Daata Editions feature in the International New York Times

International Arts – The Art of Collecting

Website Gives Stage to New-Media Artists 

By Ginanne Brownell Mitic

International New York Times

This is what a hit looks like in the age of digital art. 

A web video piece called “she’s so talented,” by the Canadian born, New York-based artist Chloe Wise, sold three copies within a day of being posted in May on Daata Editions, a digital art marketplace. 

The video, 1 minute 3 seconds and set in Boca Raton, Fla., features a gender-bending character in a variety of poses: drinking Red Bull in a pink velour zip-up jacket on the beach, sitting on a sofa in a high-rise condo, doing dance moves while dressed in a floral midriff top. The soundtrack includes conversational snippets overheard by the artist at last year’s Art Basel in Miami Beach, including “She’s so talented, she’s a real artist,” and “Listen, if you are on the wait list, that means you are in the liminal zone between being no one and actually being someone.” 

“Miami is a place of excess, of vacation and gluttony, but also the art market, with lots of consumerism going on,” said Ms. Wise, who graduated from art school in Montreal in 2013. “It is a really interesting place to overhear things.” 

And, apparently, to get on board with a new way to sell art. Miami is also where Ms. Wise first met David Gryn, a London-based curator who, along with the British collector and philanthropist Anita Zabludowicz, co-created Daata Editions. The website, which debuted during this year’s Frieze Art Fair in New York, combines the growing online art sales scene with the mushrooming market value of new media art. 

Ms. Wise was one of 18 new-media artists invited to be part of the inaugural group to show on the website. The group includes Jon Rafman, Takeshi Murata, Hannah Perry, Ilit Azoulay and Stephen Vitiello. 

“I have learned to say no to a lot in the art world, as you sense ‘I do not trust this person,”’ said Mr. Vitiello, a Virginia-based sound and visual artist who created sound works for Daata with names like “Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.” 

“But you try and say yes to those that instinctively feel interesting, and I thought, ‘Why not give this a shot?”’ 

The idea behind Daata is simple. Once a year, 18 video, sound and digital artists will be commissioned to do six pieces of three minutes or less, 15 editions of each piece. The works are available to be purchased and downloaded from the site. 

Daata has a sliding price scale. Sound, web and digital works start at $100 and increase by edition to a top price of $2,800; for video, the starting price is $200, increasing by increments to a top price of $5,600. The price difference, Mr. Gryn said, is linked to the perceived higher market value of video. Daata keeps the revenue and pays each artist a 15 percent royalty on each sale. 

The website got an institutional boost in mid-October with the announcement that two museums had become benefactors. The Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf, Germany, has purchased the full set of new works, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles has accepted a full edition as a gift. The Hammer’s chief curator, Connie Butler, said in a statement that the pieces would “extend the museum’s history of collecting and displaying new media work.” 

Seed funding for the site came from Ms. Zabludowicz, who remains an adviser. The site is staffed by Mr. Gryn and a producer. Their intention is to break even by 2017. 

The first release took place during the Frieze Art Fair in New York, followed in June by a release during LOOP in Barcelona, Spain. After Frieze London, there will be three more releases during Season One, which will extend into early 2016. 

Mr. Gryn, who curates the outdoor film screenings at Art Basel in Miami Beach, said the idea for Daata grew out of his and Ms. Zabludowicz’s observations that collectors were hesitating to buy new media art and gallerists were struggling with how to show it. That, in turn, led to gallerists’ hesitating to bring new media works to art fairs because they tended not to sell well during such high-stakes, high-profile events. 

“We are all so very used to buying music and film online without having to own physical items we have purchased,” Ms. Zabludowicz wrote in an email. “The art mediums are not very different. There are natural similarities in these immaterial art forms. We are making it very simple to show and collect the works that have been commissioned.” 

The British artist Hannah Perry, who was one of the inaugural 18, acknowledged that the concept of collecting video art was difficult for some people to get their heads around. 

“Once you buy something, how do you display it or how do you share it?” she said. “I had a collector say to me once, ‘Do I put a monitor on the wall during a dinner party? Do I keep the sound down? How do I put the sound in?”’ 

When Ms. Perry sells a video work, she includes in the box not only with the certificate of authenticity but also a small silkscreen print related to the piece that the owner can display. 

The perception that video or sound art is difficult to grasp is something that Mr. Gryn hopes will change with Daata. 

“We are not a gallery — we are not art advisers,” he said. “What we are is a commissioning platform that works with artists who work in those mediums and who promote their art form and nurture awareness. My idea is that you make a self-sustaining business that commissions the next round of artists’ works.” 

By the beginning of September, all the inaugural artists had sold several editions of their works, and there were over 500 downloads of a free Jon Rafman video. By Mr. Gryn’s standards, “that is fantastic,” he wrote in an email, because it means the work is being seen and bought. 

