art_value : VYGANDAS ŠIMBELIS artist Das Vegas

ART VALUE

The project examines the notion of political economy in the realm of art constitutive processes, i.e. production, evaluation, circulation, and consumption. The economic standards and its influences on the art world and to creation, in general, is a key theme of the project. Critically appropriating principles of such dual discourse (capitalist influences, neoliberal values, political economy versus art, financialisation of art), the artist seeks for synthesis and interaction between those two dichotomic paradigms. The participant of the project is invited to rethink the existing connotations of these assumptions, elevating the moral and aesthetic values of the discourse to a more critical level.

It is a speculative project in the realms of post-conceptual art questioning artwork’s reception through economic principles, i.e. through rethinking the notion of the artwork as commodity. There might be an overarching approach to discussing a conceptual principle: the price of an artwork is an artwork. It is also a critique of one of the main characteristics of the contemporary art world – the segregation of the art world and its public escalation of the monetary values.

The transformation from numerical aesthetics into monetary aesthetics appears in change of values. The exposure of monetary value, a face value, happens in a common way – through the numbers. However, it is not just a simple exposure of numbers, in the way they appear - they contain a direct financial value. This turn brings more concrete financial means, reshaping and finalizing the numerical aesthetics with a punctuation sign and turning a whole number (integer) into a decimal (fractional) number.

By selling the complete abstraction, the project questions what is possible to sell and buy in this digital age. The explicitly exposed monetary value questions the price of the artwork, however, the crypto aesthetics enters the realm of cryptography and supports authentification of the artwork.

The project bridges the relations between art and art economy, this notion refers to the established understanding, means and tools of a financial world brought to the world of art. We may want to think from a hybridization perspective when both fields support each other’s aims in a constant loop. With a major focus and regard to the post-digital age, the artist is particularly interested in harnessing the hacking of structural systematic units through disrupting the system by its own means (Accelerationism and Accelerationist Aesthetics), with an aim for humanizing technology in its contiguity with and of its situatedness in the real world. In the following, the examination of infrastructural connotations increases the perceived humanization of technology and brings awareness of the digital to rethink the surrounding world.

ART_VALUE is an enduring art project since 2009, consisting of performances, exhibitions, installations, interventions, artwork production, critical designs, evocative experiences, network building, interactions, etc. It takes precedence in a variety of hybrid activities, but also elaborates on the post-digital condition involving hybridization of forms and formats, converging the digital and analog, manifesting in formalist and conceptual.

Constitutive parts of the Art Value project:

After On Kawara, series of acrylic paintings, variable dimensions, from 2009

The project ART_VALUE started with a series of acrylic paintings of After On Kawara. Paintings represent their monetary and financial value written in the manner of the Today series of Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara. The face value reports the price of the artwork, it follows the concept "the price of an artwork is an artwork". Various values are incised like an arbitrary value, personal data, big data and other numerical representations and evaluations transformed into a monetary value.

Despite the initial monochromatic On Kawara style paintings, other types of colorful, heavily texturised paintings, drawings, stamps, typings, hand-writings are also produced.

Digital On Kawara, series of digital displays and series of digital prints

The project Digital On Kawara reflects upon Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara’s famous art project the Today series with date paintings' numbers. Artist switches On Kawara’s date numbers with the data numbers in a similar minimalistic manner, but with a reflection upon a conceptual idea and critique of digital and data values in the art market: questioning what could be sold and bought in the digital age. These artworks are print-outs of digital images or screened as digital images. This project is a starting point for the Art Value NFT.

Art Value: Auction

The project "Art_Value: Auction" is part of the larger "Art_Value" project and is a series of art auctions where the viewer is encouraged to rethink the notion of the "artwork as a commodity". The project consists of creating a real art auction situation (Relational Aesthetics) in which the buyer (bidder, art collector, patron) of the artwork becomes a co-author of the work.

In the performance the content is produced by the audience, the price paid for the finalized artwork is imprinted (as a receipt by a mechanical calculator) on a paper and sold to the owner. From the start, there is no artwork produced, so the bidding process happens preemptively. After the completion of the all procedures: bidding, winning, selling, producing an artwork, the Certificate is provided to ensure the authenticity of the artwork.

