Yeah, I'll vote that that's a pretty valid art project. He's calling up the movie image of a giant diamond on a pedestal, one that jewel thieves go to great trouble to steal because it's so incredibly valuable. Well, there he has $5 million in "stolen" loot, in a compact package with a comparable weight to value ratio as giant diamonds. In addition, one is confronted with wondering about intrinsic value. Is there really $5 million in value there? Is the Hope Diamond really worth $200 million? To who and what for?
The artist deemed it art, therefore it is.
If you're wondering "Why is it art?" realize that you, wondering this, are the very justification of the art. It makes you wonder, it makes you react, therefore it is art.
He attached links to all of the downloads, that's the ballsiest part about this.<p><a href="http://www.art404.com/5million1terrabyte.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.art404.com/5million1terrabyte.pdf</a><p>Being an art student I love seeing new modern art like this hit the news. Even though I'm just studying Industrial Design, I always get a kick out of this kind of obscure shit. I'll always remember my trip to NYC last year when I browsed the modern art galleries for hours. If you ever get a chance, there's a particular street lined with them (I forget which). It promises some of the most interesting stuff you've ever seen.<p>Edit: The downloads seem to be password-protected, so this guy's not a total maniac.
"Art is anything you get away with" is my favourite definition.<p>The artist should have used the valuation usually claimed by the media companies when dragging young kids to court and he'd have gotten a valuation of somewhere in the billions.
This is excellent not only as a question about the intrinsic value of information, but this piece also implicitly, even involuntarily, makes a negative statement about the valuation of conceptual art, of which this piece is an example. I read in this something akin to Epimenides Paradox (i.e. the value of this work is in showing how works like this have no value.)<p>The question pertaining to whether or not this is really art isn't very interesting. It's an old argument. What I find fascinating are the very passionate arguments against things labeling things like this art, sometimes coming from people who might not even follow art.<p>The objection must stem from the fact that the term 'art' automatically connotes a cultural/economic value and a signifier of class. There is a legitimate worry that the message from the art world is that you just aren't very impressive if you aren't just infatuated with Kadinsky, De Kooning and, by some perverse extension, Jeff Koons.<p>Calling something an installation like this art has the value of framing a very, very specific statement: something would be lost by not calling this art. That said, I wouldn't buy this, nor make any effort to see it in person. That would hardly be necessary. Nor would I label someone who didn't 'get' this a 'prole' or 'not with it' (as if my opinion counted.)<p>Still, this would not be enough to sway one holding on to a conservative definition of art. His or her value as a human being is at stake. Who can blame them? It's a shame, because these political concerns limit art in many thousands of tiny ways with a net result of making a more boring world. I guess politics of status limits activities in many other ways. Nothing new here.
Is that question important or interesting?<p>It is what it is. A one terabyte hard drive that contains illegally downloaded data valued at 5 million dollars. By presenting the drive in a certain way (on a pedestal, with a title, …) certain properties are specifically pointed out.<p>Is that art? I don’t know. Is it important to answer that question? I don’t think so.<p>It’s a nice piece all about the value, nature and availability of digital goods, bringing all these aspects together in a nice and compact way. Well done, creator.
I think what helps make it art is that this artist took this idea, made it into an object (the hard drive with all the data), and then labeled it/made it accessible in such a way that we start to question it differently than if we had just looked at some old hard drive in our room.. So yeah, it's art, but in a sense away from typical mediums like music or painting, etc.
I find it very anti-intellectual when people call others snobs for appreciating art. There's nothing snobbish about learning about or appreciating conceptual art. People who don't care enough to learn about something find that they do not undertand it, conclude that it must be phoney or fake or for snobs.
Can ideas be art? We can't attribute much of any visual aspects of the piece to the artist since the artistic merit of this display relies entirely on the idea of what the drive contains.
If a urinal laid on its back[1] can be considered art, so can an external hard drive placed on a pedestal.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)</a>
I think people are missing the point here, whether or not that is art doesn't matter, the question here is if one is allowed to break the law just because "it's art".
I approve of this incident because it (perhaps not intentionally) pokes fun at art. The argument reveals how silly art really is.<p>I don't care if it's art or not. Art is such a vague label that calling something "art" is meaningless. A far more meaningful criteria are pretty/not pretty, enjoyable/not enjoyable, or intriguing/not intriguing. Something can be pretty, enjoyable or intriguing without being labeled as art. The term "art" is for people who want to feel superior at the cost of others (snobs).<p>In my opinion this hard drive is neither.