Abstract (Long paper)

Keywords: value of art, art market, economy of attention, interactive art.

Attention is becoming the new currency in our information and media society. The art market is using art as commodity that can be invested in, and on which one can make profit. That profit can be increased with the help of marketing and attention-accumulation strategies. We will present a series of our recent interactive artworks that deal with the economy of attention and the evaluation of art value on the basis of user attention.

• Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau are media artists and researchers. They studied with media art pioneers Peter Weibel and Roy Ascott. After an artist-in-residency at NSCA in Champaing/Urbana, USA, they worked 10 years in Japan as researchers at ATR Research Laboratories in Kyoto and as associate professors at the IAMAS Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu. Currently Sommerer and Mignonneau are professor and heads of the department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria. Sommerer is also a Obel Guest Professor at Aalborg University’s Art &Technology Department in Denmark. Mignonneau and Sommerer have created around 20 artworks, for which they received numerous awards such the Wu Guanzhong Art and  Science Innovation Prize by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and the Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica Award. They have exhibited in around 250 exhibitions worldwide and their artworks are in collections such as the ZKM Media Museum Karlsruhe, the NTT-ICC Museum Tokyo, the Itau Cultural Foundation Sao Paulo, The View Contemporary Art Space Switzerland, the Contemporary Art Museum Lyon, FR, and Hermès Paris, FR.

Full text (PDF) p. 730-737