May 1, 2022

A Non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, in-game items, and videos. As NFTs dominate the digital art discourse, art and cultural organizations have been experimenting and exploring the format. NFT does bring some opportunities and complexities for art institutions, galleries, and museums that try to take advantage of the increased interest in this emerging form. 

Due to the pandemic, arts organizations’ income has been dramatically affected. Art managers need to think of ways to change exhibition formats, increase audience participation and engagement and find new revenue streams.

NFTs Create New Curatorial Format and Increase Audience Engagement

On Instagram, the #NFT hashtag has 10.27 million posts, and its popularity has led many museums to consider how to use NFTs to arouse greater visitor interest. Art museums create innovative NFT exhibitions by displaying artworks on large high-resolution screens. Seattle NFT museum (SNFTM), the world’s first NFT-themed museum, explored curatorial format and seized the opportunity to bring digital art and NFT communities together while promoting exposure, dialogues, and education. Through large screens and QR codes to access online portals, viewers can observe digital arts in a physical space and unlock the NFT art experience. 

Image 1: The NFT exhibition at the SNFTM. Source: Reuters

In addition, some art galleries integrate NFT and VR/AR to create a Metaverse. Specifically, Weibo Digital Art Gallery created a virtual landing space in 2022, including a three-dimensional street view display. It sets the angle, direction, and borderline that the participants can watch. The participants can scan the objects in reality and put them into virtual exhibitions. Therefore, everyone has the opportunity to create an exhibition area and display various NFT collections. In this way, NFT promotes the virtual form of an exhibition and creates new ways for the audience to interact. 

Image 2: The NFT exhibition combined VR technology. Source: CoinYuppie

Moreover, art museums enhance the audience’s participation by using NFTs as a certificate of ownership and a proof of identity, honoring the involvement and experiences of participants. Specifically, the National Museum Liverpool (NML) has created an online exhibition called Crypto-Connections, inviting viewers to choose museum objects based on their personal experiences and connections – their selections and interpretations build the basis of a decentralized gallery online. Also, each participant will receive a token representing an item they selected from the exhibit and their personal story within the exhibition. 

Image 3: The selected artworks from the exhibition Crypto-Connections. Source: NML

What is more, Art Basel Miami 2021 is partnering with blockchain platform Tezos to encourage visitors to try to “cast” an NFT artwork on-site. Specifically, the artist Mario Kingemann’s interactive installation offered a chance for visitors to cast their own NFTs on the Tezos platform by taking selfies in front of this installation. Art organizations try to provide a more immersive experience, bringing audiences to think about AI and NFTs.

Image 4: The process of minting an NFT by taking a selfie. Source: Surface

Although NFT art auctions have shown a more balanced contribution ratio between males and females than the traditional art market, gender imbalances still exist. According to ArtTactic’s report in November 2021, the contribution rate of male artists in NFT primary and secondary markets reaches 77%, while female artists only account for 23%. Some galleries try to alleviate gender inequality — SuperchiefGallery NFT is the first gallery in New York dedicated to showcasing NFTs on the ground. The works on display are entirely by female artists, and the organization aims to celebrate the creativity of the black community and female artists in the NFT field. As we can see, the addition of NFTs brings up social issues of concern, creates interest, and initiates dialogue among different races and genders.

Art organizations believe that NFTs will be a good reason to attract audiences to the exhibition. The cases above imply that the addition of blockchain and smart contracts decentralizes the museum and encourages participants to engage in it. At the same time, NFT empowers each artist with their rights and helps them enter a new ecosystem. These artists will have the opportunity to gain more attention and benefits.

NFTs Change the Way in Fundraising

In this day and age, art organizations have started to use NFT as a financial tool for fundraising. As digital arts are incorporated into museum collections, many museums are trying to monetize museum collections by marketing digital paintings that are initially from many world-class artists. They transform and replicate masterpieces as digital twins, certify, and sell them as NFTs. In 2021, Florence’s Galleria degli Uffizi sold a painting of Michelangelo for €140,000. Subsequently, the Italian Ministry of Culture stated that they would issue specific restrictions for public museums to sell unique digital reproductions. 

Image 5: Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo. Source: Artnet

Besides, NFTs can be retailed innovatively, such as in museum collections and gift stores. In fact, MoMA’s Photography Department has been in early discussions about incorporating NFTs into their gifts. For example, you can buy an umbrella at the gift shop with a Monet painting, but you can also buy an NFT as proof of participation in the exhibition. Also, museums may consider accepting cryptocurrencies as admission fees, donations, or endowment funds. 

