Money Talks on This Phone

The blogosphere is abuzz about a very unusual iPhone application for sale in the iTunes store: "I Am Rich," an app that costs $999.99 and does nothing but display a blinking red light on your iPhone.

The cheeky little application -- created by a German programmer named Armin Heinrich -- has caused a stir amongst internet commenters.

"I am Rich?" More like 'I'm a douchebag,' " writes one commenter on TechCrunch.

"I am waiting for the $4.99 Chinese Knock-off I am Rich," says another commenter on Wired's Gadget Lab blog. "Then, and only then will I be able to impress my friends with my perceived wealth and wasteful spending ways."

As of now, the point may be moot, as 'I Am Rich' is no longer showing up in the iTunes store. Calls to Apple to determine the details of its removal weren't immediately returned.

But for all those out there bewailing this application as proof that we have reached some new height in conspicuous consumption and ghastly materialism, rest assured that it's really just a natural progression of what Marcel Duchamp started with the porcelain urinal in 1917, and Andy Warhol advanced so memorably with his Campbell's soup cans and Brillo boxes.

Conceptual artists have been producing tongue-in-cheek comments about the commoditization of art for over a century, largely by producing and selling works of art that have little or no material value or evident craftsmanship.

In 1961, for example, Robert Rauschenberg was supposed to exhibit a portrait in the Galerie Iris Clert, and instead submitted as his contribution a telegram sent to the gallery declaring, "This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so."

How does a useless thousand-dollar iPhone app really differ from the shark suspended in formaldehyde (Damien Hirst) or a shovel leaning against a wall (Marcel Duchamp) that would command many times that sum in a gallery setting?

Andy Warhol was perhaps the artist who explored the irrational relationship between art and money most aggressively. He began to paint images of dollar bills in the early 1960's, producing entire canvases consisting of rows of dollar bills.

"I like money on the wall," Warhol said. "Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall."

Liz Gunnison