Understanding the Digital Art Market: Evolution and New Frontiers
Duration: Oct 02 – Oct 30, 2023
Fee: 179€
Max seats: 28
Enroll before: 28 Sep 2023
Live sessions: 2 hrs/week
The contemporary art market is facing a deep revolution determined by the proliferation of digital production technologies on the one hand and by online platforms of distribution and sales on the other. Since the late 1990s, an increasingly complex scenario has emerged through different actors in the art market from auction houses to entrepreneurs, artists to large galleries. This in turn has led to new ways of buying and selling art online – some more successful than others.
This course will explore the evolution and current developments of the digital art market as it rapidly grows and adapts to new demands from its customers and reaches out to wider audiences–from the importance of archiving and conservation processes of digital artworks to changes related to metaverses and virtual worlds.
We will analyze different trends and examine case studies drawn from media labs, online exhibition spaces and DAOs, to understand how art is produced, distributed and sold, and what has led certain models to fail or succeed.
With knowledge of the histories and potential futures of the digital art market, participants will gain the know-how and confidence to venture into the online art market for themselves.
Session 1. Introduction
- Presentation of the course, teacher and participants
Session 2: Media Art and the Internet revolution
- Production, distribution and selling in the media art system
- The Art Industries economic system
- Showcasing and archiving online artworks
- Digitalizing spaces, processes and strategies
- Online networks and communities for sellers and collectors
Session 3: Formats, softwares, codes and virtual machines
- From Net Art to Post-Internet objectification
- Generative Art, wall objects, sculptures and prints
- Audiovisual objects and digital art frames
- AI and automated graphic systems
- Web3 protocols and Cryptoart
Session 4: Selling and collecting on the blockchains
- The NFT phenomenon
- Marketplaces and art advisory
- New galleries and institutions for digital art
- Main artists and aesthetics
- DAOs and participatory actions
Session 5: Critical issues, utopias and developments
- An evolving notion of (art) value
- Lack of transparency and sustainability
- Being ready for a new art market
- Metaversus and virtual worlds