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MARILYN L

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Saying Yes to Life, both the bitter & the sweet
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Member Since: 11/2005  Last Seen: 2/12/2011

For sale: the numbers 1 to 1000

Sat Jun 3, 2006 10:13 AM EDT
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By Marilyn L
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Internet history is being made while I type this. Zurich conceptual artist/internet marketer Sala (Marcel Salathe) has come up with a fantastic conceptual art/internet marketing concept:

Paint all the numbers from 1 to 1000 in blue on white canvas. Find gallery to kick off the sale with an opening, develop a simple web site http://www.onethousandpaintings.com for global sales and marketing buzz. Include a blog for communication. Also program the site so that the price of the paintings increases with every 100 sold, encouraging people to buy now.

Link from another web site http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm which offers a cool form for displaying a web page graphically, saying that if you enjoy the page, please consider supporting the artist by buying one of his paintings.

Start a viral buzz, including Boing Boing, Seth Godin, Webmonkey's blog, my own blog (I've bought, too). On Monday, BBC is going to interview Sala, and on Tuesday, Switzerland's largest newspaper and radio station plan to release articles.

Saturday morning I just made the 500th purchase.

Whether or not you think of this as art, as I definitely do, it will be written up in the annals of great internet marketing ideas. Wish I had thought it up myself!

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Noah BradleyDeleted
Matt Treager

wait, what? the guy is selling numbers? is there anything special about them other than the fact that people are over hyping a product, thus making it cost more? I fail to see why people would pay money for a number painting.

  • 3 votes
Reply#2 - Sat Jun 3, 2006 2:36 PM EDT
Adam Kemp

This is typical for art, I think. Especially modern art. Someone makes something (say, by throwing some junk in a pile) that they claim somehow represents some abstract concept (the problems of war?). Sometimes they just skip the second step. Then they convince some poor sap to pay thousands (or sometimes millions) of dollars for it.

Honestly, I say good for them (the artists). If they can make a living this way, then they have a great deal of skill. Just not in art (unless the art of persuasion counts ;).

I'm just glad they don't get jobs in marketing departments. We'd all be screwed then. "Must buy crappy product....don't know why...but it's so deep..."

  • 5 votes
#2.1 - Sat Jun 3, 2006 3:19 PM EDT
Matt Treager

"Must buy crappy product....don't know why...but it's so deep..."

that made me chuckle :)

  • 2 votes
#2.2 - Sat Jun 3, 2006 3:29 PM EDT
Reply
Marilyn L

Well, conceptual art goes back at least as far as Marcel Duchamp. According to the Wikipedia:

"Conceptual art, sometimes called idea art, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved are considered the real substance of the art, in distinction to the traditional expectation of a made art object to be the criterion. Conceptual art may not even produce an art object, but rather a physical manifestation that is to be viewed as a document of the art." The article can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art

So, especially since he began the work in a gallery showing, this is art. You may of course disagree.

Many artists are not thought to be mathematically gifted. Sala programs as well as paints, and has come up with some unique ways to merge math and art. As interesting, maybe even more interesting to you, is his websites-as-graphs site http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm which is a freely offered graphic visualization of your web page. You simply enter a url and the javascript created a visual representation of the html of the page. That's what interested me in his work.

  • 1 vote
Reply#3 - Sat Jun 3, 2006 2:53 PM EDT
Matt Treager

I agree that the website that graphs a website is nifty. But selling numbers printed on 12x12 boards is not art to me. I just fail to see why people buy into this. Sorry if I offend you, but I think "conceptual art" has gotten a little out of hand if this is what it is supposed to be. It seems to me that conceptual art is for people who want to feel smart because they think that they all understand something, when in fact there is nothing to be understood. It seems that everyone wants to be esoteric. Hope the guy makes lots money on the pet-rock marketing scheme.

  • 3 votes
Reply#4 - Sat Jun 3, 2006 3:19 PM EDT
Marilyn L

You don't offend me at all.

  • 1 vote
#4.1 - Sat Jun 3, 2006 3:37 PM EDT
Reply
Lee Stone

It's the pricing idea he's got which is interesting.

The charge in dollars is 1000 - the number which you buy.

He then takes a percentage off, depending on how many numbers have been bought. This discount started at 90% but goes down 10% per 100 sold.

Hopefully people had the sense to get the expensive low numbers whilst the high discount was applied! The higher numbers would stay low for quite a while as their is a minimum cost of 40%

  • 1 vote
Reply#5 - Sun Jun 4, 2006 5:52 AM EDT
Marilyn L

Interestingly enough, people do seem to buy the number that interests them. I've been watching the counter, which shows how many paintings are sold and what is the last number to be sold. It really jumps around, meaning that people are making a decision based on something other than price, at least until now.

If you look at the availability section, you can see what numbers are left, along with excerpts from Wikipedia about the significance of each number in a variety of fields (math, astronomy, history, etc.). Only the first 33 numbers have been sold so far, which isn't what you might expect. In fact I count 29 numbers under 100 not yet sold. On the other hand, all numbers above 752 have already been sold. 248 of the least expensive have been sold, therefore.

  • 1 vote
#5.1 - Sun Jun 4, 2006 7:06 AM EDT
Lee Stone

Those numbers under 100 are going to be getting very expensive very soon.
Possibly too expensive so the artist may struggle to sell them.

I think in the early stages when the prices were fairly similar I'd be more inclined to purchase a number that interests me. With the prices so similar it wouldn't matter much and I'd much rather have a relevant number than a random cheap one.
The other thing is I wonder where people are going to put them? Its not the most obvious piece of art work you'd expect on the wall unless it had some relevance, house number, age for birthday gift etc.

Also how long is it before someone tries something similar doing the same again, or a different set of numbers, or the alphabet. The idea is quite similar to the million dollar homepage and there were quite a few rip-offs of that.

  • 1 vote
#5.2 - Sun Jun 4, 2006 7:18 AM EDT
Reply
Franky

how about this one: www.thousandlotsofsand.com same idea

  • 1 vote
Reply#6 - Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:24 AM EST
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