What is #arttech

We all probably heard about Fintechs, Insurtechs, Biotechs, Regtechs and maybe some of you also are active users of those new services, but little has been said about Arttech.

In all of the above-mentioned industries, new technologies are challenging the incumbent business models, ways of working and most importantly ways of engaging with the recipients of products and services. Companies from the Fintech or Biotech space are now one of the hottest in their industries with tremendous growth potential and actively setting new norms (Revolut, Slice, Klarna to name just a few).

It’s no different when it comes to the art market and the application of Arttech. It’s all about finding new digital models in the way the art is created, presented, sold or archived. It creates new opportunities for all art world participants including artists, collectors, institutions and the ability to connect with new entrants: technology experts, entrepreneurs and other visionaries.

Innovation however, is much more than just establishing new businesses and changing the technology through which the interaction is taking place, quite often it has a huge social impact as well. By looking again at some comparisons from other sectors we’ve seen how it helps to redesign the services and products from scratch, making it more accessible and in many cases also tackling social issues:

• Creating grounds for inclusion like offering of microfinance and phone banking in Africa enables financial inclusion for underbanked communities.

• Facilitating creation of affinity groups to better represent their interests especially for dispersed clients and audiences in affinity lending or insurance.

• Introducing disintermediation by allowing for a direct contact between recipients and creators or product providers, visible on the insurance market where for years the distribution was dominated by brokers but also platforms for farmers in Africa to have direct access to the whole value chain.

• We all now see as well, how technology helped with Covid-19 bringing an unprecedented speed of change in education and healthcare systems allowing for completely new ways of engagement and communication.

Looking back at the first response of incumbents in the finance sector to the fintech wave, it was simply putting lipstick on a pig without changing the fundamentals of the business, and in most cases ended up as a failure. This seems to be very much like the initial reaction of the art world to the new reality imposed by Covid-19 for example in the form of ‘Online viewing rooms’ launched by galleries and art fairs. We believe that the future digital space should serve all of us as a new, global, democratic and public space for art. A place to share art (in all of its kinds and dimensions), based on new inclusive rules and building new relations without any limits or exclusions. Arttech above all else should focus on initiatives having social impact. We can all see how people working in art and culture often struggle to make a living in the world of social distancing. And there is a lot to fix: unequal representation in art institutions, limited access to art and especially art collecting.

In our next posts we will present some examples of initiatives already paving the way in #arttech.

Stay tuned!