Technology is changing how art is made, displayed, and sold. Here’s the deal

The first attempt to merge visual arts and technology dates back to the ‘60s when New York-based artists teamed up with scientists and engineers from Bell Laboratories to create installations and deliver remarkable performances. They used innovative, at that time, wireless sound transmission and video projection technologies. When speaking of influential artists mixing tech and arts, Andy Warhol immediately comes to mind. He was among the first to create digital drawings on an Amiga computer in 1985. Unfortunately, the piece was lost and recovered only in 2014 by one of Warhol’s fans. Since then, modern technology has continued to influence the way artists create, display, and sell their work. When COVID-19 hit, the arts sector struggled immensely. Americans for the Arts surveyed art workers to estimate the impact of the pandemic on this industry. The study revealed that 95% of art-related events were canceled while 24% of organizations were forced to reduce staff. And yet, 65% of the respondents are still managing to deliver content. Let’s see how technology impacts the arts sector and helps it overcome the pandemic-induced challenges.

Christie’s art auction company recently sold its first AI-generated art piece for $432,500. The painting is a blurred face titled Portrait of Edmond Belamy. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are typically used to produce this type of distorted and weird imagery. At first glance, such work might look odd, but some human artists created similar art on purpose. Think of Francis Bacon’s deformed portraits, such as Three Studies of a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes.

Examples of robots in the art industry vary in their complexity, from mini robots that draw colorful lines following clear instructions to self-sufficient robot artists that can imitate humans in creating art. Artists Julian Adenauer and Michael Haas created a robot that moves around on a canvas leaving a colorful trail. This art piece is installed on the wall of the Berlin Gallery. It is changing every day as the robot keeps moving around, adding color in response to Haas’s idea of creation, “the process of creation is ideally endless.”

The gaming and entertainment industries were the first beneficiaries of extended reality. Soon, individual artists, museums, and galleries also turned to VR and AR development companies. Among early applications of augmented reality in arts is the work of a Japanese artist, Nubumichi Asai. He gathered a team of technology experts and makeup artists to create an application that projects patterns on a moving face. This software can detect the human face and project strictly within its contours.

This technology enables artists to gather data from various locations and project it into their artwork. One example comes from San Jose International Airport that hosts an eCLOUD. This artwork resembles a cloud whose polycarbonate tiles change from transparent to opaque state as it reads real-time weather data.

Due to the pandemic, many countries went on lockdown, and visiting museums physically became impossible. With modern technology in arts, you can see exhibitions while sitting on your sofa. Google Arts and Culture collaborated with over 2,500 galleries and museums worldwide to allow art lovers to immerse themselves in the art world online through virtual tours. Now one can view the history of American fashion in the time of 1740 to 1895 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Then move to Paris to enjoy the works of famous French artists at Musée d’Orsay. Then virtually travel to the Netherlands and witness incredible art pieces from the Dutch Golden Age, including the works from Rembrandt and Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

This technology is widely used in the retail sector. Now, live streams of exhibitions and concerts are also gaining popularity due to COVID. Towards the end of 2020, a famous English singer Dua Lipa streamed her concert live, and it was a vast success. According to the singer’s team, around 5 million viewers from different countries watched the event in real time. China alone brought in almost two million attendants. Like concerts, exhibitions can also be streamed with the help of new art technologies. One example comes from Canada. Three Canadian galleries teamed up with a tech partner to organize a live stream featuring one famous painting, Wayne Gretzky #99. One gallery holds the original painting while the other two display replicas. This live stream captured the artwork and the viewers observing it. So, when visitors arrive at The Room, the gallery with the original painting, they are captured on a video together with the painting and streamed to the other two galleries. This way, the live stream did not only feature the painting, but also the people who were interacting with each other and goofing around.

