A Day at the Beach

Volume I Issue 3
2 August 1999

A Day at the Beach

by Anne M Carley

According to this summer's US government report, Electronic Commerce in the Digital Environment II, the new digital technologies are already reshaping the way we do business. While it's true that email, information for hobbyists, general news and business information are more popular than online shopping, its rate of growth continues to skyrocket. Assuming this trend will continue for a while, it may be useful to speculate how ecommerce could alter the marketplaces for the arts. As we slow the pace in honor of summer enervation, we can close our eyes and imagine: what might the (near) future look like? Leaving aside some very large questions of art's role in the marketplace generally, assume here that artists would prefer to make their work or talent available to others for a price. It seems there may be some new opportunities in both the retail and business-to-business marketplaces.

According to the report, retail is changing, partly because the nature of what is sold has been morphing. What were once sales of hard goods - music CD's, for example - can now be sales of data streams, services, in the form of downloaded music files. Imagine similar transformations. One interesting aspect here is the potential to delay the change from idea to materialization. A present-day precursor might be the way some conceptual art, like Sol LeWitt wall drawings, can be bought and sold as dematerialized notions documented on a letter-size piece of paper - a far smaller and more portable material manifestation than the executed artwork. In the performing arts, we are well-acquainted with the delayed gratification inherent in pre-season ticket sales.

Taken further, if I bought a music recording in the form of a data stream, I could delay materialization past the time of purchase, with not even a piece of paper to represent the binary data - the thing sold. This is a significant change from our traditional model of currency in exchange for tangible goods or the delivery of defined services performed by humans. I could do the same with recordings of theater, dance, scholarly symposia, concerts and other events, effectively buying the promise of future entertainment or edification. I could even agree to rent a performance for delivery at a specific time to a specific computer screen or theater. Alternatively, I could buy a perfect clone of that performance's data stream, for more permanent access, but I might find it convenient for the vendor to store it for me.

In a context where the tangible object is more essential, booksellers are experimenting with "print on demand" book sales. They distill a store's physical inventory of books to a flow of specific data, sent on request through onsite printing and binding machinery and resulting in a paperback book for sale. When the store sells a copy of a particular novel, it can order up one more for the shelf, awaiting the next purchaser. The result is a much tidier inventory for the vendor: no returns to the publisher, no overstocking problems, no shipping mixups.

Would this be applied to the worlds of fine art print multiples or limited edition photographs? Digitally printed art and photography are already do-able: printmakers and photographers have been working for several years with the sophisticated color printers, special inks and papers best suited to digital production. By altering the commercial transaction, a collector in a gallery could request a digital print from a particular edition and receive it on the spot. Assuming quality controls could be established to the artist's satisfaction, each purchaser would get an immaculate print. If the collector were nowhere near that gallery, but near an Internet connection in another suitable printing facility, a similar transaction could be arranged, for delivery through this affiliated printer. An enterprising cryptography expert could devise a method, if one does not already exist, for an authentic artist's signature or its irrefutable equivalent. The artist could retain control over the edition size: when edition number fifty from an edition of fifty sold, the artist's or gallery's central computer registry would shut off that data stream. Thereafter, works from this edition would only be available in the secondary market. (And doesn't that raise interesting questions, too - about whether to retain the expectation of aging, deteriorating media, or rather to permit periodic total replacement.)

If retail offers some interesting possibilities, so does the business-to-business world, although the fit may be a little more awkward. The report identifies three kinds of emerging ecommerce intermediaries: aggregators, auctions, and exchanges. Aggregators permit individual and small-business sellers, by sharing one online public "face," to pool their inventories and establish pricing. The basic model is already familiar: dealers, agents and impresarios in the traditional worlds of the arts already serve these functions. An ecommerce aggregator could represent a number of individual artists - singers, writers, photographers - or small dance or theater companies. The agent-impresario would share its own "branding" with each of the member artists or organizations. Their combined reflected glory could burnish the aggregator's reputation, as well, in symbiosis.

Auctions, in the words of this report, "create markets and reduce sellers' losses." In a curious development, a new online auction house for the buying and selling of patented inventions opened a few months ago. Inventors without connections to big business can use this ongoing auction to put their patent - their government-sanctioned temporary monopoly - into the marketplace. If intellectual property as abstruse as patents can be sold online, it seems possible similar innovations could develop in the performing and plastic arts. Individual sellers of art objects already participate in general online auctions like ebay. Could the international art fairs combine the dealers' physical presence, at Basel for example, with online sales to the highest bidder? Could adventurous artists themselves aggregate, to market and sell their goods and services (and data streams) at auction to other arts aggregates?

Member traders on an exchange share market information and buy and sell defined properties to each other according to clear rules. A full-fledged art exchange, where traders buy and sell art objects and/or performance seasons, could be said to exist now, in some of the clannish worlds of international arts managers and world-rank performance and exhibition spaces. Transferring their quiet, person-to-person method to an online, potentially more inclusive one might not appeal to those from the old school. Perhaps another analog is to artistic colonies, workshops, or cooperatives with shared purposes, where barter often replaces conventional buying and selling. Translated to a marketplace of ideas then, the "market information" they share would be commentary and constructive criticism. It seems possible to envision this kind of community developing over the Internet. Using the Internet as a vehicle for creation may not be a familiar model yet but its time may be coming.

If even some of these possibilities occur, we may find ourselves swimming in art forms. If the arts become ubiquitous, will their perceived value change? In one recent development a prominent brick-and-mortar auction house has proposed its pairing with a major online bookseller to sell fine art print multiples (made the old-fashioned way, at least for now). Combining the prestige of the reputable auction house with the buzz of the exciting new electronic world could result in a much larger market for the same limited-edition objects. Will their value increase with increased demand? Will their value decrease because the market will be flooded? Will living artists make more art? Will artists' estates market old work formerly considered substandard? Will we see more new artists? With all this activity will the Internet so democratize the arts that they become mass-consumables, and thus lose value? Would the already more big-business art forms - movies, commercial art and design, recorded music - thrive and push out the others?

There are, of course, alternative scenarios. We can believe that more available technology means greater opportunity for more niches. Smaller-scale artistic ventures the world over have a far greater chance of finding others in those smaller constituencies it would have been difficult or impossible to identify and reach without the Internet. Artists living outside the handful of acknowledged cultural hotspots around the world may now be able to build the network of friends, patrons and business associates essential to any artist's career. There is also the basic truth that artists and arts managers can choose to behave with integrity, online as well as off.

A bedrock redefinition or two may be in store for us. Former economic barriers to "going pro" - education, mentorship, introductions and opportunities - may be dismantled. If the demand for the arts increases, new, emerging and even part-time artists may benefit. The line separating amateur from professional may fade. Those whose creativity expresses itself in the presenting and marketing of the arts may also have tremendous impact, further altering the cultural landscape.

Predictions of the future are, predictably, tentative. But, just as the US government takes seriously its report outlining the digital economy's impact on our economic life generally, we may want to take seriously its impact on the economics of the arts, specifically. As we wonder what the future will look like, we can also take time to imagine the influence each of us can exert. Swimming in art might be fun - maybe even good for us.

Resources:

The government report, Electronic Commerce in the Digital Environment II, can be downloaded (as a pdf file) from the US Department of Commerce at http://www.ecommerce.gov/ede/ede2.p df. The report can be read using Adobe's Acrobat Reader version 3, which can be downloaded for free from Adobe at http://www.adobe.com /prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html.