An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s

I suppose that's also already true today. Unmaintained software rots; the OS moves on and the software no longer runs. DRMed software has its servers shut down. Online games get shut down. Etc. The most loved software typically has enough interested hackers to keep it alive; releasing bug fixes decades later, defeating DRM, emulating server software to keep old online games alive, etc. But if no one cared about a piece of software, it won't be long before it "rots" and becomes unrunnable in the future.

Somewhat related, your comment reminded me about a piece of online performance art. It was a website with an animation of a dying astronaut, a countdown, and a clickable button. If the button wasn't clicked within a certain amount of time, to reset the countdown, the astronaut would die. Forever. As long as someone, somewhere, on the internet clicked that button, the astronaut would keep on living.

Things were touch and go when the website first went online. Not a lot of visitors meant not a lot of people to click the button and keep him alive. But it went viral, and his life was nearly assured.

I believe in the end a server glitch or something ruined it; the countdown ran out and the astronaut died. And that was it. There was no reset after that. For a brief flicker in time that virtual life burned dimly enough to light up the internet. Now he's merely a buried artifact of internet history.

The transience of the act is what gave it value. If something never dies, if it can never be lost, what value does it hold?

At the end of the film Blade Runner, the "Tears in Rain" speech. I always felt like he was saying he finally found value in his life. Androids, living only for a brief few years, didn't find much value in their lives. But he realized he had seen and done things that nobody else in the world had. And when he dies, those things will be lost forever, like tears in the rain. It seems pointless. But that loss is what gives value to his life. He isn't just another android. He's something priceless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard_(Vonnegut_novel)#Pai...

Banksy's work is rooted in street art, which is historically priced at zero or less and/or priceless, i.e. usually not removed from source (exterior walls of public infrastructure) and viewed as expense by local govt (cost to clean off) but may simultaneously be loved by residents in the community it's located in. It's also subject to unexpected change or erasure (destroyed or painted over by municipal govt or other grafitti artists). So, it's not surprising that it took longer for Banksy's work to reach $M price levels.

In contrast, Koons' work is commercial to the core and on a grand scale (per physical size, amount and cost of materials, etc). The upper bounds of pricing on his work is open to debate but the lower limit was always meant to be significantly above zero.