Contemporary Art Is Digital Art
Earlier this year, the New York Times ran a story on the great divide between the art and technology sectors in New York. The art galleries of Chelsea and technology start-ups setting up shop around the Google mother ship may be close in physical proximity, yet the article claimed that the two worlds could not be more different or mutually disinterested. The art world’s elusive machines — its galleries, museums, art fairs, and auction houses, with their long-practiced rituals of hierarchy, exclusivity, and privilege — continue to operate in a hermetically sealed bubble, while the tech companies — many of which were established on the equalizing principles of social media and the web — have no desire to play along in traditional games of patronage just to get to be “part of the club.”
Now that cultural funding is more critically threatened than ever (just in the past month, the New York City Opera filed for bankruptcy and the Brooklyn-based arts center 3rdWard closed its doors), there is a significant need for the two parallel universes to intersect and cross-pollinate. It will be to their mutual benefit. The reality is that the CEOs of technology companies are the next generation of donors, patrons, and philanthropists. Like it or not, they are the John D. Rockefellers and Andrew Carnegies of our time, and by forming alliances and breaking down established ways of giving they can support new movements of artists, and eventually an entirely new network of art-world machinery — galleries, museums, art fairs, auctions — dedicated to the support of digital art.
Paddles On, the first digital art auction at Phillips, was held on October 10, 2013 in partnership with Tumblr. It was a pivotal moment in bridging the divide between art and tech. Curated by Lindsay Howard, the auction of 20 lots raised more than $90,000 for 18 preselected digital artists, with a portion of proceeds benefiting the new-media art nonprofit Rhizome. The artworks up for auction ranged from videos, animated GIFs, and inkjet prints of digital images to entire websites sold to the highest bidder in the form of domain name transfers.
For many collectors, the idea of purchasing digital art — work that theoretically lives online and could be distributed to anyone — is still problematic, even if it comes with a certificate of authenticity. If paintings exist because of walls, then what new formats of presentation and ownership are required for art that exists in a virtual space? But examining art created in the last few decades reveals that the art market is agile enough to be responsive to this kind of change: Marina Abramovic, for instance, was supported by the sale of editioned photographs documenting her performances. Christo and Jean-Claude frequently sold drawings and studies of their large-scale temporary installations to fund future projects. Ephemerality never stopped the art market before.
Still, it takes a village. Rather, to move toward a truly digital paradigm shift, it will take an active ecosystem of artists supported not only by dealers and art sales, but also by museums and nonprofits incorporating digitally produced art into their collections, exhibitions, and educational programming. Museums are an ideal think tank for experimentation, research, and discourse, but they require funding and strategic partnerships to enable new projects. An excellent example of this digital embrace is the Museum of Arts and Design’s new exhibition Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital, featuring work by artists, architects, and designers who use digital fabrication techniques such as 3D printing and CNC laser cutting. Appropriately, the exhibition is supported by Shapeways, a 3D printing company based in New York.
New art movements always evolve in tandem with new generations of collectors. It just so happens that much of the contemporary art created today is digital, and, as participants in art and culture, we need to support and grow with the artists of our time. It’s my hope that more tech companies like Tumblr and Shapeways, as well as individuals, will step up to the plate and form alliances with artists and arts organizations. Whether or not they are interested in becoming the next Rockefellers and Carnegies, they can find joy and satisfaction in participating in the creation of contemporary art that truly reflects our new digital reality.
Originally published at the-exhibitionist.com on October 31, 2013.
