The New Age of Digital Disruption and Innovation

While boomers and their parent generation were collecting art with academic connaisseurship and stacked up warehouses with art, Gen Y and Gen Z’s buying habits seemingly differ from their parent generations. Podcasts, Instagram, online viewing rooms and virtual reality exhibitions are following the common market trends, moving away from physical showrooms towards digital platforms. With this in mind, how should art businesses tweak their strategies to appeal to the next generation collectors online? Is artificial intelligence with the ‘Shazam for Art’ going to change the way how the smartphone generation is making their buying decisions?

The rise of new digital technologies have also led to the expanded field of new media art encompassing moving image artworks which includes videos and films; net-based artwork; and early computer art, also known as generative art. With reproducible forms,changing technologies and mutable contexts in new media art, what are the best ways to exhibit, collect, preserve and build a new media art collection?

Before the COVID-19, art fairs were still the most important place to meet and greet but what will happen in the present age of social distancing? Will virtual reality become the art world’s empathy machine to help tackle physical isolation?

With inevitable cancellations and postponements of art fairs, temporary closures of museums and galleries,the superfluously crammed art world is at an unparalleled standstill. In a sector that thrives on in-person connection, the loss of an audience is disastrous.

Most art fairs and galleries have taken advantage of the current crisis to develop new opportunities with online sales channels. Sometimes, it makes one think if the art market is consolidating into one big Amazon-like market place and does this mark the beginning of the cyber turn of the contemporary art world. The race for the most sophisticated tech power is challenging the art world with a new power game but will digitization be the art world’s answer to a sustainable art ecosystem?

With the art world going through a new era of digital transformation, how will the ethereum blockchain infrastructure bring about a decentralized future for a new art economy? If digital art can be as scarce as a unique painting through blockchain technology and there are no complicated transport modalities and customs involved, will there be a new breed of collectors who will store their art collection on an Ether wallet instead of a costly bonded warehouse?

The digital scarcity of artworks can become a game changer for art investors whose interest is a mere profit and a quick flip of their collected art. Some digital collectibles such as Cryptopunks and Cryptokitties have brought remarkable profits for their buyers.What can the art world learn from the digital collectible markets? Will museums issue their own tokens in future in order to raise their acquisition? Has the time come that museums should have an acquisition curator for art collectibles.

Assetized art will demand higher security and proof of authenticity in order to build trust among institutional investors. Maybe a standardized ID for artworks will be the answer and even a specific blockchain for art transactions will approve and verify every change of ownership.  Will augmented authentication be able to detect any forgery in the market? Will the future Beltracchi be a tech genius?

A Renaissance 2.0 at the intersection of visual arts and technology poses a new challenge for collectors, gallerists, museum directors, curators, artists, and even art fairs, who have to think about ways of how to deal with technology that is replacing itself in vertiginous speed.

These are questions which will be discussed by 40 global art market leaders and tech entrepreneurs shaping the future of the art ecosystem today. A new horizon is opening up in front of our eyes. Art + FinTech 2.0 is offering an unprecedented stage from June 1st to June 29th, 2020 to examine, uncover and debate about the future of the art market and the new age of digital disruption and innovation.

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