Salon - Techspressionism

Salon Format

Artists are invited to share their work in relation to the topic of phygital art. The Salon will be moderated by Colin Goldberg, who will discuss his Metagraph series of AR works to introduce the topic and then open up the floor for sharing. The time per share will be determined by the number of artists who wish to share their work. If you are interested in sharing on this topic, please arrive at the Salon at 11:45 to place your name in the lineup and test your screensharing.

What Does “Phygital” Mean?

Phygital is a portmanteau combining physical and digital. It refers to experiences, strategies, or environments that seamlessly blend tangible, real-world elements with digital enhancements to create more immersive, interactive, and personalized engagements. Examples include AR-enabled mirrors, QR codes in physical stores, VR pop-up events, smart kiosks, and click-and-collect retail models.

Where Did the Term Originate?

Coined in 2007 by Chris Weil (then Chairman & CEO of Momentum Worldwide). The term was coined to emphasize the merging of physical and digital realms in marketing communications.
Momentum Worldwide, an Australian-based agency, formally copyrighted the term in 2013 and even embraced it in their motto: “An agency for the Phygital World.”

While some sources ambiguously suggest earlier origins, the most consistent and widely cited history attributes the term to Chris Weil in 2007 with official adoption by Momentum in 2013.

Meaning in Fine Art

A phygital artwork is one that exists both as a tangible object (painting, sculpture, print, installation) and as a digital counterpart (NFT, AR layer, digital animation, interactive projection, or virtual model). The two components are conceptually and often contractually linked, forming one unified piece.

Common Contexts

Hybrid Artworks
- A painting embedded with an augmented reality (AR) experience accessible via phone or tablet.
- A bronze sculpture accompanied by a 3D digital twin that can be viewed in VR.
Phygital Collecting
- Selling a physical work with a blockchain-verified NFT that serves as proof of authenticity or unlocks additional digital experiences.
- Offering collectors both the original and a tradable digital version.
Exhibitions & Installations
- Galleries and museums presenting works that can be explored in person and through immersive digital extensions online.
- Physical shows with virtual replicas for a global audience.
Market & Provenance
- In the NFT boom (2020–2022), “phygital” became a key term for artists bridging traditional and crypto art markets—adding permanence, collectability, and tactile value to otherwise purely digital assets.

Why It Matters in Fine Art

Bridges audiences: Appeals to both traditional collectors and digitally native buyers.
Expands storytelling: Digital layers can deepen meaning through animation, sound, or interactivity.
Secures provenance: Blockchain records tie physical works to immutable digital certificates.
Opens global access: Digital versions extend reach beyond the gallery walls.

Techspressionist Salons now incorporate Zoom translated captions, which enable users to have the speech in a meeting or webinar automatically translated in real-time to captions in another language. For example, if the speaker is speaking English in a meeting, captions can be made available in Spanish, Chinese, Ukrainian, and more. Many thanks to Cynthia Beth Rubin for taking the lead on this initiative. Instructions on how to enable translated captions are available for mobile and desktop.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Attendance is free,
but pre-registration is required.

Artists in attendance are always invited to share their work via screen-sharing.

Salon: 12 p.m.-1:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

Afterparty: After recording stops (1:30-???) – do you want to be on the Techspressionism advisory board? It’s the peeps at the afterparty.

If you would like to share your work via screen-sharing, please arrive at 11:45.

THIS JAM WILL BE RECORDED.

WHAT IS A TECHSPRESSIONIST SALON?

Techspressionist Salons are a time and place in cyberspace where artists gather once a month to hang out, share their work and discuss matters relating to art, philosophy, and technology.

These meetups were conceived as a modern counterpart to the Surrealist salons of the 1920’s, in which artists could meet informally to socialize and discuss ideas. Techspressionism is a 100% volunteer-based international artist community.

The First Techspressionist Salon was held on September 1, 2020, and included artists Colin Goldberg, Patrick Lichty, Steve Miller and Oz Van Rosen, as well as art historian Helen Harrison.

In 1990, after serving as curator of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY, director of the Public Art Preservation Committee in Manhattan, and curator of Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, Ms. Harrison became the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, a National Historic Landmark museum and the former home of Abstract Expressionist painters Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. She served as Director of this National Historic Landmark museum and research collection in East Hampton from 1990 until retiring from her post in 2024. Ms. Harrison continues to serve Techspressionist artistic community in an advisory role.

During this first Salon session, the working definition of Techspressionism was decided upon by the participants as: “An artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience.”

Artist Davonte Bradley (aka DAVO) proposed the idea of recording the Salons and publishing them on the Techspressionism YouTube Channel, which was implemented starting with Salon #8.

Salons are moderated by a rotating panel of artist volunteers. After the recording ends, artists are welcome to hang out for the afterparty (aka advisory board meeting), in which the topic for the next Salon is decided upon, and other community-related ideas are discussed.