PART II — THE DIGITAL BREAK

Then the object disappeared. Art made of files could be copied perfectly and infinitely, and every method the classical world had for binding work to maker assumed there was a singular thing to bind. These three chapters follow the break and what came through it: how art left the object for the network, how a ledger built for money turned out to be a ledger for time, and how the mint gave digital art the one thing it had never had — an origin that can be kept. By the end of this part, the book's central term, signature provenance, will be fully defined. Everything after that is what the definition means.