Maribor, Slovenia
12 noon, Wednesday, May 12,1999
5th International Festival of Computer Arts

Live Panel concluding the online forum to discuss the sale of net.art
(http://www.teo-spiller.org/forum/)

Participents: Teo Spiller, Brian Goldfarb, Alexander Bassin (director of
the Ljubljana Municipal Gallery, and the Buyer of the net.art project
"megatronix"), Jaka Zeleznikar

The panel began with Spiller providing a summary of the one month online
discussion of net.art commerce and negotations over the sale of
Spiller's recent online artwork "Megatronix"
http://www.teo-spiller.org/megatronix/ . Spiller announced that a deal
had been struck and that the general terms for a contract of sale were
finalized within the final 24 hours before the close of the forum. The
work will be purchased by the Ljubljana Municipal Gallery for 85,000 SIT
(approximately US $500). The work will be maintained on the artist's
server until the Gallery secures its own domain name and server.

Spiller has agreed to add a small banner to the opening page of the
project announcing that the project is now owned by the Ljubliana
Municipal Gallery. The artist has committed to updating the site as
necessary in collaboration with the Gallery's technical support
personnel. The Gallery and Artist have agreed to split any future
proceeds from reproduction and distribution of the work. The Gallery may
put banner ads on the introductory screen of "Megatronix" but may not
alter the piece in any other way.

Significanly, the Gallery must maintain the presence of the project on
the Web. However, they may restrict access to it if this is part of a
revenue raising strategy that they are applying to the rest of their art
collection (ie, similar to a museum entrance admission).

Among the terms of the contract which are still unclear is whether the
artist is entitled to a percentage of any advertising revenue gained
from banner ads or other promotional use of the artwork. Also it is
still to be determined who will be responsible for updating the work
should, for example, it become incompatible with future browsers or
internet protocol.

Spiller suggests that this will most likely be something that he would
undertake for a fee negotiated under an additional contract.

The negotiations over the sale of megtronix raised a number of critical
issues concerning the changing role of artists, curators, galleries,
museums, and other art world constituencies in a digital age. Many
artists are concerned that traditional collecting and exhibiting
institutions take up a role in preserving art works which may not
actually be presented within the white walls of their galleries. If
museums and galleries don't begin collecting and preserving these works
now, it may be difficult to access these "early" net.artworks later as
platforms and software formats change multiple generations.

It was agreed that net.art is shifting the audiences for art and will
likely affect the economics of artistic production and exhibition.
Equally we will see a shift in the constituancies who see it as in their
interest to support, promote and preserve net.art. Bassin discussed the
varying motivations of commercial and noncommercial collecting
institutions and individual patrons of the arts. While he noted that
collectors are clearly aware of the growing importance of this art they
have yet to determine which avenue provides the best means for their
participation.

Spiller, Goldfarb and other forum participants suggest that in the next
few years we will see art on the Internet beginning to conform to two
general approaches. On the one hand there will be a proliferation of
works which are platform independent that can be acessed and downloaded
from the net, but which are essentially removable from it (much like
CD-ROMs and DVD). These works will be supported though the global
entertainment industry's commitment to development of multimedia
standards and methods of distribution and exchange. On the other hand,
we will see more specialized genre of work that builds upon the
communicative aspects of the net. These latter works will be more
difficult to collect or preserve as they are tied to the specific, and
rapidly evolving context of digital networks. They will most likely be
supported through other means than sale. Goldfarb suggests that they
might be supported through the works ability to deliver specific
constituencies through affiliation with a commercial or corperate
patron–much like the model of radio or television programming being
supported through advertising revenue.

With this last point in mind Spiller and Goldfarb have determined to
extend the current project by announcing a competition for a
banner.net.art project. The award for the winner will be presented in
Ljubljana in the first days of the coming Millenium. Entry and
submission details will be forthcoming on www.teo-spiller.org and will
be posted broadly to appropriate net.art forums and discussion groups.

[read more about selling net.art in New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/reference/indexartsatlarge.html]