Art & Blockchain

It’s become a cliche at this point to say blockchain technology will disrupt an industry. Distributed ledgers will theoretically disrupt the disruptors, serenade the chaos then spawn little baby disruptions all around. And yet, there’s some truth to this tech industry adage.

Take for example the art world, which encompasses a global market for fine art and antiques that Wired reports pulls in around $60 billion a year.

Blockchain networks are already changing the way art is bought, sold and evaluated. There are countless reasons why art lovers are quickly becoming a new sphere of blockchain aficionados. Mobile wallets can swap payments faster and with less transaction fees than traditional methods like credit cards and wire transfers, which makes cryptocurrency an easier conduit for big fine art purchases.

In addition, future blockchain platforms could someday help fans without deep pockets collaboratively own art investments they could never afford on their own. Cryptocurrency is only the beginning.  




The United Nodes of Bitcoin and original artwork by the interdisciplinary California artist cryptograffiti. Photo: cryptograffitiIn 2015, Vice reported the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art became the first museum to buy a work of art with bitcoins, a screensaver by the avant-garde artist Harm van den Dorpel.

Today, several art institutions around the world routinely use cryptocurrency.London gallery owner Eleesa Dadiani sells art by established contemporary artists for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ether, litecoin and dash. Everything in her gallery can now be bought with cryptocurrency."It's really very simple," Dadiani told the BBC. "I give the client my public key [a long string of letters and numbers] and they use that to send bitcoin to my account from their digital wallet or bitcoin exchange.

”The BBC reported Dadiani even plans to join the initial coin offering boom by launching her own token for art collectors later this year.Andy Boot, co-founder of the Cointemporary digital art gallery that sold van den Dorpel’s piece to the Vienna art museum, told International Business Times his gallery issues blockchain certificates of authenticity for each artwork sold.

The same concept can be applied to traditional fine arts, like paintings and sculptures, which are notoriously difficult to appraise.“Supply-chain based projects could help authenticate original artworks, or whether an work has been exposed to the correct storage and transport conditions,” Boot told IBT.

The Singapore-based blockchain startup Maecenas is already working on this type of decentralized record. Today, the industry relies on highly educated experts to assert an artwork’s authenticity and value. In the future, a global recordkeeping system could almost eradicate fraud from the art world.Blockchain platforms could also prevent thefts like the controversial case of Gustav Klimt’s "Lady in Gold” painting.

After Nazi forces stole the artwork from its Jewish owners in Vienna during World War II, a surviving relative had to fight in court to reclaim ownership from a museum. Immutable blockchain records could come in handy for people who want to loan an art piece to a gallery or museum without any fear of losing ownership. Maecenas also plans to use their blockchain platform to allow people to collectively invest in art.

Let’s say both you and I love the French artist Henri Matisse, but neither of us make enough money to own one of his paintings. Through Maecenas' platform, we could buy just a small piece of the painting and reap the benefits when it sells in an auction house. Or we could visit it in a musuem, where it can be properly preserved for future generations, and know it actually belongs to us. In the meantime, cryptocurrency is already opening new opportunities for tech-savvy artists.

A 38-year-old artist in California who goes by the alias cryptograffiti now makes his living from selling his cryptocurrency themed artworks and merchandise with his original designs. He works with repurposed banking materials to make everything from sculptures to collages.

Most of his buyers use cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which is increasingly popular with art collectors worldwide. Economic historian Garrick Hileman, who works at both the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, told CNN he estimates there are now between 5 to 10 million unique, active cryptocurrency users.




Nakamoto - 2014, an original artwork by cryptograffiti. Photo: cryptograffitiCryptografitti’s most widely acclaimed work is an imaginative portrait of bitcoin’s mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto, depicted through destroyed credit cards arranged on wood. It sold for 17 bitcoins, around $77,860 by today’s prices.

This California artist thinks future generations will benefit from blockchain records as well, once art-centric platforms are more widespread....continue reading: http://www.ibtimes.com/why-artists-art-collectors-love-blockchain-technology-2584019

Blockchain is emerging as a solution that promises the most significant impact on the artistic world, but will it be able to put money back in the hands of artists?

Blockchain is democratising access to copyright protection. It is both allowing artists to instantaneously claim copyright on their work, and showing them exactly where their work is being used. The use of blockchain is a promising solution to combat the lack of transparency and rebuild trust in the industry.

As global art sales exceeded $63bn in 2015 alone, being able to crystallise deals and transactions on the digital ledger will ensure art collectors are acquiring full title to the artwork they purchase. As transactions recorded in the blockchain are non-repudiable with validations being reached through consensus, the entire transaction history of a work of art will then be publically available and protected.

Issues regarding origin, copyright, and authentication will no longer prove to be a hindrance once this revolutionary technology is adopted.

Funding Mechanisms

The use of blockchain will allow artists to be treated as equal partners by allowing them direct the flow of funding and see whether their projects are completed as per the agreed terms – terms spelt out in smart contracts. Artists can use these blockchain smart contracts as a fund mechanism to raise venture capital.

For example, a blockchain based crowd-sale platform, WeiFund, is being used by LeBeau, to fund part of her debut thriller, Braid. WeiFund turns its contributors into investors and allows them to have their share in the profit, should a film become profitable.

Incorporation of Revenues and Monetising

Self-executing smart contracts divide profits justly and without any delays based on an individual’s contribution to the creative process. This benefits everyone involved in the venture, be it actors, directors, screenwriters or designers.

