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You bought a pixel for $1.4 million
I have some bad news for you
Yesterday, a Sotheby’s auction for a single gray pixel ended with a winning bid of $1,355,555. I have some bad news for the buyer.
Dear etyoung,
You bought into the hype. You thought, “A single pixel? That has to be the most meta artwork in history. Backed by NFTs? Color me RGB. And also, in. Color me in.” You bid and won and I mean, who can blame you when faced with an artist’s statement like this:
The Pixel is a single pixel statement. It is created to validate.
The Pixel is a digitally native artwork visually represented by a single pixel (1x1). It is a token that signs the most basic unit of a digital image in a traditional global auction house. It is a tiny mark to carry digitally native art to a potential future history.
Those certainly are words.
Here’s the thing, though: you didn’t buy the most meta artwork in history. How do I know? Because I’m one of the creators of the most meta artworks in history, and I have no plans to sell it.
The creator of the gray pixel was pretty clever, but not that clever. Or, maybe just not old enough to know about the early Web. Because a gray pixel, while meta, is not that meta.
Our artwork? It’s also a single pixel, but it’s not a gray pixel. It’s not a pink pixel, blue pixel, or yellow pixel. In fact, it has no color at all because it’s a clear pixel. 100% transparent.
Oh, you haven’t heard of clear pixels? Maybe you’ve heard of spacer gifs? Same thing. See, in the old days, we used clear pixels—er, spacer gifs—to achieve pixel-perfect web pages. The beauty of a clear pixel is that you can make it any size you want with a little bit of HTML code, and it will push everything around just as you like. And, as I said, it’s clear—100% transparent—so no one will know your secret. (Well, unless they know basic HTML and can open Code Inspector.)
Anyway, I wouldn’t sell you my clear pixel. In fact, I wouldn’t sell it to anyone, not for a dollar or ten million.
Instead, I’m giving my clear pixel away for free to anyone who wants it—and I’m not the only one. Sure, my clear pixel isn’t unique, nor is it…
