Page 40 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

40not actually possess the work but depend on Sedition to view, preserve and even resell it.The platform’s director, Rory Blain, states that collectors feel they own a work when they are able to sell it (Waelder, 2014, p. 54), but theycan only do so after all the copies of a limited edition have been sold on the market established by Sedition in a section of its website. This particular feature of the business model arouses doubts as to Sedition’s continuity, even though it currently enjoys an active presence in the contemporary art world.In the eld of auction houses, Paddle88 is an initiative that explores the bene ts of organising auctions exclusively online. Founded by Alexander Gilkes, chief auctioneer at Phillips, and entrepreneur Aditya Julka, it soon enlisted the support of a powerful group of investors including gallerist Jay Jopling and artist Damien Hirst (Gamerman, 2013). Paddle8 focuses on auctions of artworks and design objects priced below 100,000 dollars, which are not usually included in traditional auctions as shipping and insurance costs make selling them unpro table. By eliminating these costs, the platform can organise riskier sales, such as the three auctions of digital art it hosted between 2013 and 2014.9 These auctions, held for charity, attracted the media’s attention to Paddle8, and therefore turned out to be more pro table in terms of publicity than sales.10 Paddle8’s foray into digital art showed that collectors continue to be more interested in traditional formats.More and more art is being sold over the Internet, the online art market grew from one billion dollars in 2013 to 2.64 billion in 2015 and could reach 6.3 billion dollars by 2019.The online art market can be considered tobe booming, as Amazon,11 one of the leading ecommerce rms, has been selling artworks since 2013. The way Amazon presents works on its website (in the ‘Home and garden’ section) contrasts with the methods of other platforms, as the items (priced between 44 dollars and4.8 million dollars) are advertised in the same manner as any other consumer product.12 Nevertheless, Amazon currently sells more than 40,000 works for 150 galleries, indicating that the latter basically want an e ective distribution channel that reaches a broader public. Indeed, more and more art is being sold online, through ecommerce websites like Amazon and more sophisticated platforms. According to the Hiscox Online Art Trade Report compiled by the art market research rm ArtTactic since 2013, the global online art market grew from one billion dollars in 2013 to 2.64 billion in 2015 and could reach 6.3 billion dollars by 2019 (ArtTactic, 2015, p. 5). Even so, this upward trend in art sales conducted through digital devices does not mean that interest in digital art itself is growing: according to this report, painting continuesto be collectors’ favourite format (62% of customers of the web platforms purchased a painting), followed by limited-edition work (53%), photographs (35%), drawings (31%) and sculptures (22%). Only 10% bought work in digital format. The highest price fetched by an artwork sold online continues to be modest (less than 12,000 euros), but the high number of potential buyers indicates that pro ts will be sizeable (ArtTactic, 2015, pp. 6–19).Art in a digital frameThe platforms that extend the reach of the online art market and the initiatives that explore alternative ways of selling works were recently joined by new devices that make it possible to show and collect art in digital format. These are digital picture frames: high-resolution screens incorporating a PC and wireless Internet connection and designed to be hung on the walls of collectors’ homes [Fig. 5] . The content of these frames is controlled by a smartphone application featuring a store where users can acquire works to display on the screen. Artworks can thus be experienced in a similar way to how people currently consume lms, books and music on the many payment platforms that exist in theTHE ART MARKET IN THE AGE OF ACCESS · PAU WAELDERSmart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Artistic Creation