Digital Creations Come of Age
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy ALICE PFEIFFER
Published: September 4, 2009
PARIS — The British artist David Hockney caused a small sensation in May by creating “paintings” on his iPhone, using a special application to draw with his fingers on the screen — a consecration, if one was needed, of digital technology as a medium of contemporary art.

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Courtesy of the artist and Winkleman Gallery
A detail of the image "cartoon_trace_atoms" by Shane Hope at the Winkleman Gallery.

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More Arts NewsAround the world, major institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York have opened departments devoted to the genre. Avant-garde collectors, too, like Richard and Pamela Kramlich in San Francisco, are homing in.

“We’re seeing more and more collectors with a wide range of media in their collection begin to buy digital work,” said Edward Winkleman, founder of the Winkleman Gallery in New York, and an influential art blogger.

Still, many others remain reticent.

“It took people a hundred years to realize photography was art,” said the French auctioneer Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr during an interview last month. “Similarly today, people still have fears about collecting digital art.”

The speed of change in electronic technology, the disconnect between data storage and display and the virtual nature of digital imagery raise difficult questions: how to tell genuine from fake or copy; how to create and protect uniqueness; and how to protect a work against technological obsolescence.

“It is undeniable that digital tools are today’s new paintbrushes,” Mr. Cornette said. “The issue lies in the way the pieces are sold.”

Video art, for example, is typically sold as a limited-edition DVD, accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. This, he said, “gives the buyer a sense of purchasing an unfinished piece,” since display requires the installation of a DVD player and a screen.

One solution is to incorporate the display technology into the artwork, as in “Holiday Movies” by the French artist duo Kolkoz, in which 3-D films inspired by home-made vacation movies are installed in a replica of a TV set that acts as a viewing station. The film plays in a loop and can be paused by the viewer using a remote control, like a regular film.

While this avoids the need to install viewing equipment, it does not alleviate fears of future obsolescence.

The archiving of video art is an acute problem now facing early works, like Nam June Paik’s “Totem” pieces dating from the 1960s, said Nils Aziosmanoff, director of Cube, an organization dedicated to the development of new-media art based in Boulogne, a western Paris suburb.

“The issue with technology is that it evolves every six months, and that unless the formatting of the work of art is updated every few months, we are going to need fundamentally new ways of buying art,” Mr. Aziosmanoff said.

This is precisely what some galleries, including Winkleman, are now offering, through technology update programs: “We take care to ensure we consult the best experts” on archiving and master formats, “so that collectors can receive updated versions of the work should its current display technology cease to be manufactured,” Mr. Winkleman said.

The involvement of the gallery is itself a significant element in reassuring buyers. “We sell digital prints and videos through the same time-tested way dealers have sold anything new — by standing behind the work and putting our reputation on the line in declaring it worth purchasing,” he said.

As part of its strategy to introduce digital art to a broader audience, Mr. Winkleman’s gallery shows new and traditional media in the same space — sometimes incorporated in the same work. “We exhibit both more ‘traditional’ art that incorporates digital technology, including photography and video, as well as exhibit work by artists who would fall into the ‘new media’ category,” Mr. Winkleman said. “Shane Hope, whose work involves working with molecular modelling programs and writing his own scripts to enhance them, is an example.” Mr. Hope, a New York artist, had a solo exhibition, “Your Mom Is Open Source,” at the Winkleman gallery from June 26 to Aug.1.

As well as fueling concerns about obsolescence, the virtual nature of digital art also raises issues of authenticity, said Louis Cornette de Saint Cyr, the son of the auctioneer and co-curator of a show about to open at the Galerie Agathe Hélion, a Paris gallery specializing in digital arts.

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Related
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More Arts News“Buying digital art presents several fears to buyers: they feel they are buying something intangible, which fits on a USB key,” Louis Cornette de Saint Cyr said. “Also, they fear the possibility of fraud, even more so since the debates about illegal music downloading.”

The notion of an “original” digital artwork is complex. For a photographic print, production from the original negative may constitute a relatively trustworthy provenance; but what exactly is the “original” of a digital painting? What is the difference, if any, between the digital code stored on the artist’s hard drive, and an identical copy held on a backup storage medium like a CD-ROM?

“People are still wary of computer arts, and are generally attracted to pieces that resemble paintings,” said Agathe Hélion, owner of the eponymous gallery. “For example, squared frame works, which people can hang like a photo, are a preferred choice.”

Reflecting that preference, the gallery often sells pieces that apply manual, fine-art skills to digitally produced supports. For example, Caroline Bénech, a young French artist, produces digital figurative and landscape prints that she then varnishes, paints and cuts by hand to create works not dissimilar to the constructivist collages of the early 20th century. “This gives people a sense of buying a unique, precious object,” Ms. Hélion said.

Ms. Hélion also keeps her prices relatively low — typically €500 to €5,000, or $700 to $7,000 — to avoid scaring off potential clients. “These are young artists,” she said, “and on top of it, buyers find it difficult to pay a lot of money for something that isn’t unique.”

Uniqueness is central to the digital art paradox. On one hand, its lack of uniqueness is a fundamental characteristic, part of its originality; on the other hand, the sense of exclusive ownership that uniqueness bestows is what collectors and investors typically want.

“The value of art traditionally lies in the uniqueness of a piece,” Mr. Aziosmanoff said. “New media force us to reconsider notions of ownership.”

This rethinking will be part of the brief of the giant Île Seguin art center being built on an island in the Seine in Boulogne. Mr. Aziosmanoff and Cube will be closely involved in the center’s digital art program, which will provide facilities and residencies to digital artists, while encouraging the development of new business models for the art market.

“We are currently trying to come up with new means of distribution,” Mr. Aziosmanoff said. “Perhaps the idea of the unique object is becoming obsolete, just as software programs that are only used online rather than owned, are slowly replacing physical software packages that one owns.

“Perhaps people will lose the urge to own a physical object,” he said.

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