[p2p-research] the abundance of art

[Ryan Lanham]

Sometime you should find a path to look up the story of black pearls.  They
were made stylish and held to effect to achieve very high values by
marketing them at the very wealthy, and then monopolizing supply.  They
aren't rare, and they were once spurned.

People make money off of scarcity.  That scarcity can be intrinsic or
manufactured.  Style, fashion, brand are mechanisms that drive scarcity.
The role of scarcity is a topic in marketing, but it isn't much looked at by
economists, surprisingly.

What is fascinating is that things once taken as not scarce, like clean air
and water, are becoming scarce in certain "markets."  This is leading to
calls that access to them exist as "rights."

Lessig talks about free as in free speech versus free free beer.  The
trouble with art is that its reproduction spans the concept of free speech
and free beer.  People have a "right" to earn income from their ideas (like
art designs).  But the P2P ethos suggests that a fair portion of production
should go into the creative commons so that it can be accessed by others. I
think artists can be urged to norms of have some of their works be scarce
while others are in the creative commons.  That way many have access and
some can enjoy the economics of scarcity.


Ryan Lanham



On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Kevin Flanagan <kev.flanagan at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hey,
>
> There is definately a culture of making art works artificially scarce. Lots
> of art is scarce by default because of its medium ie painting and marble
> sculpture, other art works prints and photographic prints from film are also
> scarce by default of their medium but less so, the artist might produce an
> edition of 10. But with digital video and photography the original source
> material , your camera RAW files or MTS files can be copied and reproduced
> with 100% accuracy. So scarcity is not built into the digital medium it is
> imposed by choice of the artist/gallery in order to get a decent price on
> the market.
> It is important to consider how reproductions also contribute to the
> mythical status of the original art object. We all know the Mona Lisa and
> that shared knowing itself plays a big part in what gives the original its
> social currency. If that makes sense?
> So how do I make a living from my art, it is a tricky problem? I dont
> currently and I worry about this quite a bit..
> If I make the source files of my work accesible online with a CC licence
> allowing anyone to make a high quality digital print without having to
> renumerate me I will be underminig my own ability to make an income from
> selling work through the gallery system. The gallery system thrives on
> making art artificially scarce, and inflating its monetary value. On the
> other hand I could give away my art for free online and hope that people
> will take an interest and support me and what I do by other means.
> Ideally I would like to make everything available for free as and when I
> like but I think a mixed approach is more practically viable.
> Im hoping to have a solo exhibition in 2010, I will get some nice high
> quality photographic prints done up to mount on the walls but I will also
> make some poster quality prints of the same images for sale at an affordable
> price, personally I can never afford to buy art nor can most of my friends
> so I think it would be a nice way to make the work accesible to regular
> people not just collectors.
>
> I would certainly like to see contemporary visual art become more accesible
> for regular people and I think affordable reproductions are a good way of
> achieving this.
>
> Regards
>
> Kevin F
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090503/cc010939/attachment.html>