Caleb Larsen’s Auction Art

Art Auctions are common by anyone’s standards. You can’t go more than a few days weeks without reading something about a some piece selling for a price you wouldn’t pay. However this installation / art piece by Caleb Larsen takes the auction and makes THAT the real art.

This little black box is a sophisticated internet enabled device. Its sole purpose in life, other than looking mysterious is to sell itself to the highest bidder. In turn the winner of the auction agrees to a contract which says that the device must be connected to the internet upon reception. The device is staffed with an algorithm which searches Ebay for a listing of itself. If the search turns up negative then the device creates an auction with the previous selling price as the starting bid, and sells itself off.

The current owner gets the proceeds of the sale and must ship the item to its new owner. This is cannibalistic capitalism at its finest. Especially since the contract is apparently written to give the artist a 15% cut each time…

Via Make: Online Caleb Larsen’s A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter.