With the advent of efficient peer-to-peer protocols and applications that support them (such as BitTorrent) becoming a more prevalent means of distributing copyrighted and non-copyrighted content on the Internet, it's not surprising that this phenomenon is spreading into the art world as well. Taking this to heart, Anders Weberg has created "P2P Art - The aesthetics of ephemerality", a collection of art made for and only available on P2P networks. In this project, the "original" artwork is first shared by the artist only until someone has downloaded it, after that happens the original file and all the material used to create it are deleted by the artist. This presents an interesting challenge to the idea of the "original" artwork as the only way to experience the work is to see its copy distributed across the Internet.
Jonah Brucker-Cohen