blockchain for galleries and collectors

an approach for for treading and collecting digital art based on verified trust

preamble

In the artworld we have to deal with fraud, missing provenance, forgery, fencing. Broken chains of trust causes speculation and devaluation of goods unlikely their relevance to the current and upcoming society and history. Trust is a need in the communication and relation of ideal values. Without trust we loose our cultural heritage as human beings.

Blockchain is an technological proposition to establish a better governance bottom up and top down, linking the the weakest and strongest as partners based on equality. Blockchain for the artworld will grant artist fair income during their lifetime, preserve our cultural heritage and protect galleries and collectors against any fraud in a better way.

data is the new value *1
data has it’s own value. It shapes our culture and heritage
data representation forms our thinking as a society

equality statement

Currently blockchain has been abused to reproduce same money and market mechanisms we used to know virtually. It had been called democratic, because it does gives new chances for anyone. Though, it is only only giving away these chances to early adopters. Yet I have not found any concept or implementation which tries to deal with the whole stack of problems as a door opener for a real democratic access to the web for all and everyone.

Let’s take a look to the problems:

well established inequalities for women, colour, foreign workers
well established inequalities between quantity based productivity and quality,
especially between physical products and social infinite work
well established inequalities for the same work and productivity by geographic locations
cognitive dissonance between the helpful evaluation of work and pure speculation

The second look reveals each problem is a social technique of diversity. Disparity and dissonance do create a vicious cycle of loss of trust and confidence. A promise should be a promise of fulfilment not pure speculation for the personal private benefit of one, almost no one.
Not merely blockchain can establish trust in the digital none physical parts of the world, but rather gather a new better balanced way of trade in the physical world. Social work has always been virtual and a high virtue highly underpaid.
Rethink the currency evaluation process. Use blockchain as one technique, because it is a good tool to rebuild the web the way we wanted it, the internet, the global public common place.

the simple blockchain scenario

initial step

create an artwork and document it’s initial values

with a digital generated artwork
- the source code of the generator,
- the source data > random seed, poem 4ex.
- the data of the origin > artist programmer, OS, software versions (node –version 4ex.)
- license > regulation of duties and rights
- other stuff
for an physical artwork
- documentation of the work process
- photos of the final result
- the data of the origin > artist, ..
- license > regulation of duties and rights
- other stuff

all this should be bundled in this first link of the blockchain

hand over to an exhibition place

documentation of the whereabouts, who and when > the exhibition place
contract data > regulation of duties and rights
other stuff like catalogue number etc.
current owner

first time sales / ownership change

data of the sales point aka gallery, owner, artist
data of the buyer (where, who, when, etc)
contract and license data

every other sales

data of the sales point aka gallery, owner, artist
data of the buyer (where, who, when, etc)
the fulfilment of the original contract and license data
verified change of the contract or license data, if possible

what we try to achieve

involve so called trusty-points, trusties from different fields in the art world, which are ‘big’ enough to support this blockchain on the long term run. Possible trusties are institutions like private and public museums, foundations, insurance companies, lawyer offices, galleries, state collections, libraries …

Support against technological obsolescence, fraud or loose of (digital) artworks > recovery or historical reconstruction.

on each of the mentioned steps one or better two trusties should verify the step. Maybe not during but at least after the creation, when the artwork is reaches it’s first destination of presence.

Trusties do keep records of all blockchain-links verified by them, also they should share and collect other parties verifications. Their network will grant the long term support beyond the single points of failures, the death of the artist, the gallery went out of business, single point(s) of trusties collapsed.

Each action causes a blockchain transaction

wallet and vault

wallet: the things one owns with a complete watchable documentation

for an artist his unsold artworks
for galleries, museums , collectors, anyone else the collection
data in here will be shared and synchronized to other nodes

vault: global collection of references

encrypted data - you need the private owner-key to decrypt
public data-hash
public data
public owner-key

an extended chain link proposal

timestamp, index, nonce(?)
encrypted data - you need the private owner-key to decrypt
encrypted private data-hash
global data-hash
public data / the documentation that needs to be public (a copy of the contract/license! e.g)
public owner-key

(1) It is possible that it will replace any money like concept aka currency in the long run towards the future _»back

describing the work flow chain

`a producer`

`a legacy entry`

`a market place vs sales points`

`a contract`

`a buyer new owner`

copyright vs author(ity) rights

the market theft vs to original, better natural achiever

what is digital

social, digital, physical contexts and scopes

the worth of work

world heritage, curation and conservation

to grand long life support for the artwork, even if it is partial destroyed, lost, ..
one can recompile the artwork from the source or at least its history.

lousy values and products

build it lossless
because I claimed long life support, this is a problem,
if one creates something with a growing obsolescence or disappearance

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