eBay Watch.

What would you do if you were a YNA (young Net artist) without a Sadie Cole or Jay Jopling to sell your warez? As e-commerce has become a viable method of exchange, wired artists, gallerists, and collectors are making deals from their desktops: Bid at more conventional auctions like http:// artnet.com; buy souvenirs from an electronic performance by artist Prema Murthy (http:// www.thing.net/~bindigrl/); or browse at the e-commerce shops of Net artists like John Simon or Olia Lialina (Simon has a boutique site to sell editions of his Every Icon website; Lialina built the groovy http://art.teleportacia.org/to sell her work and that of other YNAs). Even megalopolis auction mall eBay has recently delved into art dealing: Wolfgang Staehle of The Thing (http://www.thing.net) used it, unsuccessfully, to try and sell an old Thing iteration (http://old.thing.net). These days at eBay, one can bid on rare Furbies, Kurt Cobain's power of attorney document, and, thanks to Staehle, some old image files by Mariko Mori, all in one fell swoop.

Of course, e-commerce raises important questions for those who create or value Web art projects: Is a website/art project a workable art commodity? Prone to technological obsolescence, cloning, downloading, crashing, and copyright headaches (e.g., does Staehle have the rights to sell Old Thing, a site hosting the work, writing, and chatter of dozens of people?), Net art is for collectors who embrace public art, are willing to contest the notion that a valuable art object must be tangible and unique, and aren't afraid to call tech support.