Jessica Witkin, the director of the New York gallery Salon 94, which specializes in new media, drew a parallel with how collectors eventually warmed to photographic art, accepting the idea that more than one edition could be available. 

“I think it is really important what they are doing, supporting artists from the inside,” she said. Ms. Wise agreed, saying that if Daata had not commissioned her Florida videos for the platform, they would not have been made. 

“Basically,” she said, “they are pushing the cycle further and allowing digital to really be appreciated and have acceptability, viewership and be funded.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/arts/international/website-gives-stage-to-new-media-artists.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=0

http://daata-editions.com

Collecting on the Cloud, a digital exchange with David Gryn of Daata by Sylvia Wu, SCREEN

photo: David Gryn by Jane Bustin

Sylvia Wu’s conversation with David Gryn, director of Daata Editions, On New Models of Selling Digital Art, is now live on SCREEN, a New York-based bilingual platform aiming to redefine media art.

http://www.onscreentoday.com/conversation/art-collecting-in-the-air

With the fall coming up, the relatively quiet holiday season will burst into a kaleidoscope of exhibitions and events. Alongside the physical world, several online sales platforms are also making their voices heard. Daata Editions, created by Art Basel’s Curator of Film, David Gryn, and collector Anita Zabludowicz, is among the most active. Launched in May this year, Daata Editions has made some great sales of its artist commissioned video, sound and web art editions, and perhaps more importantly, it has established a fresh model for selling and buying digital art. On its website, Daata Editions has currently two releases from “Season 1” of artist commissioned works including a collaboration between Martti Kalliala and Daniel Keller, and videos by Takeshi Murata. To figure out more about Daata’s language and concepts, SCREEN was in conversation with David Gryn, who previously said “We need to believe that, in the same way we easily buy music and films online via the likes of iTunes or Amazon, we can buy art via digital files and not have to [physically] possess an object to give a work its validation”1

SCREEN: We know that you curate Art Basel’s film sector where you can observe the market for digital art. But how exactly did the initial idea of creating Daata Editions come to you?

David Gryn: I worked with Art Basel for five years, and before that with various major other art fairs. It was obvious that galleries really don’t think about bringing films, videos, sound and other digital media to art fairs because they haven’t found a way to sell them. It dawned to me that something needs to be done about this, not just by one person but by many. I’ve never been a big believer in the market place per se, but I do believe that you need to have a market place where artists who make good digital artworks can be supported.

So our model of creating Daata Editions is the idea to start commissioning artists, paying them and giving them royalties, marketing the process and what they create, and I came together with these thoughts with collector and philanthropist Anita Zabludowicz, whom I’ve known for a long time. We came from different spectrums of the art world, me working with the art directly and not involved in the market place, while Anita collecting art passionately but also supporting artists and students. She believes in the ecosystem of the art world like I do, and the evolving concept of Daata was something we mutually agreed with.

S: What differs Daata Editions from other online sales platforms?

DG: We are not trying to be different. What we are building is our own bespoke, boutique model. I’m not looking at this being reinventing the wheel, but that we’ve created Daata Editions to present artists who make artworks with digital media, video, web, sound works. It works for that medium as well as we can possibly do within a finite model. Where it may differ from others is that we are very restricted to what we are focused on doing—we are commissioning, any one time, currently 18 artists per “season”. We pay the artists upfront to make the works, which is quite unusual in the art world. They also receive a royalty, which is also quite unusual.

A snapshot of the “Artists” page on the Daata Editions website. The background picture is a frame from Leo Gabin’s “Write Your Name”.

I hope that there are many models, and we are one of many. My view is that we’ll do it very well and hopefully other people will also do well. Just like you need many good galleries in an art fair, and you need many of them in a neighborhood to make it an art center that people might travel to visit. One good thing doesn’t form a market place, but often dominance. What often happens with digital business in the art world is that there’s a desire to be dominant because of the idea of monopoly. You could be the next big thing, the next Facebook or the next Twitter. We are not trying to be that. We are trying to put artists at the center of what we are doing, representing mediums that are actually very much commonplace amongst artists. Really commonplace. It’s almost ridiculous that most artists use digital media even if they are painters, to some degree to research or to communicate. But somehow the art market hasn’t found a way to reflect that yet. And galleries really find it difficult to find a business model around those works and how to find the commodified market place. We are working with art forms that are still finding their feet in that area but we are also working with them because we believe that those are true artists, not some freak shows. All the artists we work with are artists that are emerging and somehow emerged—simply talented artists and digital media is just the way they work.

S: But you seem to have a different language or vocabulary for the components within your model? What’s different about the works in the category “Web”? What’s a “season” (it easily reminds people of TV shows on websites like Netflix)?

