LOOP PROFESSIONAL MEETINGS Date & hours: Friday 3 June, 15 - 16.30 Venue: Hotel Catalonia Ramblas, Carrer Pelai 28, Barcelona Title: Moving images: turning towards online exhibition & new distribution models Moderator: Daniela Arriado, Founder & Curator, Art Republic Participants: Chantal Molleur, Co-Founder Director and Curator Margaux Bricler, Artist Pau Waelder, Curator, Critic & Art Writer Peter Andersson, Founder of Vestigium Art Rob Anders, Founder of NIIO Shaun Gladwell, Artist Harley Adams, Artsy 1
Meeting report by Gisela Chillida TOPICS: new exhibition models, engaging audiences, create sharing tools, Interactions between new media art and market. The topic of the session was the so called new turn, a change in exhibition models and distributions platforms. The meeting focused on the new distribution and exhibition models emerged in recent years and explored different ways to face challenges such as engage audience, find income or create useful sharing tools. The main goal was to discuss about future prospectives in order to find how to create an ecosystem able to link artists, distributors and software developers common interests. 1) Taking new media into traditional spaces Since technology has become ubiquitous and screens are ever-present in our everyday life, art world needs to find its place in the virtual world. We started discussing about the complex relation between online and offline world as exhibition spaces in relation with both virtual and non-virtual art. How can we show new media in traditional spaces? • • •
It is important to allow computer based artworks enter to traditional exhibition spaces. In fact, years ago, one of the main issues seemed to be how we should take new media art into the “white cube”. Someone says that projects focused on taking new media art to contemporary art spaces (museums, galleries) are necessary, because this kind of art needs traditional spaces to be normalized and presented to the audience. It is an interesting exercise since this way a people can have an experience, an expectation and as a curators we can play with this expectations.
2) Putting traditional art into the Net
1 The present report aims to provide a summary of the discussions that took place during the meeting. It does not aim to be a transcription of the conversations, so we emphasize its summary character.
Artworks are now travelling in two directions: from the net to a physical space; and from material dimension to virtuality. How we should exhibit traditional artworks in the Net? Since 90% of the art we see is through the screen, are art fairs as important as they used to be?This question points to new models of exhibition and news ways of curating. • •
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A question to solve is how can we take traditional art (painting, sculpture, drawing…) into the virtual space. Art pages have become crucial for artists, galleries and collectors. new platforms that have come out the last six years focused on taking all the information required to curators and collectors: artsy, artspace Artsy platform is focused in bringing art online to make people feel “like in a gallery when you are actually in a computer”. We also need to bring maybe not so traditional mediums like films, photography or video art to Internet and find the best way to present them online We need to reconsider the importance of originality when we observe an artwork: Where can we see -for example Mona Lisa- better, printed in a book, on a webpage like artsy or at the museum?
3) Selling a digital piece: economic issues and questions regarding legality We discussed the paper of the collector and issues related to ownership and authenticity. We need to find a proper and easy way to sell and transfer an immaterial piece of art. Despite the allure of the object, do we always need a creative box to sell videoart? On the Internet, It’s easy to take someone’s work so how we deal with authentification? How can we prove a digital work is an original and not a fraudulent copy? • • •
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We need to have an entity, a central trusted register, a cultural hertitage institution. Everything will be ok (from a legal point of view) if there’s a registration of every transaction. For a buyer (collector, institution, museum), is crucial to have a document. It is, from the gallery or the artist to a collector o from collector to collector. VestigiumArtTM that has developed a method (LEQUO) to give unique identities to artworks, originals and editions, and thereby keep track of works, rights, documents and transactions of the works. Vestigium use Meaplus and Lequa, and other servers to store the signed receipts of the transactions. In other words, every transaction has a digital sign that verifies its authenticity. Every work has an i.d. an you cannot change it, every part has to stay the same. This way, you can prove who is the artist and who is the owner. That allows the artist to make copies or editions and register every single one with a common i.d. On the other hand, it permits the owner to transfer the artwork to another collector in a trustful way. Paper certificates are not useful anymore, are obsolete. One of the problems regarding the question of unifications is that art world tends to avoid rules. But we need standards both regarding sharing and ownership issues. It’s time to make decisions about legal questions. Sometimes technology is linked with artist idea. That’s why it’s important to keep track of artist desires. It is good to documentate everything, especially from a posthumous point of view. Discussion over ownership: sometimes, new media art is more restricted than traditional one in digital because there is a fear of that being copied.
4) Sharing
A main point to clarify is how we share a virtual artwork. Since now, wetransfer and googledrive have been the most common sharing platforms, but it could be very useful to create a single tool able to upload, storage and transfer at the same time. •
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Unification is the clue, one of the biggest challenges is to create a functional platform for everything and everyone. All agreed that we need an institution capable to be “the standard” but some pointed the difficulty since every artists works in a different way and medium. One platform for all entities (upload, download, store, preserve). We also need to avoid different formats. The next step is storing digital art in a single way and create a platform where the artists could upload their entire portfolios and share it with the gallery which at the same time, can rent or sell it in different resolutions. For example, the gallery will be able to send the artwork to a possible buyer who can access to it for a limited period of time from his home. This way, the artist to control the way this artpiece is watched. Education is very important, we want people to understand end they will only understand through a good education.
5) Exhibiting and new ways of curating We tried to explore the fluid relation between software and hardware when talking about how we show new media art since it opens new opportunities for curating (selecting and exhibiting). new media artists can be very specific about the kind of screen…It is the artist who decides how its work is screened. • • •
Streaming exhibitions happening only on the Net. Offline venues. Sometimes the context is crucial. The artist wants its work to be screened only in a physical venue and gives very specific technical directions about how it must be shown. On the other hand, actual venues can be a sort of a pop-up gallery in dialogue with a digital event or exhibition.
6) Audience One of the big challenges is to find a way to engage people that don’t have a “museum culture”. How are we going to create interest in digital works from the public (not specialized)? • • •
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Extend the audience is fundamental, but we need to work hard to be able to engage new publics. Platforms like Netflix are a good example of how to proceed. One of the keys is to create artworks oriented to people not coming from a background of art. In other words, it is crucial to be able to engage a wide range of people. There exist a close relation between generations and use of technology. Towards different age publics also how to bring together art communications with digital tools taking in account different generations Even online, there are different cultural and national identities.
CONCLUSIONS •
We experience art through a screen and more artworks are created in a digital format. We need to create a net system that connects together curators, artists, distributors, software developers is fundamental.
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Unification of the information through online channels and platforms is a main point. There are problems with video and digital art because there’s still a gap and no consensus. We absolutely need a single infrastructure that provides a service for preservation and storage. Attribution and preservation are two main points. You have to control the authenticity, the number of copies and you have to develop a technical tool to be able to distribute and control the ownership. We have a problem in terms of the market. It is obvious that money is necessary to continue producing. In the following years, we need to focus on find how to stimulate the market. New platforms where you can pay by subscriptions (following Netflix example) will be the key.