Buying Time: The Nostalgia-Free History Sale offered art patrons and online shoppers a chance to commemorate the new Internet age with a product attuned to the rapid pace of our time: a video of the buyer ordering that very same video. Using the ability to cheaply videoconference, M. River and T. Whid Art Associates recorded customers stating, “I want my time,” and then mailed the videos back the participants.

The tongue-in-cheek project also commented on the Internet’s ability to offer such an overwhelming array of information that an individual could spend hours of his or her life surfing websites, as opposed to communicating with the “real” world. The project was a part of Creative Time’s CyberWide series, and was included in Port: Navigating Digital Culture, an artnetweb exhibition of networked digital worlds on the Internet.

M. River and T. Whid Art Associates (MTAA)

Buying Time: The Nostalgia-Free History Sale

Online

1997