Brainstorm Design: When Androids Dream: Ai, Art And The New Marketplace
Francis Belin, President, Christie’s Asia Pacific In conversation with: Tony Chambers, Founder and Creative Director, Studio TC & Friends; Co-chair, Brainstorm Design
Transcript
00:00 The advent of algorithm-generated art has expanded our definition of art, raising vital
00:05 questions with massive implications for the industry.
00:08 Is a piece of art any less valuable because it was created by an algorithm?
00:13 To help us tackle that question and many more, we're joined by Frances Belin, president of
00:18 Christie's Asia Pacific, who manages all Asia Pacific-based teams and serves as a key decision
00:24 maker for all transactions conducted by Asia-based collectors on a global scale, spanning live,
00:31 online, and private sales.
00:33 His global purview extends to the supervision of Christie's Asian and world art departments,
00:39 as well as the luxury department.
00:41 Please welcome Frances and Tony Chambers, founder of creative agency TC & Friends, former
00:46 editor-in-chief of Wallpaper Magazine, and co-chair of Brainstorm Design.
00:51 [Music]
01:06 Thank you, Claire, for that very nice introduction.
01:10 And thank you, Frances, for joining us at Brainstorm Design.
01:14 Thank you.
01:15 Thank you for having me.
01:16 Bringing your knowledge and your expertise in the art market.
01:19 Let's see about that.
01:20 I'm not sure yet.
01:21 We trust you.
01:22 To our conference today, which, as you know, the theme is empathy in the age of AI.
01:29 And we think that Christie's has been at the forefront of exploring this boundary between
01:35 technology and art.
01:37 The seminal moment in 2018 of the sale of the artwork, Edmond de Bellamy.
01:46 Can you tell us how the market has developed since then and how that sale impacted the
01:52 perception of digital AI and generative art and how Christie's deals with it?
01:58 Right.
01:59 So we've been around for quite some time.
02:01 You're not young.
02:04 Me not as long as the whole company, of course, but I started in 1766 and the Emperor Qian
02:11 Long was just halfway through his reign and the French Revolution had not happened yet.
02:15 So I think we've gone through a fair amount of revolution.
02:17 So we've tried to adapt.
02:19 So based on this, the history and the DNA of the company, I think there's also what's
02:25 coming up.
02:26 How is the art market developing?
02:27 How is the world of collectibles developing?
02:30 And what does that mean for the future?
02:33 And we're always very curious and very engaged with different communities to understand what's
02:37 coming up.
02:38 There was a moment where we sold the Edmond Bellamy, which actually sold for 432,000,
02:43 I think it was US.
02:46 It was not Hong Kong dollar.
02:48 It was either US or pounds.
02:51 This was generated by an algorithm.
02:52 It was generated by an algorithm.
02:53 But curated by a collective.
02:56 Exactly.
02:57 And it was a pure AI-based work.
03:00 The data set were 15,000 portraits from the 14th century to the 21st century.
03:07 And that basically got into the machine.
03:10 And Lafamille Bellamy, who is the author of this work, came up with that work.
03:14 And the response, 42 times the high estimate, was quite phenomenal and surprised everyone.
03:20 So we started with this, but we didn't stop there.
03:24 We started to embrace in 2021 NFTs.
03:27 Some of you might remember we sold the work by Beeple for almost 70 million US dollar.
03:32 That met the headline around the world.
03:35 It's the second time in seven years that Christie's are on headlines of major newspapers.
03:41 The first time was the Leonardo da Vinci in 2017.
03:44 And we've continued to be very present at the forefront of digital art, launching Christie's
03:50 3.0, which is an on-chain platform to support the transaction of NFT.
03:54 So we try to do our bit to stay ahead of the game and be there for collectors, also bringing
04:01 to our sales new objects and new objects we think are worth looking at and collecting.
04:09 And I was pleased to see that you recently published a collector's guide to AI and generative
04:16 art.
04:17 Now, I think I know a fair amount about this area, but I realize I didn't know as much
04:23 as I thought.
04:24 Perhaps our guests in the audience may be the same way.
04:27 Can you give us an insight, and particularly the key difference between AI and generative
04:33 art, and actually digital art generally?
04:37 So without getting into too much detail, then I can reference everybody to what actually
04:42 Christie's.com.
04:43 The first distinction is digital art and analog art.
04:46 So analog art is what, since the early ages of art has existed, you have a pigment, you
04:53 have a surface, you paint.
04:55 You have iterations of this over time, innovations of different kinds, including the tubes that
05:00 Bonnet actually could finally use, like he could travel outside of a studio and paint
05:05 and capture the light.
05:07 That's analog art.
05:09 Digital art is using digital means to create.
05:11 Now the way you create may or may not be generative.
05:14 So there's an intersection between digital art and generative art, but generative art
05:19 has existed for decades and basically has a principle which is, I don't want to rely
05:24 solely on my culture, on my brain, on my own emotions.
05:28 I'm trying to extract myself as an artist from the system in which I grew and the system
05:33 in which I live.