The performance is held by artist, auctioneer, and cash-accountant in collaboration with an engaged auction audience.

Art Value: 14,47

The project “Art_Value: 14,47” is a short experimental film, which is a documentation and reinterpretation of the enacted performance in a film format based on the “Art_Value: Auction” performed at MANIFESTA 11 The European Biennial of Contemporary Art in Cabaret der Künstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire in Zürich, Switzerland, 2016.

Experimental film 4,15 min., B/W, stereo, 2016.

Art Value: Marketplace

Interventional performances "Art_Value: Marketplace" had been enacted in various marketplaces of Vilnius district (Lithuania): Halės market, Gariūnai, Kalvarijos street market, Aukštadvaris village flea-market and others, in August 2016. The project inquiries the basic market strategies in relation to art production, circulation and consumption and gives the buyers (participants of the performances) an opportunity to acquire (and create) the artwork through their negotiation skills.

Data Economy

Data Economy is a project bridging the digital and physical worlds, incorporating data layer and standing for the post-digital processes in our contemporary world. It is an interactive installation “Data Economy” where participants interact via sensors and make a substantial change on the screen. The turn from the numerical aesthetics to monetary aesthetics through the change in value dimension is emphasized in this work as a contribution to the post-digital domain.

Of course, the technological and scientific world, but also a contemporary human (post-human), have deep obsessions and desperation with numbers and data. Raw data (Big Data) itself has no value. We suppose to create value out of the numbers we get (e.g. Life-logging). This is a deconstruction or recasting of the obsession with the numbers. Digits as a form of data, but from another side, Big Data is often referred to as the “new oil”.

The conception of post-abstraction is taking place through the exposition of numbers in the project. This aesthetic turn is examining the contemporary notion of post-humanity, a post-human who radically and decisively believes in numbers. Questioning the exponentially growing trust in numbers and data, its inclusion in everyday life, abstraction, and unification of everything what is around us, also through what is digitalized, coded and quantified: through clock-time, media archeology, algorithmic procedures, digital occurrences, computation, quantified-self movement, ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp), Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data.

The installation is constructed of the interactive set-up of abilities to interpret data to the monetary values. By interacting the participant gets invited to make changes in value, to transform data streams to the financially appreciated ones. The neoliberal values get deconstructed to criticise themselves through its infrastructural basis. And transformation gets in the change of data number into a fractional number, punctuation takes command. A decimal number refers to any number written in decimal notation, although it is more commonly used to refer to numbers that have a fractional part separated from the integer part with a decimal separator.

Sensors, micro-processors, projectors. B/W, no sound, 2017.

Art Value: 2% Support

The support project gets online with a possibility for art collectors bot just to acquire artworks, but also to create content for these artworks produced. In this project, Lithuanian people (sorry, it is very local yet) by donating their 2% of taxes can support artist and art production. The final artwork gets generated by the sum of the support, how much one supports the project, that is how much will be written on the artwork. The sum of the support is the content of the artwork the supporter receives as artwork after the process. Online website - www.MenoVerte.lt (Meno Verte means Art Value) - helps to join the project, declare the taxes and support the art.

Restitutio Ad Integrum

The exhibition "Ebay Restitutio" on eBay.com and the sales of artworks from a series “Restitutio Ad Integrum”.

Through acquiring the works of this series you support the artist in a direct way! It is an explicit reimbursement of the artist’s expenses, so be aware of not reselling them later ;)

The artworks in the series titled: 2590,00 SEK | 2018-04-17 | IKEA | Barkarby, Sweden
The price of the work is 2590,00 SEK. You can buy it on eBay or through directly contacting the artist by email.

Art Value: Album of Receipts

The collection of the artist's personal shopping receipts and checks from various purchasing occasions. The collection is part of the statement of the Art_Value project with its notion of supporting artist and creativity with all its life and entirety, from the flight tickets to beer consumption. The album brings Big Data issues (hidden in our daily consumption receipts) on a surface for the viewers to read the daily expenses and get details of the personal life of the artist. Data surveillance through exposing personal artist's data. The project also questions the notions around the value of such artwork: the price of the album is the sum of the receipts included.

