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Jess Houlgrave on Blockchain for the Art Market

27 points by Artnome 9y ago

moonbug22 9y ago
Enough, already
tim333 9y ago
There are a few companies trying to to art and blockchain stuff. http://www.looklateral.io/ http://www.looklateral.io/ and https://www.artcoinfund.com/ https://www.artcoinfund.com/ are a couple.
tomasien 9y ago
Jess is one of the smartest people I've met in the space.
ThomPete 9y ago
If you think about it the art industry is bitcoin in the real world. I find blockchain especially interesting for digital and interactive art installations.
- bringtheaction 9y ago
  > I find blockchain especially interesting for digital and interactive art installations. Please expand on this. Do you mean in terms of a blockchain being part of the installation itself and made "tangible" by visualization or are you thinking of something else?
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    In 2004 I went to Ars Electronica[1], it's a really interesting art/technology event where technology, academia, and art scene meets. If you haven't been you really should. Anyway, one of the sessions was with an artist who did interactive art installations which included both software and physical elements. One of the discussions he had which really stuck with me was the idea of a sofware update/upgrade. I.e. a customer buys a piece which includes software. Now do you actually sell the update or do you provide that for free. The thing is that with that kind of art installations is that they are fairly easily copyable the software can be copied. This is even more true when you look at what Casey Raes and Ben Fry was doing with processing. Digital normally means abundant which means that it's hard to know if you have an original (which means artists have to invent other types of monetary models to pay their bills). Using blockchain would allow for two very important things IMO. 1) It would allow the artist to sell "the original" 2) It would allow the buyer to resell that "original" 3) it would allow for price of the original to increase. The real power of blockchain is the ability to create a secondhand market (not secondary) for used digital goods completely isolated from the original sell from the artist. [1] https://www.aec.at/ https://www.aec.at/
    - bringtheaction 9y ago
      Oh I see, yeah I could see the value of that. Primarily as a novelty I think but still interesting idea. By that I mean I wouldn't expect "all" digital art to be sold like that. But like with how someone was willing to pay a lot for the genesis crypto kitten, I think some pieces of digital art could be sold for a lot on a blockchain. But once sufficiently many different pieces of digital art have been sold like that I think the value of distinguishing between "original" and "copy" will fall back to negligible difference for new pieces. But the first different pieces of digital art will retain their value I think.
      - ThomPete 9y ago
        My belief is that more and more is becoming digitalized also culture. Culture is fundamentally an accumulation of history. It's the history part (unique history trail) which is greatly undervalued. A piece of art is valuable because of its history. That makes it more than a novelty from my perspective it makes it a fundamental part of our digital life. It's like TCP+History that has tremendous value.
- matt4077 9y ago
  The art market certainly has aspects best described as a "Keynesian Beauty Contest"[0], and so do Cryptocurrencies. But while the latter is almost pure "beauty contest", art retains a far stronger connection to the real world: art buyers are very rarely motivated by speculation alone. And even if they want to brag about the $X0,000,000 painting they bought, it helps if they actually like it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    The art world (the selling and reselling of art) is purely history + speculative and most of it IMO is definitely motivated by speculation. A piece of art can go from 20USD to 20.000USD in no time. My wife works in the auction industry so at least from having followed the world through her it would say it's mostly speculative. I think there was even an article recently about how manipulated the art world is.
tjwds 9y ago
Jason Bailey's (artnome) other work is absolutely fantastic. If you care at all about open access data, art history done digitally, or art in general, definitely give him a follow. Here's a FiveThirtyEight article about him: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-art-lovers-crusade-to-catalog-the-world/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-art-lovers-crusade-...
cousin_it 9y ago
It's trivially easy to upload some scanned provenance documents to your Google Drive, so later you can send them to the next buyer. If that predictably and strongly increases the sale price, why isn't everyone doing it already? There are other startups like this. People aren't losing weight as much as they'd like, clearly there's an unmet demand that the blockchain can meet! But if you put the problem first, like helping people lose weight or keep track of valuable paperwork, any solution using blockchain would be at the bottom of the list.
- bartread 9y ago
  I wish I could upvote this comment more than once. I'm getting sick and tired of all the "blockchain is the solution to all problems" hype. Not only is it becoming exceedingly boring, but it's total nonsense.
  - lucozade 9y ago
    Sick and tired? May I recommend placebocoin? It uses an innovative virtual blockchain * and the coin value is guaranteed to rise making you feel better about yourself. Try it today! * virtual in the sense that I haven't built it and have no plans to
    - bartread 9y ago
      Yeah, OK, you can have an upvote for that. :)
- ThomPete 9y ago
  That's actually not true IMO. Blockchain is great as a secondhand market for things like art as it allows the buyer and seller to both know that they have the original and it allows for a digital art (and even assets to increase in value) This is a real problem where a non-centralized version actually is the only viable solution (because you can include other things than just digital art). You don't need a specific token for it you could use a satoshi or some token but it's definitely important if you want to see a digital art market that allow you to have unique items. (You don't have to want that but if you do it's definitely the only solution i can think of that would make sense)

27 points by Artnome 9y ago

Enough, already

There are a few companies trying to to art and blockchain stuff. http://www.looklateral.io/ http://www.looklateral.io/ and https://www.artcoinfund.com/ https://www.artcoinfund.com/ are a couple.

tomasien 9y ago

Jess is one of the smartest people I've met in the space.

