(2 of 2)
Assigning value to, say, a YouTube video is another challenge. "Pricing always makes me uncomfortable," says Petra Cortright, whose webcam video RGB, D-LAY is up for auction. Cortright markets her work with an equation: video's current view count x amount per view = total current price. That encourages collectors to keep circulating the artwork online to increase its value.
While this is the first auction devoted solely to digital art, other artists working in the medium have already scored big. Wade Guyton sold one of his black monochromes, made with an Epson ink-jet printer, for nearly $1.2 million at a Christie's auction earlier this year. Phillips says its auction is intended to encourage a greater prevalence of digital works in the contemporary market. "We don't want to silo this type of work into its own corner," says Annie Werner, Tumblr's arts evangelist. "We want it to be a larger part of the zeitgeist."