It is basically a documentary work in which we'll show the sale's evolution of new media art, from the origins of net.art until the current days.
This is a research project for HAMACA collective. The result of this study will be published online in HAMACA website and in a mínima magazine.
Your contribuition on our project would be really appreciated, therefore we'd invite you to answer, comment or debate some of the following topics:
- Are new media artpieces being sold in galleries, as the same way as the so called traditional contemporary art?
- How is business done in this context? How is the process to negociate them?
- In the case of digital pieces or immaterial projects, do you adapt them to a physical support to market them or do you keep them in the original format?
-What is the profile of customers interested in these artpieces?
- What conditions / negotiations have you got with the galleries? Are similars to contemporary art?
- Who pay the production of new media artpieces?
- Do you propose any alternative circuit to make business with them?
- Are these artworks well-paid? How much do they usually cost?
- Is possible to live of new media art?
- Do you like to make any comment about any special changes in new media art market during the last years?
You can leave your commennt or contact with us in: aminima@aminima.net
9 comentarios:
WELL! I think there is a "new media art" market BUT it is not the
artists who benefit from it. The
media art barons are software, hardware cartells (namely Microsoft and/or Apple, Adobe, Sony etc)art managers (curators, pr specialists)and academists (like myself!). Dont forget the publishing companies, journals etc.
All these people and companies that benefit from new media art are the ones that need to eveporate when the technology fully funtion by itself! What a big paradigm!
I am not what you would term a Proffesional Full Time Artist.
I make zero money from my art.
Production costs, including equipment, come from my personal earnings.
My earnings come from work obtained through a recruitment agency.
Y se puede contestar en español? jejeje
Hola Pedro,
¿tú qué crees? ¡claro que sí!
gracias!
yeah! :p
genco gulan is spot on. I would add that after 20 years of looking and hoping and praying that some good thing would surface from the digital miasma.....well I've given up looking cos it aint gonna happen.
Pull out your watercolours people and find a soft sweet spot on the grass in the morning sun and let us see what you can do.
p.s I am Bobby's partner
i would gladly buy a piece or two...
but noone is seling.
at least i din't found anything on my favorite artists sites.
i once bought a poster, but i guess that doesn't count.
put a shop on your site - i'll check it in time.
- Are new media artpieces being sold in galleries, as the same way as the so called traditional contemporary art?
It's a complex answer.
There are, roughly, at least two "souls" in the artifacts/processes/actions produced using new media art.
The first "soul" use new media to produce "things" that establish parallels with art before new media. These "things" are truly evolved from their classical peers, for sensorial involvement, for the possibilities offered by technology, for the capabilities in terms of interaction with the audience.. for many things (so many that "quantitative" change becomes "qualitative"). But, essentially, they are intended as "classical artworks": things that can be hung on a wall, placed in a space, installed at an event or public space. Artworks.
The second "soul" sees new forms of art coming out from what once was conceptual art, or dada, or experimental performance. These "artworks" are processes, systems, designs. They relate not to an art market, but to consumism, media, visual fetshes, technology, culture, networks. They can only be materialized by using "placeholders", represented by documentation, prints, objects.
The first soul actually lives quite well in galleries and museums, with many professional art operators that are starting to create focus on this side of technology.
The second soul has a life that is a bit more complex. They create their value in fetishes created by mass cultures, by their availability, by their replicability, by their perceptibility in society, in politics, in cultural anthropology, in economy. They come out from Walter Benjamin, Theodore Adorno, Gregory Bateson, Felix Guattari, Jacques Derrida. And fitting them into a "classical" art market is somewhat odd. What is happening is that the artists are producing artistically materialized documentation of their works (just as Christo produces sellable sketches of his lanscape art works), and that these are paired to the fetish impersonated by the artist, to be sold in the various occasions. This mechanism works, and provides economic support to the artists happening to be so lucky to be able to access it, but : 1) the cocnept of value of the artworks is totally distorted; 2) it is totally un-contemporary.
