Is Digital Art a Gimmick?

Yoko Ono, Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst, Raphael Rozendaal, Wim Wender, David Hockney,Mat Collishaw, Elmgreen & Dragset, Brian Eno and Jenny Holzer have all sold art where the original only exists digitally. Is digital art an evolving medium, or a passing fad?

Reasons to Believe

Digital Editions and Digital Art are on the right side of History

Editions have heritage

Artists have been creating editions of artworks for centuries. Hokusai’s Edo-era woodcuts, Rembrandt’s lithographs, Rodin’s bronze sculptures, Warhol’s silk-screen prints and Lange’s photographs all have multiple copies.

Artists Love Digital

Artists have painted with computers since their invention. Starting with Laposky in the 1950s, through to Warhol in the 80s and more recently Hockney’s iPad paintings. The rise of digital photography and video art means increasingly, no physical original artwork exists.

Collectors Love Digital

Collectors buy into digital. Regardless of whether it is books, films, music, magazines, news, maps or ringtones, content that often used to exist physically is now bought, rented or borrowed as computer code. There are few cultural barriers to collectors streaming art.

Trail blazers in film and music have solved key problems

Digital Rights Management

Leading record labels and film studios can’t prevent piracy, but they make life great for payers and difficult for cheaters. Only collectors who play by the rules can access and stream high definition versions of artworks, and have a great user experience on vPatina.

Transaction Management

Our transaction management engine is industry standard. It uses the most secure methods to protect the payment details of collectors. It also makes sure artists and galleries quickly receive their payments and have detailed informaton about their followers.

Intuitive User Experience

Our intuitive and flowing user experience builds on the user experience offered in Spotify, iTunes and Netflix. It helps collectors naturally and effortless explore the works and events of the artists and galleries they follow.

vPatina is now tackling challenges specific to the artworld

Digital Editions need to support, not undermine, artists, galleries and the networks that allow the creation of ground breaking original works.

Our technology connects images to artists, curators, venues, events and original artworks. It encourages collectors to participate in and explore the entire artworld.

Artists are more numerous and prolific than writers, musicians or film makers. Making sure the right people get the credit is a challenge.

Our technology only allows vetted artists and galleries to upload art. Profiles can also be authenticated by peers in the artistic community.

Even the highest resolution 3D screens can't replicate an original artwork and what it is like to experience a painting or sculpture up close.

We are looking at completely new user experiences, such as incorporating artist voiceovers, videos and artist-defined zooms and pans on key details.

In addtion to attacks by pirates, who copy art, artists need to be able to protect their works from unauthorised commercialisation.

We are looking at technology that allows artists to tag, track and trace each edition, so they know who is using their work and how they got hold of it.

The size, resolution, portability and orientation of the screen makes a very significant difference to the way art work is experienced.

Our goal is to work with artists to develop different experiences and also, potentially, different artworks for different classes of devices.

For collectors to confidently trade digital editions it needs to be easy to track ownership and also define the rights of the digital collector.

We are looking at technology that creates an open-source, encrypted ledger of ownership as well as legal frameworks that protect artists and collectors.