The AAA Festival Auction is an online auction website dedicated to hosting auctions for digital copies of each individual page of Zenon Hanappi’s thesis, entitled “Reconceptualizing the thresholds of auratic and exchange value in the post-digital art world”. In my thesis, I explore the shifting methods and accepted recognition of what constitues art in the digital age, and lay a framework for the potential revaluation of how digital art can either enter or reset the boundaries of what is considered and accepted as art today. With a speific focus on the blockchain as a method of establishing and evidencing art ownership, and the rise of non-fungible tokens as a method of quantifiying and facilitating art ownership exchange value, I hope to use this thesis as the groundwork for exploring the consequences this may have for art’s prescribed and perceived auratic value.

The full abstract of my thesis can be read here, and the auction for the image of the page of my thesis which contains the abstract can be viewed here. This auction is not a legally-binding transaction auction, but rather a mock auction of sorts, where I hope to simulate the atmosphere of personally evaluating, bidding on, and even “purchasing” these mock-NFT art pieces.

With this, I would invite you to peruse the listings, and if you find a page you would be happy to bid on, I would be most curious to know and would ask you to truly consider the following:

If this image is uniquely my property, what would I be willing to pay for this?