DG: A lot of things are about semantics here. It’s trying to find a way to describe what we are doing. You might have noticed that we call everything artists’ video, artists’ sound, artists’ web, because what we see is that artists make the works. It’s not just video art, sounds art or web art—sometimes these are quite old and clumsy terms. The category “Web” is still an amorphous area of different forms of artworks, maybe a website, a video, or GIFs, but it’s enabling us to have different technologies within a section. Right now it’s probably ostensibly things that you could call video in our video section, but they are just made by slightly more emerging artists. With the “seasons”, it is a way of defining what each cycle is. As we were launching, we wanted to give a flavor that Season 1 is the first commissioning cycle. Like on Netflix, you might have a second season, which is a new cycle. What I think of the languages of Netflix is that you go back to Season 1 and Season 2 when you are on Season 10, but are still delighted to look at those seasons. You don’t think of them any less just because they are “older”, and in some cases you realize you have to look at those first.

A snapshot of the “Art” page on the Daata Editions website, where artworks are categorized as “Video”, “Sound” and “Web”.

S: How do you select the artists for each season? How does the collaboration work?

DG: It goes back to what I mentioned as an ecosystem. The artists all have a pretty good aura around them. A few of them recently graduated, like Helen Benigson, Matt Copson, Lina Lapelyte and Charles Richardson. And then there’s others that we have been working with for years and are well known. David Blandy has done a lot of works about gaming and sound cultures. Ed Fornieles and Jon Rafman are both advisors to our project. Leo Gabin, for instance, produce video and film works, but for Daata they have also made sound works for the first time. It’s therefore exciting to commission something that these artists haven’t focused on before. We show them online, but they can be purchased and shown offline. In other words, they are not solely dependent on the online platform. We commission the artists without saying what they should make for us, only that the work should be around 3 minutes or less. The idea is that the works will be fresh, quick and spontaneous. We limit what we do but we never judge the works. There’s no sending back to the artists or saying that we don’t like the works. That’s risky but it’s the way we wanted it to be—trust the artists to deliver. Our business model is a self-sustaining company. The aim is that each cycle is paid for from the previous one, but the artists get paid upfront regardless of sales.

Takeshi Murata, OM Passenger, HD Video, mp4, 0:40 mins ( artwork page on Daata https://daata-editions.com/art/video/takeshi-murata-om-passenger )

S: What about the choice of the website design?

DG: We did something similar with the designer of the website. Studio Scasascia, the company we worked with designed the website of a favorite record company of mine. As I’m comfortable buying music online, I hope to use this model to sell artists’ works as well. My brief to the designers was that we wanted the artists to be the center of the website. We wanted it to be an aesthetically pleasing and also simple platform, doing not more than showing and selling 18 artists’ commissioned works. We commissioned 6 works from each artist, plus one by Jon Rafman, which is free for downloading from the website. Meanwhile all the works can be viewed without registration or payment.

Jon Rafman, Oh the Humanity, HD Video, mp4, 3:00 mins, Unlimited edition.

A certificate for Jon Rafman’s “Oh the Humanity”.

S: Now that the works can be fully accessed on the website, what marks the difference between viewing and owning the works? What do you think drives a collector to purchase something non-physical?

DG: For one artwork, there’s 15 editions for sale. When you purchase one work you can download the high resolution file and own an edition of that work. The price goes up by $100 (in web and sound) or $200 (in video) after each edition sells. The price of a final artwork, for instance in video, can be $5600, which in my view, is probably closest to what the artwork is actually worth. In this way, we want to make it transparent and accessible, so that the works become affordable for many more people. Of course not everyone buys an artwork of $100, but this price is quite cheap for a quality artwork. So we are talking about people who believe in art. We are not trying to convince people who think it’s not worth it, because they might say the same thing about Picasso and Matisse. But still we want those people to be able to watch the works. Unlike Youtube where you find millions of videos and sounds, we are an artist based platform and we show artworks. What drives the collectors is their wish to own artworks, similar to how they come into a gallery or an auction house to buy artworks of other media. I think a collector can do both.

S: How is Daata Editions and your artists doing so far?

DG: We have made some major sales to major art collectors and collections. We will be announcing those in October when we launch the third release. It is in fact magical for us because these are the biggest collectors of this kind of media. It’s also brilliant for the artists because they are now in those big collections. Some of them will truly start their career from this, which could have taken more years for their works to be found or purchased via galleries. Actually, many of the artists on our site don’t have galleries yet. For those who do, several galleries are keen for us to show their artists, because evolving a market for any artist is difficult. So we see what we do as a supportive act. We promote the artists but don’t actually represent them.

Lina Lapelyte, Hunky Bluff ACT2 – Never was a shade, CD Quality sound, wav, 2:57 mins, ( artwork page on Daata https://daata-editions.com/art/sound/lina-lapelyte-hunky-bluff-act2-never-was-a-shade )

S: What’s the sales agreement between Daata Editions and its customers? Do you have something like customer service? What happens if a file is damaged or lost?

