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Selling and Collecting the Intangible, at $1,000 a Share
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Published by The New York Times on 2002-04-29
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By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
Mark Napier sold some of his art this month. For an artist whose digital works have been shown by the Whitney and the Guggenheim in New York, this should neither be significant nor surprising. But Mr. Napier's medium of the moment is the Internet, where the art that one sees is not a material object to collect. And with nary a guarantee that this kind of work will even survive the next power outage, sales of online art have been scarce indeed.
Yet Mr. Napier has succeeded in selling three $1,000 shares in "The Waiting Room," an interactive, animated painting that has been hung, so to speak, in a private corner of the Net. Although he created the software that drives the work, its sights and sounds are generated by the online actions of its owners. As they click on the screen, pastel-hued spirals, ovals and squares appear and begin to swirl against a black background. Each shape is linked to a sound file that yields an accompanying hum or chirp.....
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