DIGITAL ART: BRAW HAUS

BRAW HAUS PARTNERS WITH DIGITAL ARTISTS, ENTERING CREATIVITY'S NEXT FRONTIER.

By Morgan Becker

“Digital art, as contemporary art, has thousands of techniques and ways of creating,” asserts Justine Vilgrain, one of the founders of Braw Haus. Together with Patricia Gloum, she imagined a digital talent agency that would seek out meaningful collaboration with artists, who might otherwise go under the radar for the simple fact that their work isn’t sculpted or painted or drawn or built by hand.

Braw Haus has many functions—straddling the ad firm and the gallery, technology and art. One day, Vilgrain and Gloum might liaise between a CGI designer and a luxury label, envisioning ways to bring a product to life with animation and vibrant detail that transcend the flatness of any phone or desktop screen. The next, they might focus on their own curations: The agency’s exhibitions cover a lot of ground, grappling with, for instance, the aesthetics of the computer glitch, psychedelics and mental health, climate change and nature’s proven resilience.

“The aim of Braw Haus is to be a reference in digital art, for digital artists,” continues Gloum. The fact that her work is hard to define is both a condition of the field, and its greatest strength: “We don’t really want to step into one style or one thing. We can always evolve.” In an era marked by fear of change, the pair embrace the unfamiliar: In their view, AI, NFTs, generative and digital art only add to the conversation, if engaged with responsibly. With Beyond Noise, they share a curation of the artworks they strive to uplift, speaking on Braw Haus’s present and future.

MORGAN BECKER: Tell me about the origins of Braw Haus.

PATRICIA GLOUM: It started back in 2017, with the idea of connecting freelancers and elevating artists that were not really seen at that time: animators, designers, illustrators. My purpose is as a filmmaker, and I wanted to put more women together to do something in this area.

It was so abstract for people, as to how we were going to elevate artists in a medium that was not recognized. What is digital just stays in the digital area—not in the physical. We started by doing exhibitions and projections around New York. We would partner with parties and do little pop-ups. We were selling the idea that they could actually commission those artists to decorate their shops.

JUSTINE VILGRAIN: Patricia and I met on this Greek island more than 10 years ago. We bumped randomly into each other in the subway in New York, at Union Square. And from there, we reconnected. Patricia was a director, and I was always interested in advertising, so we thought it could be an interesting new way of creating campaigns that are different from what we were used to seeing. It’s making art and technology to put the product up front.

PG: How do we connect advertising with art? These are ways to do advertising that are more interesting to the eye, more immersive, more 360. Thinking experientially—not just about what’s on the screen, but what do you feel if it’s in physical space? We wanted to really explore that part, because at Braw Haus, we have those two poles. We have advertising, commercial branding, but we also have the pole of art just as it is. When you go into an art exhibition, what is that story and the point of view? It's very important for us to do both.

MB: You were quite intentional about founding Braw Haus as a female-led team.

TK: That was a starting point, because we didn’t want to be only women. We love men, too. We love any type of people. It was more because, in the creative industries and in filmmaking, as a woman, it can be really tough. Now it’s a little better, but still you see there’s a big gap in which entrepreneurs are successful and which are less successful in the field. We wanted to push for that balance because we’re women—we’re doers. We’re very productive. We have a lot of ideas. We want to produce things. We want to make things happen. We want to change things in the world for positivity and for equality.

MB: What kinds of artists are you drawn to, and what do you prioritize as you promote their work?

JV: It’s like curation. What do we see that is different? Digital art, as contemporary art, has thousands of techniques and ways of creating. I think our eye is drawn by the art piece itself, and then we dig more into what the artist was thinking. In terms of selecting the work, it depends on the client or exhibition. If it’s for a curation or for an installation that mixes art and tech, we’ll be able to go in with more technical artists that are working in this field, that know the vocabulary and how things work.

