by Eolake Stobblehouse

Normally I don't write "make-your-point-by-fear" articles, but I thought I'd give it a whirl to see how it goes:)

Are visual artists who are not online an endangered species?

Will 95% of all art be sold and delivered on the Net in ten years?

You laugh. So did the directors and owners of Encyclopædia Britannica eight years ago when Microsoft offered them a collaboration to make a CD-ROM encyclopedia. Microsoft had to do it alone, they did so, their Encarta CD-ROM was a huge hit, and now EB has to give their content away for free to get rid of it at all. They never imagined that anything delivered on a screen could ever replace their heavy paper books. EB as a company is now about one-tenth of the size it was in the early nineties.

Think about that.

But you say: "People still need something they can hang on their walls!"

To that I say: "Sure... Mmmaybe..."

Several data modify this heavily:

1. I have not personally bought any wall art for a couple of years, which is partly due to the fact that I get a lot of "art-satisfaction" just from the relatively low-resolution art I always have on my computer screen, and refresh often from what I get from the web.
2. Computer screens are getting bigger and bigger, better and better, and cheaper and cheaper all the time. And since they are backlit, which paper or canvas is not, it takes a really good print to rival the colors of a modern screen.
3. Color printers are also getting better and cheaper really fast. It will not be long until almost any computer-enabled home can print out its own high-fidelity posters.
4. At some point big wall-screens will become popular and common. Why buy fragile and dull-colored paper/canvas art when you can have a screen that updates the art every week or every hour per your wishes? There will even be online services that sell you subscriptions to art that is automatically downloaded to your home system and displayed for your pleasure.
5. And even before these things become common, we already have systems in place for ordering your art online, getting it custom-printed to your liking, and shipped to you by mail.
6. If you say: "But I am making textured paintings 12 by 12 feet. They can't print out those. I am safe!" I admit it will be a decade or two before there are cheap printer to do stuff like that. And some craft will never be replaced. But this will be a rapidly diminishing niche. Are you sure you want to bet your livelihood on being able to dominate there?

Adapt or die!!! ...Erhmm, sorry, this is no good. I don't like to paint the future in grey and black, particularly when the more realistic picture has got enormous amounts of white in it. Look at it this way: if you were employed as a scribe when the printing press was invented, you had two ways to go about it: succumb to depression and starvation, or find a way to use this marvelously economical invention to your own good.

The fact is that the Internet is potentially a gold mine for most everybody. Just look at the fact that big companies are already making purchases almost entirely on the Net. Why? Because it saves money. Not small money, billions! Something that is such an economic boon for such a basic and traditional application obviously has a lot of potential beyond that.

Of course the way to use the Net depends on what kind of art you make. Sculptures can't be delivered electronically, for instance. But they can be sold electronically. Just for instance, instead of sending expensive kits of pictures or color brochures to potential customers, you can just refer them to your web site. The cost of distribution on the web is something like one thousandth of physical distribution, if that.

And those savings and ease of use is just for having the most basic of all web sites: a bit of text, a bunch of pictures, and your e-mail address. Imagine what actual e-commerce could do for you, with online ordering and payment. I will not pretend that it is not still early in the game, and the setting up can be a little clumsy as yet, but that is true of all new opportunities.

One important factor is still missing from the online artist's game: micro-payments. There are people working on it, and everybody is very interested in getting it, but so far it has not appeared in widely popular systems. So far credit cards is about the only practical solution for online payment, and it is only viable down to payments of at least a few dollars. When we get a payment system that will take payments of five or ten cents profitably, then the artist can sell big numbers of electronic copies of his works. He might sell low-resolution copies for screen viewing for very small amounts of money each, and high-resolution copies for printing out, for higher prices. Of course if you are selling high-quality prints, signed, then you better take prices that are viable by credit card anyway:)

Since art is not quite a consumer item in that most people don't go out of their way to find it, and since we are used to a certain fidelity in that area, resolution and longevity-wise, it has not yet reached an online commerce level anywhere near what other commodities have, for instance music and books. But the keyword here is "yet". David Bowie said it well in an interview: "The Internet will change everything, absolutely everything." I don't think that is an overstatement. Already some of us find it hard to remember what life was like without the web, and it has only been around for half a decade!

Maybe you think you will do fine for a few years yet without sucking up to the big bad web. But remember: the early bird gets the fresh coffee!

- Stobblehouse