Name: Brainstorm Design: When Androids Dream: Ai, Art And The New Marketplace
Uploaded: 2023-12-06
Duration: 16 min 54 s
Description: Francis Belin, President, Christie’s Asia Pacific In conversation with: Tony Chambers, Founder and Creative Director, Studio TC & Friends; Co-chair, Brainstorm Design

Francis Belin, President, Christie’s Asia Pacific   In conversation with: Tony Chambers, Founder and Creative Director, Studio TC & Friends; Co-chair, Brainstorm Design

Brainstorm Design: When Androids Dream: Ai, Art And The New Marketplace

Conferences

The advent of algorithm generated art has expanded our definition of art raising vital questions with massive implications for the industry is a piece of art any less valuable because it was created by an algorithm to help us tackle that question. And many more we're joined by Francis Belin, president of Christie's Asia Pacific who manages all Asia Pacific based teams and serves as a key decision maker for all transactions uh conducted by Asia based collectors on a global scale spanning live online and private sales. His global global purview extends to the supervision of Christie's Asian and world art departments as well as the luxury department. Please welcome Francis and Tony Chambers, founder of creative agency TC and friends, former editor in chief of wallpaper magazine and co chair of brainstorm design. Thank you Claire for that very nice introduction. And thank you Francis for joining us at brainstorm design in bringing, thank you for having me bringing your knowledge and your expertise in the art. Well, let's tell you about that. Not sure yet. We trust you um to our conference today, which as you know, the theme is empathy in the age of A I and we think that Christie's has been at the forefront of exploring this boundary between technology and art and the seminal moment in 2018 of the sale of the artwork Edmund de Bellamy. Can you tell us how the market has developed since then and how that sale impacted the perception of digital A I and generative art and how Christie's deals with it. Right? So we, we've been, you know, we've been around for quite some time. I was, you're not young me, not as long as, as the whole company, of course, but uh I studied in 1766 and uh the Emperor Chen Long was just halfway through his reign and the French revolution had not happened yet. So I think we've gone through a fair amount of revolution. So we've tried to adapt. OK. So based on this in um the history and the DNA of the, the, the company, I think there's also what's coming, what's coming up, how is the art market developing? How is the world of collectible developing? And what does that mean for the future? And we are always very curious and very engaged with different communities to understand uh what's coming up that moment where we saw the Mont De La Mi uh which actually sold for 432,000. Uh I think it was us. Uh It was not Hong Kong dollar, it was either us or pounds. Uh It was, this was generated by an algorithm. It was generated by, by a, a collective. Exactly. And it was, it was a pure A I based work. The data set with 15,000 portraits from the 14th century to the uh to the 21st century. And that basically got into the machine. And uh the fy beam who is the author of this work came up with that work and the response 4242 times the highest iate was quite phenomenal and surprised everyone. So we started with this, but we didn't stop there. We sold, uh we started to embrace in 2021 NFTS. Uh Some of you might remember, we sold the work by people for almost $70 million that met the, the headline around the world. It's the second time in seven years at three. So um uh season on headlines of major newspaper, the first time was the Leo Da Vinci in 2017. And we've continued to be very present at the forefront of digital art launching Christie's 3.0 which is an on chain platform to support the transaction of NFT. So we, you know, we try to do our bit to, to stay ahead of the game and, and be there for collectors. Uh also bringing to ourselves uh new objects and new, you know, new objects we think are worth looking at and collecting. And I was pleased to see that you recently published a collector's guide to A I and generative art. Now, I think I know a fair amount about this area, but I realized I didn't know as much as I thought. Perhaps, I guess in the audience may be the same way. Can you give us an insight and particularly the key difference between A I and generative art and actually digital art generally? So, uh without getting into too much detail, then I can reference everybody to actually.com. Um The first distinction is digital art and analog art. So analog art is what you know, since the early ages of art that existed, you have a pigment, you have a surface, you paint, you have iterations of this over time. Innovations of different kinds, including the tubes that B actually could finally use. Like he could travel outside of the studio and paint and capture the light. That's analog art. Digital art is using digital means to create. Now the way you create may or may not be generative. So there's an intersection between digital art and generative art, but generative art has existed for decades and basically has a principle which is I don't want to rely solely on my culture, on my