Platform for art

As interconnected digital media increasingly gives us a lens with which to view the world, it should come as no surprise in terms of where its tentacles go next. Having taken – and shaken – the music and film industries, it's now working its way through publishing, with the lens itself moving from a chunky white box to a curved aluminium tablet. Art may be next on its list of markets to disrupt, if not conquer.

With that in mind comes s[edition], a new platform to collect digital versions of works from leading contemporary artists. It provides a means of "digital collecting" - a way to securely store artworks in digital form, and to display them through an image viewer, a video player, or through a bespoke iOS app. The collection available at launch is from nine artists, and comprises of work made especially for s[edition], as well as some re-purposed for the medium.

S[edition] is both a buying platform and a repository for the storage of acquired art. Works are numbered, as they are with physical products, and through digital watermarking can be identified, verified, and traced back to their owner. Purchased editions are stored in a digital vault, and come with a certificate of authenticity which is signed by the artist.

Robert Norton, co-founder and CEO of the business, explains that the business is the product of an idea nurtured over many years.

"The concept for s[edition] evolved over time as a way to make available digital limited edition artworks, which we see as the 21st century equivalent of traditional woodcuts and etchings.

"Harry Blain, with whom I founded s[edition], first started to consider this idea in the 1990s, but the technology did not exist at the time to support a platform dedicated to collecting digital limited edition art. In recent years, there have been major improvements in cloud technology and high-definition screen resolution, and growth in mobile technologies, so it seemed like the right time to launch."

Tracey Emin, I Promise to Love You, digital limited edition
© Tracey Emin, courtesy of www.seditionart.com

What Norton and Blain are aiming to achieve is to provide a new generation of collectors with the opportunity to enjoy the work of contemporary artists, and to start to build an art collection at a lower price point. They also see it as something of a springboard for artists to create works especially for digital, who may not have developed for it in the past.

The site makes low-quality versions of the artworks available prior to purchase. Once an artwork is purchased, it is transferred to the owner's vault, where they can view or download it to a device of their choice. The digital watermarking layer tracks where the work is sent and received. This model is not dissimilar to DRM in music; will we see Emins and Hirsts ending up on Rapidshare along with millions of MP3 and ebooks? We'll have to wait and see, although Norton is adamant that "... our aim is to build a rewarding culture of responsible collecting".

Because the price point is low, one may consider the average price point of a s[edition] product to grow as the business matures. Because Norton and his team purposefully limit the availability of work, its market is not disrupted by a flood of "digital prints". However, Norton admits that it's early days: "Selling digital limited edtions online is not something that has been done before as far as we are aware. We do not know what the future value will be of these works but judging by the success and popularity of limited edtions in the physical world, some works do go on to sell for more than their original price."

Although the work can be shown anywhere, Norton is keen to stress that s[edition] is not in the business of replacing the gallery. In some cases, the site provides links to galleries who represent artists featured on the site. "What we are doing is making contemporary art available at affordable prices to a wide audience. There will always be collectors seeking original works by the artists that we feature." However, there is some subtlety here: Norton is keen to invite curators to present exhibitions online at a later stage, clearly looking for the business to become a complimentary force within the existing contemporary art market rather than a fundamentally disruptive one.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Forever, digital limited edition
© Tim Noble and Sue Webster, courtesy of www.seditionart.com

The company's launch phase focuses on established artists. To help to keep the market sustainable, upcoming talent currently in art colleges need to be attracted to digital art as a legitimate medium. Norton is sanguine about the future. "The digital format is one that many artists are already working in, and many more in the future will encompass as a part of their practice, and so naturally it will become a focus of study at art schools if it has not already." How and if s[edition]'s balance between "native" and repurposed work for digital media changes over time will be something to watch.

S[edition] appears to be offering something new here: a viewing and acquisition platform which is for works either in or out of the digital medium, from contemporary artists that already attract significant interest in the market. If it leads to a model where both "native" and repurposed digital work is available to all while offering a fair deal to the artist, then it may be the shape of things to come. It may seem a rather strange concept at first, but then so did buying and storing music exclusively in digital form in its early stages of birth.

Hopefully we won't see a clip-on gilt iPad frame accessory as a result...

Robert Norton is CEO and co-founder of s[edition]. Further information is available on the s[edition] website and at @seditionart.