ART MARKET 4.0 the Impact of New Technologies on the Creation, Distribution and Sale of Art
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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 New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 3 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference Fare clic per modificare lo stile del titolo 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 New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 5 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 2/2 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. New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 6 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 1/2 AI and Deep Learning The Next Rembrandt Project New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 7 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 2/2 . 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». New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 8 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 1/4 Algorithmic Creation - GAN New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 9 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 2/4 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. New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 10 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 3/4 • 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”. New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 11 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 4/4 • 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. New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 12 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference Fare clic per modificare lo stile del titolo 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 New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 14 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 2/5 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 New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 15 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 3/5 But, there may be abuses too… New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 16 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 4/5 Chronicled.com New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 17 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 5/5 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. New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 18 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 1/2 A.I. Artworks recognition and price database Magnus.net New Technologies and Art Market - The impact of new 19 #FBA #ArtLaw technologies on the creation, distribution and sale of art Art Law & Litigation Conference 2/2 Magnus • The Shazam for art. • Take a photo of an artwork and instantly know the artist, title and price.