DG: If the file on your computer is damaged or lost, you can download again from the website. We won’t make it a problem, since the collectors own the file and their names are on the certificate. If they want to give it to another person and transfer the ownership, they go to the website and change the certificate and then download it in the new owner’s name. Also the collectors can always log in their accounts on our website and view their purchased items online. If a different operating system exists, we will adjust the files to make sure the works play well on it. We want to make the whole process simple and friendly instead of making a prison contract that you enter into. You buy an artwork, and you can view it on whatever platform, and within reason, you can show it in your home and in your office. Of course if you want to show it publicly, the artist owns the intellectual property, and we need to go back to the artist. But we operate based on the trust in the buyer. The art world I operate in is all about good will and credibility, and this world should believe in itself. We don’t want to make the buying of digital art a problem before it’s happened.

S: Did you set a goal of any sort?

DG: We are working with artists, whose natural language is digital and online. We set up this platform with the goal that in the near future people are happy to buy, play and show artworks digitally on their devices. If a gallery can’t sell digital artworks or any time-based media easily, then the artists become compelled to make paintings, sculptures, installations that are easier to commodify. I see digital media equally to the traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture. I hope they can be seen equally by all. With most artists touching upon digital media in some way, we anticipate there will be a real market and audiences will have the confidence to engage with it.

S: Are you confident about creating a “virtual” market for artists and collectors?

DG: Yes. I do think it’s a natural development. It’s not a contrived market because I do believe we are getting to the point where real artists are making really good artworks with digital means. Technology, as their tools, are being used brilliantly. It’s no longer a romanticism of digital media. But again we don’t want to be the only platform to show artists working with digital media. Currently we can’t do more than 18 artists in a season because obviously we, as a small team, are limited. I’d love to think galleries can look at what we are doing and similar companies like ours can copy us, because I believe galleries are the ultimate and best placed curator of the artists they represent. However, many galleries can’t think of doing it, because perhaps they can’t do it properly or still lack the desire. That’s why I think we have to evolve different market places. Not all artworks are sold in the same way. There should be different sales or rental models, but what bonds them, makes them co-exist and move forward together are dialogues and communications. Hopefully we are a powerful voice and I do believe that we are empowering the market place by making people believe they can buy what we have commissioned from the artists and create various commercial relationships.

1 See ANNY SHAW, “Collectors join forces to co-commission digital art”, THE ART NEWSPAPER, 18 June 2015, http://theartnewspaper.com/reports/156860/

Daata Editions 3rd Artwork Released on 12 Oct

Takeshi Murata, Plant Whisperer (2015). Courtesy the artist and Daata Editions.

Daata Editions, the online platform for the sale of commissioned artist video, sound and web editions, is pleased to announce the third artwork release for Season One. The artworks will be available at http://daata-editions.com from 5pm on Monday 12 October with a special release event at the Daata Editions Lounge at the Zabludowicz Collection. The release coincides with the Jon Rafman and Charles Richardson shows opening at the Zabludowicz Collection.

Daata Editions was developed to enable audiences to view contemporary artists who are working in digital mediums, showing artworks made for, and therefore best viewable on, laptops, iPads, iPhones, screens and even cinemas. This new and innovative way to collect art is designed specifically to be a native platform to a new generation of artists who work with moving image and sound, and to empower artists, audiences and the marketplace in an area of artistic practice that remains underrepresented within traditional art market models.

For Season One, Daata Editions has commissioned 18 artists to create six new artworks each in editions of 20, with 15 going on sale to the public via the website and five others automatically put aside for philanthropy. All artworks last no longer than approximately three minutes and are made in ways that challenge traditional modes of exhibition, reception and, therefore, of collecting as well. Daata Editions artists commissioned for the Season One are: Ilit Azoulay, Helen Benigson, David Blandy, Matt Copson, Ed Fornieles, Leo Gabin, Daniel Keller & Martti Kalliala, Lina Lapelyte, Rachel Maclean, Florian Meisenberg, Takeshi Murata, Hannah Perry, Jon Rafman, Charles Richardson, Amalia Ulman, Stephen Vitiello, Chloe Wise.

David Gryn, Director of Daata Editions, said: “It is important that while we continue to find new artists whose work pushes the definition of contemporary art, we also develop formats through which such work can be best accessed and understood. We also need far more competition from similar platforms that commission, show and sell digitally made art online to empower artists, audiences and the marketplace alike.”

In addition to the commissions available for purchase, all subscribers to the platform receive a free Jon Rafman artwork, made specifically for Daata Editions.

To watch the trailer for the third artwork release, please click here.

