Ryder Ripps, Alone Together (Installation View), via Art Observed

The New York-based artist and designer Ryder Ripps capped his first solo gallery show with Postmasters earlier this year, and has spent the past two months in residency at the Red Bull Studios, where his current show, Alone Together, has turned the space into a self-reflexive digital laboratory, complete with test subjects, flickering hardware, and its own, occasionally fractured ideologies. (more…)

Ebay has launched a new section of its website this week, making good on its long-hinted-at art sales collaboration between the auction giant and Sotheby’s.  The site will stream all sales from the auction house save its major biannual sales.  Early highlights include an offering modern and contemporary photographs by Man Ray, Paul Strand and László Moholy-Nagy on April 1st. (more…)

Richard Prince, Untitled (Portrait) (2014), Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photograph By Robert Mckeever.

Currently on view at Gagosian Gallery’s smaller galleries at 976 Madison, Richard Prince’s new set of Instagram-culled pieces are nearly as potent in exposition as they are in person, a series of images pulled directly from the social media app’s user accounts, and blown up to immense scales, full-sized canvases that command the attention of viewers passing by on the street outside. (more…)

Online auction site eBay is attempting a second foray into the world of live online art sales, a second venture outside its upcoming collaboration with Sotheby’s.  The new site is open to a select group of New York art galleries, and allow live bidding on works from around the world. (more…)

Cory Arcangel‘s ongoing project Working on My Novel has finally been published in book form, compiled from posts by Twitter users in which they use the phrase “working on my novel. ”  “Now that I have a great domain name I can start writing on my novel,” reads the first tweet. (more…)

Partnering with Beijing’s Tsinghua University Art and Science Media Laboratory (TASML) and the Center for Art and Technology at CCIA (CAT/CCIA), Rhizome has announced a $10,000 cash prize to one Internet artist.  The award will be handed out annually three times total over the course of the next three years, through 2016. “Internet art remains less recognized, less supported,” the organization said in a statement. “This prize gives a boost to those who continue to make art on the Internet, and emphasizes the unique cultural importance of such work.” (more…)

Sotheby’s has announced a partnership with online auction giant eBay, with the aim of offering easy access to streaming coverage of the auction house’s sales worldwide, and to broaden the company’s reach beyond its traditional buyer pool.   “Even if we only reach point 1 percent of eBay users, that’s huge for us,” says Sotheby’s COO Bruno Vinciguerra. “The point is to make our sales more accessible to the broadest possible audience around the world, all the while remaining totally committed to our high end.” (more…)

The New York Times has published a profile on Ryder Ripps, the net artist and designer who has worked on major branding campaigns and web design projects alongside his own online practice, including his role as the founder of image community Dump.FM and the viral WhoDat.Biz hoax, a website falsely attributed as a new project from Kanye West. (more…)

Over the past several days, Ai Weiwei has been posting and reposting images to his Instagram of both himself and supporters around the world, holding their legs up to mimic the aiming of a rifle.    The phenomenon has viewers puzzled, comparing it to a classic Chinese communist ballet, and other classic photo memes like “planking” in equal parts. (more…)

Google has launched a new project, an online street art gallery of images provided by cultural organizations and Google’s Street View camera.  But with the company’s entry into the conversation on the documentation  of street art playing out against the criticisms Google has seen regarding privacy and surveillance, the move should offer interesting discussion points for open access to art online and in the streets.  “I’ve always used my street art to democratize art, so it would be philosophically inconsistent for me to protest art democratization through Google,” says Shepard Fairey. (more…)

Jeremy Deller has announced that he will be releasing a free, downloadable version of his work from the 2012 British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.  The adaptation of English Magic will be released on July 7th as part of a commission by Own Art, a nonprofit aimed at encouraging new contemporary art collectors to buy their first works. (more…)

Online art sales surpassed the $1 billion mark for the first time in history last year, The Art Newspaper reports.  The market is also expected to double in less than ten years, according to special insurance group Hiscox.  The news was accompanied by a survey that noted some drawbacks to buying online, including an inability to see the work in person, but also noted a high number of customers to be aged under 30. (more…)

Arcangel Surfware, the line of internet inspired clothing and accessories by Cory Arcangel will see release at a one-day pop-up shop at the SoHo Holiday Inn, the artist has announced.  “I’ve always looked to disperse my artwork in as many different arenas as possible. I’ve been surfing the world wide web nearly since its inception, and I just haven’t seen a fully integrated and consistently designed line of products aimed at making the experience more comfortable, more personal, and ultimately more relaxing,” Arcangel says. (more…)