Furthermore, the transparency blockchain provides ensures everyone can see how much a film is generating and what percentage of the profit goes into whose pocket. Moreover, filmmakers can monetise their films for online viewers using Wiper, an encrypted messaging app that comes with a bitcoin wallet.

Analysing and Managing Data Analytics

Blockchain helps artists attract the right merchandisers, distributors, and crowdfund for creative collaborations with the help of advanced and efficient data analytics.Additionally, it helps deploy smart contracts to maximise the value of digital rights in a database through its Digital Right Management (DRM) feature.

Piracy Protection

It allows artists to exchange their assets securely with customers over networks. This is because it allows piracy protection. For example, a South African startup, Custos Media Technologies, has deployed the bitcoin blockchain to track media piracy allowing producers of art content to identify pirated versions of their content.

Conclusion

It remains to be seen whether the mainstream art world would...continue reading: http://themarketmogul.com/blockchain-art/?hvid=2vyc5F

Perhaps you have heard of John Myatt, the famous forger behind the “biggest art fraud of the 20th century.” Myatt recreated over 200 art pieces from famous 19th and 20th-century painters.His fakes were so genuine that auction house experts valued them at enormous prices and buyers were tricked.

Such deceptions and sophisticated forgeries are not an isolated case, nor are they decreasing.In fact, 2016 has even been labeled the “year of the fake” for the complex art forgery scandals it brought. While many consider Blockchain to be a disruptive technology that could have a transformative effect on our global economy, I must at least agree on its versatility.

I have yet to find an industry where it won’t have a tremendous impact and the fine art world is also one that could harness Blockchain to solve some of its issues.

The actual system of transferring fine art suffers from great opacity that makes it difficult to track provenance and the movement of items. Transaction records are still paper-based most of the time, which exposes them to a plethora of risks - they can be easily lost, destroyed, altered or stolen.

Blockchain to certify provenance and track ownership

This is where Blockchain is particularly fit to solve these issues. As a distributed ledger, it can be used to provide an immutable and censorship-resistant database of ownership.Indeed, many organizations are looking to leverage this technology in issuing certificates of authenticity.One of these organizations is Verisart, which is building a worldwide permanent and decentralized ledger of art and collectibles. Its mobile application can be used by artists to generate a certificate of authenticity, and by collectors to verify provenance in real-time.

We previously detailed its ambitions here.Ascribe and Monegraph are other startups that have entered this space. The Berlin-based Ascribe allows artists to generate a certificate of ownership for each one of their creations. Each piece is assigned a unique cryptographic ID from which its complete history can be retrieved.Artists can then share their work, gain visibility on where it spreads on the Internet and use Blockchain to license it and generate revenues.

As for Monegraph, it is also using Blockchain to verify digital assets. Artists can submit the URL of their online creations, and receive a Blockchain key and value to be stored in a Namecoin wallet.Namecoin is an open source decentralized key/value registration and transfer system based on Bitcoin technology.

By using this method that looks at art as a digital currency, online artists can store certificates of ownership of their creations.Monegraph, in turn, can spot if an illegitimate person is trying to claim ownership of the same creations in the future.

Proof-of-concept

Besides, Blockchain’s ability to certify provenance has not only attracted new entrepreneurs. Professional services firms, such as Deloitte, have also expressed their interest in the technology.“The Blockchain distributed ledger can trace the journey of artworks. When this technology is used in the art market, all events in the life cycle of an artwork are recorded and traceable.

The application addresses one of the main concerns in the art market today, namely the fragile documentation related to the provenance and movements of a piece of art,” explains Patrick Laurent, partner and technology leader at Deloitte Luxembourg....

continue reading: https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-to-change-world-of-fine-arts-as-we-know-it

Maecenas - an art platform - is using blockchain technology to create a secure trading market in fine art for owners and investors

Art investors, collectors and owners will be able to trade shares in fine art for the first time on a unique online marketplace powered by blockchain technology. Maecenas is a new platform that will match art owners with investors, creating a fair and open market, reducing costs and bringing transparency to a traditionally opaque world.

It will also allow any investor to have a fractional share of a masterpiece.Its creators are using blockchain technology to create an open exchange where works of art valued at more than $1 million can be traded in real time as liquid financial units.

Through the use of cryptography, blockchain will enable transactions using digital ledgers that provide transparency, trust and security – aspects of the art market that have long been missing but are now finally possible.>See also: Emerging from bitcoin’s shadow: The rise of blockchain

Expensive and illiquid artworks can be now be converted into smaller and more liquid tradable financial units, very much like shares of a company, which could then be traded frequently through an open exchange. Portfolio managers could then price their positions more accurately, and could diversify their risk by investing in a range of different art assets as opposed to having their funds concentrated in a handful of pieces which can be hard to sell....continue reading: http://www.information-age.com/blockchain-new-art-tech-marketplace-123466111/

Movie studios and record companies should take note.

Anyone who follows the cultural industries — art, music, publishing, theater, cinema — knows of the tussles between artists and those who feed off of their talents.

The traditional food chain in movie-making, for example, is a long one: Between those who create a film and those who pay for it — movie goers, cable subscribers, pay-per-viewers, advertisers, rights licensees, and institutional sponsors such as the National Endowment for the Arts — is a multitude of middlemen...
https://hbr.org/2017/03/blockchain-could-help-artists-profit-more-from-their-creative-works