first place?!
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
Only if the definition of art encompasses EVERYTHING. I like art too much to consider this an example. This is attention-mongering and marketing.
This is not a F1r57 p057. It's artwork.
Give me a fucking brake ...
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
First sale doctorine doesn't apply if you have a contract. If you signed a contract to buy the piece of art, it certainly can have restrictions on what you can do with it. The first sale doctorine rather applies to limitations imposed by copyright, ie: the right for the copyright holder of something to sue you, even though you don't have a contract, because you sold it again.
according to the article '....give Larsen 15 percent of any increase in value ...', which is slightly different to what the story summary implies. I wonder, should the value decrease, does the seller get 15% back of any decrease?...I guess not!
TFA says that the artist gets 15% of the INCREASE in value, not 15% of the entire value.
I should have read TFA. Still, it seems foolish, seeing as you need to sell it for at least 118% of the price you paid for it, just to break even.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
The purchaser also gains the right to claim the title of "The worlds most obvious sucker"....
He doesn't claim you don't have a right of first sale to the raw object, he's just saying that if you don't adhere to the contract then the object loses its value as a work of art and will no longer recognize it as his legitimate work of art. So while you have whatever rights the law gives you to the raw materials, but he is controlling the use of the concept which is what anyone who would buy this thing is actually interested in.
A bit twisty, but if you're into that sort of thing it could work for you. I think every week is a bit much, makes it potentially not worth the effort to deal with it. I'd think at least quarterly would be the way to go.
Would make an interesting sales model for a self-replicating machine.
Buy it. Use it to make as many copies as you can in a set period of time. Then you have to re-sell it and send a percentage of the profits back to the originator.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Some famous artist once exhibited a metal cube about 1m on a side. He was based in New York, and one day, driving through New Jersey, he saw a sign that said "You design it, we fabricate it". So he called them and ordered a 1m cube of solid steel. It was explained to him how much this would weigh. So he settled for a cube of sheet metal on a frame. The cube was duly fabricated and drop-shipped to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
That was in the 1970s, when it was at least an original idea. As late as the 1990s, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art was showing a Plexiglas cube held together with tape. That was embarrassing. (When SFMOMA started, all the money went into their building, and the permanent collection was awful. It's since improved, but it's still far behind NY and LA.)
As Frank Lloyd Wright pointed out, you can have very simple geometric forms, but the materials and finishes must be very well chosen.
...the art of making something (money) from nothing (black piece of plastic with a couple microchips built-in). Also could be considered the art of the pyramid scheme. Then again, the only people who would buy this probably have too much money anyhow, so at least it goes some distance towards the redistribution of wealth.
Your weekly fee is 15% of its market value (minus eBay fees) and you support possible market value gain/loss. But this is also the occasion for a new piece of art. Since it is allowed to keep it unplugged when travelling, constantly ship it to yourself again and again.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
That's uh, all I really had to say
First Sale is a copyright issue. It does not apply where there is a prior agreement to the sale between seller and buyer.
Barring something completely ridiculous, two parties can make any agreement they want about a copyrighted work, as long as it is prior to sale, and First Sale will not apply.
I assume the box contains one? Has he opened up his source already because this would certainly qualify as commercial use. Think I'm gonna steal this idea though and implement in the black boxes of airplanes. At least they will an excuse when they kind find it next time a plane crashes. Anyway, I anyone wants to bid on this auction, please contact me first. I am willing to rip you off for half the price. (Excluding taxes)
Yeah, whatever you say, Agent Smith.
I've more than once seen that a seller purchased the offered product about a week before. This happens especially for strange things. Strange things are very similar to art. The reason for buying and selling seems to be simple curiosity.
The only difference now is that it's enforced by the thing itself.
...it better pack/box itself, bring itself to the shipper and pay it's own shipping fees after it sells itself automatically, otherwise, it's going to stay on the shelf where it belongs. /not that I'd every buy such a stupid NOT-ART object, anyway. //dammit why didn't I think of this!?
The buyer terms attempts to circumvent first sale, by stating the agreement is between the buyer and the artist, regardless of whoever the seller is.
And if the terms are violated the item ceases to be a work of art
I don't know... this may be perfectly valid. But it still sounds really funny.
It's like selling someone a painting, with an agreement... that if they sell it to another person that other person has to make an agreement with the original painter.
