How does digital art acquire symbolic and monetary value, and what role do media infrastructures, platforms, and technological innovations such as blockchain play in this process? These questions drive a dissertation project that examines value attribution in contemporary art markets from a media studies perspective.
The starting point is the observation that art valuation is not a purely economic process but a mediatised one: visibility, repetition, and institutional framing determine which signals gain credibility and produce trust. Within attention economies, market actors read visibility as a marker of significance – and price accordingly. Technological infrastructures, blockchain in particular, have not only made these dynamics observable but have amplified them, extending their effects to non-tokenised digital art. The project examines how art economics and the valuation of digital value are being reshaped in this process.
Methodologically, the study combines a media-theoretical analysis of market reports, platform data, and journalistic coverage with the application of signalling theory to the digital art market within a framework of medie theory and affect theory. The aim is to develop an explanatory model demonstrating how trust, attention, and symbolic authority are produced and circulated through media structures, and what this means for access and transparency in the contemporary art market.
Artist Statement:
Viktoria Sophia Charlotte Hilsberg is a media studies researcher and doctoral candidate at Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. She has studied in Leipzig, Berlin, and Barcelona, and publishes regularly on art markets, media theory, and digital culture. Her article "Invisible Labour, Visible Value" appeared in Navigationen in 2025. As co-founder of archora, she supports the digital transformation of cultural institutions across Europe. Her work connects academic with market practice, including her role as Gallery Relations Manager at POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair.