Q & A with SmartStamp CEO and Co-Founder Juli Cho Bailer

The Contemporary Art Insider Founder Sofia Bertilsson’s Q & A with Juli Cho Bailer, CEO and Co-Founder of SmartStamp and the technology behind the Swiss tech newcomer.

SB: Who are you and what do you do?
JCB: I’m the CEO and co-founder of Smart­Stamp. Togeth­er with my busi­ness part­ner, a promi­nent art col­lec­tor and entre­pre­neur here in Switzer­land, I found­ed Smart­Stamp to bring Ai and blockchain — tech­nolo­gies that his tech team had devel­oped for sup­ply chain secu­ri­ty — to the art mar­ket where we saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty with respect to object authen­ti­ca­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, the most impor­tant fac­tors for mar­ket and his­tor­i­cal value.

SB: Who can use SmartStamp?
JCB: It’s been designed specif­i­cal­ly for art sec­tor use cas­es. Artists and oth­er cre­atives, includ­ing pho­tog­ra­phers, print­mak­ers, and design­ers, can use either our indus­tri­al cam­era or a smart­phone (both Android and iOS) to authen­ti­cate their art­work or pro­to­types. These fin­ger­prints can then be stored in their col­lec­tion man­age­ment sys­tem, be shared with autho­rized per­sons, and be includ­ed as part of the paper or e‑certificate of authen­tic­i­ty. Sec­ondary mar­ket gal­leries, auc­tion hous­es, and muse­um or pri­vate col­lec­tions can also ‘Smart­Stamp’ incom­ing and out­go­ing objects to prove their identity.

You can even fin­ger­print crates and secu­ri­ty seals to ensure a box wasn’t opened, swapped with a coun­ter­feit, and resealed. Art logis­tics com­pa­nies and oth­er art ecosys­tem stake­hold­ers, such as con­ser­va­tors, can use Smart­Stamp to cre­ate IDs of all objects they han­dle. Using the App, they can also take blockchain time­stamped pho­tos and videos as irrefutable proof of their art handling.

Even pure­ly dig­i­tal data can be made immutable using SmartStamp’s blockchain. Dig­i­tal archives, such as the mas­ter file of a pho­to­graph or video, can be blockchain time­stamped to authen­ti­cate the art­work or its dig­i­tal cer­tifi­cate, to ensure the ‘orig­i­nal’ meta­da­ta is intact and unal­tered. This would be impor­tant for future researchers try­ing to iden­ti­fy which ver­sion of a video is the artist’s true ver­sion. This also holds true for writ­ers and musi­cians who want to pro­tect their IP before shar­ing it with third parties.

SB: What’s your background?
JCB: Before Smart­Stamp, I was a muse­um Cura­tor of con­tem­po­rary art, and before that, Per­ma­nent Col­lec­tions Man­ag­er at the Jew­ish Muse­um New York — a col­lec­tion that spans ancient Judaica to con­tem­po­rary art. My muse­um career start­ed, how­ev­er, at The Whit­ney Muse­um in New York as a cat­a­loguer and researcher in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. This was my first hands-on oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about col­lec­tion care. The Whit­ney didn’t have a con­ser­va­tion depart­ment at the time, so much of the col­lec­tion care was the respon­si­bil­i­ty of col­lec­tions man­age­ment, while his­tor­i­cal research belonged to cura­tors. I was lucky to learn both at such an amaz­ing insti­tu­tion — hon­ing my research skills while learn­ing the mul­ti-faceted respon­si­bil­i­ties of col­lec­tion stewardship.

SB: What is SmartStamp?
JCB: Smart­Stamp is the most flex­i­ble and tam­per­proof secu­ri­ty and trace­abil­i­ty sys­tem avail­able to authen­ti­cate and iden­ti­fy objects of art. We have enter­prise APIs, use cloud tech­nol­o­gy scaled for Indus­try 4.0, and our prod­uct range includes three dif­fer­ent solu­tions, from indus­tri­al cam­eras to a mobile App for ease of use. We even have our own robot that is pro­grammed to scan with a smartphone.

