Slate has a story about how the value of digital art is measured — and the role of intellectual property law in that calculation:
[Eli] Sudbrack vaulted to art stardom with his contribution to last spring's Whitney Biennial — a surreal full-room installation with a Brazilian-disco vibe that included images of drag queens, soft-core porn, and serial substance abuse. Traditionally, such installations are unique pieces. Those created by artists firmly inscribed in the artistic canon — such as Joseph Kosuth, Richard Long, or Mona Hatoum — might sell for $150,000 to $300,000. But Peres Projects broke the Whitney piece down into multiple units (somewhat like the suit, shirt, and shoes of an autumn ensemble in a Barneys window) and sold each individually. To reproduce the whole installation, a collector would have to buy one of each element, at a total cost of $150,000. The defining elements — the installation's floor, walls, and ceilings — were in an edition of three. But the five sculptures, priced at $5,000-$15,000, were in an edition of five while the $2,500 decals and $5,000 video were in an edition of 10. Thus, the total list price of products available from the Whitney show was $600,000, minimum. Such sums only matter, of course, if someone will pay them. But by the time Frieze opened barely seven months later, Peres Projects had sold every last item from the Whitney show.
Is this madness? That's debatable. But the sales model definitely reflects a fundamental change in how art can be produced and sold. Purely digital art — sold as software or access to online environments — has been creeping into the art market over the last decade, but it still remains very much marginalized.
