SUPPORT FROM
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts: Creative R&D Labs program, fundraising and Fiscal Sponsorship from the Bay Area based non-profit cultural incubator.
Filecoin Foundation: Funding for research and design from the foundation, which aspires to put the power of humanity’s most important information back into the hands of everyone.
Fission: Development support and product design insight from the experts in identity, data, and compute solutions for the future of the Internet.
Arts Equity Group: Communication support from a network of artists, activists, and consultants committed to promoting systemic change through arts and culture.
NYU Tandon School of Engineering Integrated Design and Media Program: Collaborating on engineering and restoration of experimental media artworks.
TRANSFER Data Trust is a decentralized artist-owned archive and cooperative value exchange network.
The Data Trust is a milestone development in TRANSFER’s decade-long journey. In 2023 we announced we’re pausing our gallery program to reflect on the distant early warnings from our artists, by establishing a decentralized archive backed by a trust holding artworks from our 85+ international exhibitions. This speculative design project is focused around building an automated, non-profit cooperative trust model that integrates the perpetual purpose artist trust with cooperative organizational structures.
The experiment is backed by modern technological practices such as encryption (smart contracts) and decentralized storage to facilitate efficient management and accrue value in a new way for experimental media artists. This shift in the gallery’s operations represents an ‘Exit to Community’ inspired by the Media Economics Design Lab at the University of Boulder.
KEY FEATURES
Decentralized Archive: A peer-to-peer network for art conservation, ensuring a robust and distributed approach to preserving artworks.
Artwork Equity Management: Using smart contracts to manage and grow the value of digital assets, offering a new dimension to art asset governance.
Long-term Sustainability: Designed to maintain artworks in perpetuity, ensuring their preservation and accessibility across generations.
ROADMAP for 2024
Prototyping: Powered by Fission, prototyping decentralized inventory management and proof-of concept for our decentralized data network.
Artwork Restoration: Reviving the 10 years of exhibitions at TRANSFER to produce condition assessments and conservation treatments for the historic inventory.
Establishment of the Artist-owned Archives: Implementing a decentralized data storage network in the studios of our artists.
Cooperative Trust Business Model Development: Adopting an iterative design and development methodology to develop data structures, workflows, and best practices across the studios. We’re modeling the value exchanges that have been powering TRANSFER cooperatively over the past decade.
Public Engagement: Hosting events and programs in Miami, NYC, and SF to share the development process and engage the community.
OUTCOMES
– A decentralized network across multiple regions, owned by artists and built for long-term art conservation.
– Efficient resource pooling and time-banking expertise from specialists in various fields.
– Prototype of a toolkit for artists to host, enabling a self-owned system for art management.
SUSTAINABILITY ROADMAP
– Establishing a treasury from the equity of artworks for ongoing maintenance and conservation efforts.
– Expanding the model to benefit a broader community, providing resources for others to establish their own artist-owned trusts.
– Continuous development and enhancement of the trust model, ensuring its relevance and effectiveness in the changing art and technological landscape.
FEATURED IN
Looks Like New: Interview with Adina Glickstein
C/Change Signals Interview with Mai Ishikawa Sutton
DWeb Decoded Podcast: How TRANSFER Gallery is Decentralizing Art