In addition, some organizations use NFTs as a fundraising method to solve social problems effectively. For instance, the cryptocurrency industry has eagerly supported Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked invasion. On the one hand, many NGOs began to raise funds for Ukraine. On the other hand, the Ukrainian government officially entered the cryptocurrency industry to obtain financial support to enhance the potential of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Ukrainian MetaHistory NFT Museum raised over $650,000 by selling NFT artworks documenting the war to restore the museums and theaters in Ukraine.

Potential Risks and Things to Consider

Are NFTs worth it? Although NFTs have been very popular in recent years, many critics still worry about whether NFTs will be a fad. From my perspective, the critics’ concerns are reasonable. NFT has the features of uncertainty and instability, and it lacks a legal system to monitor the whole market. There are risks of fraud and money laundering in the NFT market. Therefore, art organizations need to think about the risks and dangers. 

First of all, arts organizations need to think about the management of digital assets if they decide to adopt NFTs in fundraising. As NFTs became popular, the number of charitable gifts by digital tokens increased. Art museums need to consider the ways to buy and hold crypto assets. Specifically, as an unstable coin, cryptocurrency’s overall value will fluctuate according to the market, and the actual value cannot be guaranteed. If art museums decide to accept cryptocurrencies, they must undertake the risks. 

According to Bloomberg, the largest U.S. donor Fidelity’s Philanthropic Powerhouse, received $331 million of digital assets in 2021, implying that donors could avoid partial taxes on non-cash investments. Arts organizations need to rethink how to promote fundraising and explore the management of digital assets. 

Image 6: A New Philanthropic Powerhouse. Source: Fidelity Charitable

Moreover, art museums need professional knowledge of NFTs and technical support if they decide to apply this emerging form. They need to ask themselves: do we have the personnel and infrastructure to process and preserve the NFT artworks? Do we have difficulty finding trusted technology partners? Are there any copyright issues for us to consider? The opacity of unregulated cryptocurrencies has always been a big problem due to the lack of a regulatory system. Infringement, counterfeiting, plagiarism, and fraud are widespread. If there is a chain breach, chain override, or hacking on a public chain, museums will face huge asset losses. These problems are so severe that several major NFT marketplaces have recently halted their NFT transactions. 

Last but not least, art museums also need to consider if the encryption’s nature affects the organization’s overall development and if NFT’s features connect to the form and theme of the museum collection. Currently, many audiences have questioned the digitalization of masterpieces as an unethical form because it lacks the deceased artist’s consent. Also, traditionalists who appreciate on-site art would object to the display of NFTs in museums. They believe that art museums should still focus on traditional art in a physical space. Indeed, museums are often publicly funded entities, and NFTs challenge the existing values of some museums. When traditional museums tried to use virtual exhibitions to reach online audiences during the epidemic, NFT encrypted art seemed to do the opposite. Based on the differences between NFTs and traditional art forms, art managers need to consider whether the addition of NFTs aligns with their core mission and future development strategies. 

Generally, it’s an exciting fusion of technology and art. NFTs change the direction of museums and bring many potential issues. To apply the new art form, museums need to make strategic changes across various departments – curation, legal, marketing, development, etc., and each sector will face new challenges to digital artwork and NFTs. Based on all this, will NFT art bring benefits to art museums? The answer may be both Yes and No.

Bibliography

Albert Agustinoy, Pablo Ramirez. International | How NFTs will change museums and art in general. Cuatrecasas, published on October 4, 2021. https://www.cuatrecasas.com/en/latam/article/how-nfts-will-change-museums-and-art-in-general 

Anders Petterson, James Cocksey. NFT Art Market Report. ArtTactic. Published in November 2021. https://arttactic.com/product/nft-art-market-report-november-2021/ 

Ben Steverman, Sophie Alexander. Crypto Gifts Surge 1,082% at Fidelity’s Philanthropic Powerhouse. Bloomberg, published on February 15, 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-15/crypto-gifts-surge-1-082-at-fidelity-s-philanthropic-powerhouse 

Christina Petridou. Seattle NFT museum opens its doors to blockchain enthusiasts. Designboom, published on January 18, 2022. https://www.designboom.com/architecture/first-nft-museum-seattle-open-01-18-2022/ 

CoinYuppie. Weibo Digital Art Museum launched a virtual art exhibition based on NFT concept blockchain yesterday. Published on January 11, 2022. https://coinyuppie.com/weibo-digital-art-museum-launched-a-virtual-art-exhibition-based-on-nft-concept-blockchain-yesterday/ 

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Frances Liddel. What Makes A Museum Object NFT Valuable Beyond The Scope Of The Technology? Artnome, published on May 5, 2021. https://www.artnome.com/news/2021/5/1/what-makes-a-museum-object-nft-valuable-beyond-the-scope-of-the-technology

