For Digital Art, Watermarks Aim To Bring More Aura—And A Hotter Market

Thanks in no small part to the Internet, digital art is having a moment, and it’s attracting collectors too. An auction last year of GIFs, digital paintings, and printouts at Phillips in London raised over $113,000, including $3,500 paid for a website by the Dutch-Brazilian Internet artist Rafael Rozendaal.

Along with money, the budding market has also raised some interesting questions: If digital art is built on a medium prone toward reproduction, how do you make a one-of-a-kind edition? You might hang digital art on your wall, but how do you prove who made it, or that you bought it?

“Sharing art online is a double-edged sword,” says Shambhavi Kadam, a cofounder of Depict, a San Francisco-based startup that is building a physical, 4K Ultra HD picture frame, along with “watermarking” software to protect works bought and sold on its platform.

Source: Fast Company

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