Proceedings of the symposium Quel Marché Pour L'art Numérique ? (What Market For Digital art?) organized by Digitalarti - featuring Drouot Formation and the teaching institute of the Hotel Drouot (French auction house)– as part of the Futur en Seine festival at the CentQuatre, in Paris, last June 22nd.
Summary of the three round tables with participating artists and digital and contemporary art professionals who outlined suggestions to open up the digital art market by trying, through definitions, reflections and proposals, to invent a market value for works whose creative essence is intangible.
ROUND TABLE #1
Topic: What is a digital work of art?
Introduction: Dominique Moulon (journalist, teacher, art and new media critic)
Host: Manuela de Barros (French philosopher and art historian, lecturer at Paris-VIII University, she teaches aesthetics and the relationship between arts, sciences and technologies).
Speakers: Olivier de Baecque (lawyer, specialised in the art market), Violaine Boutet de Monvel (art critic and PhD student in contemporary art history at Paris 1/Pantheon-Sorbonne), Miguel Chevalier (artist), Marie-Claire Marsan (general secretary of the Art Galleries Professional Committee)
Summary:
The question “what is a digital work of art?” is open, multiple, and can vary according to the chosen point of view of aesthetics, law, etc. As a preamble, it is appropriate to wonder about the very nature of digital art. Is it a genre per se? Is using a digital tool enough to classify a work of art as “digital”…? Is the media the only reference point? Are materiality or immateriality the only reference frames? Does the medium define the work? Which specific criteria can be found to reach a definition? Is it a work of flow or a matrix work one can copy, print, disseminate, etc?
The shift from analogical to digital could be one of the criteria enabling to determine the specificity of a digital work of art. But this transitional stage is not suitable to define video art, for instance. It only qualifies its expansion into other means of screening, installing, broadcasting, exhibiting… Neither are the hacking and recycling practices specific to digital art. They already existed in other art forms (such as collage).
The definition of digital art - the art “linked to the computer” - is to be sought as much in “the inventory of differences” to establish in comparison with the “traditional” forms of art as in some kind of intrinsic ambivalence. Thus, digital art often implies the participation of the “spectator” who becomes an actor, an “artist” even, when involved in an interactive and/or generative work. In such a case, can one speak of a collaborative work? A redefinition of the concept of author is also emerging as an outcome of these processes and approaches.
The difficulty to monetize digital art also originates from this ambiguity, this lack of definition, of identification, as much for the public, as for purchasers and sometimes even participants… Is the construction of a market - which in fact relies on organizing rarity – however compatible with the very nature of digital art…? Is this economic fiction still operational when it comes to creations which can exist without any tangible, material medium even if copyright is precisely there to protect immaterial creation…?
ROUND TABLE #2
Topic: Which means can promote digital art? What are the promotion channels?
Host: Frederic Elkaïm (director of Drouot Formation)
Speakers: Malo Girod de l’Ain (cofounder of Digitalarti), Christian Delécluse (teacher, artist and architect), Jose Manuel Goncalves (director of the CentQuatre), Valerie Perrin (director of the Espace Gantner), Pau Waelder (art critic and independent curator)
Summary:
The problem of the awareness towards digital art is also a problem of recognition… There is an amount of suspicion when it comes to the legitimacy of digital art as compared with other artistic forms or fields. Nevertheless, digital art is not an “art of geeks”: its existence has been anchored in art history for three decades now. Consequently, one should wonder why there are still restraining forces towards the integration of digital art into the contemporary art sphere?
On the one hand, the multidisciplinarity of digital art conflicts with the traditional validating categories of contemporary art, built over the years by experts who wish to sustain their fields of intervention… Another typically French problem is the lack of an important and authoritative public figure – an art critic, gallery owner, artist, collector, etc - in the field of contemporary art who could plead in favour of digital art with these taste gurus… The third factor is the confusion of the general public regarding the techniques, modes and forms through which digital art is being expressed.
