New Infrastructure

The Strategic Imperative for New Infrastructure

Beyond Digital Transformation

FAE2 critiques the cultural sector's approach to 'digital transformation' as having 'primarily focused on implementing digital tools to allow arts organisations to better do the things that they have been doing all along.' The research identifies a fundamental error: treating digital as merely 'synonymous with accessibility and reaching greater audiences to experience events designed for physical spaces.'

Nonterritorial represents precisely the paradigm shift the FAE research advocates: not digitising the gallery experience, but creating an entirely new mode of art circulation that is native to networked conditions while preserving the embodied, physical encounter with art that digital-only models cannot replicate.

The UX of Art Framework

The FAE research proposes 'User Experience of Art' (UXA) as a strategic framework for cultural institutions. Key tenets include: focusing on art experience rather than the artwork as a rare object; recognising that institutions have multiple specifiable user types rather than a generic 'general public'; and allowing deeper integration with artistic production processes. The research notes that 'good UX thinks through how the logics of space, content, audience and navigation come together in meaningful ways.'

Nonterritorial's tripartite participant model—exhibitors, hosts, and visitors—embodies this UXA approach. Each stakeholder group has a distinct relationship with the platform: artists contribute work and receive sustainable compensation; hosts curate their own exhibition experiences within their specific contexts; visitors encounter art in intimate, meaningful settings adapted to local conditions.

Art-Adjacent Innovation and New Ecosystems

Learning from Adjacent Fields

FAE2 documents how 'artistic experimentation' with advanced virtual environments is flourishing in 'art-adjacent fields such as gaming, blockchain, film and architecture as a consequence of their openness to developing new skills, proficiencies and business models around emerging technologies.' The research explicitly notes that while visual arts defaulted to 'Online Viewing Rooms—a 3D walk-through digital white cube' during the pandemic, this represented 'a very narrow approach to the wealth of possibilities offered by advanced virtual environments.'

Nonterritorial draws from these adjacent fields—particularly the film industry's production and distribution expertise, and the gaming industry's understanding of networked experiences—while remaining rooted in contemporary art discourse and practice. The 'Cinematic Preview' format represents a synthesis of filmic documentation quality with the conceptual rigour of contemporary art presentation.

Infrastructural Plays

FAE1 catalogues various 'infrastructural plays' that Art x Advanced Technologies practitioners deploy: dedicated display spaces, collective workspaces, new business models including ticketed experiences and art products. The research observes that these plays are 'often being set in motion by people who are not traditionally responsible for the technical, financial and operational infrastructure of the art world.' Finding 'both a lack of support from the art industry as it stands and a new portfolio of opportunities around technology, AxAT is building out an alternative ecosystem.'

Nonterritorial's infrastructure integrates multiple plays: a distributed network of display spaces (host locations), a collective production framework, sustainable economic models through hosting fees, and a living archive that transforms documentation into a circulation asset rather than mere record.