51
ONLINE EVENT / NET ART
NETWORK
PARCEL
DROUT
AUCTION HOUSE, PARIS
16 OCTOBER 1996
PUBLIC
AUCTION CONDUCTED BY JEAN-CLAUDE BINOCHE
Like
“Video Portrait of a Collector in Real Time” (no
14) and “The Artistic Square Meter” (no 22) this
work involves an artistic commodity of a conceptual nature
that (ironically) takes on added esthetic value through its
use as prop in a performance designed to raise questions about
how art is invested with symbolic capital, traded, distributed,
and consumed in the age of information and electronic media.
In this case, the commodity in question is a password granting
the purchaser exclusive access to a web site hosting an original
digital work titled “Network Parcel,” and the
performance is the public auction—the first of its kind
to be carried live on the Internet—at which it is sold.
^ |