Crowd theory and Hedge Fund in contemporary art
In the ' Crowd theory Lite ' the crowd ' in participatory art and pop economics ', C. Sarah Brown mentioned that it was Andrea Grover called our attention to the phenomenon of ' crowdsourcing ' in the context of contemporary art. The ' crowdsourcing ' is part of contemporary business lexicon coined by Jeff Howe in an article of Wired magazine in 2006, describing a new form of corporate outsourcing which could use largely amateur labours to get more content or solve problems. Similarly, the future ' breakthroughs ' in art may come from the amateur as well. To involve more participants into art market in so doing to make more money, some businessman who playing the hedge fund also put one eye on the art market by useing the crowdsourcing theory. I found some famous examples which are about how people use the crowd theory and play hedge fund in the context of contemporary art.
1: The first example is the Fame Theory, a media company from New York, created an activity named ' Trust Art ', using a website to involved a lot of participants, playing a ' game ' looks like a stock. The webdsite chose 10 potential artists, and each artists would have an individual page to be followed by many fans. The artists should post their proposals on the website and talk about some points of their works, such as materials, charges, forms and so on. Moreover, the individual page of each artist's would also show the process of how they finish their works. The participants could use one dollar to pay for the shared stock of the artists, and they also could get the interest after the works were sold. In so doing, the website not only could provide a platform to show the artists' work, but also could spread the risks of investment by sharing the participants' stock. What's more, it could also evoke the consumers' interest in are area.
2: Last year, Tom Saunders, a student from Camberbwell College of Arts, sold the right of purchase his work in the coming 10 years in London. Tupert Beecroft, a lawyer, bought it at the price of 2000 pounds. No people know what works Tom Sunders would create, and also no people know whether he could become a famous artist in 10 years. While no people could assert that he is not a potential artist, and only time could prove everything. If his works sell a good price, the 2000 pounds to Tupert Beecroft could be very worthy; if not, at least Tupert Beecroft could get a piece of work and it's not too bad.
3: Arts Trading Fund in London aims to create an index of art market which looks like Dow-Jones Industrial Average. This organization identified the stock of some art companies, auction companies or gallerys, and then they also bought the put options of it. Once the art market go not well, the stock of the company will fall, and then the Arts Trading Fund could sell the limit price of the put options and get cash back. In so doing, they could spread the risks as well which caused by the falling price of art works.
4: As we know, the economic crisis and the turbulence of stock nowadays influenced the collection market, while the collection Chinese contemporary art works is still a hotspot. Generally, the Chinese art works, especially the oil paintings, are cheaper than Western artists' works. While just like the market in other area, the art market in China is also huge and potential. Thus, many businessmen, especially some hedge fund player, came to China and tried to make money from Chinese contemporary art market. So most of the buyers of Chinese arts are come from the West, which led Chinese contemporary art market depends on western market excessively. Since the economic crisis came, many businessmen drew their money back from Chinese art market to their original business, or just cancelled their investment in Chinese art market, so many gallerys' business were crashed. The bubbles of Chinese art market were broken by the economic crisis.
The famous hedge fund player, Adam Sender said that he made more money from art area than other area he invested. While, the hedge fund is still like a gamble in my point of view. On the other hand, it's a good way to collect money from a quantity of participants - ' untrained crowd ' - if they use the money to help some poor but intelligent artists to fulfill their idea.