New York's Phillips Auction House joined forces with Tumblr to put on what's been described as the world's first digital art auction earlier this month.
The Paddles On project ended late last week, with 20 varied works of digital art being valued at as much as $16,000.
The sale featured the first website ever to be auctioned, digital artist Rafaël Rozendall's ifnoyes.com project, which sold for $3,500. The tricky thing about digital art, especially Internet-based digital art, is that ownership can be difficult to establish, unlike with a sculpture or painting. Accordingly, the artists involved with Paddles On had to devise creative arrangements. Rozendall, for instance, sold ifnoyes.com along with a contract stipulating that the buyer be responsible for keeping the website "online and completely accessible to the public."
"It's really easy to get people to look at you," new media artist Molly Soda, who sold an eight-hour performance video at Paddles On, told the Verge, "but once you put something on the internet, it's not yours anymore."
Visit Paddles On's website for a full list of the digital pieces that were up for auction.
[via The Verge]
