I recently had to pick the edition size of a digital interactive project I made. I just went with a standard ten but it got me thinking. I understand that when you are making prints for example each piece in the edition has to be physically produced by the artist. Thus it makes sense to limit the number of pieces that can be made. But why arbitrarily constrict the number of something that can be copied infinitely at no cost or time to me? Video works would be another example of this. Movies, music, and literature don’t have this type of artificial supply constriction. Can you please explain the function and process of editioning digital art?

In general, edition numbers vary for reasons both pragmatic and market-driven. Traditionally, the edition run of a print on paper is determined partially by its technology; most printmaking media such as etching plates degrade with repeated use. Therefore, if you want the last print to look as good as the first, you have to limit the overall number of prints produced so that every print is of nearly the same quality. It has less to do with being physically produced by the artist—many editions are contracted out to printing houses—and more to do with the inverse relationship between edition size and print quality.

But, of course, there is no limit to the amount of digital copies you can generate from an original file, because unlike prints on paper, the reproduction quality never deteriorates no matter how many CDs or DVDs you burn. So should you limit the number of copies available? It’s a great question, but the answer isn’t arbitrary even though it may be artificial.

Cory Arcangel, Sweet 16, 2006. Projection from a digital source, dimensions variable, edition of 5

One factor to remember in digital editioning is that it’s contingent on the art-historical precedent set by the conventions of more traditional media. Capital-A Art typically has an aura, in part because the art object is singular (a painting) or because the technology that produced it can only last through a limited number of runs (lithography stones, ceramic molds). This has a direct bearing on digital editioning—generally, when a new technology is introduced to the arts it has to fit into the established paradigm.

In addition to its reliance on preexisting standards absorbed from other media, editioning of digital work is also market-driven. In a capitalist society, restricted supply means increased value, so when the medium itself is cheap and infinitely reproducible, value can be contrived by limiting its availability.

In the case of digital editioning, historical precedence and market forces conspire—sometimes to an absurd extent. For instance, some videos are now created in editions that include “artist’s proofs”—a term used in traditional printing for the very first prints, of higher quality resulting from the fresh printing stone. Print-on-paper APs, it can be reasoned, are more valuable because they are generally sharper and more colorful than subsequent prints; but video APs have no such enhanced clarity, making them into something between an embarrassment and an in-joke.

Cory Arcangel, I Shot Andy Warhol, 2002. Interactive video installation

All skepticism aside, creating a limited run of a digital work is a perfectly legitimate practice. Doing so is a promise to collectors that you will not devalue their purchase by making additional copies of the work at a later date. And if you do limit the edition, it is important that you stick to this promise, painful though it may be in the long run if demand for the work increases. The question of whether or not to limit an edition of a digital work hinges on your priorities. If wide distribution is your first priority then it would be more advantageous to produce a larger edition or an open edition. If you desire a high financial value for the work then a limited edition and the scarcity it creates will serve you better.

But beware, there are many factors that will make a big difference to the success of an editioned project. For example, if you are very early on in your career and your reputation is not widespread enough to add any value to the work, then it might be better to create a large or open edition that will get your work in front of more people. On the other hand, if the work will be exhibited at a gallery that has a good history of sales and you can reasonably expect to sell most of the works in the edition, then limiting it will allow you to command a higher price.

One resource for ideas about editioning is the recording of the 2009 panel discussion at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Australia entitled, “Editioning: Photography and Video.” The first speaker, Elena Galimberti (who collaboratively built the Australian Video Art Archive), discusses the minutiae of editioning videos, noting, “Emerging artists will generally offer early works in larger editions, lowering the price to more accessible levels. As an artist becomes more established, the edition size will usually decrease.” Another issue that Galimberti touches on briefly in her remarks is the manner in which the perceived value of an edition may be enhanced by certificates of authenticity, signed copies, special packaging, or other related ephemera. If you’re working with a commercial gallery, creating related materials that accompany the CD or DVD can reinforce a sense of significance and value. And when in doubt, the gallerist or dealer should be able to help you decide on an edition size.

Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Clouds v2k3, 2003. Installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art

However, if you prefer to try for the widest possible distribution, or if the idea of accessible dissemination fits more closely with the conceptual goals of your work, you may choose to produce unlimited open edition. It’s important to note that an uneditioned work is not necessarily free for those who exhibit it. The Electronic Arts Intermix Online Resource Guide explains that the creator of an open-edition video can still enforce, “restrictions governing who may make copies, how they are made, and how they may be used…With uneditioned video, artists are typically paid a royalty when the work is exhibited or sold. Thus, exhibitors pay a fee for the inclusion of an uneditioned work in an exhibition or screening.” That is, they pay if you want them to; remember that you make the rules here.

Of course, interactive digital artwork is a relatively new field that fits rather poorly into traditional structures governing the distribution of editioned works. The EAI also has a section on best practices for computer-based arts, noting, “…most works and exhibitions need to be considered on a case-by-case basis… Although distinctions between single-channel video, video installation and computer-based arts continue to blur, the interactive attributes of many computer-based installations create unique requirements.” It’s likely that there exists an entirely novel solution to the problem of editioning your next project, one that serves the needs of producer and consumers, and will be as new as the media on which it is based. Good luck!

