"Christie's" sells work for a record price of $ 69.3 million

Art auctions open their galleries for "digital" business

The work, entitled "Everyday: The First 5000 Days," is a compilation of fixed and moving cartoons completed daily over a period of 5,000 days.

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A fully digital work by the American artist Pebble was sold Thursday for $ 69.3 million, following an auction by Christie's, in a record number that attests to the revolution taking place in a market that has been kept secret for a long time.

With this work titled "Everyday's ... The First 5000 Days", which is a compilation of static and animated cartoons completed daily for 5,000 consecutive days, Mike Winkelman, the original name of Bebel among the three artists with the most expensive work in the world, has become Includes all technical media.

Mike Winckelman commented, on his Twitter account, in a tweet in which he wrote "Damn it", after the auction, which lasted two weeks, ended.

A second record was also broken, as nearly 22 million internet users watched the final moments of the auction on Christie's site, in the first such event organized by a major auction house on a completely digital work.

Winckelmann, 39, was known for his digital projects and collaborations with other artists, but he hadn't sold any work in his name before the end of October.

The record recorded Thursday reflects the increasing importance of the new documentation technology that uses the "blockchain" technology (blockchain) used in digital currencies, which is presented as the ideal solution to dispense with copies that constitute one of the obstacles to the development of the digital art market.

This technology allows artworks and virtually any other conceivable commodity to be released online, from music albums to personal tweets, by means of an encoding method known as non-exchangeable codes (NFT).

This designation, which began to be used in 2017, includes every digital piece that can document its identity, authenticity, and the ability to trace it in a manner that does not bear ambiguity or appeal.

About six months ago, NFT symbols entered the lexicon of a greater number of Internet users, in light of the increasing number of artists, collectors and entrepreneurs wishing to benefit from this trend.

"Artists have been using data and software storage to create works of art and publish them over the Internet for more than 20 years, but there has never been an actual way to own and collect them," said Mike Winckelman in a statement released by Christie's after the auction.

"Everything has changed with NFT."

"A new chapter in the history of art"

"We are witnessing the beginning of a new chapter in the history of art, that is, digital art," Winkelmann said.

At the end of February, another work by Pebble, entitled "Crossroads", was sold for $ 6.6 million via the "Nifty Gateway" platform, which specializes in virtual works.

The artist received 10% of this amount, which is the usual rate across specialized platforms.

In addition, an animation of him had sold it at the end of October for a symbolic sum of $ 1, which was finally sold for $ 150,000.

Most digital commodities encoded in NFT can be purchased through digital currencies, which is what happened with the work of Pebble, which was sold Thursday at Christie's auction, which accepts payments in the currency of "Ether", one of the most prominent virtual currencies.

In a sign of interest in new technologies, the NBA has launched a NFT-encoded code platform, titled "Top Shot," that broadcasts snippets for a few seconds of matches.

In February, a video clip showing a banner jump for Los Angeles Lakers star Liron James during a match was sold for a record $ 208,000.

The "Lara Labs" organization is often credited with launching this new digital era, as in 2017 it launched the "Cryptobanks" project, which is a series of 10,000 computer-drawn faces, all of which are different with averse features.

In music, last week, "Kings of Lyon" released their album "Wayne UC Yourself" in "NFT" format.

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