05:34 So you had in the '60s or '70s, you had algorithm-based, computer-supported art creation with aesthetics
05:43 that were very graphic, very geometrical.
05:46 And the extension of generative art with AI-based art is basically using machines and algorithms
05:56 like you have for artists like Reific and Adolphe, for example, to create compositions
06:02 that are generative and are digital.
06:05 So there's digital and analog, and there is generative, which has existed before digital
06:09 art actually existed.
06:11 And AI is actually empowering generative art today, bringing it to the next dimension.
06:15 I hope that was clear.
06:17 Very clear, but I want to just make it a little clearer, if you don't mind.
06:22 Generative art, you say, has been around a long time with machines, but AI has introduced
06:28 this element, the artificial intelligence element, which adds a greater possibility
06:35 of chance, less control, in fact, from the artist or the curator.
06:40 Absolutely.
06:41 So in generative art, there is still a certain amount of control through the parameters that
06:47 that artist puts in place.
06:49 There is, even if the objective of the artist when he gets into generative art is to let
06:53 go as much as he can.
06:55 And I think AI as such is a technology that helps to build even more chance into the ultimate
07:02 work that is being created.
07:04 You mentioned Reific and Adolphe, who seems to be the poster boy at the moment of the
07:10 AI.
07:11 I think he is.
07:12 In the AI art world.
07:13 You sold an NFT of his for 1,380,000 back in 2022.
07:19 There was some controversy recently for his piece at the Museum of Modern Art.
07:25 Can you elaborate?
07:26 So we sold, I think, three works of Reific and Adolphe.
07:32 One of the most celebrated digital artists today, as Bepo was on non-AI base, I mean
07:39 there's less AI in what people does.
07:41 Reific is very heavy on the AI side.
07:44 I don't know if some of you have seen the work that was exhibited and actually acquired
07:48 by MoMA in New York.
07:49 It's a massive wall, seven, eight meter tall, five, six meter wide.
07:54 And it's a composition that evolves that is being programmed based on the data set.
07:58 The data set is all the art pieces that MoMA has acquired throughout its history.
08:05 And there was a controversy recently between Reific and Adolphe and Jerry Salz, who's an
08:11 art critic in New York.
08:12 Jerry Salz saying, "Well, that installation is nothing more than a screen server."
08:18 So I don't want to take sides.
08:21 Very expensive screen server.
08:23 Very expensive screen server, but without taking sides, because you know what my side
08:28 would be anyway.
08:30 What I think was really amazing when I saw the work.
08:34 First I was personally touched.
08:35 I think the difference between a random piece of furniture and a painting is it touches
08:41 you.
08:42 A random piece of furniture doesn't touch me.
08:43 So if you have art in your home, if you come across art in a museum or in a place, it has
08:49 to touch you.
08:50 That's what fundamentally defines art.
08:52 That piece of art touched me.
08:54 When I was there, I was absolutely mesmerized.
08:57 But I was also as someone who works in the art world, just looking around how people
09:03 interact or just don't interact, but at least what is the dialogue that's being created
09:07 between that art piece and the audience.
09:08 And it was displayed in that lobby just before you go up the escalator to the galleries.
09:14 And I observed that people stayed tense 20, 30 minutes sitting there looking at it.
09:19 What's coming next?
09:20 What is the next composition?
09:21 What is the color?
09:22 Where is that bubble actually going to land?
09:24 And I think he managed to create with his massive installation, AI-based installation,
09:30 exactly the dialogue that I believe defines art.
09:33 It creates emotions.
09:34 It creates a connection.
09:36 It's something that just brings you into what has been made.
09:42 I was in the Rothko show at the Yenvi Foundation recently in Paris.
09:47 There's a lot of controversy at the beginning on Rothko, which is like, this is just wallpaper.
09:51 When you look at the Rothko with the right lighting, silence around you, it was hot.
09:55 There was a lot of people visiting.
09:57 That's exactly what it creates.
09:58 There's something that she draws, it catches you inside the painting and it touches you
10:04 emotionally.
10:05 So you felt that same emotion?
10:06 I felt it and I observed it.
10:08 And I was obviously not the only one when I looked at the way the rest of the audience
10:11 at MoMA was interacting with the objects.
10:14 I think it's obviously a bit more than a screen saver.
10:20 That leads me on.
10:22 It's created by a machine or data.
10:25 Rafik is curating it in a sense.
10:28 Well, in that sense, maybe not because the collection is there, but it is concept, it's
10:33 its idea.
10:34 It's a conceptual piece in many cases.
10:37 But the thorny issue of intellectual property in that piece.
10:43 So many of the pieces are generated by an algorithm, which is using human prompts from
10:49 Rafik in this case, and a database of images created by human artists.
10:55 What's your take on that?
10:58 The short answer is if you buy at Christie's for sure, it's all cleared when it comes to
11:01 intellectual property.
11:02 So no issue.
11:03 I think AI is...
11:04 I'm not a lawyer.
11:05 I'm certainly not an IP specialist.