And if they fail to follow the terms, the item ceases to be a painting.
So yeah... the terms are funny in a kind of absurd way.
I suppose if the terms are violated for the self re-selling piece, though, it does cease to be a re-selling piece... so there's some uniqueness there.
However I say it's still a piece no matter what!
A piece of _____________. (What goes in the blank is up to you)
Wonder how the dynamics would change if you were allowed to own it longer and longer for each resale, say +1 day for every time it changes hands.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
To everyone saying "scam" and "this will never work" and "this is not art": this auction and event is clearly not for you. I think it is for all those people who played and enjoyed "pass-the-parcel" as a childhood game. In this case, it is like playing pass-the-parcel in reverse. Remember, everyone who "buys" the work still has the right to "sell" it afterwards and this can go on until the value of the art drops. The person still holding the parcel in that situation is unlucky as s/he will lose money. So long as the artist stays in vogue or becomes more established, people will make (small amounts of) money on each transaction - up to a point. It's just a piece of harmless fun for those people who can afford to risk up to £2500 on a scheme like this. I agree with those who say that the artist should have gone for a monthly or quarterly rather than a weekly scheme. But I wouldn't think that their aim is any more than illustrating a principle.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Wow. The current bid sits at US $4,250.00 with six unique bidders.
Somehow, based on the posts here, I don't think that number is going to increase as a result of exposure on Slashdot.
My highschool art teacher had a special scowl when he told us about the commonly heard phrase among the plebes, "I may not know anything about art, but I know what I like." I tended to think that this is one of the more sensible statements I'd ever heard, but then I didn't get stellar grades in art class. I wonder if he'd be up for a black cube of doom?
From the FAQ. . .
Hm. That's actually kind of neat. I can see the appeal for the art community. Nice jorb. --Though, for the rest of us, the same feeling can be achieved at discount simply by contemplating the EULA on a piece of software. You own the disk, but do you OWN the disk? The mind reels!
Now THAT's art!
-FL
Cool cube and a nice experiment.
How is it powered?
It's not artwork. It's just a computer in a black cubic case.
"Maybe the First Sale Doctrine works differently in the UK."
Or maybe it doesn't exist, what with that being an American law, and all, and the UK being a different country and all.
Why do Americans, and Slashdotters in particular, assume that the world's legal systems are based on the USA's?
With you being such a new country, you'd think you'd realise that your laws are an amalgam of what's gone before - and that Common Law or other branches were around a long time before your country existed.
The whole world doesn't want to be American you know.
First of all, whoops... sorry it took four years to get delivered to my place.
Yes, of course it was disconnected during that time! ^^
Second, strangely, after I had it, weird thinks will happen to the other owners. Like waking up in the room with the box, with no memory of the past eight hours, everything valuable stolen, and perhaps a used condom in their ass, filled with sperm from a goat. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I knew this story wouldn't go well on this site. Nerds typically don't get art. I don't get it either but am at least aware that the "art" in this case is NOT the physical black box but the entire concept. The concept of the black box (as a device that functions without you knowing what goes on inside) and the concept of it selling itself and needing to be resold.
A lot of art AIN'T about the physical product, but about the idea behind it.
Since I am a geek, I don't pretend to fully understand the artists thinking behind it and am even willing to admit that I personally think he might be blowing a bit of smoke. But the failing is mine, not his.
It is an interesting idea, but you got to be able to look beyond the mechanics. I predict that only a handful of real /.ers (as in people who don't think XP is the first and best OS ever) can truly get art. Forever outsiders looking in.
Then again, we get tech, which I notice some more socially aware just don't get... if only we could use both halfs of our minds at the same time :P
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190367275705
Where do you draw the line? Simple example: Picasso. Mainstream or not? Once he was not, now he is. Rap was once extreme, now it is so mundane white people do it. Elvis Presley once shocked the world, now he is elevator music.
Movies were once extreme, daring, shocking and made in Hollywood, now Hollywood stands for everyday commercial crap.
When someone made the first shadow portrait, he or she was the first, pushing technology to new limits. Now it is old hat.
The paintings and photographs you mentioned all developed over time (get it, photographs, developed?) into different forms. The super realistic paintings that are considered "not proper art" anymore by the snobs but the rest of us buy (Rembrandt) were NEW once.