SB: How does it work?
JCB: Smart­Stamp com­bines patent­ed Ai com­put­er vision, which we call Mul­ti-Dimen­sion­al Dynam­ic Iden­ti­ty, and sus­tain­able blockchain time­stamp­ing to cre­ate immutable, non-inva­sive, dig­i­tal fin­ger­prints of objects — of a vari­ety of media, includ­ing mul­ti­ples, pho­tographs, and print­ed col­lectibles, such as stamps. We devel­oped the user inter­face to be as sim­ple as tak­ing a pic­ture, whether you are using our pur­pose-built Blue­tooth cam­era or our mobile App. Smart­Stamp ana­lyzes the microstruc­ture of a tiny 0.5cm sur­face area of an object, so no spe­cial light­ing is required, which makes it sim­ple and flex­i­ble. The cap­tured image analy­sis is then con­vert­ed into a math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­la, in oth­er words ‘code,’ which is the unique ID, or ‘fin­ger­print’ of that spe­cif­ic object. You can cre­ate as many fin­ger­prints of an object as you want. Keep the fin­ger­prints pri­vate or share the ones you want with oth­er par­ties, such as your gallery or art shipper.

That’s the phys­i­cal-to-dig­i­tal mag­ic that Smart­Stamp does — cre­at­ing unique fin­ger­prints for even iden­ti­cal objects. Addi­tion­al­ly, to com­bat dig­i­tal fakes or hack­ing, every sin­gle fin­ger­print is auto­mat­i­cal­ly blockchain time­stamped for immutable data. In order to keep things eco-friend­ly, we use blockchain time­stamp­ing and the Merkle tree to pack­age mil­lions of time­stamps into one seed and upload it once to the blockchain, there­by great­ly reduc­ing ener­gy con­sump­tion and costs.

Enter­prise clients can over­lay our API to their data­bas­es or inte­grate it into their col­lec­tions man­age­ment sys­tems to roll out to their cus­tomers. We’ve designed it to be opti­mal­ly flex­i­ble for a wide spec­trum of art use cases.

SB: Why should they use it?
JCB: Our tech­nol­o­gy is sup­port­ed and proven by lead­ing Indus­try 4.0 com­pa­nies and uni­ver­si­ties in Switzer­land, Ger­many, and Japan, some with annu­al rev­enue of over EUR 2 bil­lion. Our tech can be deployed on a range of new­er smart­phone devices or with our Blue­tooth con­nec­tion indus­tri­al cam­era. Either way, it’s as easy as tak­ing a pic­ture, if not eas­i­er because you don’t even have to set up light­ing. We are also the only secu­ri­ty tag­ging com­pa­ny in either indus­try or the arts that can dynam­i­cal­ly update ever-evolv­ing sur­faces. Our Ai detects sub­tle changes and updates the old fin­ger­print with a new one, while keep­ing a his­to­ry of all ver­sions. We have glob­al patents on that so it’s not pos­si­ble for anoth­er sys­tem to copy us. Addi­tion­al­ly, our tags are 100% dig­i­tal. We don’t attach any­thing to an object, such as an RFID tag, which can be removed, go offline, or expire; and QR codes are eas­i­ly trans­ferred or copied. Like a human fin­ger­print, our scans are of the object itself even as it changes. And, we cre­ate blockchain back­up of all of our fin­ger­prints, to make the entire sys­tem tamperproof.

SB: What’s the inspi­ra­tion behind SmartStamp?
JCB: The inspi­ra­tion behind Smart­Stamp is to be a 21^st cen­tu­ry smart ‘stamp’ for artists. In addi­tion to the his­tor­i­cal artist estate stamp or foundry stamp, or print studio’s chop­mark, we now have a tam­per proof dig­i­tal stamp for new cre­ations, but that can also help ensure the iden­ti­ty of cul­tur­al her­itage objects of our past. We live in an age of fake every­thing — goods, news, mon­ey, videos. Smart tech can help dis­rupt the coun­ter­feit trade!

