Art Law & Litigation Conference
ART MARKET 4.0 The impact of new technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art
Avv. Massimo Sterpi Gianni Origoni Grippo Cappelli & Partners
NYC - February 6, 2020
#FBA #ArtLaw Art Law & Litigation Conference
«Artists are the R&D department of humanity»
Zach Lieberman (2011)
New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new technologies on the creation, 2 #FBA #ArtLaw distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference
Disruptive Technologies and Art
Blockchain
Artificial intelligence
Smart contracts
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CREATION
New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 1/2 Blockchain and smart contracts “A Plantoid is the plant equivalent of an android; it is a robot or synthetic organism designed to look, act and grow like a plant.” Primavera De Filippi
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Plantoid is an artistic project by Primavera De Filippi made up of metal sculptures, as well as software embedded directly in a Blockchain (which generates a DAO – Distributed Autonomous Organization) . The Plantoid Project is formed by a series of plant-like metal sculptures, characterized by individual distinctive DNA structure, (e.g. rules about their shapes and relationships with donors) associated with a unique digital wallet accepting crypto currency from the public. Each Plantoid thanks for every donation received by moving itself and by reproducing sounds and lights. • Upon collecting a predetermined amount of money in one of these wallets related to a Plantoid, a smart contract registered in the Blockchain automatically launches a competition to design a new Plantoid, different but based on the same basic DNA. • Among all of the projects received, the donors (“bees”) select the winning project by sending micro-sums to the preferred project. • The winning designer receives the sum in cryptocurrency through a smart contract and can create a new Plantoid. And so on. • Plantoid's goal is to show the potentiality of technology in creating Blockchain-based life forms, meaning independent algorithmic entities (a.k.a. DAO) capable of sustaining and reproducing themselves autonomously.
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. The Next Rembrandt Project was conceived by advertising agency J Walter Thompson and commissioned by ING Bank. The project made possible for AI systems to create works “by or resembling to Rembrandt" through Artificial Intelligence. • Specifically, all data related to known Rembrandt’s artworks were collected in a software to analyze the main distinctive features of the artist (e.g. brush strokes, chosen subjects, way of alternating lights and shadows...). • This procedure gave rise to a new artistic work realized through a 3D printer programmed as to release a quantity of ink suitable to recreate, even in terms of thickness, the same effect as Rembrandt’s works. • The Project’s creators described the operational procedures, by stating that: «We examined the entire collection of Rembrandt’s work, studying the contents of his paintings pixel by pixel. To get this data, we analyzed a broad range of materials like high resolution 3D scans and digital files, which were upscaled by deep learning algorithms to maximize resolution and quality. This extensive database was then used as the foundation for creating The Next Rembrandt».
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Algorithmic Creation - GAN
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On October 25, 2018 Christie’s auctioned an artwork created by the French art collective Obvious through an A.I. system («Portrait of Edmond Belamy»): this artwork was realized by analyzing 15,000 portraits dating back to the period between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries and using a Generative Adversarial Network («GAN»), meaning paired neural networks (generator / discriminator) that respectively create and select random interactions, producing works that - being consistent with the most recurring patterns detected in the starting data - seem to be made by humans.
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• Disputes have arisen with reference to the source code that was used by the founders of Obvious for the creation of the work, as it was a (minimal) reworking of the code created by the researcher Robert Barrat: the latter, starting from the concept of Generative Adversarial Network proposed by Ian Goodfellow, developed a code accessible (for free) on a digital platform (GitHub). • Definition given by the critics to the final artwork: «the machine-learning equivalent of a urinal on a plinth”. • Caselles-Dupré, co-founder of Obvious, replied to those who challenged the originality of their method by explaining that: «If you are only talking about the code, then there is not a large percentage that has been modified, but if you talk about working on the computer, by making it work, there is a lot of effort there”.
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• The series of paintings "Faceless Portraits Trascending Time", exposed in NYC in early 2019, is presented as a "collaboration between an artificial intelligence named ‘AICAN’ and its creator, Dr. Ahmed Elgammal" (who until then was a university professor and not an artist).
