CALL TO THE ART HISTORIANS PRESENT HERE TO GIVE THEIR OPINION...

THAT PITS FRED FOREST AGAINST CHRISTIE'S AND METAKOVAN THE BUYER OF THE BEEBLE FOR $69.3 MILLION!

Fred Forest's controversy with Metakovan and Christie's over Beeple's $69.3 million NFT who claimed, perhaps a bit too prematurely and certainly for lack of information, that this work on Everydays -The first 5000 Days by Beeple was a unique piece, representing the first NFT in Art History sold by a major auction house. This claim is disputed by artist and theorist, Fred Forest, who provides evidence below.

He urges them to retract this statement and to acknowledge their error without delay. Counting on their good faith, he believes that if they did not do so spontaneously, they would expose themselves to a damaging discredit for their reputation.

Here on the website ?https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/call-art-historians-present-here-give-opinion-presse-webnetmuseum/ vous you will find all the proofs of the anteriority of Fred Forest's work of 25 years on Everydays - The first 5000 Days of Beeple

Below, Fred Forest's ?https://nft-archeology.org/ visible on OpenSea which is not for sale by auction, but by mutual agreement.

Indeed, this French artist, Fred Forest, on October 16, 1996 had put on sale on line at the H?tel des Ventes Drouot in Paris a digital work (without palpable physical existence, but visualized at the time of the sale on cathodic screen) of which the happy bidders-purchasers took possession under the shape of a code which was given to them in person by the auctioneer in a closed envelope bearing stamp and signature of his study. This code gave them access on the Internet to the work of which he had just finalized the acquisition.?So today it is at least 25 years ago. His work did not yet bear the name of NFT, of course, but was nonetheless a... before its time! The blockchain had not yet been invented by Satoshi Nakamoto to make this code inviolable, but it does not remain about it less than Fred Forest, artist of genius and pioneer besides in various domains of the art, was the author of this unpublished process which consisted in associating narrowly, in a way, at the time of its sale, the digital work to its code... to the point that for the first time in a sale of art the representation of the work took the step and stole the star to the work itself authentically recognized as such.?The staging conceived by Forest for the circumstance consisting in making of the code in question "the object" that was really proposed and bought, while the work excentered on the side with its pixelized reflection could appear only as accessories to what was the essential. In other words in this sale of October 16, 1996 under the hammer of Binoche Forest put on sale a code! It was the first time that such a substitution was made in an international room of Sales devolved in principle to the objects and works of art...

What the auctioneer, Jean-Claude Binoche, is handing out to the buyers as a purchase is the sesame (the encrypted link of the work) contained in this envelope, which will give them access on the Internet to their digital copy, which they can then contemplate at home, or on the move from any other point on the globe, like any physical work hanging in their living room ... Just as the blockchain also allows the author of an NFT, its owner, or whoever holds it, a kind of codification (private key) by its registration which makes it inviolable as regards its nature, its forms, its contents, as well as the identity of the one who proceeded to its registration, or of the one who became its owner after a purchase transaction

It is this premonitory protocol created by the artist, Fred Forest, who anticipated on the History of the art and the technology of the blockchain, by associating a code to his digitalized object (in the circumstance a digital work of art) to the point of making it represent by him, instead of the work in question in a transaction in auction room. It is necessary to understand in the logic of our reasoning that under different forms the work and its data-processing coding are here very closely related, and in our case paradox: are the only and same thing! Only the form differs from it. Forest the time of this sale, substituted, one to the other, for the first time in the course of the ritual of a public auction in a prestigious international auction house. This did not fail to make event and the world tour for the media craze aroused, which had not been alien to the intentions and prognoses of an artist, often named the Media Man No. 1.??

?What makes today, thanks to the invention occurred in the meantime of the blockchain, for any work answering to its criteria, it is its intrinsic inviolable and unfalsifiable existence for any forger, from the moment when it was the object of a coded computer recording on one of the numerous specialized platforms put today at the disposal of the public.

Finally Fred Forest points out to Metakovan that it is already 25 years that a time, which is neither compressible nor extensible, has passed since his sale of Parcelle/Réseau at Drouot... And that he made of the time, him also, Forest, his business, and that for 24 years, with among others " I stop the time " a numerical work that he created in 1997, that is to say when we were still in the XXth...;-) (1997) https://urlz.fr/gk7N

And this does not diminish the great talent of Beeple, which you are right to support with millions. But you should also know that the NFT collection that you have the ambition to create, deprived of the emblematic https://NFT-Archeology.orgqui, would lose with the absence of this indispensable piece the essential of its value.

Not to mention that its acquisition by one of your potential competitors, nourished by the same ambitions as you for art, could be a fatal blow, while some of your challengers, also rich to the tune of billions in search of an image, are already lurking in the shadows, barely concealed for profitable investments... Notably as Justin Sun who has just announced these pharaonic projects concerning art.

We are waiting for the correction of your error committed in company of Christie's auction house for having proclaimed in an inaccurate way and without nuance, that Evrydays5000 was the first unique digital work, sold by an international auction house in the form of NFT without making any mention of Parcel/Network alias of NFT-Archeology.org

I remind you here:

1- That on October 16, 1996 at the Drouot International Auction House (the oldest Auction House in the world) proceeded, room N° 9, under the gavel of Master Jean Claude Binoche to the sale of the online digital work Parcelle/Réseau by the artist Fred Forest.

2- For the first time in the world according to our knowledge, the procedure of the sale at the initiative of the artist innovated in the sense that it is the numerical code (the key) i.e. the link giving access to the work placed in an envelope which turned out to be the object materializing in a way the sale, and which will be given to the two associated purchasers, against the payment of 58.000 francs that is to say 65.000 francs with the expenses, paid on the spot by check. (A derisory sum at the time, I agree, where appetites have been whetted somewhat...)

3- Today, 25 years later, the computer invention of the blockchain also dematerializes the sale of works that have been registered on its lines of code, but also makes their registered code tamper-proof, guaranteeing the authenticity of the deposit without recourse to a trusted third party.

4- It is necessary to know that 4 years later Parcelle/Réseau following a bankruptcy of its owners was definitively lost, seized and taken away with the computer and the furniture of the company n@rt by bailiffs... to finish in the scrapyard. Forest who had preciously kept an artist's copy of it has slightly modified its original digital file, and puts it on sale on OpenSea as authorized by the copyright. Today under the name of NFT-Archeology.org, Plot/Network became NFT in its own right.

Its code is now inviolable, certainly registered in the blockchain on OpenSea under a new code name NFT-Archeology.org , while its digital identity has remained perfectly identical to what it was in 1996 under the gavel of Master Jean-Claude Binoche and in the form of the link that gave access to the Internet.

5- As in Greek mythology, Parcel/Network, digital and allegorical, is reborn from its ashes and becomes once again the emblematic https://nft-archeology.org/ that it has always been.

6- The premonitory substitution operated by Fred Forest at the time of the sale of Parcel/Network, of his own digitized code in replacement of the work, itself, constitutes a kind of obliged rite of passage that illustrates the generalized reconversion of the material towards the immaterial to which we witness more and more at the present time.

7- The work of Beeeple Eveydays5000 with its own originality is thus at most the second work that is the object of a sale of this kind, the first having been Parcel/Network, which we ask you to take into account and to acknowledge publicly.