The media wants to show us new things. The first guy to break the 1 minute on the 10 mile run is news, the second isn't. The first moon-landing was news, by the time of Apollo 13, people famously didn't care anymore.
For art to be news worthy, it got to do something new. You wouldn't accept a slashdot story on a guy painting the ceiling of a church in high detail with just paint and brushes would you? Been done.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I took a look at some of his other 'art' on his website.
One of his pieces of 'art' is a dollar bill acceptor on a plain white wall. Once $10,000 dollars is reached, the money is split between Larsen and whoever owns the acceptor. Then it starts again.
Another piece of 'art' was the purchaser of the 'art' assuming Larsen's credit card bills.
Another was a 'donor plaque', in which the more you gave, the bigger your name was on the plaque.
All of his newest pieces of 'art' just seem to be money makers for himself that prey on people who want to seem like they are hip to the 'art scene.'
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Nice idea, similar to the million dollar homepage.
But one problem: without maintenance, this thing will inevitably stop working, I bet soon.
According to the agreement, no internet connection is needed during transport between venues. So if it is in a perpetual state of transport; no connection is required. Could you not put it on a model railroad track and move it between two venues on a perpetual basis? You could create your own derivative work, Moving A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009 Among the Masses.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
So, we have a mysterious plastic cube that automatically sells itself after a week. How about, during that one week it releases a noxious chemical, or a bacterium, which then eventually kills the owner (say, after about a few months)? A chain of mysterious deaths, "untraceable" (in Hollywood movies you can have plotholes as big as goatse asshole), terrifying...
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If this art auction goes to court to get a legal opinion on the validity of the sale terms and conditions, then this would become cross genre "performance art", as modern court procedure is way more theater than not.
As would also be the case if someone walked up to it wearing a rubber chicken suit and smashed it with a hammer, then ran off giggling....and I think the latter would have more socially redeeming artistic value...triple plus artistic good if simultaneously with the art piece..rearrangment from one into many little pieces of art... the original artist got flashmobbed wherever he was and got mass pied, and all of that got videoed and put up on youtube.
Anyway, this piece isn't all that original past the viral cost aspect, it is a plain nothing special (see, I can be an art critic) variation on that $999 app store "I'm steenking rich, neener neener" does absolutely nothing but cost money app they had up for a day or so. Or like those "buy a pixel" websites.
Now if the artist had any real talent, which he doesn't, the art piece would sprout robotic legs and walk off and go home in a nasty cussing hissy fit when some new price wasn't met....
So if the thing doesn't work as advertised, can I get my money back? Will the previous owner take a hit on that?
Everbody's focused on the cube. It's not about the cube. It's about the tech--the cube is really just a case. This is a novel form of performance art. Would I pay to "see" it? No. Do I think it's particularly interesting? No. But think of it as an Internet play or something along those lines.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Whatever scam you can get away with.
--Andy Warhol
"This is where the art collector could make money. However they must first pay any fees to eBay and give Larsen 15 percent of any increase in value of the artwork."
is not the same as
"Another condition of sale is that the artist gets 15% each time the piece is sold. Maybe the First Sale Doctrine works differently in the UK."
oops I read TFA.
Try doing a "completed item" search and you'll find he's offered it once on January 14th, and four times on January 21st, to no takers. (http://completed.shop.ebay.com/i.html?MA2ShowItems&_ipg=50&_sadis=200&MA2ShowItems=&LH_SALE_CURRENCY=0&_in_kw=3&_sacat=See-All-Categories&_samihi=&_samilow=&_fpos=Zip+code&_oexkw=&_udhi=&_udlo=&_rdc=1&_sop=12&guest=1&_ex_kw=&_nkw=A+Tool+to+Deceive+and+Slaughter&LH_Complete=1&_okw=A+Tool+to+Deceive+and+Slaughter&_dmd=1&_fsct=&guest=1).
Now, of course, the item has acquired 12 bidders (as of this writing), and up to $4250.
It just proves P.T. Barnum's maxim about a sucker being born every minute.
Maybe I should buy it, and deliberately break the contract.
I can then put it on display in a gallery as a new piece of art representing the corruption of man.
who sees this as an ingenious satire of the economics of the housing bubble. Buying something intrinsically worthless and hoping to sell it at profit, without paying attention to the reality of the product....
I forget which book it's in, but the name & appearance of this thing makes me think of the shapeshifting assassin-bot in one of Philip K. Dick's short stories.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Though earth and man are gone, I thought the cube would last forever. I was wrong.