PG: We like to think outside of the box. With digital art, there’s a lot of different types of techniques, and it’s so interesting to see behind the scenes. We live in an era where there’s so many different types of programs to create. We left the world of After Effects, Final Cut, and Premiere Pro. With AI, it’s super interesting to see how the artists feed a model and see what comes out of it. The aim of Braw Haus is to be a reference in digital art, for digital artists. We don’t really want to step into one style or one thing. We can always evolve. Digital is so broad. There are always new things coming. We can continuously find new types of artists, new types of thinking.

MB: Were AI and generative art always a part of your vision for the company? Or is it something that you’ve had to reckon with as it’s come up more?

JV: Generative art has been around for a very long time. Now that AI is mainstream, everyone can actually use it. Now, people are just more understanding. It’s the same as with the NFT boom. The thing with AI is: Everyone thinks that all digital art is AI. Before, everyone thought that all digital art was an NFT. We explain that AI is a different process of creation. It has an effect. We were talking earlier about how we can create a new way of advertising—and this is a new way. It’s art speaking for the product.

MB: Have there been additional challenges, with people coming in with their preconceived notions of what AI is? I’ve heard a lot about how it’s really important to look at what the art is being fed, in terms of training data.

JV: This is a global conversation that hasn’t been solved yet. For example, some artist might say, Can you remove your feature of my work on your Instagram? Because Meta is now opening up. I believe the next step is to make all of the internet traceable [for] authentication. Now it’s gonna go into blockchain, so that if tomorrow we create a piece of art that [pulls from] 10,000 other pieces, everyone can actually at least get 0.01 cents. But as of now, there isn’t any kind of proper solution. In general, a new way of doing things must be put into place.

MB: Is there a collaboration, either with an artist or a brand, that’s been particularly meaningful to you?

PG: I’m very proud of the project we did at UNESCO in Iraq. We projected on the Citadel that is up on the mountain, and the whole city of Erbil could see it. It was very beautiful to see something ephemeral, like a digital art projection, adorn such a monument—and the connection that we were creating with the population. It’s something new.

JV: On my end, I think one of the most complex ones we did was for Paris Saint-Germain. As a football fan, this is my team—so it was such a nice way of working. It was very challenging. We were learning a lot as we went. Seeing this work at the PSG store was definitely rewarding. That was one of our first big projects.

MB: I’m interested in the exhibitions you do. What’s the creative process like?

JV: Sometimes we brainstorm, when it’s our own exhibition or when we have a space. Like the exhibition in New York—it’s large-scale. It’s a 360-degree projection. It’s finding the right artwork, getting adapted to the space. We’re doing another exhibition in October in Paris. The company we work with on creative direction does a lot of black and white. So we’re doing a full curation of black and white.

The exhibition we did in Paris was called Genesthai, and it was about mental health and psychedelics. We selected artists and artwork related to those subjects, who would be able to express why it makes sense for this artwork to be present. And then there is the one we did Lisbon—

PG: Ah yes, Burning the Motherboard. You know how you get glitches; it can just really burn your [hard drive]. I say we should totally do [that sort of show] again, because we did it in a very small exhibition space, and that type is fun to have in bigger spaces.

MB: What were some of your earliest exposures to digital art and the digital art space?

JV: Both of us grew up in the arts. My parents are collectors, and my mom worked in the art space for a very long time. We were always experimenting with art. On my end, I’m a big fanatic about technology and robotics. Mixing [those interests] together made digital art.

PG: My mom taught me everything about art. She doesn’t work in art—she paints, but that’s on the side. But she would take me to all the museums. My background is filmmaking and I studied graphic design.

MB: What do you see in Braw Haus’s future?

JV: Our main goal is to become the reference for digital art, and for people who want to do something digital. The bigger picture is to keep doing what we do, but on a larger scale. Also, to be able to bring digital to places where it’s not being brought, like we did in Iraq—to take it to other, even more faraway places.

PG: We hope to help artists create projects and to keep pushing for technological exhibitions that push forward that medium, [bringing] more of what’s digital into the physical space.

JV: On top of that, there’s the idea of opening a physical space, to be able to showcase artists in this world. To create a festival where it’s totally about digital art, that brings in artists from all around the world to connect and collaborate and to view each other’s work.

PG: The last thing I want to add—to have our artists get known through Braw Haus, propelling their career.