What is real?
Is this real?
If I were to sell this for a million bucks,
then would it be real?
How can it be,
when there is no original?
It’s no Salvator Mundi.
It is a digital painting.
Original has little meaning,
when it is just ones and zeros.
The only original,
the only real,
is the first exported image file on my computer drive.
Any other image file,
whether transferred through flash drive or the internet,
is a copy.
Not real.
But is there much value in the “real” digital file,
when digital files can be copied so easily?
Would the hard drive with the original,
be worth more than one million US dollars,
if it was put up for auction?
Like The Persistence of Chaos
Then what if the digital painting is printed once,
and only once,
and any traces of the digital file is destroyed,
like a Duchampian Fountain,
then is it real?
Or is it still a copy?
With the original forever lost?
But the single, physical copy is still around.
Can the title of “original” be transferred to it?
People can still look at it,
and appreciate what it represents,
just as much as if the digital file was still around.
Why this attachment to the real, then?
Would authenticity be distinguishable without context?
Especially when it is a digital print?
Is this desire for the real justified?
Even if there is not yet a way to prove or disprove reality?
What if this piece was auctioned as “probably real?”
It could be the real copy, but it could also not be.
Would the chance of originality spur some to bid?
Just in case it really is the real original?
Where did this desire for the original come from?
Something primal?
Something spiritual?
What I am certain is,
I am not the first,
nor the last,
to wonder:
What is real?