Art Value: +Tax

The series of works created in New York residency in regard to the American consumer market, buying culture behavior, and tax calculation. The American way the products and services are sold is in fact with a tax put on top of the written price on tag resulting in the buyer's unknowing of the final price, i.e. the consumer does not see the total price in the price label. The Art Value: Plus Tax project extends the Art Value practice with questioning whether this way is suitable for art consumption.

Original US price tags, which usually used in-store shelves to expose prices, are used in this project. Exhibited at Chelsea gallery, New York.

Art Value NFT

Multiple series of numerical NFT artworks released in the framework of web3 in the Metaverse. Some NFT collections are fractional numbers similar to After On Kawara series (including the first Lithuanian NFT artwork), some with a supporting aim reflecting important Ukrainian dates on a background of Ukrainian flag aiming to gain funds for supporting Ukraine.

Semiotic Intelligence

The Art Value project extends with a help of artificial intelligence creating variations of numerical comprehensions of algorithms and generating the numbers into visuals narratives. Encountering the second digital layer and second intelligence to create art from numbers and data. Project supported by LTKT Art Council grant.

Art Value: Exchange

Wanna swap? Many things could be swapped with the artist in relation to a simple exchange of things or gifting. If you want to swap your artwork with Vegas, simply gift it to him and than receive a Restitutio artwork in return. Possible scenario: buy a thing and exchange it with a Restitutio receipt artwork.

Art Value: Brand

The Brand part of the project is research into the realms of business through a critical approach towards entrepreneurship and start-up environment, technology, and innovation. By creating a brand, establishing a company, building a team, and searching for VC (Venture Capital) investment artist and his project team explores the borderlines and creates narratives between art, technology, and business. In those distinctive realms, conflicts evolve as well as articulation on business strategies, consumer products, and art projects elucidate in a pure form. There is no clear picture of this Brand part of the project as a critical view of brand strategies, which in the end is not a single brand, in a way of its critical thinking and approach, the building of community, development of knowledge, disruptive viewpoint, contradictions between approaches in business and art.

The project is part of entrepreneurial incubator KTH Innovation and its examination staring at things and steering processes from the within.

Visit: www.ArtValue.org

Art Value Pavilion

The Art Value pavilion is an exhibition space with NFT artworks and installations. This space give our art collectors, owners of Art Value NFT numbers, and community members to exhibit their artworks globally. Those pavilions are planned to be built in various locations and for various occasions, they could appear in London, New York or Dubai to expose NFT culture through the Art Value NFTs.

Pavilion for the Venice Art Bienalle by architecture studio AEXN - architectural proposal.

Art Value App

The “Art_Value App” project examines the human and its obsession for numbers. Through novel and advanced technologies, we turn the numbers into artworks and prove their uniqueness and authenticity. These artworks are generated by the users themselves and acquired and collected by them too. The participants of the project generate their personal artworks which later get certified through the blockchain distributed network. These digital artworks later get produced by artists (commissions) and the production process is supported by the platform.

Interactive blockchain-based platform and crypto-art project. Dapp, distributed website, generative art, commissions of artworks, sales, and art auctions in the Metaverse.

Visit: www.ArtValue.org

Art Value: Generative Auction

Generative Auction is our main primary-market sales mechanism for NFT token minting and issuance. Here users generate and acquire Numbers as NFT tokens.

Users bid and increase prices in the online auction and eventually the highest bid wins. However, everyone participating in the auction can outbid other and take over on higher numbers as a result your lower number will be gone at his auction. You need to bid higher to outbid other or wait for another auction and start from the beginning. In the auction, when the final winner has won, he has to pay the final bid and receives a Number NFT. For example, if the last highest bid was 55,66 – it is the price the winner has to pay. For the Number 55,66 he pays 55,66 Euros.

Demo: Auction at ArtValue.org

Art Value Experience

In the Art Value Experience, the artwork creation is executed through the unique user interaction and experience by using an online tool interface and a digital gallery space. The user gets the ability to embody her/his vision, personal connection, values and meanings into a particular Number. This possibility enhances our system to elevate users to creative heights and be open for everyone, resulting in personal engagement in the process of creation of the artwork. Users become creative artists / designers through involvement in the Art Value system – the Art Value Experience. Those abilities come with digital tools of Art Value Experience interface in the Metaverse.