What is left is a scouting work from festivals around which digital art as we know it has been developed. This implies the risk of an increased isolation, and some galleries. Precursor, sure. But not enough. Just as art schools and training centres, are still withdrawn when it comes to the facilities required by digital art. Other promotional spaces are yet to be invented or consolidated. Businesses, major partners, share a wide range of interests with digital art in the fields of communication, innovation, research… Lastly, public spaces also offer numerous visibility opportunities and event-driven communication…
The problem of the dissemination of digital art is nevertheless unveiling a change: the shift from a time of suspicion to a time of questions. An increasing number of multidisciplinary curators, producers and venues are showing digital art without promoting it, due to the interrogation on the very object that is being exhibited, which challenges the traditional curating categories… They are also trying hinder the qualms of investors, subsidizing public bodies and the public itself, as associating art and technology still remains fairly difficult… This dissociation is materialising the border between the scientific and artistic cultures which was erected in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment …
ROUND TABLE #3
Topic: What market for digital art? How to build its market value?
Host: Stephan Corréard (art critic, director of the contemporary art department at the SVV Cornette de Saint Cyr - Auction House)
Speakers: Juan-Carlos Bendana Pinel (gallery owner, Bendana Pinel gallery), Samuel Bianchini (artist) Eric Dereumaux (gallery owner, X-ray gallery), Julie Miguirditchian (curator and head of development at DigitalArti), Johan Tamer Morael (directing of Slick and director of the JTM gallery), Pascale Cassagnau (inspector of artistic creation, in charge of the video and new media collection at Cnap – French National Centre for Visual Arts)
Summary:
How to establish a market value? In itself, this question presupposes the relevance of the contemporary art market model applied to digital art. But is this really a customized commercial approach taking into account some of the specificities of digital art? In this field, perhaps more than any other artistic one, the question of the sale is tricky, ambiguous even … What item should be sold? The computer? The screen? The program? According to which criteria and methods? Should a package be created…?
Indeed to establish a market value, photography, then video proceeded by mimicking the commercial codes of contemporary art (certificate of authenticity, limited edition, etc). Though with a similar approach, digital art must - will have to – also transcend the engineering and legal issues (edition, duplication, conservation…) linked to the specificity of the formats required by a multi-media work, so that these issues do not - anymore - constitute a hurdle in establishing its commercial value.
Beyond the convergence and divergence points between contemporary and digital art, a paradoxical question which has transcended the art market for a few years also arises: how to sell a piece of art whilst being less economically dependent on the sale of objects? Options start to be outlined, such a “right of showing”, proposed by a few artists who claim fees during exhibitions, or the availability of a customer service (maintenance)… In a broader sense, a brand new way of financing art - which no longer relies on the sale of the object per se but on its “exhibition duration” and on the service offered by its creator - is beginning to grow… An economy of access and flow…
However, the manufacturing costs of a digital work might require its valorisation on other markets than the art one. Because of the elements and devices used, some artworks require a complete engineering input (mechanical, optical, computing, etc) without which the artist could not complete his piece. The -sometimes exorbitant- cost of this labour can be financed early in the process, by teaming up with industrialists and scientists, research laboratories or research departments… as well as establishing a synergy on the grounds of innovation between the enterprising world and the artistic field…
Other active participants can also contribute to set up this new art market. Though it implies redefining roles. Thus, the collector could become a patron of the arts, the gallery owner a producer…The gallery would thus become not only a place for showing, but also for producing… Though, one cannot consider a market value without an “assigned value”…Eventually the problems linked to the digital art market might come from depreciation: many creations are based on playful processes but terribly devoid of any aesthetic grounding. Many artists seek to renew their practice through a technique instead of a more thorough artistic requirement. This phenomenon is being sustained by a certain ghettoisation of digital art (specialised festivals, etc)…
transcription/summary: Laurent Diouf
Futur en Seine: www.futur-en-seine.fr
Published in the Digitalarti Mag #7.
Digitalarti Mag, the international digital art and innovation magazine.
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