The Next Great Art Movement Will Come At The Swipe Of A Finger

An improved app, optimized digital display and monthly art discovery service round out Electric Objects' renewed commitment to democratizing the art world

Prompted to particularize the soundtrack to your life, a vast majority of us have at least a semblance of an answer at the ready—one curated by a lifetime of memorable, music-filled moments. You might even already have a Spotify playlist handy that could serve as a suitable stand-in. Asked to detail the ‘gallery to your life,’ however, and you might draw a blank worthy of a Robert Rauschenberg retrospective. In fact, the phrase ‘gallery to your life’ is no phrase at all. Heck, you might even have a hard time naming your favorite artist. (Gustav Klimt takes the gold, for this author). With the launch of the EO experience, Electric Objects thinks it’s developed the framework necessary to elevate art to a place we reserve for music.

Makers of the EO1, a digital display we reported on in 2014 when the company was just a Kickstarted enterprise, Electric Objects is now a three-year-old company that like its sleeker, faster 2nd-gen unit, the EO2, isn’t just in the business of selling pretty digital decor for your home but is keen on upturning how we interact with art altogether.

While TV programming has its Netflix, and yes, music its Spotify, art has been somewhat of an orphan without a proliferation model. Until now. With the release of Art Club, a monthly subscription service that will serve as a discovery tool, personal art curator, and ticket to venerated art institutions like the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), EO gives consumers access to a peerless and ever-growing stream of artwork (for $9.99/month).

Available through an updated app (Android, iOS, and web), the Art Club launched with 1,000 pieces, on top of the free 20,000 works available through the EO community. With new EO-commissioned collections in the works (including to upcoming live art show streams), and your own art and animation projects ready to be uploaded and displayed as well, the EO platform has been transformed into a digital gateway that can transform the ‘art world’ into an art cosmos.

And this is just the beginning. As Jake Levine, Founder & CEO of Electric Objects, tells PSFK,

“What you’re seeing today represents a tiny slice of the platform we’re building. We’re committed to helping people connect with art and artists that they love, to make discovering a great work of art as easy as it is today to find that next great song. We want to remove as many barriers as we can between artists and art fans, and our design, engineering, and curatorial efforts will always reflect that goal.”

Not by accident, this mirrors EO’s larger reason for its existence: “to make the world of art more accessible for everyone, moving it out of the gallery and into the home.”

Though, it still bears asking: Can a digital gateway, one that washes away the prohibitive costs and the rarified air that so plague the art world, really herald the next great art movement?

The answer might lie with Björk.

When previewing the new EO2 alongside Levine, the Icelandic songstress naturally came up as she’s one of many EO artists available on the platform.

Always the master curator and salesman, Levine threw on one of the curated moments from her Inez & Vinoodh-directed music video for “Lionsong.” And there she was, in full other-worldly splendor, beautifully alive on a 1080p HD display, calling out to my inner fanboy.

Picture it: a Björk in every home.

In a nutshell, seeing her fulfilled EO’s truncated mission, to make it so you can “choose your next piece as easily as you’d pick the next song,” like perhaps nothing else could have. All in a matter of seconds.

At $299 a unit, which is the same price for the EO1, for many times the perks, the E02 promises the next wave of digital curation at a reasonable price. Still, given their dedication to making art more accessible, PSFK wondered if the price point of a display unit might work against that, considering that not everyone is in a position to fork over $300. Given EO’s renewed commitment to making art as integral and accessible as music happens to be in people’s lives, how would the company respond to someone who might say that $299 as a price of entry might continue to inhibit that?

Levine responded with:

“Many of us can relate to spending on both music hardware (headphones, stereos, speakers, iPhones) in addition to digital subscriptions, so I think the model will be easy for people to understand. That said, we’re always working to balance our high standards for quality with accessibility.”

If Art Club proves to be a viable subscription model, the company might be in an improved position to do just that: lower the costs of entry so that every household can deepen its relationship with art.

Click here to view original web page at www.psfk.com

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October 20, 2016