.ART

Last week .ART team members travelled to Saint Petersburg to participate in the panel “New Approach and Tools for collecting contemporary art» which was held in the Marble hall of the The Russian Museum of Ethnography. The discussion was organised by Forbes and formed part of Saint Petersburg International Cultural Forum – a global cultural event arranged by the Russian Ministry of Culture. Held for the last eight years annually, it attracts thousands of experts in the field of culture, stars of theatre, opera and ballet, famous directors and musicians, public figures, government officials and businessmen from all over the world.

Global leaders in collecting, art, technology and jurisprudence met to discuss their experience in corresponding fields, emerging projects that present various cutting-edge solutions for art market players and ways of fostering innovation in the art market in order to bring transparency and make the global culture complex generate regular and abundant cash flow.

Speakers included Katerina Vassilieva, the founder of the Kate Vass Galerie situated in Zurich, who spoke on behalf of Art & Tech Association Switzerland; Elena Zavelev, the founder and CEO of CADAF, the leading international Contemporary and Digital Art Fair; and the managing partner at Deloitte Legal CIS Anna Kostyra, a lawyer with a strong competence in IP/IT projects. They discussed a wide range of topics including the problems of provenance, copyright infringements and protection and monetization of collections by means of modern technological tools including blockchain and Domain Name System (DNS).

Speaking on behalf of .ART, PR and communications specialist Maria Efimova shared the team’s view on how to scale up the efforts towards transforming culture into a powerful and flourishing sector of the global economy by means of modern technological tools that already exist in the digital world and the Internet.

«We are happy to provide domains to creatives around the globe helping them to build effective online presence and self-representation, but ultimately we would like to contribute to achieving a larger and more ambitious goal of transforming culture into a powerful industry that works for the benefit of as many people as possible», – said Maria.

One of the main contemporary trends is a tangible shift towards the non-material, characterized by the growing desire to consume experiences, impressions and emotions rather than just goods.

In view of the above, culture as intangible cognitive capital has breakthrough potential. Over the past 40 years the number of museums in the world has more than doubled – from 22 000 to 55 000. Just the top-30 museums of the world have been visited by 180 million people in the last year. Culture is booming, but it is still very poorly monetized. Currently, according to the UNESCO, the share of creative industries in the global GDP, including income from cultural heritage, is only about 2.3%. And today we have all the necessary tools and technologies that can scale this process through creating digital derivatives of physical art objects. While physical art objects can only be consumed in a limited space by a limited number of people, digital objects can be available in an unlimited way to unlimited audiences bringing infinite benefits to states and nations.

Digitization, 3d-scanning and printing, VR, augmented reality, blockchain and other huge developments can serve this purpose and .ART is ready to provide stable, reliable and safe Internet infrastructure which is based on the DNS. «Our Digital Twin service is capable of incorporating those tools in order to enable art accessibility, education, evidence of provenance, digitization, protection, monitoring, evaluation and monetization of art objects while turning them into valuable and liquid digital assets. This process can help to preserve culture for future generations and make it accessible to a wide and global audience».

Also published on Medium.