Event

Daata Editions 3rd Artwork Release Launch
Monday 12 October, 5 – 6pm
Daata Editions Lounge @ the Zabludowicz Collection
176 Prince of Wales Road
London NW5 3PT
RSVP to hannah@suttonpr.com

Artworks in Daata Editions 3rd Release (Season One)

Video
Ed Fornieles – Climbing
Leo Gabin – Ain’t Gon Do It
Daniel Keller & Martti Kalliala – Exitscape 3
Florian Meisenberg – hihihihihihihihih
Takeshi Murata – Plant Whisperer
Amalia Ulman – White Flag Emoji 3

Sound
Ilit Azoulay – Object #3
Matt Copson – Booty Call
Leo Gabin – Aliens
Lina Lapelyte – Hunky Bluff Act 3
Hannah Perry – sick off smoke
Stephen Vitiello – In The Woods (after Tana French)

Web
Helen Benigson – Cluck, Cluck, Cluck 3
David Blandy – Mist
Rachel Maclean – Let It Go Part 3
Hannah Perry – the worse you feel the better I look
Charles Richardson – Extra
Chloe Wise – should i add an emoji

(All works are 2015)

Press Information

Hannah Gompertz, SUTTON
+44 (0)207 813 3577 | hannah@suttonpr.com

Daata Editions and Monegraph Grow Online Marketplace for Digital Art – Art in America

Ed Fornieles, Falling 2015, Courtesy the artist and Daata Editions

Daata Editions and Monegraph Grow Online Marketplace for Digital Art

Art in America

by Whitney Mallett

The art market continues to grow, with spring auction house sales totalling a record-breaking $2.6 billion this year. But video and new media works make up a fraction of the works sold, and are only represented in 10 percent of collections. Although more artists than ever are working digitally, many of them find it difficult to monetize their work and have expanded their practices to include more easily commodifiable objects. The problem of selling new media works, of course, is not new. Since video art emerged in the 1960s and ‘70s, new media artists have struggled to earn a living comparable to their colleagues working in more traditional forms like painting and sculpture. Our recent shift to digital, though, rather than being another source of the problem, just might lead us toward a solution.

Two companies are working to develop new systems for selling intangible work and getting artists paid. David Gryn, a curator and consultant based in London, launched Daata Editions in May with support from collector Anita Zabludowicz. The digital platform is devoted to selling select video, Web-based and sound works commissioned from artists with gallery representation. Artist and professor Kevin McCoy’s platform Monegraph, which launches in September, is more democratic. The service offers an online marketplace as well as a licensing system based on similar encryption technology used by Bitcoin and other so-called “cryptocurrencies.”

Over the last two decades Gryn has worked primarily with artists who create moving image works. During a phone interview, the Daata Editions director noted two paradoxical trends: the art market is dominated by fairs and auction houses that don’t cater to video and digital work, while digital media is ubiquitous in everyday life. “It dawns on me every time I go to an art fair that galleries don’t know how to sell moving image work and people don’t know how to look at it and buy it,” he said. In conceiving Daata Editions, he imagined an online platform as a more intuitive way for people to consume and buy these works.

The first season of commissions for Daata includes seven videos, six sound pieces and six Web-based works. Contributing video artists include Jon Rafman and Ed Fornieles (who are represented in the Zabludowicz Collection), as well as Amalia Ulman and Takeshi Murata. Chloe Wise and Charles Richardson are among the six artists tapped for Web-based commissions; Stephen Vitiello and Matt Copson are featured sound artists. All the works can be accessed on the site, with a small watermark in the corner as the only distinguishing feature from the editioned version for purchase. (For the sound pieces, there’s an equivalent aural watermark woven into the piece—a few seconds of beeps introduced about 20 seconds into the work.) Buying an edition also means the collector can download the file. Gryn envisions Daata Editions as an accessible way to “empower the market” to take ownership of digital work.

Selling reproducible digital works has been difficult in a market geared toward unique objects like paintings and sculptures. Monegraph is a platform geared primarily to establishing usage rights for digital works. “We make a distinction between the bits and the rights,” explained Monegraph co-founder and CEO McCoy when I spoke with him in New York, “and that’s a fundamental belief we’ve built the platform around.” The bits, meaning the digital information encoded in a file, can be pirated or copied. “But instead of worrying about those bits, let’s instead have clear articulable ownership and rights around the usage of media,” McCoy said.

Monegraph verifies ownership of creative works through the same system that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin register transactions: unique alphanumeric strings of characters on a secure database that is both decentralized and a matter of public record. “All our contracts are living on the block chain in the public ledger,” said McCoy. Artists can create contracts on Monegraph’s platform without specialized technical knowledge, simply by registering the work under their name. They can also register art for sale as a unique work, a limited edition or unlimited stock media. The registrant controls whether the buyer has resale rights and whether the work can be remixed. Selecting “no remix” doesn’t change the ease at which someone can take a screen shot of the work and use it as source material, but it does specify usage so that contesting the remix no longer falls into a hazy legal zone.

