The Layer project is a screen from the creator of DeviantArt, specially designed to showcase digital art in the best possible quality.
Angelo Sotira founded the online digital art platform DeviantArt as a teenager, and it grew into a community of millions of artists in the 2000s. Twenty-five years later, Sotira wants to change digital art again by focusing on the way it is reproduced. In the interview TechCrunch He said:
«A canvas should work and behave in your life in a completely different way than other types of displays. It has to blend in harmoniously with its surroundings… It costs $22,000, so that says a lot about who it’s for. We spared no expense or effort. We made no compromises in creating what we believe is the best way to showcase digital art on a wall,» says Angelo Sotira
From industrial products, the closest reference point for a likely consumer of such a product may be Samsung Frame TV set — it looks like a picture on the wall. But Layer raises the technological bar and is not just a simple demonstrator of photos, albeit high-quality ones.
It can require a lot of computing power to reproduce works of art. That’s why Layer is so expensive — because of the technology to reproduce the art of the future.
«You’re dealing with over 35 years of history of extraordinary artists developing code-based art, and essentially the pixels on the display are controlled by written code that runs in real time on that GPU, doing the rendering at full resolution. It actually controls every pixel and does not use any» compression algorithms.
Sotira is well aware that he is not the first to try to create a better way demonstrations of digital art — at DeviantArt, he was constantly offered products like Layer. But thanks to this, he knows what was missing from such devices.
«One of the main principles is that you can turn it on at peace and it should know how to play images consistently. … It will be on your wall for five years, so it has to fit your life really well».
Layer seems very expensive and niche, but the startup has secretly raised $5.7 million in funding from investors. The company’s ambitions go beyond selling art display equipment. Layer’s owners will have subscription access to a collection of works by digital artists, who are paid royalties depending on the time their works are displayed in this unusual gallery.
- 1100 x 1100 x 127 mm
- Ultra resolution, true black, P3 color, GPU
- Wall and ceiling mounting
- Light, ambient, Bluetooth sensors
- No microphone. No camera. No speaker. Only art.
We couldn’t find any technical details on the project’s website or in the TechCrunch article other than the ones mentioned above. So don’t argue about them in the comments.
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