Digital Spaces Make Art and Fashion More Accessible

Editor’s note: This piece is part of our Columnist Network series, which explores the tactical thoughts and actions from Adweek’s community of high-level experts. In today’s installment, Roblox’s Christina Wootton discusses how the world’s top cultural institutions and fashion brands are exploring digital realms. According to her, the digital meeting space known as the metaverse can elevate these efforts beyond imagination. The challenge Spring is usually the time for fresh colors and filling our calendars with an array of cultural activities and art exhibitions. This is the second spring where things are very, very different. Travel is still limited, and while some art institutions are slowly welcoming a reduced number of visitors, many have yet to reopen. According to The Art Market 2021 report, the pandemic forced a shift of art sales to online spaces while, at the same time, the overall art market shrunk as much as 22% in 2020. Limitations have introduced significant challenges but have also spurred innovation in how art in its various forms, including fashion, is being shared with audiences. The process Top cultural and fashion institutions have been exploring a number of ways to make their art collections and exhibitions more accessible to the public through digital spaces and formats for quite some time. Without any need to travel, people can enjoy (or even purchase in real time) rare works of art from the comfort of their home—a very attractive concept. New art forms have been emerging, too, as this quest and the need for innovation have become an important part of business strategy. There are more digitized collections and rare real-life artworks online than ever, Art Basel livestreams to attract collectors and artist incubators using AR to create inspiring digital art journeys. The New York Times recently reported on David Hockney’s digital art billboards that are popping up in world capitals. On Roblox, we’ve been hearing from museums, art institutions and fashion houses that want to explore new opportunities to share art in the metaverse. In Spain, for example, Fundación Bancaja opened an immersive digital space on Roblox to introduce kids and teens to its renowned art collections via educational workshops. This week, Gucci is launching a virtual Gucci Garden to coincide with the unveiling of the House’s Gucci Garden Archetypes, an immersive, physical multimedia experience in Florence, Italy, that explores and celebrates its inimitable creative vision. The discussions we are having are more about how to reinvent real-life experiences for virtual spaces in ways that make them truly unique and memorable rather than mere digital copies. For example, in the Gucci Garden, two friends will walk through different spaces of the exhibition and rooms in a different order, individually absorbing fragments of those spaces onto their avatars and becoming one-of-a-kind works of art. Not only are we introducing a much broader global audience of millions of people to the audacious creative vision of Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele, but we’ve also conceptualized this experience to make visitors’ experiences truly unrepeatable in the physical world. The metaverse allows us to come up with visionary ideas that are beyond the simple replication of physical spaces. While artists are also looking for new ways to shift their work online, questions arise about how to distribute and share these digital works. Can an artist thrive financially in a virtual space? The simple answer is yes. Roblox is on track to share nearly half a billion dollars with our creator community in 2021. A few of these creators are now collaborating with major brands like Gucci, making virtual items and collections. The takeaway We've seen artists embrace digital components in real life, but the next opportunity on the horizon is bringing "real life" into the digital. We can easily envision the innovation being driven by the metaverse, and the significance of its role in enabling global access to art in the form of immersive, shared experiences simply can’t be overestimated.

Columnist Network

Roblox Reinvents Virtual Spaces That Aren't Mere Digital Copies

Innovation in the art spaces gets shared with the audience

The challenge

Christina Wootton

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Christina Wootton