Helen Holmes. The Every Woman Biennial Is Launching an Exhibition at Superchief Gallery NFT. Observer. Published on June 24, 2021. https://observer.com/2021/06/superchief-nft-gallery-show-every-woman-binennial/ 

Jason Vermes. As Museums begin to embrace NFTs, they face new opportunities – and risks. CBC Radio, published on February 19, 2022. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/ottawa-protesters-dig-in-the-pressure-of-black-excellence-museums-embrace-nfts-asahi-baseball-and-more-1.6347442/as-museums-begin-to-embrace-nfts-they-face-new-opportunities-and-risks-1.6356987 

Jing Academy. NFTs and Cultural Institutions: A Guide to The Crypto Space For Museums and The Arts. Accessed on April 19, 2022. https://jingculturecommerce.com/checkout/purchase-confirmation/ 

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Matt McKnight, Diane Craft. World’s first NFT museum in Seattle aims to ‘pull back the curtain’ on blockchain art. Reuters, published on May 2, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/worlds-first-nft-museum-seattle-aims-pull-back-curtain-blockchain-art-2022-04-29/ 

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Nate Storey. An Exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach Allows Visitors to Mint Their Own NFT. Surface, published on November 30, 2021. https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/tezos-art-basel-miami-nft-exhibition-opens/  

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Motion Capture in the Art Industry

Nowadays, audiences have become increasingly demanding and want to have diverse experiences, understand, interact, and share artwork. Many art institutions face the challenges of digital innovation, especially in the pandemic era. This article mainly talks about the change motion capture brings to the museums, artists, audiences; the advantages and issues to consider to use the technology.

In 2020, The Robins Nature Center reopened and offered a diverse, interactive multimedia experience to the public. The exhibition used camera and motion capture technology to build a touch-responsive virtual diving pool to invite visitors to engage, creating an immersive viewing experience through the audiences’ movements. In addition to making artworks responsive to audiences, some museums try to provide a high degree of interactivity, allowing the audiences to become artists and creators. For instance, History Colorado Center used motion capture technology to process images of visitors, revealing their thermal features and contours. The images, like signatures, are integrated into a new scene to interact with the new audiences.

Generally, motion capture meets the need and creates interactive installations to help the museum educate the audiences, inspire the artists to make innovations, and provide audiences with more opportunities. 

Motion Capture Helps Museums Better Communicate Information

Early in 2015, the Metropolitan Museum experimented with digitizing a Renaissance sculptural masterpiece, Adam, with performers in motion-captured suits controlling digital Adam on set. Since the sculpture had previously been shattered by gravity and time, artists Farrington and the Met Museum invested a lot of time in restoration and intensive research to develop this live performance installation. The Hidden cameras, microphones, and speakers captured the movements and voices of the performers and allowed viewers to talk with the digital Adam. 

Through this way, audiences can explore the complexity of the sculpture and dynamically investigate, research, and ask questions about the details. The Metropolitan Museum’s revolutionary exhibition provides an interactive and immersive experience to educate their audiences better. 

Motion Capture Inspires Artists to Innovate

At the same time, motion capture gives artists more diverse forms, more inspiration, and more accessibility. For example, choreographer Merce Cunningham used motion capture for solo dance demonstrations. The camera and software tracked the dancers’ movements and created images with 48 small devices worn on knuckles, wrists, and fingertips. Even when he was in a wheelchair in his later years, he could still control the images with his hands, showing the audience behind the screen the fusion of visual arts and technology. 

In most cases, artists use motion capture in two ways. On the one hand, they could choose to create an avatar and then have performers outfitted with motion-tracking suits to manipulate that avatar in real-time. On the other hand, they can also create a virtual scene, throwing real-person images into the background. Artist Lu Yang chose the latter approach. She used the Noitom Motion Tracking Suit to integrate the performer’s figure into an animated scene. Specifically, the on-site cameras and software would dynamically switch between the reality and virtual space to incorporate the performer and the lively scene. It is also worth mentioning that in this process, the performer’s image can be duplicated into many copies to communicate with different audiences at the same time. The form of audiovisual performance is pioneering, showing the dynamic online art experience possibilities. As we can see, motion capture can inspire artists to explore different art forms. 

In contemporary art, interactive technology like motion capture is an inevitable trend, which records the movements of artists or performers, and allows audiences to watch from different angles, anywhere, and at any time. 

