Artists, museums, auction houses and art enthusiasts in Hong Kong have jumped on the art technology bandwagon, cashing in on the burgeoning digitalization trend that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They are all trying to seek new ways to create, exhibit and monetize their artwork, giving art tech a much-needed lift in a city where the government is leaving no stone unturned in making Hong Kong a world art arena, as well as an international cultural metropolis by accelerating cultural exchanges.
The special administrative region government is walking the talk, having set aside HK$100 million ($13 million) last year to support four funds to help related sectors implement projects on developing and promoting the integration of technology and arts.
While commercializing the market may be an inevitable trend, industry experts stress that technology should not be used to steal art’s thunder.
Hong Kong is well positioned for art tech to blossom with the support of local collectors, who are often younger and tech-savvy, as well as the city’s rich pool of tech talents, said Francis Belin, president of Christie’s Asia-Pacific, noting that Hong Kong has become a key auction center in Asia in recent years.
The global auction house has pumped up innovation in the way objects are presented and transacted at auctions and exhibitions, by shifting to online sales.
Although the move to online sales was already well underway before the pandemic struck, “there is nothing to compare” with the magnitude of today’s technology adoptions, Belin said. Christie’s is keeping up with the market where sellers and buyers are already fully adapted to the digital life during the pandemic.
“To give you an example of livestreaming — we used to have the channel where you have a (single) camera pointed at the object. And that’s it,” he said in jest, comparing an old-fashioned auction to livestreaming today, in which items for sale are shown from 20 different angles. “It has become more like a proper television show production line,” he said.
Livestreaming an auction to buyers online in high resolution and in a steady transmission, as well as capturing the atmosphere, is important in Christie’s innovation endeavors. “Either you do the bidding now, or you are out and the deal will go to somebody else. So being able to retranslate this to the collector who cannot be in the room has been at the forefront of our digital innovations,” Belin said.
On the transaction end, such as how the objects are auctioned and purchased, Christie’s has adopted and upgraded technologies to support processes involved in account opening, sale registration and bids placed at its auctions, catering to a rapidly growing crowd of online buyers.
Christie’s record-breaking 2021 Hong Kong Autumn Auctions, which were held from
Nov 25 to Dec 3, raked in HK$3.8 billion — the highest ever for the auction house in Asia, representing a 42 percent rise in sales value since 2019. All told, 693 lots were sold through online channels, accounting for 33.4 percent of a total of 2,072 lots sold. There were 255 online buyers, making up more than 28 percent of the total number of buyers, according to Christie’s.
Christie’s is also making full use of social media platforms like WeChat — the omnipresent mobile app on the Chinese mainland — by opening up auction channels via mini programs, Belin said. The number of bidders on WeChat channels went up 176 percent during Christie’s 2021 autumn auctions, with total sale value reaching $495 million — the highest for Christie’s Asia so far.
The auction house plans to hold its first online auction on the mainland, featuring Moutai liquor, in Shanghai in January.
Amid the global digital transformation, dealers and auction houses had allocated more resources to upgrade their information technology networks last year. Their IT spending soared 80 percent year-on-year to $3.5 billion — the highest in ancillary expenses — according to The Art Market 2021 report by the Art Basel and UBS.
The international art market saw the most significant growth in online sales in 2020 despite the contraction in overall sales, the report said. Online sales of art and antiques, covering sales by galleries, dealers and auction houses made online, hit a record high of $12.4 billion last year, doubling in value compared with 2019.
A visitor interacts with a movement-sensing screen at the Teleport, an immersive digital art exhibition in the L. Place, Hong Kong. The exhibition runs through Feb 28. (ZENG XINLAN / CHINA DAILY)
The online transition has enabled museums to reach out to wider audiences and find new revenue streams by licensing museum intellectual property for branded product crossovers and online sales to combat the pandemic, said Louis Ng Chi-wa, director of the Hong Kong Palace Museum.
“Museums should grasp the opportunities that licensing deals present to transform their business and expand their global audiences,” Ng said.
To meet the demands of more digital-accustomed audiences who want “unique, beautiful and carefully crafted products”, museums have to be more careful in selecting and designing their products with greater sensitivity, he said. “Just copying and pasting an artwork onto an iPhone case is no longer an option.”
Despite the pursuit of technology adoption, Belin stressed that technology should not and cannot steal the focus from the essence of the artwork. “We are very object-centric,” he said.
“When you add technology to enhance the experience of an object, you fundamentally have to stay true to that principle, which is all about the object. The object is the immersive experience … (so) don’t create something around it. No, don’t play too much around Picasso,” said Ng, referring to the technology used in exhibiting analog art.
Digital art, however, is a different thing, which opens up more spaces and allows technology to be widely applied.
Analog art, such as paintings and sculptures, is created by hand using traditional materials like pencils, paints, paper, canvas and film. As such, it cannot be easily reproduced. Digital art is made using software, computers or other electronic devices in the form of animations, photographs, illustrations, videos and digital paintings.
As the art world becomes more familiar with blockchain, cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, there has been a growing demand for digital art, which has developed rather modestly since the 1960s.
Digital art now has a new window of opportunity opened up by the pandemic, which has lifted Hong Kong viewers’ digital readiness, said Edward Eremyan, founder of Teleport — an immersive digital art exhibition in Hong Kong, which runs through February.
The digital art exhibition provides an oasis for people to escape from urban life overshadowed by the pandemic. “People, sometimes, need to recharge. We need to reset, forget about where we are and our problems,” Eremyan said.
He believes Hong Kong is a perfect place to develop and lead digital art in Asia and the world for the city’s responsive audiences who are open to new concepts.
“Hong Kong is really the No 1 in the region and, definitely, in Asia” in the traditional art environment, Eremyan said, referring to the major art events the city used to host, such as Art Basel, Art Central and the city’s numerous galleries.
“But in terms of digital art, it’s still not that. And I think it’s going to change,” Eremyan said, predicting a boom in digital art in Hong Kong in the next one to two years.
Ian Liu, partner of patent and designs practice at Hong Kong law firm Deacons, said NFTs have created a new market for digital art and digital collectibles, and have opened up a revenue stream — namely, royalties — for its creators.
“By using smart contracts for blockchain, creators are able to pre-build transaction mechanisms to distribute their works. A commission, royalty or payout can be enforced through a smart contract for every transfer of NFTs in the secondary market. Smart contract technologies allow a royalty collection mechanism to be implemented and enforced efficiently,” Liu said.
The technology also shortens the time span from creating the artwork to its monetization, said Pindar Wong, chairman of VeriFi (Hong Kong) and chief architect of the Belt and Road Blockchain Consortium.
He said the NFT experiments could solve the fundamental paradox for digital artists — the monetization of the work could happen many years later, when the artists themselves may be gone.
Blockchain, the underlying technology of NFTs, could also create new ways for small investors to own an expensive artwork with an investment value as it allows multiple ownership.
However, Liu warns potential buyers that purchasing an NFT artwork does not necessarily mean that the IP rights of the underlying digital work could be transferred.
“(The) rights associated with a NFT depend on the nature of the NFT and how it’s marketed, traded and sold. Depending on how the NFT is structured, the owner may not own the IP of the underlying digital work.”
Liu said collectors should think about various issues before making a purchase, including ownership of the works, the copyright and the right to use them, and whether the seller is the real owner.
