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.

Comments

Sounds like a pyramid scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Sounds like a pyramid scheme

[sopssa]

IMHO, scam it is. Listing reported to Ebay.

Uh, do you even understand what a scam is? The seller isn't scamming anyone here. I think even the slashdot summary is (for once!) pretty clear about the item.

This isn't some kind of mad marketing scheme trying to make millions. It's a funny concept playing with technology and might interest some people for its novelty. Cry me a river.

Re:Sounds like a pyramid scheme

[deniable]

It's a cube scheme, not pyramid.

Re:Sounds like a pyramid scheme

[theheadlessrabbit]

...the "art" in question really is just a black cube.
Part of me has to admire the "artist" in spite of myself.

The art isn't the black cube. the 'art' is the conditions of sale. it's a piece about the market forces in the art world. The black box is only the frame.
There is a very good chance that the artist is just toying with the collectors about this whole project. in a sense, the artist is gaming the system, and presenting that as art.

Re:Sounds like a pyramid scheme

[ElectricTurtle]

Your analysis is almost certainly correct, and it's why the only thing I hate more than modern art is modern artists and their fans. There was a time long, long ago when art was about years of honing talent to create previously unknown and unexpressed works of beauty in the world. Now it's about cheap, crass attempts at being 'clever', weird, shocking, or so blandly inscrutable as to be worthless to most people. A couple months ago I went to the Hirshhorn and beheld all the boxes, piles of painted garbage, and random lines and thought to myself, to what is the common man supposed to relate in this drivel? Only a handful of prigs think such things have meaning, and the meaning they largely invent to see if they can outwit the other prigs in their artsy clique. I had to do that myself in college for classes that related to visual arts, and it made me despise myself to know I was drawing lines in the air and spewing completely fabricated bullshit that in truth should have no association with the crass visual grotesquery I was supposedly describing, but in such contexts that passes for 'insight'. If a piece of art cannot convey some emotional meaning to a wide audience it is worthless. It is a failure of communication and of art itself.

Erm....15 % each time its sold?

[tonywestonuk]

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!

Re:Art?

[gowen]

Frank Zappa had a good point. He claimed that the only thing art required was a frame -- metaphorical or literal. To make something art, all one had to do was simply put it in a frame -- i.e. declare it to be art. Anything that was created with the purpose of being art is, intrinsically, art.

Of course, as Frank was quick to point out, that doesn't make it good art, or worthwhile art, or a good idea. Just that the artists intent is all that matters as to whether something is art or not.

Re:Art?

[Knuckles]

Frank Zappa had a good point. He claimed that the only thing art required was a frame .

With all due respect to Zappa, it's Marcel Duchamp who understood this first, around 1913.

This guy is a scam artist

[AnotherUsername]

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.'