While Monegraph gives artists a platform to sell work and control of the terms of sale, Daata Editions defines the contract that it offers to artists. Daata pays the artists upfront for the commissioned works and grants them a 15 percent royalty on sales, as well as two editions of the work they produce. Although the works could potentially be pirated and reproduced, Daata controls rightful ownership through a simple certificate system and maintains the value of the work through an editioning model. Each work is produced in an edition of 15, the price rising with each subsequent edition that sells. The going rate for the first edition is $100 or $200; the highest valued video works on the site are being sold for $5,600. “It can possibly give people that thrill they get at an auction,” Gryn says of the pricing system, “where they want to get the work before [the price gets] too high.”

Monegraph and Daata Editions also take different approaches to authorization. McCoy has opted for a digital verification system at Monegraph, whereas Gryn doesn’t think digital art needs a structure any more secure than those already used for other forms of art. Intellectual property attorney Andrew Gerber suggests that these different verification systems would both hold up in a court of law. “If there’s an instance of copyright infringement and the potential plaintiff had handwritten documents in crayon that clearly established ownership of the infringed work it would be, from a legal perspective, identical to a block chain that established ownership.” He added, however, that the current copyright system is antiquated, and the registry is hard to find information in. “People are excited that this new technology presents an easier way to find out who owns what.”

There’s some precedent for these contracts and systems in the world of new media art. McCoy, who creates interactive films, videos, installations and performances with his partner Jennifer McCoy, has sold and distributed work via the gallery system, as well as through independent distribution services that were established during the rise of video art in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Nonprofit archives like Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) and Video Data Bank (VDB) facilitate both the sale and rentals of works in their collections. Most artists receive royalties in the form of screening fees when the works are shown at universities or museums. McCoy noted that this nonprofit model emerged alongside alternative and artist-run spaces like Anthology Film Archives, Artists Space and Printed Matter.

“Video Databank, EAI and LUX [a moving image nonprofit in England] have been doing it brilliantly,” Gryn said, “but their model is ultimately an academic rental model, which doesn’t often cater toward the audience which has now emerged through the art market.” He added, “I think you need to be addressing as many voices as possible in our art ecosystem.” The global class of collectors that Gryn is addressing through Daata, able to flit from continent to continent to attend the ever-increasing number of art fairs, is a relatively new audience.

Monegraph exemplifies another recent change in the art ecosystem: the flirtation between the creative and tech industries, which has the potential to draw alternative funding sources funding like venture capital money into the arts. The business developed from McCoy and New York-based tech entrepreneur Anil Dash’s presentation at the New Museum-affiliated Internet-based arts nonprofit Rhizome’s “Seven on Seven” conference in 2014. Because of its pairing of artists with technology, Rhizome is able to lure Silicon Valley participants for the conference. Today Monegraph is a member of New Inc., the New Museum’s co-working space designed to breed these sort of start-up hybrids.

Like Kickstarter, Etsy or Vimeo, Monegraph’s model is structured around a demographic of prosumers, a demographic of creators that blur the distinction between media producers and consumers. It will take a percentage of the sales made through its platform (though one can register authorship through Monegraph and sell through other means) and will launch a subscription model similar to Vimeo’s, including features for professionals and businesses like higher usage rates. “We’ve seen the democratization of the means of production,” explains McCoy, noting that nearly everyone is a content producer in the online ecosystem. “I think the role of the artist or of the creator is more broadly distributed now.”

Monegraph aims to have a variety of works registered on its platform, from fine art to stock photos. McCoy plans to sell his own work on Monegraph and wants other artists from the gallery world to use the service, though he also relishes in the unpredictability of exactly who will relate to it. “For a long time I’ve made systems of various kinds—data-based systems, imaging systems, discourse systems—and I see this as the same thing,” said McCoy. “It’s going to be a platform people are going to use and use in strange ways. I’m just trying to get to that point.”

Both McCoy and Gryn seem to agree that a healthy online art economy depends on decentralization. McCoy says that the anti-proprietary attitude ushered in by the sharing, remixing and creative-commons era of Web 2.0 “paved the way for big aggregators to come and suck in all the content. Now we have Facebook and a couple of other centralized platforms.”

Gryn, for his part, laments the comparisons of Daata Editions to Artsy (a site that promotes and sells art in all mediums) or Sedition (a sales site for digital art). He says it suggests a mentality that people have come to expect digital monopolies, but he insists there needs to be competition between platforms for successful monetization. With Daata Editions, “it’s not trying to be dominant and take over the world. It’s trying to be a business model that can hopefully exist with many others, but there aren’t a plethora of them yet. If there were a plethora of those platforms paying artists to make work, then all of a sudden you’ve got an economy for artists.”