Welcome our new supreme cube overlord.
I can see this cube being owned by some famous people in the future, making it very special to own yourself, sky-rocketing the price.
I don't know if the artist is deliberately satirizing tulip bulb bubbles or not, but I think we all know what art is involved.
In the meantime you can buy The Art of the Con a good deal cheaper.
I hope the last buyer puts a teardown video on Youtube for Ars Technica types.
This piece of art reminds me of The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson. In that story, the bottle had to be resold for less than you paid for it. Similar concept though http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/rlstevenson/bl-rlst-bot.htm
One of the main problems of the art world in the past has been artificial inflation in the market and the rapid buying/ selling of artwork which pisses off the artist and the gallery. This contract/ art takes care of those by A) artist receiving a cut of sales, and B) the auction is transpired via Ebay, wide open to the public, which avoids buying/selling between two friends/ collectors/ galleries to inflate its worth.
I'd say he's an honest artist. If you go back to DaVinci, or even Cimabue, no one does art without money/ resources. Every single artist in time did it as a *job*, albeit the famous one did it with passion and more talent than its contemporaries.
In short, artists make art for money; they use that money to sustain themselves in order to make more art. Larsen is being honest about his art and producing more work, unlike the execs at Enron, Goldman Sachs, et al showering themselves with extravagant vacation, parties, golf courses, and gambling on a market by "borrowing" your money - those are the real scam artists.
Does this have ipv6? If not then that may stop this form reselling it self in a few years.
Well put my friend! Well put!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
15% of a $ -100.00 increase is: You owe me $ 15.00 you scmuck! I like it.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Wow, 200 comments and nobody mentioned the I Am Rich iPhone app?
I Am Rich was a legitimate application. It would have been completely legit if the description said, "Displays a red jewel." Instead, according to Wiki, it said, "a work of art with no hidden function at all." Vague, but not much different than this.
I Am Rich got pulled after 1 day and 8 sales. Scam? Apple pulled it for being worthless. I'm sure eBay could come to the same conclusion.
an artist.
That sounds an awful lot like that old thing people haven't talked about since the 1990s...you know, a RENTAL. o.o
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
Oh I wonder how many STUPID people will bid on this piece of plastic, just so they can one up the rest of their snotty friends.
Sounds like DRM to me. You have to pay, but you don't get to keep the goods. This kind of marketing strategy is really taking off these days, and I bet the artist is quite aware of that.
...it's that this is typical, self-indulgent stuff that does not deserve the name "art". Like painting a canvas all black, etc - this has nothing to do with providing pleasure to the viewer and everything to do with the artist's ego.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Since it (re-)sells itself, it could also leave feedback for the buyer when it knows there has been a sale and the MAC address of its gateway has changed... Something like, "Great ebayer... not the sharpest tool in the shed, but OK as a sucker" (somebody else can count the chars to see if the eBay comment length limit is exceeded with that).
What happens when the cube's batteries run down? What happens if no-one buys the item...will it just keep adding auctions when they run out, indefinitely? Does this violate eBay's Terms of Service?
We get it, we just don't think it's all that terribly clever, aside from the scam.
It's stimulating a conversation.
Have a look at the "artist's" site. He's plainly got some interesting ideas.
In many ways, these ideas are more 'accessible' than a lot of classical 'pretty pictures'.
PS:
It's also interesting to me that this guy can survive, while producing less than 1 artwork per month...
So if a person was to buy this off of eBay and then give it as a gift to the Amish, could that be allowed? The internet connection requirement is satisfied as it is "in transport" but I am not sure if the gift receiever is under any contract to hook it up to a connection
I think there's a camera and a microphone in the box.
Does it list itself with the owner's ebay ID or does it use the artist's ID? How does it know the owner's ebay password? I'm guessing the cube doesn't access ebay directly. It just pings the artist's server and the server does the ebay listing.
Because I am certainly entertained by his portfolio.
All of his newest pieces of 'art' just seem to be money makers for himself that prey on people who want to seem like they are hip to the 'art scene.'
Is any seller of anything that is "preying" on someone's "wants" a scam artist now? Just wants that you disapprove of?
It's not just a computer in a black cubic case. It's artwork.
So, it would seem to me that this would require giving the... uh, object, and by extension Larsen himself, access to your eBay account if you win. Unless I'm missing something, that would seem to be the only way it could start a new auction.