• These works are based on a set of 3,000 Renaissance portraits, but they use a Creative Adversarial Network ("C.A.N.") and not a G.A.N.: Ahmed Elgammal explained that a C.A.N. is composed of a generator and a second neural network that does not limit itself to judging whether the result conforms to the pattern detected in the initial data (such as the “discriminator” of G.A.N.s), but adds new elements instead. In this way, the C.A.N. reproduces the natural evolution of art, through small alterations of a known style.
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ART MARKET SERVICES
New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 1/5 Blockchain Assessing provenance and authenticity Verisart.com
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Verisart • A system which applies Blockchain technology to combine transparency, anonymity and security to protect records of creation and ownership of artworks and collectibles. • Verisart fights art forgery by providing an “airtight” authentication methodology that allows for real time verification of artworks using distributed ledger and hi-resolution image-recognition technology.
Trying to resolve issues of: • Authenticity • Chain of title
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But, there may be abuses too…
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Chronicled.com
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Chronicled • This San Francisco based startup uses Blockchain technology to address the issue of counterfeiting, particularly by placing microchips on or within any physical object. • Chronicled is able to record the critical identification data related to that object on the Blockchain, authenticating them and monitoring each stage related to ownership changes. • The process is the following: a chip is placed somewhere on/in a work of art. There’s a private key that’s stored in the chip, which is invisible to the eye. There’s also a corresponding public key stored on a Blockchain. When you scan the chip, it goes through a cryptographic algorithm and affirms that this is the authentic work of art. • Chips may be used as self-authentication (the artists themselves can attach it when they produce a new work) and they can also be applied to older, more renowned works as a certificate of authenticity by art authenticators.
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Magnus.net
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Magnus
• The Shazam for art. • Take a photo of an artwork and instantly know the artist, title and price. • Magnus’ database contains about 10 million prices, compiled through crowdsourcing, about 10 percent of which are from the primary market. • A disruptive technology for market transparency.
New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 20 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference A.I. Image consultancy and recognition Thread Genius threadgenius.com • Thread Genius (est. 2015), built a set of A.I. algorithms that can both instantly identify objects and then recommend images of similar objects to the viewer. This system is similar to Amazon’s recommendation service. • The start-up was acquired by Sotheby’s in 2018 to become a part of a new unit of this international auction house and used to build a new AI-based recommendation engine. • This matching and recommendation technology is very similar to the Art Genome Project developed by Artsy.
New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 21 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference A.I. Market Services - Stroke recognition
Rutgers University (New Jersey) and Atelier for Restoration & Research of Paintings (Netherlands)
• Their system – to which Prof. Ahmed Elgammal also strongly contributed - broke down almost 300 line drawings by Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, and other famous artists into 80,000 individual strokes. • Then a deep recurrent neural network (R.N.N.) learned what features in the strokes were important to identify the artist. • The researchers also trained a machine-learning algorithm to look for specific features, like the shape of the line in a stroke. • With both algorithms working in tandem, the researchers were able to correctly identify artists around 80 percent of the time.
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SALE
New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 1/2 Sale Blockchain - Payment with cryptocurrency Paddle8 Lab lab.paddle8.com
. Paddle8 Lab is responsible for the technology at the basis of cryptographic payments of Paddle auction houses and also developed a service based on the Blockchain for tracking artworks and collectibles. . Paddle8 Lab’s first project (BidCoin) took place on August 18, 2018: on that occasion, important works of art and collectibles were auctioned and cryptocurrencies were accepted as a payment method.
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Portion.io
• At the end of 2018, Portion.io was launched, being the first auction house based entirely on Blockchain and accepting cryptocurrencies payments only. • Portion.io also allows - through a smart contract - verification of the purchaser's Proof of Funds.
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DADA.nyc
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DADA.nyc
• Dada.nyc provides a decentralized marketplace where one can buy limited-edition digital artworks with IP protection and proof of ownership.