SB: How much does it cost?
JCB: The B2C prod­uct range will be offered in a tiered sub­scrip­tion for as lit­tle as USD 25 per license, per month, for basic fea­tures. Artists may only need one license and lim­it­ed fea­tures, while larg­er com­pa­nies or gal­leries may need dozens of licens­es and unlim­it­ed dig­i­tal scans. Our B2B prod­ucts, of course, are specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored for our enter­prise part­ners and their needs.

SB: Where are you located?
JCB: We are incor­po­rat­ed in Thur­gau, Switzer­land, where our HQ is, about 45 min­utes from Zurich. Switzer­land is famous for its excel­lent enter­prise land­scape and attracts some of the best tal­ent in the world. We are an inter­na­tion­al team, but our devel­op­ers, includ­ing back, front, and full­stack are all in Switzer­land and Germany.

SB: When did you estab­lish SmartStamp?
JCB: I met my busi­ness part­ner, Friedrich Kisters, and his tech team in 2018 and we began mar­ket research and analy­sis of front end devel­op­ments specif­i­cal­ly for art objects. When I first met the team, I was very impressed by the scal­a­bil­i­ty and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the tech, as they had been orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped to track and trace bil­lions of indus­tri­al and con­sumer goods — using AWS cloud tech­nol­o­gy, indus­tri­al cam­eras, and mobile Apps. All of these were adapt­ed to cre­ate what we believe is the per­fect prod­uct for the niche arts and col­lectibles sector.

My part­ner, Friedrich, has an incred­i­ble art col­lec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly mas­ter­piece Old Mas­ters, and is extreme­ly knowl­edge­able about con­ser­va­tion and sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis. That’s actu­al­ly what led him down the path of devel­op­ing sur­face area dig­i­tal fin­ger­prints ten years ago, but he focused first on anti-coun­ter­feit­ing secu­ri­ty of indus­tri­al objects. Sup­ply chain pro­tec­tion, every­thing from our food to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to lux­u­ry goods, is under­go­ing huge dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in this age of fakes, of both tan­gi­ble goods and e‑certificates.

We rec­og­nized imme­di­ate­ly that we could expand the base tech­nolo­gies to the pro­tec­tion of the art mar­ket ‘sup­ply chain’ — it’s not how we describe it in the art world, but it’s fun­da­men­tal­ly sim­i­lar. Smart­Stamp shares the same tech team as our sis­ter com­pa­nies, but com­bined with art pro­fes­sion­als, such as myself.

SB: Describe a real-life sit­u­a­tion that inspired you?
JCB: Hav­ing worked with such his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant art and arti­facts, there were many expe­ri­ences that shaped how I envi­sioned Smart­Stamp. And dia­logue with our tech team always inspired new ideas! But just ref­er­enc­ing art sit­u­a­tions, I’ve been a muse­um couri­er of high val­ued objects dozens of times, hand-car­ry­ing pre­cious objects, accom­pa­ny­ing crates filled with tens of mil­lions of dol­lars worth of art car­go across Europe, over­see­ing instal­la­tion of large scale works in my own curat­ed exhi­bi­tions or as a couri­er on oth­er shows. I even had the rare chance to vis­it the White House to super­vise a loaned Hanukkah lamp dur­ing Christmas/​Hanukkah and was giv­en a pri­vate tour. That’s one of the perks of muse­um work.

But, I’m grate­ful that I’ve had the chance to work with and meet liv­ing artists, many of whom are the heroes I stud­ied in school: Kiki Smith, Fred Wil­son, Maya Lin, among oth­ers. The muse­um expe­ri­ence of prove­nance research, con­di­tion report­ing, inven­to­ry, and over­see­ing crat­ing and trans­port around the world for most of my career was the foun­da­tion for dis­cern­ing the biggest art mar­ket problems.

Pres­ti­gious insti­tu­tions have most­ly unques­tion­able doc­u­men­ta­tion, but there is always ongo­ing research of objects, and I think it’s excit­ing that new tech­nolo­gies are here to add to qual­i­ta­tive as well as oth­er sci­en­tif­ic approaches.

