Marek Zabicki (Arteia): Innovation at the service of art
“Arteia builds the next generation of smart, automated, and easy to use tools which help in the everyday tasks of artists and collectors,” exlplains Marek Zabicki, Co-Founder & CTO of Arteia. Interview.
Can you present Arteia in a few words?
Arteia is an art and technology company which draws on two decades of experience in the development of collection management and navigation systems for hundreds of museums and cultural institutions, as well as for major private art collectors. Arteïa's mission is to deliver user friendly applications that empower the actors of the art market, allowing them to build symbiotic relationships with each other and be more efficient and productive. Arteia develops apps that facilitate managing, sharing, promoting, researching, selling, and buying art, but more importantly, tools that make the process of discovering and learning about artists and artworks thrilling. Arteia achieves this by utilizing cutting edge technology in newly applicable and innovative methods.
“CONNECT is the first tamper-proof digital passport for an artwork, securely linking artwork’s digital representation to the object itself via encrypted NFC tags”
How exactly are you innovative?
Our applications keep innovation at their core. One of them is COLLECT, a collection management system, which proposes, among other benefits, entirely separate database per customer, making everyday tasks much more secure and easy to decentralize. It can easily integrate RFID technology for fast object identification and NFC tagging for effortless authentication. COLLECT is a window into the artworld, where the collector can learn about artists, artworks, services, and events as well as interact with other art market actors via a personalized feed, discovery tools and integrations. Our experience in blockchain technology enabled us to put the artist at its center. Our Digital Catalogue Raisonné (DCR) allows the artist to manage artworks and their production, promotion, and provenance. With a website generator, the possibility to systematically compile a DCR anchored on the blockchain, and an incoming tool for online media outreach, this app will become a fundamental means of communicating online, where collectors and institutions interested in the artist’s work will learn about the author and their practice.
How do you see your company evolving in the next 2 years?
We see Arteia as an art technology company which is making a digital ‘ecospace’ as friendly as possible for any artist and any collector. We consider using blockchain as an important ingredient to most of our tools potentially enabling much needed decentralization. We plan to create a new kind of art marketplace which smoothly enables standard, fiat payment and crypto transactions if necessary, and is natural to use. We will soon provide an NFT integration and a gateway into the phygital world. One of our products, Arteïa’s CONNECT is the natural bridge for creating NFTs associated with physical art objects. NFTs linked to physical objects will give new avenues to sell, trade and interact with any artwork. Soon this approach will extend so as to offer not only an authentication platform, but also enable the delivery of a personal touch and additional content and staying connected with customers long after the sale. Finally, our work on NFTs will not only permit for classical transactions but will also bring a possibility for NFTs renting.