brain, on my own emotions. I'm trying to extract myself as an artist from the system in which I grew and the system in which I live. So you had in the seventies or sixties or seventies, you had algorithm based computer supported art creation uh with aesthetics that will be very graphic. They were very geometrical and the extension of generative A I with uh so generative art with A I based art is basically using machines and algorithm like you have for artists like he and Adolph, for example, uh to create compositions uh that are generative and are digital. So there is digital and analog and there is generative which has existed before digital art actually existed. And A I is actually empowering generative art today, bringing it to the next dimension. I hope that was clear, very clear, but I want to just make it a little clearer. Um If you don't mind generative art, you say has been around a long time with machines, but A I is introduced this elements, the architect, the artificial intelligence elements, which adds a greater possibility of chance, less control, in fact, from the artist or the curator. Absolutely generative art. There is still a certain amount of control through the parameters that that artist puts in place. There is even if the objective of the artist when it gets into generative art is to let go as much as he can. And I think A I as such is a technology that helps to build in more even more chance uh into uh the ultimate work that has been created. You mentioned Rafiq an AOL who seems to be the poster boy at the moment of the A I um you sold a NFT of his for 1 million, 380,000. Back in 2022 there was some controversy recently for his hes at the Museum of Modern Art Can You? So we saw, we saw the, I think three works of uh Je and Ador. He's uh one of the most celebrated uh digital artists today. Uh As people was uh on the non A I base and it's less A I in what people does. He is very heavy on the A I side. Um I don't know if some of you have seen the work that was exhibited and actually acquired by Moma in New York. It's a massive wall, 7 8 m tall, 5 6 m wide. And it's a composition that evolves that is uh being programmed based on the data set. The data set is all the art P CS that Moma has acquired uh throughout its history. And uh there was a controversy recently between uh Rafi Anna and, and Jerry Sal was an art critic in New York. Jerry starts saying well that installation is nothing more than the screen server. Uh So I don't want to take sides, but I very expensive, very expensive screen server, but without taking sides because you know what my side would be anyway. Um What I think was really amazing when I saw the work first, I was personally touched. So I think the difference between a random random piece of furniture and the painting is it touches you. A random piece of furniture doesn't touch me. So if I, if you have art in your, in your home or if you come across art in a museum or in a place, it has to touch you. That's what fundamentally defines art. That piece of art touched me when I was there. I was absolutely mesmerized. But I was also as a, as someone who works in the art world, looking around how people interact or just don't interact with this. What is the dialogue that's being created between that art piece and the audience? And it was displayed in that lobby just before you go up the escalator to the galleries. And I observed that people stayed 1020 30 minutes sitting there looking at it. What's coming next? What is the next composition? What is the color? Where is that bubble actually going to land? And I think he managed to create with his massive installation A I based installation. Exactly the dialogue that I believe uh defines art. It creates emotion, it creates a connection. It's something that just, you know, brings you into what has been uh what has been made. I was in the, in the Rothko Show at the Envy Foundation recently in Paris. There's a lot of controversy at the beginning on Wolf Go, which is like this is just wallpaper. When you look at the Roco with the right lighting silence around you. It was hard. There was a lot of people visiting. That's exactly what it creates. There's something that she draws, it drives you, you know, it catches you inside the painting and you just, it touches you emotionally that you felt that same emotion. I felt it and I observed it and I was obviously not the only one when I looked at the way the rest of the audience at moma was uh was interacting with the objects. I think it's obviously a bit more than a screen set. Um That leads me on. It's created by a machine or data. Rafik is curating it in a sense. Well, in that sense, maybe not because the collection is there, but it's his concept. It's its idea. It's a conceptual piece in many, many cases. But um the thorny issue of intellectual property in that, you know, that piece, so many of the pieces are generated by an algorithm, but it's using human prompts from Rafik in this case and a database of images created by human artists. What's your take on that? But the short answer is if you buy a Christie for sure, it's all clear when it comes to intellectual properties. So no issue, I think A I is, is a, is a, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not certainly not an it specialist. But