11:08 But when you think of the Edmond Bellamy work that referenced a data set of 15,000 portraits,
11:15 I think it's not that easy to actually prove that a certain pixel of that artwork actually
11:20 directly links to the intellectual property on another work.
11:23 So in that respect, I think there's more clarification which is needed if we do think that there
11:30 is a legal implication in terms of intellectual property for AI.
11:35 So the jury is still out, as it were, in legal terms.
11:39 But I struggle, logically I struggle to understand how using a large data set, which is the whole
11:44 point of AI, how you could be able as the owner of a certain piece of intellectual property,
11:50 how you could claim your rights or the commercial dividends that the AI user has generated from
11:59 that work.
12:00 No, my thinking is less legal, more ethical in a sense that how is it ethical to source
12:08 work to create a new piece?
12:10 I look at art history.
12:13 Do we know any artist that has created a painting in a fully isolated way and has cut himself
12:19 or herself out of any inspiration from any other artist?
12:22 I cannot think of one.
12:25 Whether you're Picasso, whether you're Matisse, they always reference two masters and they
12:31 always make pies, they take bits and pieces here and there because that's what art is
12:35 about.
12:36 It's just building humanity one step at a time and you add your brick building on what
12:41 has been done before.
12:42 So is AI fundamentally different?
12:45 I don't think so.
12:46 I think it's just building on the same thing, just in a different way.
12:50 Very good answer.
12:53 How is AI or how is Christie's using AI to better serve its clients and its customers
12:58 through communication and pricing?
13:00 So we get into the other side of AI for us, which is we are a service industry.
13:06 So we transact about 35,000 objects a year.
13:10 We haven't announced our results for this year, but we sold last year 8.4 billion US
13:15 dollars.
13:16 That's a lot of things that move and we have clients to sell.
13:20 Like any other service industry, whether you're F&B or airline or bank, AI is bringing a real
13:26 revolution when it comes, generative AI revolution in terms of how we can serve clients.
13:31 So there's a couple of things we're working on.
13:33 One is when you're a collector, you're basically looking for unique objects.
13:37 So how do you source, based on your collecting spirit and DNA, how do we help you as specialists
13:45 in the art world in a more continuous conversation that you've started with your collection in
13:50 a way that is relevant to you?
13:51 So that's the whole thing on how do we pick from the sales that are coming up objects
13:57 that we think would be relevant for a specific collection.
14:02 There's other things beyond search, which would apply to how we serve clients.
14:08 Just making sure that the emails are easier to write and things that will transform, I
14:14 think a lot of service industries, but I think we will also be embracing this.
14:18 An efficiency and an improvement in how these things work.
14:22 And is that what part is Christie's 3.0, an element of that?
14:27 So Christie's 3.0 is the on-chain platform to transact NFTs.
14:32 Christie's 3.0 is one of the expression of Christie's commitment and DNA to innovate.
14:39 We have launched two years ago Christie's Ventures, which is our own fund to actually
14:45 finance companies that are in the intersection of art and technology so that we stay on top
14:51 of what's going on.
14:52 We also support being one of the largest, if not the largest in the industry, which
14:56 is to support these new players to take a stronger footing into the industry.
15:02 So it's just a spirit that we have.
15:03 So that's one.
15:04 Christie's 3.0 is the NFT, Christie's Ventures.
15:08 We have our art and tech summits.
15:09 We've had seven so far.
15:11 One was in Hong Kong not so far, not so long ago.
15:14 So it's more the philosophy that we have at Christie's, despite our 250 plus years of
15:20 history to try to stay at the forefront of what's going on.
15:23 You're staying light on your feet.
15:25 Just to close, I would like to pivot from digital and AI to bricks and mortar.
15:30 And I'd like to ask you about Christie's new APAC HQ, the Henderson, which is growing as
15:36 we speak.
15:37 It's another really exciting project for us.
15:39 We have announced in 2021 that we'll be moving our regional headquarter to the Henderson
15:44 in Hong Kong, the Zaha Hadid Architect Design Building.
15:49 And what's really exciting for our teams in Asia and globally is to be able to build the
15:54 first sale room post-pandemic.
15:57 Pandemic has changed a lot of things in the way we serve clients, in the way we present
16:01 objects and the way we facilitate transaction.
16:03 We've had a massive amount of digital innovations into how we self-collect us and being able
16:10 to reflect into the design of this new sale room, building on the world we're in today
16:16 and not the world we were before pandemic, I think is hugely exciting.
16:20 So we'll be moving in sometime second half of next year and be able to host a full program
16:26 of sales, auction, private sale, exhibition shows and many other exciting things from
16:34 January to December.
16:35 Very exciting.
16:36 Very much looking forward to it.
16:37 Well, I hope we can invite you back next year to Macau and you can tell us how you have
16:41 settled in to the Henderson.
16:43 Francis, thank you.
16:44 Thank you very much.
16:45 Thank you.
16:46 Thank you.
16:46 [Applause]
16:47 [End of Audio]
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