The block chain, which is “artistic”, presents both challenges and opportunities
At the armory show in New York in March 2015, media magazine “the observer” conducted a survey to see which galleries were willing to accept blockchain deals. As a result, none of them could be found. This basically represents the views of frontline art dealers in 2015.
Art is avant-garde, but why is the acceptance of technological development a bit conservative?
In the 21st century, with the continuous progress of science and technology, all walks of life are affected by words like “intelligent” and “automation”. And technology and art have been trying to combine, although there are a lot of art derivatives like digital museums, but the actual application of technology of art cases are very few. “The observer” concluded that bitcoin could not be used in art.
However, just two years later, at the New York armory, the prestigious Ronchini gallery announced that it would accept bitcoin as a currency of exchange. A new work by Dutch contemporary artist Berndnaut Smilde, Nimbus powerstation, will appear at the armory exhibition with a price tag of “one bitcoin” (about $10,750).
This move is of great significance to the development of blockchain in the art world. Blockchain, which was not accepted by the art industry at the beginning, has entered the art world with a new attitude.
In fact, blockchain is a new application technology of distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm and other computer technologies. It is an important concept of bitcoin. In essence, blockchain is a decentralized database, which is also the connection point between blockchain and art. To put it simply, blockchain can build an art information registration platform, which is a decentralized fixed database. Since blockchain can store all kinds of information of users, and all kinds of information can be encrypted, the transaction records will be sealed in the database after the specified time and cannot be modified.
The stumbling blocks to the art market are well-known: provenance, transparency, copyright, ownership, art appraisal and authenticity. It comes down to the integrity of the art market. Then, through the “artistic” block chain, that is, the filtering of the art information registration platform, the circulation of artworks will be fixed and transparent. The unique registration information of artworks also makes art collectors trust art market more. This is of great significance to the circulation efficiency of artworks in the art market. In fact, many art startups are already building blockchain-based art registration and sales, with great success. They establish a global classification of works of art and collectibles, not only increasing the availability of existing works for collectors and artists, but also providing direct value to artists and insurers.
The traditional way to identify works of art is to use the knowledge, experience and eyesight of experts to distinguish the authenticity of works of art. However, with the continuous development of production technology, the imitation degree of fakes is getting higher and higher. While experts are trying to identify fakes, they will also be influenced by human feelings and personal interests. Therefore, they are not absolutely objective and reliable. In order to overcome the problem of integrity in the art market, scientific and technological identification comes into being. Scientific and technological identification mainly focuses on dating, structure and chemical element analysis, and adopts modern detection methods to lock the microscopic information of the material form of artworks and store it in the database for certification and filing. At the same time, China has also established a relatively perfect scientific identification system.
Even so, will the long-term ills of the art market be cured? The answer is no. According to the survey, the market for forgery and fraud is as much as $6 billion a year, with no clear information on the authenticity or provenance of works. At the same time, there is no clear standard for the evaluation of the value of artworks. People usually make the identification of artworks authoritative, that is, evaluate the value of contemporary artworks according to the words of authoritative figures. As a result, the trust crisis in the art market keeps breaking out.
Faced with these long-standing “pain points” in the art market, the emergence of blockchain provides an opportunity for the art market to regain trust. Blockchain’s entry into the art world, as mentioned at the beginning, is a bold innovation and optimization of the traditional model. The advantage of blockchain lies in the openness and transparency of information, and the stored artwork information cannot be tampered with, and the absolute reliability of data. Its strengths hit a sore spot in the art market: a lack of record keeping and an unclear source of art.
However, blockchain is a brand new technology, which still faces huge challenges in the development of art market. After all, this is a new technology, and it requires a lot of research and development costs. Moreover, after blockchain enters the art market, new technologies will collide with art in a digital way, which will inevitably encounter severe tests of aesthetics. This is because, at the moment, there is still a large group of artists who believe that digitisation and technology will automatically reduce people’s perception of the beauty of art.
Second, blockchain’s entry into the art world requires a legal test. At the G20 summit in Shanghai, an attempt was made to apply smart contracts to blockchain, but questions were raised about arbitration rights and the stability of contracts. Similarly, these problems are also faced in the combination of blockchain and art field. Finally, data is a key part of blockchain, which needs the cooperation and data provided by global art trading and auction houses to develop better. However, for a long time, the trading records of art auction institutions around the world have been independent and relatively closed, so it is extremely difficult to query the trading records.
Buyers are scattered, and it is difficult to provide information about existing works of art. Therefore, there is still a long way to go before the data of blockchain is perfect and reliable and can be Shared globally.
Blockchain, as a new friend in the art field, if it develops smoothly, it will solve the long-standing huge pain points in the art market and generate huge economic benefits. All the challenges blockchain faces provide opportunities for its development in the field of art. John young, a famous Australian artist, said of the power of blockchain technology: “blockchain technology will redefine the art industry’s traceability system, just like photography in the 19th century. It will redefine the art market in terms of originality, reproduction and value, and improve the chaos that has been created by large-scale mechanized image production since the 20th century.”
While “artistic” blockchain has many advantages, can it directly address these challenges? We should have more hope for it.
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