BEYOND CHAPTER 12 · Museums and communities

How do phygital exhibitions create and distribute value?

When one exhibition appears in a venue, on a phone and in a virtual space, what does the audience gain?

In this chapter

You read about a work at home, visit an installation that responds to movement, and listen to the artist afterwards. This is a journey across physical and digital settings. What matters is what each encounter adds and whether the connections help people understand the work.

Phygital combines physical and digital. It also changes the allocation of costs and benefits: who pays for equipment and maintenance, what uses has the artist authorised, and is the visitor buying admission, access rights or an artwork? Separate these questions to assess the model.

Connect experiences without making them identical

A physical encounter can reveal material, scale, sound direction and distance from other people. Online presentation can offer enlarged details, translations, interviews or further sources. Each has particular conditions. A panorama cannot fully reproduce bodily presence, and an exhibition of digitally native art need not imitate a white gallery to be meaningful.

Distinguish the work, the interface used to interpret it, and promotional or sales channels. A projection may be the work or a reproduction; a mobile page may provide interpretation or gather potential buyers’ contact details. Different functions require different permissions, evaluation methods and expectations.

DiMoDA: virtual exhibitions have physical conditions

DiMoDA’s 2018 edition 3.0 offers a historical example. Its New York presentation installed an experience at 3LD Art and Technology Center, bringing together New Talismans and Mind//Body around digital magic, embodiment and virtual existence. A virtual exhibition can use the medium itself to pose artistic questions rather than simply reproduce existing objects.

The same virtual content can feel different at home and in a venue. Home use requires compatible equipment, space and operating skills; a venue can offer help while introducing queues, cleaning and time limits. Comparing equitable access means examining these conditions, rather than assuming that online distribution makes participation possible for everyone.

A coherent journey needs clear transitions

Cross-media curation assigns a role to each encounter: an entrance text poses a question, a work supports observation, a phone page introduces the artist’s perspective, and an archive retains research leads. Repeating promotional copy everywhere adds interaction without necessarily adding understanding. Transitions should explain why another step matters, while keeping essential content understandable without completing every interaction.

Coherence includes honest labelling. An original, digital reproduction, curatorial explanation and speculative reconstruction should not appear as equivalent evidence. If an animation changes figures or chronology, explain that it is a later interpretation. As technology makes material look more convincing, clarity about the kind of representation becomes more important.

Experience economics: capacity and costs behind admission

Superblue Miami’s 2021 opening exhibition, Every Wall is a Door, featured Es Devlin, teamLab and James Turrell, offering an example centred on large-scale spatial experiences. Audiences can pay for admission without buying ownership of a work. Different works use different methods: immersive does not always mean digital, nor does every installation respond to visitors in real time.

Saleable experiences have capacity limits. Small groups per session require planning for duration, turnover, cleaning, staff and failures. Income must cover production, rent, artist fees, rights and maintenance. Memorable visits may generate recommendations, but the label “immersive” guarantees neither repeat attendance, profitability nor learning.

Omnichannel means connecting information, not just branding

Sotheby’s 2021 Decentraland gallery is a historical example of extending a brand’s display setting. Official material for that year’s Natively Digital auction directed bidding to sothebys.com. The virtual gallery, bidding interface and Sotheby’s Metaverse launched that year should be distinguished; similar names do not establish that all transactions happened inside one virtual space.

An effective omnichannel approach keeps work identity, versions, price definitions and contact routes consistent, and explains the transition from display to transaction. Audiences can be counted repeatedly across channels: one person watching a film, visiting a gallery and making an enquiry is not three new buyers. Assess useful connections rather than treating each impression as additional demand.

Clarify rights for each kind of use

Permission for a physical loan may not cover online display, animation, promotional screenshots or distribution through another platform. Planning requires identifying rights in art, music, software, fonts and photographs, and clarifying duration, territory, format and permitted changes. Credit matters, but attribution alone does not supply every necessary permission.

Where an exception is considered, its jurisdiction and circumstances matter. US fair use requires case-specific analysis and provides no fixed percentage that guarantees permission; it is not a universal international rule. Rights concerning integrity and presentation, and more specific contractual commitments, also need examination. Linking rights records to the displayed version reduces mistakes during updates.

What does technical sponsorship support and influence?

Hyundai’s support for Yunchul Kim’s GYRE at the Korean Pavilion of the 2022 Venice Biennale shows a meeting of corporate support, technology and artistic production. Such collaboration may supply funding, equipment or visibility, while the work’s meaning exceeds brand promotion. Distinguish artistic practice, curatorial interpretation and the sponsor’s description of its role.

Agreements also need less visible answers: who repairs equipment, are updates charged, and can the work be presented again or moved to another platform? Funding an opening without maintenance capacity may leave an institution with one launch and continuing costs. Evaluate artistic independence, sustainable operation and responsibilities after closing together.

Leave memories and an experience that can remain usable

POAP offers digital collectibles associated with attendance and can connect an event’s memory with later content. A token does not demonstrate learning or necessarily prove that a particular person stayed throughout; that depends on issuance and verification. If accounts or wallet data are collected, explain their purpose and use, and offer participation without claiming a token.

Continuing a digital exhibition requires another kind of work: retaining executable files, versions and installation records, confirming rights, and planning for unsupported platforms or hardware. A surviving webpage does not establish a functioning work. Include preservation and exit options in the budget instead of turning short-term view counts into promises of permanent access.

Your turn to investigate

Which clue would you check first?

Fictional exercise: a venue wants to put an interactive installation online and offer paid membership and digital mementos. Which proposal is most complete?

Choose a clue to see what it can tell you.

READING COMPANION

A few useful terms

Phygital: An experience or arrangement connecting physical and digital settings, without requiring them to be identical.
Omnichannel: Connecting display, communication and sales channels into a coherent journey with consistent essential information.
Experience economy: A model deriving value and income from participation in a designed experience, distinct from purchasing ownership of an object.
Born-digital art: Art created through digital forms or computational conditions, distinct from photographing a physical work digitally.
Licence scope: The uses, duration, territory and other conditions permitted by an agreement, checked against actual display and distribution.
Visitor capacity: The number of people who can receive an appropriate experience within constraints of space, staffing and time.
POAP: A digital collectible associated with the Proof of Attendance Protocol; its commemorative or evidential use depends on issuance arrangements.
Lifecycle cost: Costs from production through operation, updates, preservation and retirement, beyond equipment purchased for opening.

Explore primary and secondary markets

YOUR TURN

If an exhibition could add one digital encounter, what gap in the physical visit should it address?

Consider another way to think about it

It might reveal difficult details, offer another language or provide material to read slowly afterwards. Identify the need, then compare usability, rights, maintenance and cost. If a simple page serves the purpose, a more complex installation is not required to demonstrate innovation.

TAKE THIS THOUGHT WITH YOU

Phygital value depends on whether encounters deepen understanding and whether costs, rights and benefits are clear. Viewing, participation, collecting and transactions are relationships that need separate design.

Reading notes & references

Art Value Lab develops the themes of phygital display, experience economics and cross-channel curation using artist, organiser and official records. Historical projects are not guarantees of current availability; income, access and engagement benefits remain conditional claims to evaluate.

Connect the ideas

Continue into people, works and research.