Google has opened the doors to its Google Cultural Institute in Paris this month, welcoming a first look at the virtual umbrella space for a number of the company’s art-focused ventures.  The space will feature artist residencies and exhibitions, as well as talks and panel discussions. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal notes the increasing popularity of posting photographs from art shows and openings on social media platforms like Instagram.  The article comes after a number of major immersive installations that encourage first-rate photo opportunities, like Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room at David Zwirner and The Whitney, or MoMA’s popular Rain Room installation.  “When you have an experience like that—especially after any wait—it lends itself to an assumption of accomplishment,” says David Graver, a 29-year-old who writes for Coolhunting.com. (more…)

The increasing use of the word “curation” in the economic and creative sphere has lead writer and curator Daniel Blight to question the cultural implications of the word for the world of fine art.  As people often taking a more proactive stance in creating meaning and distributional flows online, curators are challenge to increase emphasis on transparency and accessibility in the art landscape, Blight says. (more…)

Gallery mogul David Zwirner has been featured in Bloomberg’s Businessweek, discussing his early aspirations as a jazz drummer, the increasingly wealthy art market, and his thoughts on the impact of the internet on the techniques and approaches to the aesthetics of contemporary art.  “It changes the way they interact with the world.”  He says.  “I’m starting to see work where there’s something radically new in the way images are produced. Some of it’s in film and video, some of it’s in photography, some of it’s in sculpture. But we’re on the cusp of something. The emotional quality around the Internet is nonexistent—that cold, cold, cold energy I’ve seen in some works of art recently.” (more…)

In support of her ongoing Kickstarter campaign for the Marina Abramovic Institute, artist Marina Abramovic will log into popular website Reddit today, for one of the site’s ongoing “Ask Me Anything” sessions.  The artist will open herself to questions from fans and users from around the world, submitted via the site’s simple message board structure. (more…)

Rhizome has announced its list of 2013 Commission Award Winners, including its first round of award recipients for the Tumblr Internet Art Award.  Projects run the spectrum of internet and performance based works, including an online television show by Colin Self and American Medium, an app design by Aaron Meyers and Lauren McCarthy titled God’s Eyes (where one user at a time is granted omniscient access to all other user’s camera phones), a new visualization system for net art collective The Jogging, and even a one-week national tour by performance art/musical duo Extreme Animals. (more…)

When the Whitney Museum set out to restore artist Douglas Davis’s early collaborative, online art piece the World’s First Collaborative Sentence, few could foresee the challenges that digital and internet-based art posed for repair and maintenance.  Based on constantly shifting programming languages and operating systems, digital art often offers complex restoration problems, forcing curators and experts to evaluate the degradation of web sites, coding and software updates against the original authenticity of the piece to properly exhibit it.  “We’re working on constantly shifting grounds,” said Rudolf Frieling, of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “Whatever hardware, platform or device we’re using is not going to be there tomorrow.” (more…)

Online auction site Paddle8 has moved to acquire a 3% share in art sales database and auction site Artnet.  The stake previously belonged to Redline Capital Management, which attempted a takeover of Artnet last year. “We see a lot of strength in Artnet, and feel that the two businesses are complementary,” says Paddle8 co-founder, Aditya Julka.  “Paddle8 will benefit from Artnet’s price database and listings business, contributing to a winning formula in leading the online auction space. This is not a takeover but rather a move towards collaboration in the future.”  (more…)

Artist Ai Weiwei was on hand last week to film and upload a large fight on Beijng’s Ghost Street between ethnic Tibetan and ethnic Han Chinese street vendors.  The video quickly went viral, gaining the attention of viewers worldwide.  “I had arrived in the middle of the fight,” he said later. “I saw someone lying on the ground with blood.” (more…)

Jon Kessler, The Web (Installation View), via Swiss Institute

Overwhelming in its degree of sensory immersion, Jon Kessler’s hypnotic new installation, The Web is currently on view at Swiss Institute in New York.  Welcoming new perspectives into the participatory nature of the Internet, and the endless variations of image and sight that result from an information-centered society, the artist creates a powerfully immersive work that commands the viewer’s full attention. (more…)

Recognized contemporary artists Ryan Gander and Cory Arcangel have both announced the launch of their own lines of clothing.  Gander’s line is a collaboration with Japanese clothing line A.Four Labs, while Arcangel’s, titled “Arcangel Surfwear” is “all designed for comfortably surfing…. the web of course,” says a project manager. (more…)