While I'm sure he doesn't have any ideas about ripping people off (beyond the stated idea behind the auction itself, in regard to which I'm in the "scam" camp), that just doesn't sit right with me.
I think you guys are missing the point of this piece of art. Think about the people who would spend $4500 on this piece of art to have it for one week - the same type of people who would spend thousands on a pair of shoes or whatever. What makes an expensive women's purse worth $20,000? Nothing except that because it is priced at $20,000 only a few people can afford it.
In the same way the artist has created a mechanism for artificially inflating the "value" of this plastic box with a computer inside - by making it so that you can only possess it for a short period of time.
It is a great tool - "a tool to deceive and slaughter"; an inside joke whereby if you "buy" the piece of artwork you are the very object that the tool was designed for.
That's my interpretation of it. I think its sheer genius.
A Scam Artist!
duddum-tssss
There is no potential misuse of this item here. Since it probably runs Linux, it most likely already has the software necessary to sniff the network, and a package like nmap will help him ID targets in the network. Then, when his work is done, offer the item for auction on eBay... and find the next sucker with a network and collection.
Maybe the artist tried to make a point by means of reductio ad absurdum?
But artists that produce tangible artworks have for a long time wanted to have a certain cut of resale of their works.
All I say, if I wasnt to sell and noone want to buy, the artist should be forced to pay last bid or last sale price +15%... If they want to impose rules on sale of goods, then they should get the responsibility like the manufacturers of other goods have...
You can write anything in a contract that you want, doesn't make it enforceable.
First, you have the first sale doctrine. You can licence IP, you can't licence a physical good.
This is a physical good that is shipped, once you get it you can do anything you want with it. The software inside might be subject to a licence agreement, however if you don't run it (supply power), then you wouldn't be bound by it.
To give you a comparison, if you bought a car, and part of the contract of the car said that when you resold it, you had to pay the car maker 15% of the sales price each time the car was resold. Such a contract would never be enforced by a court.
Art or not, the physical device is owned by whoever last purchased it. The device then lists itself using the artist's credentials. Caleb Larson is then offering for sale an item that he does not own, have physical possession of, or title to (title passed to the last Collector). Strikes me that, beyond the sale to the first "Collector", this is a flagrantly fraudulent auction and that no contract can abrogate the law. I wonder how long before someone that parted with a substantial sum to possess the physical item (it is a nice looking cube after all) decides to challenge this through eBay.
On the other hand, it does point out some of the ludicrous goings-on with respect to trailing commissions in all sorts of fields.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
In order to buy this "work of art", one must agree that part of the concept of the work is that it will try to sell itself on EBay and one will agree to allow it to sell itself. Otherwise, one can not purchase the work. By not allowing the work to sell itself, one destroys the work.
Basically, the work comes with a contract, displayed as a part of the auction stating that one waves one's first sale doctrine rights when one purchases the work of "art". It is only for sale to someone who will allow it to sell itself.
Because this is a precondition of sale and is made known before sale, there is nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about it.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
To me, for something to be considered art, it must fit all 3 of the following criteria:
1.) The creator/artist/etc must intend to convey an emotional response to an audience
2.) The medium must be able to capture an emotional response
3.) The audience must receive an emotional response from said work
Given that this criteria on what is art is correct, this thing that re-sells itself doesn't seem to be art. What emotional response is the artist intending to convey?
The medium that this "art" is in - computer hardware and computer software - well, I suppose the medium could capture an emotional response. But, I'm not sure what emotional response was intended to be captured with a cube that connects to a network and sells itself?
And, well, I can say from my viewpoint, I personally didn't feel any emotion, except pity for people who are renting this pretentious piece of "art". But this pity wasn't conveyed through the medium, it is being felt for the folks who are participating, hence this was also a failure.
I admit, my definition may not be correct, so if someone has a better definition on what is art (and a definition that allows me to include great paintings and exclude police reports), I'm all ears.
Maybe the First Sale Doctrine works differently in the UK.
And maybe the same people who cry about "government intervention" whenever corporations are asked to pay their fair share to society could allow consenting adults to conduct whatever business they want? In this case, it is very clear and obvious from the start just what exactly the deal is. Contrary to, say, movies or games with DRM where you only find out later that your buyer won't be able to use it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org