FORCE OF FAILURE: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

Filled with electronic blips, beeps and bloops there is one sound conspicuously missing from the Barbican Art Gallery – the sound of a pin-dropping.

Cory Arcangel, Various Self Playing Bowling Games (detail), 2011. Courtesy of the artist, Lisson Gallery, Team Gallery and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Photo credit: © Eliot Wyman. Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery.

Cory Arcangel’s installation in The Curve gallery of the Barbican is comprised of a series of bowling video games in constant auto play, projected along the long corridor that itself very much resembles a bowling hall. But not a single pin falls, the satisfying sound of the crash is absent, the balls hit the gutter, again and again and again…

With the installation’s title, Beat the Champ, multimedia artist Arcangel tauntingly dangles the idea of winning, impossible to achieve – like the fixed carnival games with the ball slightly too big for the basket, doomed to lose, time and time again.

The virtual characters on the big screen are programmed to be transfixed in purposeless repetition – Sisyphean meaningless work – condemned to re-perform their own failings for us in this crescent shaped theater of the absurd.

Cory Arcangel, Various Self Playing Bowling Games (detail), 2011. Courtesy of the artist, Lisson Gallery, Team Gallery and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Photo credit: © Eliot Wyman. Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery.

Not simply a looped video of a single miscalculated moment of a game, the video game consoles themselves are active and functioning – but in a forced state of hijacked programming. Their games are played out in a perpetual state of failure, hacked by tiny green chips that bear Arcangel’s name, forcing the game to loop in a continual state of defeat. The virtual characters are driven by a code devised by the artist, rather than human interaction.

Witnessing the progression in graphics and design – from the old Atari system that greets you in the beginning, through the original Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Sony Playstation, to more recent PS2 and Game Cube versions – is itself a testament to defeat. With technology becoming obsolescent at ever-increasing speeds, these systems are doomed to fail – already antiquated as they reach the consumer floor. They are systems designed to self-destruct, and give way to their successors at breakneck rates.

Cory Arcangel, Various Self Playing Bowling Games (detail), 2011. Courtesy of the artist, Lisson Gallery, Team Gallery and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Photo credit: © Eliot Wyman. Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery.

And as the systems here progress, defeat becomes increasingly pronounced. In the old Atari, the bowling ball instantaneously bounces back and attempts again, however as the avatars become more realistic, their resilience begins to wane. Emphasis is placed on their defeat. Disappointment, annoyance and anger grow, as they throw their virtual hands up in the air, shake their computer-programmed head and have full on temper tantrums. Read as a decreasing optimism and increasing frustration in technological advances, there is an underlying current,  a realisation that technology might not save us after all.

Cory Arcangel, Various Self Playing Bowling Games (detail), 2011. Courtesy of the artist, Lisson Gallery, Team Gallery and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Photo credit: © Eliot Wyman. Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery.

Hacking into the system, Arcangel satirises the failures and frustrations of contemporary society. The lighthearted game of bowling becomes a metaphor for the complex and dangerous relationship between man and machine. Arcangel sees it as the ‘short circuits in human nature caused by everyone staring at their phones or being on Facebook all the time’. While they may short-circuit they are controlled by the artist, the virtual characters are puppets of a pre-programmed code. The act of hacking is just as much a failure of the system – an affirmation of man over machine. We may not be able to beat the game or tear ourselves away from Facebook, but as Arcangel has shown, it is possible to alter the outcome and bend it to our will – In this perpetual failure there is hope.

Various Self-Playing Bowling Games, was co-commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and will be shown there as part of the artist’s forthcoming exhibition in May 2011.

Cory Arcangel, The Sharper Image, installation view. Image by Steven Brooke.

On view through May 9th at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami is a retrospective of  work made by Brooklyn-based artist, Cory Arcangel, from 2002 to present. The solo exhibition, entitled The Sharper Image, examines the prolific artist’s diverse practice, featuring a virtual grab bag of media—video, print, sound, performance, sculpture, drawing and web-based work. An artist, computer programmer and web designer, Arcangel was first featured on DailyServing in 2007. He is best known for his explorations of consumer technology and digital culture, including cheeky modifications to old-school Nintendo games, such as in the 2002 piece I Shot Andy Warhol—an interpretation of the 1980s NES game Hogan’s Alley. Other works on view in The Sharper Image include: several prints of Photoshop Product Demonstration Gradients; Space Invader (2004), the modification of the old Atari Game Space Invaders; and a temporary re-design of the MOCANOMI website by changing the font to Comic Sans, which is live throughout the tenure of the exhibition.

Cory Arcangel, The Sharper Image, installation view. Image by Steven Brooke.

Cory Arcangel lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been included in numerous international group exhibitions such as Younger than Jesus at the New Museum, New York (2009), The Possibility of an Island at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2008); Color Chart at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007); Speed 3 at the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain (2007); Time Frame at P.S. 1, New York (2006); Database Imaginary at The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2004); and the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004). A solo show of his work just closed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. He is represented by Team Gallery in New York.