 |
 |
You might want to take a look at Heath Bunting's recent list of works for sale, many of which are web-based works: http://www.irational.org/cgi-bin/cv/projects/sale_price.pl The site looks static (ie. the prices don't seem to change) but the fact that this is a perl script rather than a static web page, and that the sale page itself is on sale indicates there may well be something clever happening under the surface somewhere. I couldn't say what this cleverness is though.. possibly some dynamic reflection of the artist's speculative collector value based on statistical assessment of who-knows-what process or processes. As far as I know, http://art.teleportacia.org/ is still the first commercial net.art gallery. Maybe get in touch with Olia Lialina to ask for an estimate of the value of the works on show - I believe that kind of valuation is what happens in commercial art sectors. Since many national collections now include net-based pieces, it seems perfectly likely that careful valuation by experts in the field would stand up to the market forces. However, the lack of established 'best practice' in this domain (amazing it hasn't been tied down yet) is a real opportunity to do something exciting and interesting with your pricing structure. If you want the valuations to reflect anything relevant to the work, you might want to take your cue from the true innivators of Internet culture and commerce: the pornographers. Many 'amateur' porn sites actually allow self-documenting models to upload pictures of themselves, and then get paid kickbacks in proportion to the reveue those images generate in advertising and click-throughs. Perhaps in this context that kind of commercial model makes more sense than Patrick's very sensible suggestion that since there is only a negligible cost involved in distribution, that the most efficient transation of value would remain in a reputation economy. On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 09:08:58PM -0500, Goebel, Johannes E. wrote: > One might look at sound/music installations and their fee structure on this issue. Sound installations come closest to webworks - they have a certain physical presence (which indeed web-based work has as well), the sounds are as quickly gone as they appear, there is mostly no beginning and no end, the visitor decides on begin and end, the evolution/development/"linking" over time is the most important constituent factor. So one might regard webworks as installations with a generic physical interface (and thus potentially more readily presentable, and mostly at a lower cost for the physical embodiement). > > In Germany exists a very rigid system for royalty payments (not fees) in the field of music, represented by GEMAC. It took a few decades until electronic music was not automatically put in the same category as a simple melodic line. Electronic music was always considered to be non-complex, not comparable to e.g. an orchestral piece - since it just emanates from a loudspeaker Ö > > Sound installations were equally a challenge for this royalty system, which stems from an artistic-economical perspective deeply rooted in the 19th and early 20th century. Usually one has to pay for a piece for each performance. If for instance an installation contains a piece, which is automatically repeated - does each repetition count as an individual performance? > > This was certainly negated under two perspectives: (a) since a composer gets in the GEMA framework more and more per individual performance of a piece the more his pieces in general are performed, this would have undermined the old way of insuring that a composer who gets performed often gets more per individual performance than one who does not get performed often Ö and (b) no presenter would have put up installations, since the royalty payments are mandatory (enforced by law) - the payments would have blown any budget. So a way was created to deal with this situation - to ensure that a sound installation would not jeopardize the old system on the one hand, and so that installations would be put up by presenters (which certainly was not why GEMA found a way). > > I had a similar interesting problem with GEMA when I published a CD-ROM with a musical/graphical piece by Kiyosho Furukawa at ZKM. The music on that CD_ROM was algorithmically created as one played the graphics. I wanted the composer to get paid by GEMA - and in Germany you can only publish music like on a CD_ROM if it has the GEMA stamp. So, how was GEMA going to evaluate a piece of music, which did not last a specified duration (one of their criteria for categorizing a piece, was algorithmically created on the fly but depending on the actions of the user/visitor/explorer, and had a non-definable number of independent voices (another criteria in their catalog). In my long exchanges with them it was quite clear, that they had no idea what I was talking about. (I don't quite remember the outcome - but the CD_ROM "Small Fish" was published.) > > > May I repeat a point I already made previously in this forum: if we look into the music domain we may discover many issues, which are new to the more visual arts but have been dealt with in music for quite a while. I think there are many common perspectives, since music has a long tradition as time-based and ephemeral art of the moment; and electronic and algorithmic tools have been applied in the field for 100 years. > > Johannes > > > > Johannes Goebel > EMPAC > http://www.empac.rpi.edu > -- -- http://chinabone.lth.bclub.org.uk/~saul/