Motion Capture Makes Audiences Become Artists

In addition to the benefits that motion capture brings to artists and museums, the core is serving the audience and giving them a better experience. Future You, the exhibition at the Barbican Center, does a great job of explaining how to fully engage the audience and inspire them to explore the possibilities of art and even create their art. This groundbreaking exhibition uses Mocap from the audience’s perspective: it presents some abstract shapes, allowing the audience to set up the different sizes, styles, color, material type, opacity, density, and other data, and then utilizes one-to-one movement mapping to synthesize figures. In this way, audiences can create a synthetic version of themselves. Each robotic reflection is unique because it is generated from tens of thousands of possible iterations, providing visitors with a personalized, exceptional interactive experience. Even the audiences without any art background can feel the joy of being a creator and have more desire to share. With over 88,000 visitors, the exhibition became the Barbican Center’s most successful exhibition.

In the current age, many organizations want to involve audiences as artists. However, the software would be an issue to consider when presenting touchless motion-based exhibitions. The most common software is Kinect, Intel and Stereolabs ZED. Their design principles include tracking visitor activity through skeletal tracking or blob tracking, detecting gestures and poses. Visitors need to stand in specific positions to make gestures to engage with the LED screen. 

Indeed, more and more motion capture technology is being used in zoos, science centers, children’s museums, and art galleries; the technology develops from a single-user experience to a shared multi-user immersive technology for audiences to deeply participate in the exhibition. Before making a blind decision, organizations need to consider whether their exhibit is suitable for motion capture technology and the pros and cons of this technology.

Advantages and Issues to Consider

“We need to be open to new ideas and understand that failure at some points is totally expected. We need to help people share what they’ve learned from failure and move on to the next idea.” – Lisa Tessarowicz

Mocap has opened a new door for the art industry. Still, there is no correct answer as to whether art organizations need to adopt this technology because Mocap’s advantages and disadvantages need to be considered and the organization’s own infrastructure and conditions.

To begin with, it is easy to see that the audiences’ direct interaction with the artwork will lead to deeper participation and understanding of the arts. Typically, only the researchers can use the magnifying glass to figure out the details; motion capture technology helps the audiences achieve this goal through multi-dimensional exploration. Unlike 3D modeling, motion capture provides more spontaneous behavior from the viewer’s perspective, and it can recreate complex movements and realistic physical interactions accurately. The Case Study for Animating Virtual Humans uses martial arts as an experiment to show how motion capture performs better than 3D modeling. Mocap can record more complex gestures, capture more details, and present smoother movements. 

Along with the convenience, art managers should consider several potential problems of mocap. First, museums are free-choice learning environments, so every interaction and participation need to be clear and intuitive. Otherwise, most visitors will leave directly to another exhibit. Therefore, organizations need to carefully consider whether they can provide the most detailed and understandable guidance for their audiences. In other words, the Mocap needs to be accessible and easy to understand. Some cultural organizations have removed physical equipment and eliminated the training phase for mocap to invite the audiences to interact directly with the digital art. For example, art organizations can display digital paintings on interactive screens, allowing viewers to use body movements and gestures to paint images. 

What is more, the mocap technology requires specific hardware and special software programs to generate and process the data, which means it can be an expensive investment for many arts organizations. In addition to purchasing equipment, organizations also need to consider the costs of human resources and the space limitation. In most cases, the organization needs to have technicians to support the operation of the mocap and solve problems and provide help for the audiences. Furthermore, the organization also needs to have enough space for the audience to wave, swing, and interact. The mocap camera will only capture a limited vision if the area is too narrow. 

Last but not least, mocap is closely related to ethical issues. Instead of using mocap to enhance interactivity, some art organizations choose to use it as a tool to collect data, monitor the audience’s behaviors, and improve customer service. Some art organizations will use motion capture not as a work of art to enhance interactivity but as a management and data processing tool to monitor their audience and improve their customer service and visitor experience. For example, facial and movement tracking, a branch of motion capture, is used by the Palace Museum in Beijing to navigate visitors, reminding them where to avoid queues and where they haven’t yet arrived. The technology sounds helpful to improve visitors’ experiences. Still, at the same time, it means that the motion capture will record the whereabouts and movements of the tourists at any time. 

Additionally, Bologna’s Civic Museum combines mocap and AI technology to track visitors automatically. The integrated technology can analyze each visitor’s movements, perspectives, facial expressions, sentiments, and demographic information. Hence, these museums’ use of motion capture has led some people to believe that motion capture has ethical issues and privacy concerns. Therefore, art organizations must carefully consider balancing service customer experience, information leakage, and data processing to improve the visitor’s viewing experience effectively.

Conclusion

The rise of the Internet and new technologies has affected the digital transformation of all industries, forcing all arts and cultural organizations to diversify their practices and innovate in forms to attract larger audience groups. As a widespread technology, Mocap can be combined with AI, robotics, 3D modeling, and other fields to help museums educate audiences, inspire artists, and increase audience engagement. The technology gives the arts organization more possibilities, but its potential problems are also worth considering.

Resources

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