In addition to creating art, IoT technology solutions can help museum staff protect paintings while improving visitor experience. Common IoT applications in the arts domain include:

Online auctioning platforms put one more marketing tool at the artist’s disposal. A seemingly easy option for beginner artists would be to sell their work on the dedicated section on Amazon. However, this platform has its seller approval process. Artists will need to meet specific production volumes that might be larger than intended. On top of that, their work might be placed outside the Arts category, making it difficult for customers to find. Artists who have already gained recognition can sell their artwork on more professional and specialized mediums, such as Christie’s and Artnet art auctions. A creative technology studio turned to ITRex to build an AR-based marketing app for fan engagement. This solution would allow artists to promote their work by decorating virtual rooms with their art pieces. Fans would be able to visit their favorite artists’ rooms and share their experiences with friends. Fans could also buy selected items in a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.

Blockchain is another innovative technology used in the arts sector. One example is trading crypto collectibles. CryptoPunks platform offers 10,000 unique collectible characters. Anyone on the Ethereum blockchain can own a character. When the project started, people could obtain a character for free and have ownership proof. All they needed was an Ethereum wallet. All the 10,000 punks were quickly claimed. Now, users can place bids and sell characters following the instructions on the platform. Here is a more innovative approach to selling art. A London-based startup, Maecenas, introduced the concept of tokenization to the arts industry in 2018. This technology allows artists to divide their artwork into fractions. Every fraction can be sold and owned separately. One buyer can purchase several fractions of one painting or even fractions of several paintings, creating a diverse portfolio. In 2018, Maecenas marketed the 14 Small Electric Chairs painting by Andy Warhol. At that time, it was valued at $1.7 million, but the blockchain-based sale generated excessive attention, skyrocketing the painting’s value to $5.6 million.

Statistics on art theft indicate that over 50,000 pieces of artwork are stolen each year. Luckily, technology can help the art segment here too. AI and IoT sensors can recognize unauthorized presence on a museum’s ground and detect artwork forgery, among other fascinating applications.

AI-based artistic technology can help restore paintings. Just recently, Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands used AI to restore The Night Watch by Rembrandt. This artwork, from 1642, was moved to Amsterdam’s City Hall where officials decided to cut large panels from the sides of the painting to fit it in a location they fancied. In 2019, Rijksmuseum dedicated millions of dollars to building and training of an AI tool that would reconstruct the missing parts in their original style. When asked why the museum went with AI instead of hiring an artist to complete the piece, Rob Erdmann, a senior scientist heading this project answered, “There’s nothing wrong with having an artist recreate [the missing pieces] by looking at the small copy, but then we’d see the hand of the artist there. Instead, we wanted to see if we could do this without the hand of an artist. That meant turning to artificial intelligence.” In another fascinating example, AI could recreate a landscape hidden under one of Picasso’s paintings. When the artist was short on money, he tended to draw on top of his work. Conservators studying The Crouching Beggar noticed there was another image underneath. The Art Gallery of Ontario released an X-ray of this forgotten artwork enabling scientists to use AI and 3D printing to reconstruct the piece.

Some people are still skeptical about the future of new technology and arts. A renowned art critic and Pulitzer Prize winner, Jerry Saltz, believes that AI-generated art is “boring and dull.” Despite some people’s pessimism, this article presents many applications of modern technology in the arts sector. It can support artists at different stages of their project's lifecycle. And when it comes to AI, it doesn’t have the same creativity as humans (yet), but it has its unique usage. For example, after proper training, AI can imitate a style of a renowned painter from the past without adding its own touch, as humans would do. There are issues that we need to address when resorting to technology in the arts. For example, in online streaming, paying the intellectual property royalties became a complicated matter. Some live stream concerts have allocated money to be paid when they understand how royalties work in this context. Standard licensing frameworks are also still missing. Another concern is who owns the copyrights of AI-generated art. Despite these obstacles, technology widens our horizons whether we produce or simply enjoy arts, and all the examples mentioned in this article solidify the relationship between art and technology. If you have an idea of enhancing your studio, museum, or art research with technology, don’t hesitate to reach out.