Creative Entrepreneurship & Altamira.Art

Episode Transcript:

Michael Facchinello  00:00

I think first off, it's just important for artists to like think of themselves as they really are. Every artist is an entrepreneur, you are creating your own product, you're doing your own marketing, you're doing your own sales, your own logistics. And in entrepreneurship, the best way to be successful is to pick one or two of those things to really focus on and then whatever your core competency is, and then figure out the easiest way to achieve the other things. And so for a long time, that's then getting into a gallery, get into a top name, Gallery, and everything else is taken care of. But I think that, like all the stuff we were just talking about, that's starting to shift. And like I said, more galleries are closing each year that are what are opening. And the artists that I'm seeing that are really, really successful are the ones that are just building an online brand. In addition to creating art, creating content that folks can engage with.

 Isotta Page  00:56

This is Art Is… a podcast for artists, where we brainstorm the future of the art world and the creative industries.

 Michael Facchinello  01:10

So my name is Michael Fachinello I am the founder and CEO of Altamira Art

 Isotta Page  01:16

love to hear a little bit more about the ultimate team. Could you bring us into that community in that world?

 Michael Facchinello  01:22

Yeah, for sure. So I already mentioned my co founder, John Guile, he is our CTO, him and I worked together at cliqstudios, for eight years, something like that. And he was the CTO there as well. He's just an absolutely amazing technologist can build amazing quality technology products and do it really, really quickly. And then we also have a part time writer named John crowler. He is responsible for writing a lot of the critiques on Altamira that are being written by other critics. He also handles our newsletter and things like that, and keeps the engine running in a consistent basis. But yeah, so right now we're a really, really small team. But certainly we'll we'll be adding folks as we continue to grow, probably more technologists, more developers, engineers, also, designers, content creators, marketers, things like that.

 Isotta Page  02:15

And how have you found that kind of team tactics between navigating a more creative side and a more technical side working with designers are working with engineers?

 Michael Facchinello  02:26

Yeah, it's interesting. And I have a lot of experience doing this working at the design studio cliqstudios, where most of the designers on that team have the FAS or, or MF aids, they're just a lot more creative. And then there's obviously the engineers and for engineers, they really like things to be discreetly written down and sort of dictated, here's exactly what this thing needs to do. And then they will go and execute it in the best way possible, or just tell them the exact problem that needs to be solved and what the exact outcome needs to be. Whereas with creatives, whether that's writers or designers, I've found that they just prefer to have a lot more freedom and do a lot better work, when they're empowered to create something from scratch, they don't want to be told what to do, they kind of just want to be given a frame up of what they're trying to achieve. And then be given the liberty to sort of create something with the soul to create something interesting that is discovered in some ways where, of course, they'll do planning and have their own processes. And they all do. But generally, the work turns out the best when you aren't as prescriptive. And that's an approach we've taken with John Crowder, our writer, he has 100% creative freedom, we talk all the time and sort of give ideas around, here's kind of what we're going for whatever. But when he's writing critiques, he gets to pick whichever works. He's interested in whenever he wants to write about them. And the same for anything else he's writing. He occasionally he's come to me and Ben, like, after he published was sad, okay to write. And that's, I think, some of the more interesting works that he has written. So yeah, I think that's kind of the the dichotomy between engineers and creatives. And certainly it's not 100% the case across the board. I've worked with designers who like to have things more outlined and prescriptive, and I've worked with engineers who are like, just tell me the problem and get out of my way. But that's

 Isotta Page  04:22

really good advice, especially for someone who maybe is thinking about outsourcing some projects, or hiring someone to work with them. That's something we never really discussed as artists or in art school context. So it's, it's really cool to be able to hear your feedback on that.

 Michael Facchinello  04:40

Yeah. And I will say, when it comes to outsourcing, I have a fair bit of experience with that as well. Generally, you have to be a lot more prescriptive, the further somebody is away from what you're doing. So unless that person really integrates and becomes a part of the team, you kind of do need to give them exactly what needs to get done and hold their hand a lot more where as the more tightly they're integrated. And the more you sort of share brain, the more you can give them the creative freedom and liberty to do what they do.

