Now on the seeping, leaching bleeding edge of art marketing technology comes a brand new and exciting venture - the step-brainchild of my good, ambitious friend Currado Malaspina.
Imagine this: You walk into your favorite coffee shop and innocently order a low-fat (dry) iced cappuccino and a quinoa-cranberry scone. You swipe your phone across the sensor and while nine dollars and forty-five cents are immediately charged to your caffeine-credit rewards card some invisible algorithmic alchemists have entered your purchase into their vast and comprehensive database. So while you think you’ve just bought a snack for the price of a pair of guppies what has actually happened is that Starbucks just sold some of your personal consumer history to Pepsico who are relieved to learn that though you’re still overweight you’re not quite yet diabetic.
Lovely, right? So why hasn’t the artworld figured out how to monetize your privacy as well?
The answer is … it has!!
Or at least Currado has and he has patents in sixteen countries to prove it!
Taches EURL is a matrix driven silo structured, limited partnership, offshore company that is tasked with providing top-flight viewer-friendly museum and gallery experiences to the moderately affiliated cultural tourist and prospective mid-scale, hobbyhorse collector.
OK … I didn’t exactly write that - I cribbed it from Currado’s new website (and translated it myself into a tamer, friendlier siliconish prose). But to be fair and honest, his idea is as brilliant as it is diabolical. He basically offers a free smartphone and Android app that’s designed to give short, coherent commentary when a user visits a museum, gallery or art fair. Essentially it tracks which works of art the user looks at and measures the duration of each interaction. By these metrics Taches is able to compile a fairly reliable profile of the user’s taste in art.
For example, a person goes to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and briskly waltzes past the Kandinskys and the Mondrians but lingers over the Bonnards. Then, while visiting an exhibition devoted to the the drawings of James Ensor bypasses a retrospective of paper bag drawings of Micah Carpentier. A profile is created on the user based on the amount of time spent in front of each piece thus reliably assessing both affinity and aversion. This information is then sold to art dealers who can refine their targeted marketing based of the confirmed tastes of the consumer!
The idea is to use the gentle surveillance of smartphone tracking in order to reach potential consumers of not only original works of art but also what are now called in the industry “art accessory inventories.” These include books, posters, greeting cards, ties, t-shirts, broaches, kerchiefs and toys.
Even pet stores can use it to identify the fans of Jeff Koons.
The user experience is about to get friendlier - so long as you consider the constant sticking of one's intrusive, unsolicited nose into your business a fair measure of genuine friendliness.
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