Over the past few years, digital art has experienced exponential growth, transforming the artistic landscape and challenging traditional notions of creativity (and indeed, how art is presented and experienced – from the best museums to the home). Not only has it allowed creators to do things that were simply not possible even a year ago, it has opened up a whole new sector for collectors.
In its simplest form, digital art is any work that utilises digital technology. That includes everything from Adobe Illustrator to DALL-E, an artificial intelligence (AI) system that creates images from text prompts. It also includes non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – virtual assets with ownership authenticated by the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs can be anything from virtual real estate to gaming collectibles, but it is NFT art that has grabbed most of the headlines. Who can forget Beeple’s ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’, which sold at Christie’s for $69.3 million in 2021.
“Digital art is an expansion of contemporary art, embracing new modes of production, distribution, engagement and appreciation of art,” say Alfredo Cramerotti and Auronda Scalera, the curators of next year’s Art Dubai Digital. “Artists now work not only from their studio, as it used to be, but increasingly from the laptop, generating amazing and immersive artworks that are produced, installed and experienced both on-site and also online.”
However, the world of digital art is not an easy one to navigate. The volatility of NFTs is notorious, while the value of owning a digital file that can be endlessly duplicated is debatable. Then there’s AI-generated art, which has its own set of issues. The primary fear being that AI could replace artists altogether. Last year, a piece of work created using Midjourney won a digital art prize at the Colorado State Fair.
It’s easy to see the allure. When the Canadian artist Beth Frey began experimenting with NightCafe about 18 months ago, she was initially impressed by the ways in which the AI art generator created the ‘feel’ of something through an imperfect representation. The failures of older AI technologies, she says, brought out their materiality, creating images that looked different to something that was simply trying to emulate reality. Her interest was piqued. She has since become one of the stars of AI art, creating an ever-increasing library of grotesque bodies using DALL-E.
“Sometimes I chuckle and think, ‘is this argument that AI is replacing artists happening to me on a personal level?’ Because I’m getting way more demand for AI art than I am for my analogue work,” says Frey. “Ideally, I’d like to integrate them. I’m interested in trying to understand the logic of these AI generation tools. I would also like to train an AI on a dataset of my own work (both digital and my watercolour work), as well as my body, to create hybrid pieces. The dialogue between these modes of creation is interesting to me, more so than the ability to write a few words and make something that ‘looks cool’.”
So, where to begin if you’re looking to invest in digital art? As Cramerotti and Scalera say, the art market has re-aligned values and prices since the heady, crazy days of 2021, and the sector is now part and parcel of the wider market for contemporary art.
“First of all, enjoy collecting,” says Cramerotti. After all, if a work doesn’t appreciate or depreciate massively, a collector “still has a work of art to enjoy at home, share with family and friends, or boast about within their social circles. The same, he says, can’t be said for “certificates of stock options or company shares – if they go down in value or come to zero, there’s nothing to hold onto”.
Although from a more traditional (non-digital) art background, Frey suggests looking beyond aesthetics. “The digital work that will have longevity will have a unique voice or approach, much like traditional art forms,” she says. “Look into curated collections to avoid the sea of similar looking work. Fellowship.xyz is a good example of a platform that carefully chooses the artists it works with.”
Danny Casale, aka Coolman Coffeedan, a New York-based artist known for his crudely-drawn animations, believes affinity is key. “Buy it because you love the art or artist. Simple as that,” says Casale, whose first global institutional exhibition is running at K11 Shanghai. “Treat it as an investment into your happiness, knowing that you get to own a piece of digital art that you’re rocking with, rather than a financial investment. Too many folks got into the NFT space for the wrong reasons, and it’s a bummer to see the thunder stolen from the incredible artists/innovators doing it for all the right reasons.”
“In my opinion one of the most important things to remember when investing in digital art is that the term ‘digital’ really just refers to the medium the artist is using,” says Jason Seife, an artist with Syrian ancestry whose work references old Persian carpets. “My approach would be no different than when collecting painting, sculpture or photography. My motive has always been to collect what I love. The investment of an artwork which enriches my home or daily life, to me is priceless and that doesn’t change whether it is a painting or a digital artwork.”
Cramerotti and Scalera suggest investing time in following what’s going on, as well as talking to curators, artists, dealers and other collectors. “You meet these figures when you move around and attend events, openings, launches, fairs or biennials, but also when you start following these people on social media,” they say. You can also follow individuals, organisations and groups dedicated to a particular topic. Then slowly you will “become part of a community where things are discussed, names are shared, and opinions are formed – these are the first steps for art validation.”
