Provenance

3264 Spam Cans – Art Wants to be Free is an innovative, cutting edge public debut from digital artist Colin Colorful. Colorful launched his career with this work, a 21st century response (perhaps a contemporary upgrade) to Andy Warhol's 32 Campbells Soup Cans. Warhol's original was displayed at a Los Angeles gallery in 1962 and is considered one of the most influential works in Pop Art.

An exciting new online art phenomenon: Digital Originals

A line must be drawn in the cybersand of the digitally distributed art market. When a work can be copied and distributed ad. infinitum, and no physical artifact exists which is obviously “the original”, a new understanding of art, artistry and originality must be achieved. Something must be the origin, the focal point, the part of an artwork that can exist as a commodity.

This website and all its associated contents (including images, code, URL and design) constitute the Digital Original of Colin Colorful's 6432 Spam Cans – Art Wants to be Free.

This site will be displayed here, available for public viewing, until the site and associated content are sold as the 6432 Spam Cans Digital Original, after which time the new owner of 6432 Spam Cans is free to either leave this site as it is, or display it when and where they see fit - or, indeed, do whatever it is that they wish with it.

6432 Spam Cans – Art Wants to be Free, the Digital Original is considered by the artist, Colin Colorful, to be the primary original artwork. The domain name and associated web-site is 100% unique and cannot be duplicated.

What makes this site a Digital Original?

To truly qualify as being a Digital Original, several factors must be considered. There are the issues of uniqueness, ownership, property rights, reproducibility and history.

Uniqueness

This website, specifically its URL (www.spamcans.com) is 100% unique. Any Internet terminal anywhere in the world is able to gain direct access to this site, and to the content hosted on it. The URL can be traded in the same way as any other address, physical or digital.

The advent of digital technology means that this artwork can be endlessly reproduced without any reduction in quality, however: the uniqueness and originality of the URL, along with associated property rights (discussed below) and ownership of this websites code mean that all free versions of this artwork do not have the same value as this, the Digital Original.

Ownership

This site is currently owned by the original artist, Colin Colorful.

Ownership of the Digital Original is fully transferable. When this work is sold, ownership of all associated rights are simultaneously transferred. The proof of ownership lies in the ownership of the website domain and domain title of the work; in this case: www.spamcans.com. The artist considers this website to be the Digital Original and, as such, it has the greatest capital value of all reproductions and derivations of this work in all its digital formats.

Property Rights

When this artwork is sold, all of the associated rights to the work come as part of the package. The new owner would inherit all of the associated global intellectual and moral property rights, the mechanical copyrights, ownership of the code, the individual images as well as the URL. As already mentioned, the URL is completely and globally unique.

Along with these rights, the new owner would have full resale rights – this artwork can be traded on the open market in the same way as any other.

Reproducibility

Each time a viewer comes to this website, or each time an Email is sent from this site, a new derivation of 6432 Spam Cans comes into being. However, the Digital Original cannot be duplicated. As mentioned, the URL and associated worldwide property rights mean that the owner of this Digital Original has complete worldwide ownership of all associated contents. Although it seems that new, identical versions are being created each viewing, this is simply not the case. At first glance, the reproduction shares the resolution and clarity of the original: however, that does not change the fact that this artwork exists in only one place - here. Other reproductions lack the originality of this work for the same reason that a photograph of a painting is not the painting, no matter how much it looks like it.

History

The Digital Original movement is exceedingly new and exciting, which constitutes a major opportunity for art collectors. As original artworks change hands, particularly when a work has been owned by a collector or institution of repute, the value consistently increases. This is not simply a trend in the art buying community, it is an absolute rule.

Digital Originals offer a unique forum for tracing and documenting the chain of ownership over a work. Rather than having to constantly check and recheck the authenticity of a work, Digital Originals offer the exciting possibility of tracing the history of ownership of an artwork from within the artwork itself! Over time, the narrative created by an artwork changing hands (or, in some cases, remaining in certain hands for a long time) becomes part of the work, increasing it's practical, spiritual and financial values.

Visit Digital Original for more information.