Digital Transformation in the Cultural and Creative Industries

Production, Consumption and Entrepreneurship in the Digital and Sharing Economy

Marta Massi, Marilena Vecco, Yi Lin, Marta Massi, Marilena Vecco, Yi Lin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000287257
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Museología

This research-based book investigates the effects of digital transformation on the cultural and creative sectors. Through cases and examples, the book examines how artists and art institutions are facing the challenges posed by digital transformation, highlighting both positive and negative effects of the phenomenon.

With contributions from an international range of scholars, the book examines how digital transformation is changing the way the arts are produced and consumed. As relative late adopters of digital technologies, the arts organizations are shown to be struggling to adapt, as issues of authenticity, legitimacy, control, trust, and co-creation arise.

Leveraging a variety of research approaches, the book identifies managerial implications to render a collection that is valuable reading for scholars involved with arts and culture management, the creative industries and digital transformation more broadly.

1 Digital transformation in the cultural and creative sectors

Marta Massi, Marilena Vecco, and Yi Lin

Introduction

Digital transformation processes—now occurring in many sectors, including hospitality and mobility—are also influencing the way that art is traded and consumed (Camurri & Volpe, 2018) and pushing arts organizations to re-envision their business practices and models (Newman, 2010; Chaney, 2012; Lee & Lee, 2018). Digital transformation has contributed to making art consumption more interactive, dynamic, and democratic. The effects of digital transformation have been particularly disruptive in many arts industries, including music, print, and film, decimating entire sectors of the arts industry (Newman, 2010). This shift is even more evident in the arts sector where the technological and digital revolutions have gradually corroded the aura of originals or prototypes threatening the notion of authenticity (Benjamin, 2008). At the same time, online media allow artists to remove barriers and show their authentic self to their supporters (Samdanis, 2016).

The advent of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has inexorably affected arts organizations such as museums, theaters, and galleries. Most of them have switched to digital, offering virtual visits, concerts, and performances online, increasing worldwide access to creative activities, which might otherwise be out of reach.

In a context of progressive disintermediation of the art market, organizations decouple their structures and land on the Internet to conform to the norms of their changing institutional environment, to gain legitimacy in the eyes of and build trust among constituents (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). At the same time, new organizations come up that take advantage of digital transformation and disintermediation: for example, online platforms that act as institutional entrepreneurs (Battilana et al., 2009).

This book deals with the transformational process and the critical changes—brought about by the advent of digital transformation—that are leading arts, cultural, and creativity-based organizations to re-invent/revisit their traditional business models and are pushing artists to revise and adapt their way of creating and communicating their artworks. In the sharing economy’s era, organizations are increasingly disintermediating their activities. Instead of using traditional distribution channels, that is, intermediaries such as wholesaler or agents, they may now deal with every customer directly via the Internet. Therefore, digital transformation leads not only to “a new form of goods and services distribution” but also to a completely novel reconfiguration of production and consumption processes (Guignard, 2014, p. 43). By initiating a dialectic dynamic of “integration/disintegration of activities” on the one side and one of “disintermediation/re-intermediation” (Jallat & Capek, 2001; Guignard, 2014) on the other one, digital transformation is introducing new evolving paradigms that threaten to disrupt the art world (Guignard, 2014, p. 43).

The disruptive power of digital transformation

Digital transformation has the potential to alter the established mechanisms of the art world, by redefining the roles of producers, consumers, and cultural intermediaries (O’Connor, 2013). Empowered by digital transformation, consumers may now concretely turn into prosumers (Toffler, 1980; Ritzer, 2014) as they can interact directly to exchange and co-create art-based products and services based on a collaborative consumption perspective. In this way, a process of “Uberization” (Daidj, 2019) takes place in the arts world and increasingly, many services are offered that empower consumers to take an active role in the delivery process. Meanwhile, new cultural intermediaries emerge in the creative economy that are not necessarily “institution-based” (O’Connor, 2013).

The platform logic that characterizes an increasing number of sectors is expanding to other fields, which are not traditionally related to the sharing economy, including crafts, music, fashion, and film (Geissinger et al., 2018). This development is also evident in the arts world, where many organizations, such as museums and art galleries, are getting increasingly involved in a new digital transformation process (Samdanis, 2016). This is an evolution that has allowed them a presence on the web with an interface that is more engaging for customers. According to Benghozi and Lyubareva (2014) the Internet has become a new alternative environment where arts and creativity can be consumed, discussed, known, and purchased. Online platforms, such as Artsy, ArtStack, and Artpassport, that allow users to purchase, share, and create personal exhibits with artworks, are just few examples of how digital transformation is redefining how arts and cultural products and services are created, distributed, and consumed. This raises the question whether art should be a possession or an experience to be enjoyed by users, as individuals increasingly prefer “affordable and meaningful experiences over ownership” (Leeds Davis, 2017, online resource).