 Isotta Page  05:09

That's really interesting to shift focus a little bit, I would love to hear your thoughts on NF T's in general and how you're thinking about integrating NF T's into Altamira, you know, in the near future, or like your experience working on this mission driven project that had an NF t component to it. Yeah,

 Michael Facchinello  05:33

it's been really interesting watching NF T's over the last couple of years, obviously, they sort of skyrocketed forever. And then even when other parts of the market started going down, and ETFs continued going up or holding value. And I think that started to reverse in general, I think NF T's are really interesting and have a great application. I think for us, as we think about it, it is in relation to Alta Mira, we just want to be really thoughtful in how we include them, we think they should serve a purpose. And we're really trying to think about what will NF T's and art look like in five years or 10 years and build to that and sort of help bring NF T's to that as opposed to looking backward and saying, here's been the money grab or the land grab over the last two years in NF t's not saying every NFT was just a money grab. But I think there will be a handful of artists who did really well over a two year period of two years. And it'll be really deleterious to their brand and and their sort of value going forward. But with that said, we really think NF T's are more interesting when they have some components or a broker can serve as a bridge to the physical world to physical art, we're really interested in some iteration of this and likely the first release of NF t's on Altamira will be as something similar to what we did with Jason where you can buy the physical piece of art and have a corresponding NFT come with it, where it's both the certificate of authenticity, but also just a pure standalone NFT. That is a representation of the the physical workmen. So if it gets into the metaverse or whatever, you can have your painting hanging over your couch in the real world and have that same one in your Metaverse living room. And so that's just the base case or base layer for us. I think that there's some other things that we're really interested in as far as sort of fusing the digital world, the physical world, and how can that STS play a role as that bridge, whether it's through VR, or what have you, I think that physical art augmented by NFT art could be really interesting and a really interesting way for an artist to continue deriving value from one piece of work that they create. And they can always release updates as entities that interact with that physical piece of the digital way

 Isotta Page  07:51

really interesting. So do you mean that if there were to be like a physical work of art, say, like a sculpture or a painting, there would be a corresponding NFT on Altamira. And if you were to buy that piece, you would receive both the physical work and the NFT. But the NFT would just be corresponding to itself not directly to the physical work. How does that work? Just because I've been really interested in understanding this physical and digital divide with NF T's. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

 Michael Facchinello  08:24

Yeah, I think it's most interesting when it's mixed my message on that last answer, I think there's on ultimately, or the first base case of how it will work is you buy a physical piece of art, it will come with the NFT. And that serves as the certificate of authenticity. So it's tied directly to that piece, you saw that piece or that work, then that NF T goes along with it as the COA when we do that, we just want to make sure that it's actually better than having just a physical certificate on the back of the painting or under the sculpture or whatever. But we think that there is that if it in also having the digital piece, I suppose you could sell them separately. And I guess you have two pieces of art, but we will allow for artists to also they make painting in that painting comes with the corresponding NFT. They could also sell, in effect digital prints of that painting. So a series of 20 NF T's that go along or correspond with it. And so that's that's one version of it. And then the second version that I was talking about, which would be a second or third iteration of NF T's for us, is that interface or interplay between more virtual reality or augmented reality where you create a sculpture, you could then sell an NF t that is related to that sculpture, that when you're looking through the altimeter app, it in some way augments that piece, and then you could sell as many of those or as many different versions of that NFT as you want it. Like it's particularly interesting in the public Artspace there's a lot of murals that a lot of cities that are the go to mural to get your picture in front of when you're visiting. And so for those artists, they get paid the commission. But then if they could additionally release more and more entities that are related to it, they could continue basically benefiting from it. And on the flip side, for the person taking a picture in front of the iconic thing, you could have it still be iconic, but how could it still be unique and interesting, because it's in some way, augmented or changed. And you can almost think about it as an NFT. That is a Snapchat filter, but just related to one specific thing.

 Isotta Page  10:36

That's so interesting, thank you so much for explaining that I'm so excited to hear about how much crossover there is happening at Ulta Mira, between creative and entrepreneurship and also technology and innovation. That's really so cool. And I think it's amazing how much you're thinking about opening up the art market and expanding on the positive future visions for the art world. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on the future of the art world. And what you're hoping to see more of

 Michael Facchinello  11:06

as far as what I'm hoping to see more of I just would really like to have more artists in control of their own destiny, I think a lot of artists right now are beholden to the power structure at play. And in a lot of folks, I guess once you get into the power structure, you don't really care, even though they're taking a large chunk of your, what you're creating, and all of a sudden that every other creative industry creatives are making more of what's due to them than they ever have before. Music Industry, musicians are making more, the labels are getting more of that percentage over because the delivery models are different. And so the creatives, the artists are able to sort of demand more. And so that's what I'd like to see. That's also what I think is going to happen, you're seeing artists now who have just a lot more power, because realistically, they're the ones who are most important in marketing their work. They're on social media, they're developing a brand, a narrative a following. And the work is selling not because it's sitting in a gallery, the work of selling because that artist is really created something for themselves, the artists have still, in most cases not getting compensated in the way that they should. I've talked to an artist who always sells all of his work, he sells them for 20k Plus, he's in a gallery that's in multiple locations. And he mentioned is several 100,000 followers on Instagram, he mentioned to me that most of the work sells because they'll DM him and he'll direct them to the gallery, not because people are walking by or even necessarily the gallery relationships with collectors. But he's somebody who doesn't really care to give any effort to the business side of things. And so is just fine with taking that commission as it stands. But I've also talked to collectors who there's a collector 19 year old who actually is spending crazy amounts of money on art that he finds artists on Instagram, he'll reach out to them. And he's like, why won't they let me just buy the art directly from them? Why do I have to go to their gallery. And so you start to see that like that's the current environment. But pretty soon, that's just going to shift. And that's what Altair is trying to do is make it so it's really easy for artists to post their work to collect payments to handle shipping. And not really have to think about the business side. If you can do Instagram, you can do Altamira and then make it so that that's the place that they would direct people to or not even have to direct people to it because that's where people collectors are discovering those different artists