I won’t name the artist, but I was the muse­um couri­er for a valu­able paint­ing that belonged to a New York muse­um. After we had trans­port­ed, unpacked, and installed the work in the bor­row­ing muse­um, the artist, who was then in her 80s, came to inspect her exhi­bi­tion and declared the paint­ing to be a fake and to take it down and burn it. Muse­um lend­ing poli­cies often don’t allow a bor­row­ing par­ty to dein­stall a loaned art­work with­out the pres­ence of the lend­ing museum’s autho­rized rep­re­sen­ta­tive, so of course they didn’t burn it! The exhi­bi­tion had not yet opened, so every­one scram­bled around to solve the mys­tery. The paint­ing was new, fresh from the artist’s gallery. Could there have been a mix­up? Thank­ful­ly, a few hours lat­er, the artist came to her sens­es and rec­og­nized and reclaimed the work. But, it always made me won­der what would hap­pen if an artist denounces an art­work — even a legit­i­mate, cer­ti­fied art­work because of mem­o­ry loss or even spite?

SB: What was it that made you become an entrepreneur?
JCB: When I saw how trans­for­ma­tive the tech­nolo­gies could be, I jumped in with­out too much think­ing. I saw how this scal­able tech could cre­ate a safer mar­ket­place, pro­vide sol­id authen­ti­ca­tion evi­dence to dis­pel future dis­putes, and pro­tect dig­i­tal doc­u­men­ta­tion for eter­ni­ty through blockchain. I stepped into my for­mer shoes as a col­lec­tion spe­cial­ist, but it was the months of brain­storm­ing and analy­sis with our tech team that cre­at­ed our solu­tions for the art sector’s biggest pain points.

SB: Where is your favorite or most inspi­ra­tional place?
JCB: I am hap­pi­est in nature or in a muse­um, so arche­o­log­i­cal sites are the per­fect blend of both. I love ruins and ancient tem­ples and could roam around these dusty places for days. The sto­ry of human­i­ty is often best told through our art and arte­facts, which is why I so strong­ly believe in bring­ing the smartest tech­nolo­gies to aid us in record keep­ing for pos­ter­i­ty. One of the most impres­sive places I’ve been is Eph­esus. I was back­pack­ing through Turkey with my friend in the 90s and we were on a stu­dent bud­get, so we trav­eled in Feb­ru­ary, when most places were desert­ed, includ­ing ancient Eph­esus. We were lit­er­al­ly the only two peo­ple there, just wan­der­ing around. I was doing an MFA in pho­tog­ra­phy at the time, so I took a lot of pho­tos. More recent­ly, my hus­band and I took our kids to The Great Wall of Chi­na a few years ago, and Pom­peii two years ago, and last year we did a tour of Athens, the Tem­ple of Posei­don, and Milos, that also has some well pre­served ruins — it’s also where they dis­cov­ered the Venus de Milo, which is housed in the Lou­vre, anoth­er place I just love to vis­it when­ev­er I’m in Paris. Some peo­ple trav­el to shop and eat. I trav­el to see art and eat.

SB: What’s hap­pen­ing right now?
JCB: We are ful­ly func­tion­al on an indus­tri­al scale. Our sis­ter com­pa­ny on the indus­tri­al side has fin­ished train­ing their robot to use the mobile App to cre­ate fin­ger­prints of each postage stamp on a sheet — this is an excit­ing part­ner­ship with Post Licht­en­stein for their Stamp 4.0, the world’s first unique­ly iden­ti­fi­able postage stamp.

Our pur­pose-built indus­tri­al Blue­tooth con­nec­tion cam­eras are also ful­ly func­tion­al and we are cur­rent­ly Beta test­ing the Smart­Stamp App for B2B part­ners with a planned B2C retail launch in Q4 2021. This is a con­ser­v­a­tive Covid time­line. We post­poned our orig­i­nal retail launch from Q2 2021 because it’s dif­fi­cult to con­duct larg­er tech work­shops or hold events with the cur­rent restrictions.

We’re also ana­lyz­ing for future Smart­Stamp mod­ules using tech­nol­o­gy we’ve been devel­op­ing for con­di­tion report­ing and secur­ing VIP car­go trans­port. We have a lot of tech ingre­di­ents and are cook­ing up a lot of cool things in the test kitchen!