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                   51 
                   
                    ONLINE EVENT / NET ART 
                  NETWORK 
                    PARCEL 
                  DROUT 
                    AUCTION HOUSE, PARIS 
                    16 OCTOBER 1996 
                  PUBLIC 
                    AUCTION CONDUCTED BY JEAN-CLAUDE BINOCHE 
                  Like 
                    “Video Portrait of a Collector in Real Time” (no 
                    14) and “The Artistic Square Meter” (no 22) this 
                    work involves an artistic commodity of a conceptual nature 
                    that (ironically) takes on added esthetic value through its 
                    use as prop in a performance designed to raise questions about 
                    how art is invested with symbolic capital, traded, distributed, 
                    and consumed in the age of information and electronic media. 
                    In this case, the commodity in question is a password granting 
                    the purchaser exclusive access to a web site hosting an original 
                    digital work titled “Network Parcel,” and the 
                    performance is the public auction—the first of its kind 
                    to be carried live on the Internet—at which it is sold. 
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