 Isotta Page  13:38

that's so interesting, and also makes me think about how Ultima era is such a concentrated place for art. Because nowadays, Instagram is so noisy, and there's so many ads, there's so much clickbait on there. So it's exciting to see such a curated space that is really built for artists to reach more voices and gain following and sell work. So it's great to hear that that's what your focus has been. Yeah, and

 Michael Facchinello  14:07

a lot of ways we think about ourselves as Instagram, but just for art with some specific tools built in like payment processing shipping, what have you. And that way, the folks who are collectors which more and more collectors are just using Instagram to source art. They don't have to sift through the bikini models and the breakfast pictures and everything else to discover and artists they like

 Isotta Page  14:28

I'd love to get your thoughts on any advice or tips you have for emerging artists who maybe just graduated this year or are early in their journey and are beginning to navigate the art business divide and also now the art business and tech divide.

 Michael Facchinello  14:47

I think first off it's just important for artists to like think of themselves as they really are. Every artist is an entrepreneur. You are creating your own product you're doing your own marketing, you're doing your own sales, your own legit stakes. And in entrepreneurship, the best way to be successful is to pick one or two of those things to really focus on and then whatever your core competency is, and then figure out the easiest way to achieve the other things. And so for a long time, that's then getting into a gallery, you get into a top name, Gallery, and everything else is taken care of. But I think that like all the stuff we were just talking about, that's starting to shift, and like it said, more galleries are closing each year that are what are opening. And the artists that I'm seeing that are really, really successful are the ones that are just building an online brand. In addition to creating art, creating content that folks can engage with, like I said, builds that audience. And then I think the tools that we're trying to build should hopefully make the rest of that stuff easy. So just focus on building your product, which is your art, marketing it, which is building your audience and getting out there. And then simplifying as many other things as you can meaning shipping, payment processing, bookkeeping, whatever, I do think it's important that art exists in the real world, and not just online. So still reinforcing everything you're doing by existing in the real world doing some of those exhibitions, and art fairs, if that makes sense for you. But all of this, I will say comes with a grain of salt. I am not an artist, I've just witnessed a lot of artists who have done their thing and sort of understand how the market has worked and how I believe it will work in the future. So you only have to do what's right for you, and what you think is going to make no sense. But from my perspective, I think that's the right way to do it and the right way to be relevant going forward. Something I didn't talk about in the future of the art market. Traditionally, art is derived value, because it's in the MoMA, or it's in negotiation. And those two institutions have a higher correlation to value and an art than anything else in the world. But it's getting into the right gallery, it's having the right people buy your art, it's a handful of who you're associated with. But more and more, it's really based on buzz and in the same way that the stock market has changed from just like the in crowd deciding what value is ascribed to companies, sort of the broader consumer market has changed the whole dynamic there. And that's not going to shift back the more buds that you can create for yourself as an artist online, the more value you'll create for yourself as well. The URL for ultimate IRA is ultra mera dot art that is a LT a m i r a.ar. T, and everything is there and find our link to Instagram, Twitter, all the socials by going there. And probably if you search on any of the social medias, you'll find us as well. And on there, you go to our bow page, I've got a link to my calendar. So if anybody actually wants to talk to me, reserve time each week to talk to any artists and collectors what have you, whether that's getting your feedback on something we should be doing, answering questions on things that you're not unsure of, or anything else just want to make myself available. And that's another good way to get in touch with me personally, I'm on social media but more of a voyeur than a contributor. So probably not much interest to follow me on Twitter or anything like that.

Isotta Page  18:24

Thank you for listening to art is a podcast for artists. Please leave art is a podcast for artists a rating and review on Apple podcasts. It really helps others find us. Also I would love it if you took a moment to reflect on who in your life might also benefit from listening to this podcast. When you do please share artists a podcast for artists with them. So we can continue to grow the show organically and brainstorm the future of the art world together. You can also support the work I do by subscribing wherever you listen, and by donating to the podcast. The link to do so is in the episode description. Okay, that's it for now. Thanks so much and see you next Wednesday.