The Art Value Experience is a 3D immersive environment for users to turn Numbers into digital artworks. There they get an interface to virtually design a sculpture which in the online gallery will be exhibited together with the provided instruments to carve the Number and make a meaning shape for yourself. After the sculpting is finished, the 3D shape could be printed with a 3D printer and brought to our physical world as a tangible sculpture.

Demo: Experience at ArtValue.org

List of selected additional artworks included in Art Value project:

Monetary Neons series: "3.141,59", "191802,16", neon light, 2017;
"1784", neon light on stand, 2016;
Digital Values, LED display, 2016, 2017;
Digital Values on glitch, LED display, 2017;
"You can order an artwork here", canvases and text, 2017;
Receipts, framed prints produced by a mechanical calculator, from 2016;
Stamped Values, stamped prints of monetary values, 2016;
Receipts, framed prints produced by cashier machine, from 2017;
Artist's Personal Receipts, framed receipts of personal artist's expenses, from 2016;

Exhibitions of Art Value project:

2022
Art Value: Exchange, via post service;
Art Value NFT drop, multiple occasions. More: www.ArtValue.org

2021
Digit solo exhibition, KKKC Klaipeda City Art Exhibition Hall, Klaipeda, Lithuania;
Online exhibition RESTITUTIO on eBay and Facebook Marketplace;

2020
Art Vilnius contemporary art fair, Exhibition and Congress Centre LITEXPO, Vilnius, Lithuania;
ArtTech Forum, ArtTech Foundation, Innovation Park, Lausanne, Switzerland;
Supernova, We Can Be Heroes group exhibition, Klaipeda City Exhibition Hall, 04 09 - 04 10 2020, Klaipeda, Lithuania;

2019
“2019.10” exhibition and performance, SLA art space, Chelsea, New York, US;
Art Value NFT, The Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce, New York, US;
Art Value: Network exhibition and auction, Post gallery, Kaunas, Lithuania;
Art Value: Network artist talk and auction, Kogo gallery, Tartu, Estonia;
Art Value: Network at Free Riga - Tallinn Street quarter gallery, Riga, Latvia;
Art Value: Restitutio. Online exhibition on Ebay;
Pa¥ Attention, Sp€nd Time, Inve$t Thought, at Svarta Havet, Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden;
Migration: Traces in an Art Collection, Tensta Konsthall, Tensta, Sweden;

2018
"The eBay Restitutio" exhibition and sales start now on eBay.com;
Interpretative Digitality, solo exhibition at Reactor Hall, Stockholm, Sweden;
Reactivated annual project "Art_Value: 2% Support" for Lithuanian citizens to donate their 2% of taxes and support artist and art production - www.MenoVerte.lt (Meno Verte means Art Value);
Solo exhibition "Interpretative Digitality" at R1-Reactor Hall, Stockholm, Sweden;

2017
ISEA 2017, 23rd International Symposium on Electronic Art & 16th International Image Festival, Manizales, Colombia, 2017;
Art_Value: Auction in Kaunas Gallery Weekend, Kaunas, Lithuania;
Media Art Festival ENTER in Siauliai city gallery hosted personal exhibition VALUATION by Das Vegas, Siauliai, Lithuania;
The launch of SUPER COMMA project;
The project in its entirety was also presented in the ArtVilnius Contemporary Art Fair, Vilnius, Lithuania;
Reactor Hall / R1 space, solo exhibition FROZEN FRACTION, Stockholm, Sweden;
Launch of "Art_Value: 2% Support" project at www.MenoVerte.lt (Meno Verte means Art Value);

2016
The project has received great feedback from the audience attending the ART_VALUE: AUCTION event in the European Contemporary Art Biennial MANIFESTA in Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland;
4S/EASST 2016 conference: Science and Technology by Other Means, Barcelona, Spain;
"Art_Value: Market" project in different marketplaces in Vilnius district: Halės market, Gariūnai, Kalvarijos street market, Aukštadvaris town flea-market and others, Lithuania;
Solo exhibition in The Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association art space - Sodu 4 in Vilnius, Lithuania;