ThomPete 9y ago

If you think about it the art industry is bitcoin in the real world. I find blockchain especially interesting for digital and interactive art installations.

bringtheaction 9y ago
> I find blockchain especially interesting for digital and interactive art installations. Please expand on this. Do you mean in terms of a blockchain being part of the installation itself and made "tangible" by visualization or are you thinking of something else?
- ThomPete 9y ago
  In 2004 I went to Ars Electronica[1], it's a really interesting art/technology event where technology, academia, and art scene meets. If you haven't been you really should. Anyway, one of the sessions was with an artist who did interactive art installations which included both software and physical elements. One of the discussions he had which really stuck with me was the idea of a sofware update/upgrade. I.e. a customer buys a piece which includes software. Now do you actually sell the update or do you provide that for free. The thing is that with that kind of art installations is that they are fairly easily copyable the software can be copied. This is even more true when you look at what Casey Raes and Ben Fry was doing with processing. Digital normally means abundant which means that it's hard to know if you have an original (which means artists have to invent other types of monetary models to pay their bills). Using blockchain would allow for two very important things IMO. 1) It would allow the artist to sell "the original" 2) It would allow the buyer to resell that "original" 3) it would allow for price of the original to increase. The real power of blockchain is the ability to create a secondhand market (not secondary) for used digital goods completely isolated from the original sell from the artist. [1] https://www.aec.at/ https://www.aec.at/
  - bringtheaction 9y ago
    Oh I see, yeah I could see the value of that. Primarily as a novelty I think but still interesting idea. By that I mean I wouldn't expect "all" digital art to be sold like that. But like with how someone was willing to pay a lot for the genesis crypto kitten, I think some pieces of digital art could be sold for a lot on a blockchain. But once sufficiently many different pieces of digital art have been sold like that I think the value of distinguishing between "original" and "copy" will fall back to negligible difference for new pieces. But the first different pieces of digital art will retain their value I think.
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      My belief is that more and more is becoming digitalized also culture. Culture is fundamentally an accumulation of history. It's the history part (unique history trail) which is greatly undervalued. A piece of art is valuable because of its history. That makes it more than a novelty from my perspective it makes it a fundamental part of our digital life. It's like TCP+History that has tremendous value.
matt4077 9y ago
The art market certainly has aspects best described as a "Keynesian Beauty Contest"[0], and so do Cryptocurrencies. But while the latter is almost pure "beauty contest", art retains a far stronger connection to the real world: art buyers are very rarely motivated by speculation alone. And even if they want to brag about the $X0,000,000 painting they bought, it helps if they actually like it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
- ThomPete 9y ago
  The art world (the selling and reselling of art) is purely history + speculative and most of it IMO is definitely motivated by speculation. A piece of art can go from 20USD to 20.000USD in no time. My wife works in the auction industry so at least from having followed the world through her it would say it's mostly speculative. I think there was even an article recently about how manipulated the art world is.

tjwds 9y ago

Jason Bailey's (artnome) other work is absolutely fantastic. If you care at all about open access data, art history done digitally, or art in general, definitely give him a follow. Here's a FiveThirtyEight article about him: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-art-lovers-crusade-to-catalog-the-world/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-art-lovers-crusade-...

cousin_it 9y ago

It's trivially easy to upload some scanned provenance documents to your Google Drive, so later you can send them to the next buyer. If that predictably and strongly increases the sale price, why isn't everyone doing it already? There are other startups like this. People aren't losing weight as much as they'd like, clearly there's an unmet demand that the blockchain can meet! But if you put the problem first, like helping people lose weight or keep track of valuable paperwork, any solution using blockchain would be at the bottom of the list.

bartread 9y ago
I wish I could upvote this comment more than once. I'm getting sick and tired of all the "blockchain is the solution to all problems" hype. Not only is it becoming exceedingly boring, but it's total nonsense.
- lucozade 9y ago
  Sick and tired? May I recommend placebocoin? It uses an innovative virtual blockchain * and the coin value is guaranteed to rise making you feel better about yourself. Try it today! * virtual in the sense that I haven't built it and have no plans to
  - bartread 9y ago
    Yeah, OK, you can have an upvote for that. :)
ThomPete 9y ago
That's actually not true IMO. Blockchain is great as a secondhand market for things like art as it allows the buyer and seller to both know that they have the original and it allows for a digital art (and even assets to increase in value) This is a real problem where a non-centralized version actually is the only viable solution (because you can include other things than just digital art). You don't need a specific token for it you could use a satoshi or some token but it's definitely important if you want to see a digital art market that allow you to have unique items. (You don't have to want that but if you do it's definitely the only solution i can think of that would make sense)