• The DADA art collection becomes permanently embedded in the Blockchain and cannot be modified. This allows a user to verify that there are indeed only a certain number of limited- edition DADA artworks, that the artwork belongs to the seller, and was created by a specific artist. • This system also provides for an innovative revenue sharing model at each re-sale of the artwork (a kind of ‘digital droit de suite’), so that the profits are divided as follows: • 60% owner • 30% artist • 10 % DADA.nyc
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Art Law & Litigation Conference 3/6
Artlery.com
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Artlery
• The Artlery platform is designed around a cryptocurrency called the CLIO, which is explicitly backed by the creation, exhibition, and appreciation of art. Analytics related to time, distance, order, and reputation all affect the core CLIO valuation and distribution algorithm. • The Artlery app permits the artist to track engagement with his/her artwork online or with sensors for tracking in person viewing. • IPO: This Initial Public Offering is actually a gift from the artist to the community. This means that anyone that is appreciating the piece with the app, or anyone that is at least visiting the gallery, gets a percentage of the sale profit. This means you are not just a patron of the artist, but also a stakeholder in the piece that is being sold. If the artwork is re-sold later you can continue to make money off of it along with the artist.
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Noow.art
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Noow.art • NOOW is a new digital platform to buy, sell, and display digital artworks. • NOOW brings lobbies, hotel rooms, or your private drawing room to life with visionary digital art. • Once bought, the artworks can be displayed on the TV or other digital screens of the owner. • The ownership, provenance, & price of every artwork edition is documented on blockchain. • With a click, users can securely invest in a digital Art Piece. What was once impossible to authenticate is now an owned original limited edition.
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Maecenas
• Maecenas is an art investment platform through which people can invest in portions of artworks (even physical artworks), the so called “tokenization”. The platform offers real time trading of art shares (namely, blockchain based “tokens”).
• Additionally, to finance the acquisition of new pieces, galleries/collectors are able to list their inventory of artworks to Maecenas’ users at a fraction of the cost of what an auctioneer or loan would cost them (it is a kind of art fund, without middlemen). • Provenance documentation is protected by blockchain-based cryptography, thus making it impossible to falsify once it is on the platform. • On September 6, 2018, Maecenas has successfully ‘tokenized’ for the first time ever a multi-million dollar artwork, namely a painting by Andy Warhol named "14 Small Electric Chairs“(1980). The beta auction raised US$1.7m for 31.5% of the artwork, at a valuation of US$5.6m. 100 participants were hand-picked to participate in the auction out of more than 800+ sign-ups from 56 countries.
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Snark.art
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Snark.art
• Snark.art, based in Brooklyn, has launched its blockchain laboratory to tokenize works of art.
• One of the first projects is a partnership with Eve Sussman: his video "89 Seconds Atomized" will be tokenized on the Blockchain and distributed in "digital blocks", which are called "Atoms". • Specifically, the collector will purchase a "digital block" of the video screen, which has been divided into 2,304 Atoms, each Atom consisting of 400 pixels of the entire screen of the video (lasting 10 minutes, all in all). • The owner of an Atom can view it as a separate work independent from the overall work (an "abstracted dive into the image"). In order to view the entire video, the owners of the various Atoms will have to agree it among themselves.
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MARKET VALIDATION
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• Christie's NY, at the auction of October 25, 2018, sold the above mentioned "Portrait of Edmond de Belamy" - realized by the art collective Obvious via a GAN and part of an edition of 10 copies - for 432,000 USD (starting from one estimate of 7,000 / 10,000 USD).
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• At the beginning of May 2019 the first edition of the CADAF - Contemporary and Digital Art Fair, took place in New York, focusing on "showcasing the diversity of digital artistic mediums, including immersive installation, video art, virtual reality, creative experiments Blockchain-based and more”.
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Massimo Sterpi Gianni Origoni Grippo Cappelli & Partners Rome
Tel: +39 06 478751 E-mail: [email protected]
Thank you!
New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art