Maha Al Mansoori in Conversation with ArtRatio Founder & CEO, Manoj Phatak
ArtRatio is in the business of smart glass vitrines. These are currently used by museums, galleries, and collectors to protect and display important and fragile art, antiques, and luxury objects. ArtRatio’s headquarters are located in Spain and, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has expanded to London where their virtual offices can now be found. In this interview MADE IN BED’s Maha Al Mansoori learns more about the company from its founder and CEO, Manoj Phatak.
MAM: Can you please tell our readers about yourself and how you came up with this unique venture?
MP: I am an engineer, who has been working for 30 years in different branches of engineering; telecom, automotive, e-government, and finance. My background is technical; electronics and IT. I set up ArtRatio about 12 years ago because I was experimenting with different types of functional materials and I came across a material called switchable glass. When I started playing around with it I realised it is almost like an electronically controllable light filter.
The first thing that came to my mind was where could this be useful? Immediately, I thought of the art industry, even though I had little background in it. At that time, I had not spoken to any museums or art institutions – I started from point zero.
When it comes to the art world, I understand that the sophistication and delicateness of art objects can be threatened by light. Therefore, my interest was initially on the material side. How can we stop this deterioration and can this material help? So, I built a minimum viable product (MVP), a very basic simple display vitrine and I took it to a number of the big museums, such as The British Museum, Tate, and Victoria and Albert Museum. I also interviewed a couple more places in Zurich and Madrid. Across that spectrum of potential customers, I realised that they all have the same underlying problem: light as the main factor affecting their art collection, among other factors like temperature and humidity. Many of them have actually taken measures to mitigate this risk, which is important in museums that typically would avoid having widows in their [architectural] design. I realized how big the problem is and I came up with a solution to partner with [museums] to reduce the risk of fragile collections and enhance their visibility.
We had our first installation in 2011 to protect an antique Spanish guitar from 1888 that was hand built by one of the fathers of a prominent maker of Spanish guitars. Another piece that our innovative glass is protecting is the original map of the 1815 battle of Waterloo. Over the course of the past 12 years, I realised that the art market is very conservative in terms of adapting new technologies. They first want to see it working in other places and then will adopt the technology.
MAM: How does the technology behind the glass work?
MP: It is basically a laminated glass, so you have two panels of glass and sandwiched in between is a special plastic lamination. Inside that lamination is where you find the switchable layer. When you apply an electric current what happens is the particles change in motion and that is how light gets through. The glass itself is not “intelligent,” as it will not know when to switch on itself; the intelligent part is in the electrical system. The question is, when should we switch on the glass? When somebody is standing in front of the object, the first thing we do is install a proximity sensor, so when you trigger it the glass switches on. The next question, from an art object perspective, is at what distance should we switch on the glass. This depends on the sensitivity of the object. When you look at our vitrines and you log on to it with your mobile device using the Internet, you can tell what is inside the vitrine. It will adjust its behavior as a function of what is inside it, its environmental parameters – like temperature, humidity, and light – as well as whether somebody is standing in front of the vitrine or not. So, it is intelligent in the sense that the glass is switchable, but it is also intelligent because it is adding contextual information into the display, which is not something that you will typically find in any museum.
MAM: Where does the IP (Intellectual Property) come into your technology?
MP: We have a patent that will be granted to us in January 2021. The IP is for the algorithm that we use to decide when to switch on the glass of the display vitrine. Our IP is about finding a balance point between the exhibition of the object and the conservation of the object. This idea was sparked by the Science Director at the V&A Museum. In a conversation project back in 2010 we talked about light, and he said it is always a dilemma when you shine light on an art object. You have to do it to see [the object] and examine it, but you may cause damage to it. He said there must be a balance point, which got me thinking… here is a problem. What can I do to find a solution and how do I find that balance point? So eventually I came up with a control system and algorithm that will dynamically adjust light levels based on a number of different parameters. The interesting thing is that the human eye is an algorithmic center; it does not detect very big changes in light, so if we reduce the light level by just 2% very slowly, the eye will automatically adjust and you will not notice a difference. That 2% over a long period of time will result in big savings and a reduction in risk of damaging an object.
MAM: What kinds of art objects are suitable for display in these vitrines?
MP: They can be used for anything of value. Right now we are talking to a group of 30 companies in London that display fine wines, champagne, whiskies, and cigars. Another company we are talking with is a firm of consultants in Hamburg. They are commissioning artwork for display on super yachts, so they are looking at a very different environment where the art in the display vitrine can potentially move around because it will be on a boat. There are also very high humidity levels, and you have a lot of ultra violet light coming in because as you go towards the equator the amount of UV increases and can affect the art objects.
MAM: What business model does your company follow?
MP: We currently work for purely customized applications – for museums, private collectors, and corporate collectors – who will have a particular piece that they would like to protect, so we build according to their requirements. In addition to the smart vitrine concept, we also have the smart plinth concept. You may have an art object that you do not want to display under a glass; rather you want to put it on top of a plinth, which we develop. It has the same underlying smart system but, in this case, we are measuring popularity, so as you walk in front of that particular object we collect data and push it for analytics. If you are, for instance, a luxury retailer and you have a bag on display, our smart plinth enables you to measure physical traffic around the hand bag just like Google analytics would measure online traffic for the same object displayed online.
MAM: What is your biggest market?
MP: We originally started with just museums. We then realized that the ones moving the market are private collectors. We focused our model on private collectors, for example Prada collectors and fine wine collectors. The market has changed a lot and as customers discover what we are doing, we reset and redirect. We can exist in any industry where you need to balance light levels, so the upscale and growth of our business has great potential.
MAM: What is the most challenging part of the manufacturing process?
MP: The [manufacturing] process starts with the glass, and then comes the film that is sandwiched in between plastic layers. [The layers] are placed between the glass panels and put it in the oven to create the final product. The glass is designed and integrated according to the client’s requirements. The most challenging part of this chain is the customization and the integration process before we land at the final product.
MAM: What is success to you?
MP: To me the real measurement of success is our customer satisfaction and building relations with our clients. The testimonials on our website are coming from people who are very pleased with the work we have done, which is to me the most important thing.
MAM: Has the global health crisis impacted your business? If so, how has ArtRatio adapted to the issues caused by COVID-19?
MP: It has been a lot of ups and down, but I have seen an opportunity. I have moved to London, where I created a virtual office and I have begun work on a new project. During quarantine, I had a chance to evaluate how we can approach our customers. I have created an app called The Dashboard, which brings solutions globally via our website to a much bigger audience in a cost effective way. We assess the risk around collections by providing collectors with a risk index from international standard documents. All the data we get [regarding] the ideal amount of light and humidly around an object is coming from published international standards, which will give clients an idea of the risk associated with the conservation of their collection. The app is entirely free and we are trying to get as many people to use it as possible; also to bring it to their insurance companies as we have a value proposition for insurance companies to understand risks that cannot be mitigated.
MAM: What does the next decade look like for ArtRatio?
We would like to expand the work that we are doing and grow into markets where we can protect anything of value in any industry. There is potential to implement our idea in other sectors like sensitive drug development for the pharmaceutical industry, for example. The possibility of applying the IP that we will soon be granted is far-reaching and promising when looking at expanding to different industries.
Thank you, Manoj.
All images courtesy of ArtRatio.com
Maha Al Mansoori,
Head of Agents of Change, MADE IN BED