Article Link: http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/daata-editions-and-monegraph-grow-online-marketplace-for-digital-art/

Daata Editions

Monegraph

Art in America

Daata Editions at Super Woofer featuring Matt Copson

Matt Copson, Broadcast (2015)

Daata Editions presents

Moralise the Masses, a new performance by Matt Copson

Curated by Dani Papadimitrou

at 

Super Woofer sound fair at X Marks the Bökship at Matt’s Gallery

Daata Editions is featuring at Super Woofer, a one-day sound fair, organised by X Marks the Bökship at Matt’s Gallery, London. Focussing on the Daata Editions Sound section artists that include Ilit Azoulay, Matt Copson, Leo Gabin, Lina Lapelyte, Hannah Perry, Stephen Vitiello, Daata Editions presents Moralise the Masses, a new performance by Matt Copson.

Moralise the Masses features Reynard Incarnate, Matt’s fox alter-ego, with a live monologue and musical accompaniment by Alex White and Mark William. Expect lascivious sax and lots of shouting.

Super Woofer sound fair has invited artists and audio publishers to have stalls for selling and displaying analogue and digital audio works, including: Keith Harrison, Plastique Fanstastique, Benedict Drew, Marcia Farquhar, Leo Chadburn, Mikatsiu, John Lawrence, Daniela Cascella, Robert Pratt, Cesura // Acceso, Erinyes, Flange Zoo, 38b, Exploit.zzxjoanw.Gen, Girolamo Marri, Drawing Room Confessions, Sonic Imperfections, Trestle Records, Matt’s Gallery, Consumer Waste, Editions of You, Top Nice, DISFIGMENT/BANKRUPSEA, The Cast of the Crystal Set, Dancehall, Sinkhole, Lost Toy Records, WE.

Fair date & hours:

August 1, 2015

1 – 8pm

Matt Copson performance: 5pm

Location:

X Marks the Bökship

Matt’s Gallery 42 – 44 Copperfield Road, Mile End, London E3 4RR

More information: www.bokship.org

Daata Editions Launching May 14 – Press Release

PRESS RELEASE

Daata Editions

A new online platform for the sale of artist commissioned video sound and web art editions

Launching May 14, 2015
www.daata-editions.com

TRAILER

Launch during May art fairs in New York include a viewing area at NADA, and programming partnerships with Salon 94 and Soho House New York.

New York  (April 17, 2015) – Daata Editions is a new online platform dedicated to the support, promotion and collecting of artists’ digital moving image and sound. This new and innovative way to collect art is designed specifically to be a native platform to a new generation of artists who are working with video, sound, and web (mediums), and which are not easily exhibited in the traditional gallery context. Daata Editions is founded and directed by curator David Gryn, and developed by London based web agency Studio Scasascia. Daata was born of a need seen by Gryn via his work as a curator, noticing the concerns of galleries, institutions, and collectors interested in artists working in moving image and sound. Daata Editions is a remedy to this, a new business that commissions and empowers artists to develop new work, and creates a seamless and playful platform for collectors and viewers to access and experience this material.    

Launch Commissions 

Daata Editions will be launching by commissioning 18 artists to create six new – video, sound or web artworks each.  All of the works, each in an edition of 20, will be available online for sale and research. The website is designed to be an easy to use and aesthetically appealing interface for collectors to browse and acquire the works. The Daata Editions website is ideal for these works, as a native platform, Daata presents digital commissions for digital distribution.

The first group of artists commissioned to create new artworks for the launch of Daata Editions are: Ilit Azoulay, Helen Benigson, David Blandy, Matt Copson, Ed Fornieles, Leo Gabin, Daniel Keller & Martti Kalliala, Lina Lapelyte, Rachel Maclean, Florian Meisenberg, Takeshi Murata, Hannah Perry, Jon Rafman, Charles Richardson, Amalia Ulman, Stephen Vitiello, and Chloe Wise. In addition to the commissioned editions available for purchase, all subscribers to the platform will receive a free Jon Rafman artwork, made specifically for Daata Editions launch. Art writer and curator Lucy Chinen has written the first texts for the website. 

Launch Programs and Events

Daata Editions is launching in NY during the week of the Frieze Art Fair, May 11 to 17, 2015, with a series of events, including a collaborative viewing area at NADA New York (May 14-17) and a Frieze Art Fair brunch, hosted by renowned collector and philanthropist Anita Zabludowicz at the Neue House VIP lounge in association with the Frieze VIP program on May 16. In addition, passers by on the Lower East Side can enjoy a month long screening on the Salon 94 video wall on the Bowery, next to the New Museum, and another month long screening program will be at Soho House, New York, running from May 11 to June 15, 2015.  

About The Team

Daata Editions’ team has a strength of experience and credibility that is unique in our art meets digital world and aims to create a marketplace platform that will be a fun experience as well as educational. Daata Editions’ Director, David Gryn of Artprojx and Curator of Film, Art Basel in Miami Beach has a strong reputation worldwide in producing, curating and promoting artists’ audio visual projects and events that have consistently excited and attracted large audiences and introduced new audiences to the arts. Responsible for the design and development of the platform is London-based Studio Scasascia, who have extensive experience in cutting edge web development for international clients including Damien Hirst’s Other Criteria, Berlin Biennale, Sounds of the Universe and the Swiss Federal Office of Culture.