when you think of the Edmond Bellamy work that referenced a data set of 15,000 portraits, I think it's not that easy to actually prove that a certain pixel of that artwork actually directly links to the intellectual property on another work. So uh in that respect, I, I think there's more clarification which is needed if we do think that there is a legal implication in terms of intellectual property for the jury is still out as it were and the jury is still out. But II, I struggle logically, I struggle to understand how using a large data set, which is the whole point of A I, how you could be able as the owner of a certain piece of intellectual property, how you could claim uh your rights or the commercial dividends that the A I user has generated from that work. Now, my, my thinking is less legal, more ethical in the sense that how is it ethical to source work to create a new piece? I look at other history. Do we know any artist that has created a painting in a fully isolated way and has cut himself or herself out of any inspiration from any other artist? I cannot think of one. you know, whether you're Picasso, whether you're um matisse, you, they always reference to masters. Uh and they always, they make pies, they take bits and pieces here and there because that's what art is about. It's just building humanity one step at a time and you add your break building on what has been done before. So is a I fundamentally different. I don't think So I think it's just building on the same thing just in a different way. Very good answer. Um How is A I or how is Christie is using A I to better serve its clients and its customers through communication and pricing? So, so we get, yes. So we get into the uh the other side of A I for us, which is we are service industry. So we, we transact uh about 35,000 objects a year. We sold uh We haven't announced our results for this year, but we sold last year $8.4 billion has a lot of things that move. Uh And we have plans to sell and like any other service industry, whether us NB or airline or bank. Um A I is bringing a real revolution when it comes generative A I A revolution in terms of how we can serve clients. So there's a couple of things we're working on. One is when you're a collector, you're basically looking for unique objects. So how do you source based on your collecting uh you know, spirit and DNA, how do we help you as specialists in the art world in a more continue the conversation that you started with your collection in a way that is relevant to you. So that's the whole thing on how do we pick from the sales that are coming up objects that we think would be relevant for uh specific collection. Uh There's all the things um beyond search, which would apply to how we we serve clients. Um you know, just making sure that the emails are easier to write and you know, things that will transform, I think a lot of service industries, but I think we will also be embracing this in efficiency and an improvement in, in how these things work. And is that what part is Christie's 3.0 an element of that? So Christie's 3.0 is the on chain platform to transact NFTS. Uh Christie's 0.0 is, is one of the expression of uh Christie's uh commitment and DNA to innovate. Um We have launched uh two years ago, Christie's ventures, which is our own fund, actually finance companies that are in the section of art and technology. Uh so that we, we stay on top of what's going on. But we also support being, you know, one of the largest, you know, the largest in the industry, which to support these uh new players to, to take a stronger footing into the, the. So it's just the spirit that we have. So that's 13 point Christie's 3.0 is the NFT Christie's ventures. We have our Art and Tech summits. Uh We've had seven so far, one was in Hong Kong. Uh not so far, not so long ago. So it's more the philosophy that we have at Christie's despite our 250 plus years of history to try to stay at the forefront of you're staying light on your feet. Um Just to close, I would like to pivot from digits of an A I to bricks and mortar and I'd like to talk to you about Christie's new A P ach Q, the Henderson, which is growing as we speak. So another really exciting project for us, we have announced in 2021 that we'll be moving our regional headquarters to the Anderson in Hong Kong, the Zaha Hadid architect, design building. And what's really exciting for, for our teams in Asia and globally is to be able to build the first sale room post pandemic. Pandemic has changed a lot of things in the way we serve clients in the way we present objects and the way we facilitate transactions, we've had a massive amount of digital innovations into how we we self collectors and being able to reflect into the design of this new C room building on, you know, the world we're in today and not the world we were before pandemic, I think is uh hugely exciting. So we'll be moving in some second half of next year and be able to host a full program of uh sales, um auction, private sale exhibition shows and, and many other exciting things from January to December. Very much. Looking forward to it. Well, I hope we can invite you back next year to Macau and you can tell us how you have settled in Henderson, Francis. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.