I guess that both 1) and 2) perfectly suit the artists that have access to this mechanism, even theoretically: point 1), for example, declares the value of an artwork as something based on a fetish, more than on a definition that is based on a formal approach, and that is perfectly inline with the works of 01.org and the likes.
In my opinion: all of the classical art market is something that is completely out of the contemporary era. It should really be thought as something temporary, a passage point towards the models that have been enabled by technology and by networks.
The current mechanisms are out of time, but, for now, they partially work. Even for New Media Arts.
- How is business done in this context? How is the process to negociate them?
Usually:
1) create a work/process/performance and get some (a lot of) "classical media" attention for it
2) get someone (a curator, a critic, a professor) to gain interest in your work
2bis) optional step: create a network of people around your works
4) figure out some documentation for your work composed by "big names" saying something about it, and by something that could appeal to a truly consumistic fetish appeal (pop-like scultpures, prints, or even artsy gadgets or enormous things)
5) grab it all and get you crator/critic to write something somwhere or, if you're lucky, get him to register you to a festival or two
6) get all your documentation (theory+artifacts+gadgets) and create a deal with one or more galleries (at this stage it won't be so hard, no matter what you do)
From now on you can do like everyone does: start working in a university of choice, go around the world giving lectures, create the occasional artwork, sell the "stuff" for a couple of thousand somethings, and keep on working with the university.
- In the case of digital pieces or immaterial projects, do you adapt them to a physical support to market them or do you keep them in the original format?
There are wonderful projects on this issue, and awful ones.
The "print" market is just terrible, with people producing prints (or DVDs...) of just about anything just to end up in a gallery or event.
Some quality/value can be found in this modality, too, but the average is just below the ground for both aesthetics and significance (and, I'd say, for the dignity of the author).
The best experiments/researches are made using costom electronics and with those productions that we could, in a way, call sculptures. Good examples are Electroboutique (custom electronics), and BeYourBrowser (USB sculptures).
-What is the profile of customers interested in these artpieces?
I absolutely have no clue. Meaning that the interest in New Media is young, newborn. There is no "definite" profile yet.
In my experience I saw: a journalist, two writers, a university professor, the owner of a chocolate industry, a kid from a rich family.
- What conditions / negotiations have you got with the galleries? Are similars to contemporary art?
Again: things are just to young to tell. In my experience every time is still "the first time".
The first big step is to make the art operators understand things.
If you get past this obstacle, you are more than half way through to get some form of deal arranged.
- Who pay the production of new media artpieces?
I pay them myself. I do side projects to finance art productions.
In most cases new media arts are produced in universties (as thesis or research projects), in marketing/advertising contexts, or, if you're lucky/famous/both, they are produced by institutions or foundations.
- Do you propose any alternative circuit to make business with them?
I propose that "them" are out of the century. New models are significative, emerging, feasable and effective. We should all try to study and enact some of them.
- Are these artworks well-paid? How much do they usually cost?
It really depends on who-you-are. I've seen things starting at few hundreds of dollars, and arriving at the thousands. No multimillion stuff, though.
- Is possible to live of new media art?
We had a project that was called "MakingALivingWithNewMediaArts". It involved creating a parallel barter/gift economy, getting everything in exchange for new media art/products/services: we exchanged groceries for videoclips; clothes for video performances in a trendy store in Rome; energy, heating and water for a generative work on corporate websites, and so on.
Very compelx to mantain, but it works :)
- Do you like to make any comment about any special changes in new media art market during the last years?
Everyone is just so confused.
Te mixture between "past" and "contemporary" is just confusing them all.
We had some truly significant revolutions going on in the past years: in technology/networks, in neuro-sciences, in economy. Some people just pretend that nothing happened, striving to keep alive "old" mechanisms that are totally unsuitable for the contemporary era (or, at least, that miss a couple of wonderful opportunities for evolution).
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