For more information, please visit www.daata-editions.com

Media Contact

Molly Rowe / Andrew Huff
Third Eye
molly@hellothirdeye.com / andrew@hellothirdeye.com
www.hellothirdeye.com

Sound by artists at Film: Art Basel in Miami Beach

 

Sound by artists

Larry Achiampong, Jennie C. Jones, Stephen Vitiello, Raed Yassin

at

Film: Art Basel in Miami Beach 2014. Curated by David Gryn.

From December 3 through 6, 2014, Art Basel’s Film sector will include over 80 films and videos. Outdoor Screenings are in SoundScape Park on the 7,000-square-foot outdoor projection wall of the Frank Gehry designed New World Center.

Every evening, sound works by different artists are presented from 6pm to the start of the first film screening in SoundScape Park: Wednesday (Stephen Vitiello, Scraped and Bowed, 2013-2014), Thursday (Larry Achiampong, The Mogya Project, 2014), Friday (Jennie C. Jones, From the Low to Higher Resonance, 2011-2014, Sikkema Jenkins), Saturday (Raed Yassin, The Deaf Oud, 2010, Kalfayan). The sound works are selected by David Gryn, Director of Artprojx worldwide, utilising the park’s fantastic surround sound system of over 160 speakers.

 

Stephen Vitiello,

Scraped and Bowed, 2013-2014,

Duration: 9:47

Performed by Stephen Vitiello and John Priestley at University of Richmond

A gently played recording, featuring instruments treated in a way beyond their normal tradition or culture. The primary sounds are of bowed gangsa from a university’s gamelan. Additional bowls and gongs are bowed, tapped and bounced off of a drum head. The ringing and beating of overtones creates an ethereal experience – perhaps like that of objects hovering in and out of focus.

In Scraped and Bowed 2013-2014, an ethereal and hovering multi-channel piece by Stephen i (performed by Vitiello and John Priestley), instruments are treated in a way beyond their normal tradition or culture. The instruments used in the performance where built by Gongsmith, Pandé Madé Sukerta of Blahbatu Village, Bali. Special thanks go to Andy McGraw at University of Richmond and American Contemporary.

from the split 7” record Sense Objects, published by Textual Records (http://www.textualrecords.com/Main/News)

Larry Achiampong

The Mogya Project (2014)

Larry Achiampong’s practice uses live performance, imagery and sound to explore representations of identity in the post digital age and the dichotomies found within a world dominated by cut-copy-paste facebook/tumblr/youtube-based cultures.

The Mogya Project represents years of research and art production in which Larry explores his audible heritage via his Ghanaian roots that resulted in the following audio projects; ‘Meh Mogya’ (2011) and ‘More Mogya’ (2012/13). For the first time these projects will be presented, one after the other in 5.1 surround sound.

https://soundcloud.com/blackph03nix

Jennie C. Jones

From the Low to Higher Resonance

Audio Works:

From the Low is an audio re-composition in two movements investigating low frequency and the psychological / emotional effect of the ‘low end’. Metaphorically, addressing darkness and the notion of the ominous. Samples and ‘micro’ samples used are co-opted range from orchestral cinematic moments, to digital bass beats as well as tempo altered bass solos, from jazz legends of the sub-tonal: Charles Mingus and Ray Brown.

My intention is to carry forward the inherent emotion of the ‘Low’, the ideal of some discomfort and to include its varied forms outside of DJ culture, toward a more expansive dialogue and listening experience.

Re-mastered for Art Basel, originally at the Kitchen, NYC 2011.

From The Low (1st Movement) 1 min 44 seconds

From The Low (2nd  Movement) 1 min 47 seconds

Muhal: Slow Flute & Bells 2 min 16 seconds

http://www.jenniecjones.com/

Raed Yassin

“The Deaf Oud”, 2010

Duration: 9 minutes

“The Deaf Oud’ is based on rare 7-inch records found by the artist, Raed Yassin, in Cairo, Egypt. The sound material of the found records has been mixed, deconstructed, reconstructed and manipulated through different effects and electronic means, to create a new Arabic minimalist piece.

https://soundcloud.com/raedyassin/the-deaf-oud

http://raedyassin.com/music.13

Other Links

https://davidgryn.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/film-art-basel-announces-2014-program-for-miami-beach/

https://www.artbasel.com/en/Miami-Beach/About-the-Show/Sectors/Film

TRAILER

http://facebook.com/artbasel

http://artbasel.com/miamibeach

https://davidgryn.wordpress.com

http://www.artprojx.com