Although online trading of artwork is not a completely new phenomenon since many websites came up in the 1990s as a consequence of the “dot.com boom” (Adam, 2014, p. 121; Lee & Lee, 2018), digital transformation processes are now occurring more often than ever in the arts and cultural field, where “online art entrepreneurs create value through digital networks that bypass intermediaries linking producers directly to consumers” (Samdanis, 2016, p. 4).

The impact of digital transformation on the arts

The impact of digital technology has affected the way artists produce their artworks. Digital transformation opened up new spaces and possibilities for art creation, leading the way for novel and innovative artistic genres and techniques, including net art, digital installation art, and virtual reality. Furthermore, digital transformation has provided artists with new tools to communicate with their fun base and to promote their artworks. For some artists, such as Ai Weiwei, and especially contemporary art and street art artists, such as Bernulia @bernulia, Tanaka_tatsuya @tanaka_tatsuya, and Beccaclason @beccaclason, Instagram represents the main platform through which they promote or sell their artworks, do cultural branding, communicate to fans, and experiment new media-based art forms “that push the boundaries of contemporary art and museum collections” (Samdanis, 2016, p. 2).

The “Uberization” (Daidj, 2019) of markets is something that all cultural and creative industries, including the arts, need to be conscious of, and be ready to respond to in this new economy. The main key to understanding this metamorphosis/change is the recognition of the integration/disintegration and disintermediation/re-intermediation dialectic processes that many of the sharing economy platforms deliver. Consequently, new roles and functions of the art organizations involved in the digital transformation process will be created.

On the one hand, the art world is not avoiding the digital transformation as increasingly art galleries and artists exhibit their artworks on their websites (Henning, 2006; Taşkıran, 2019), while art dealers found in the Internet new and alternative opportunities for making profit and meeting prospect customers (Velthuis, 2014; Lee & Lee, 2018). Meanwhile, artists are increasingly using social media such as Instagram or Facebook to release information on their exhibitions (Fletcher & Lee, 2012) and personal blogs for branding themselves and their artwork, and for “inducing transactions by making direct contacts with prospective buyers” (Lee & Lee, 2018, p. 3). Furthermore, new apps such as Magnus and ArtPassport are bringing contemporary art closer to people in an attempt to democratize and “demystify the art world” (Fetherstonhaugh, Founder of ArtPassport, cited in Doshi, 2018).

On the other hand, digital transformation has made artists, galleries, art dealers, and other art intermediaries “all very anxious these days” as an increasing number of innovative apps and algorithms have been introduced, which threaten to change the rules of the art market game (Kamer, 2016). Recently, the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) has issued guidelines to instruct UK arts institutions on how to “harness the potential of digital technology” in order to relate to a more and more active and engaged audience (Furness, 2018).

Disintermediation processes can offer to art collectors the opportunity to be involved in socialization processes that are important for them as well. Especially art collectors who would like to be part of an artistic project as partners of institutions such as galleries (as opposed to mere service or fund providers) could find in disintermediation and decoupling new opportunities for socialization (Riché et al., 2016). In this vein, social media allow arts organizations such as museums to communicate with their audiences; however, “this socialising trend is still in their infancy within the art world” (Enhuber, 2015, p. 121).

In addition, the advent of digital transformation has boosted entrepreneurship in the art market, “empowering agents to create value in the art market through the development of online platforms and new business models” (Samdanis, 2016, p. 3; Lee & Lee, 2018). Thus, the phenomenon of disintermediation, occurring in several sectors, is also extremely timely and strategic within the arts context; and particularly relevant for the segment of art collectors, who usually develop “a private and intimate relationship with the artwork” (Riché et al., 2016, p. 37). Art-tech platforms and apps allow these collectors and art lovers to sell art among them, skipping the art gallery step (e.g., ART Please), to get the artworks’ name and price without asking experts (e.g., Magnus), to rent artworks online (e.g., Rise Art), and to get information on which art to buy/sell/liquidate based on market forces (e.g., Artrank).

Surprisingly, however, studies on digital art platforms are scant both in mainstream and in arts marketing field (Lee & Lee, 2018). At present, there are no books dealing exhaustively with the phenomenon of digital transformation in the arts. This book aims to cover this gap by offering a critical contribution to the debate on digital transformation from the stance of the actors involved and based on a multidisciplinary perspective. Additionally, to show how the theory turns into practice, this book proposes research on and the analysis of cases showing how arts organizations are dealing with digital transformation in the age of the sharing economy. This book collects some of the leading scholars and specialists in the field to provide both empirical and conceptual contributions. It guides the reader through the state of the art and possible perspectives of research and development in this specific area.

Purpose and objectives of the book

Through cases and examples, the authors examine how artists and art institutions, such as museums, and the creative industries are facing the challenge posed by digital transformation in the age of the sharing economy. Specifically, this book examines how digital technology can lead to institutional turbulence and change the way arts and creativity are produced and cons...