Today generative systems, AI art engines, and digital art in general evolve faster than the institutions that can show and preserve these kinds of artworks. The technical leap in creative tech outpaces museum programs, biennales, and galleries. Artists are creating works that live in time, react to input, or unfold through software. Yet most of these works vanish after an exhibition closes or survive only as documentation.

Digital and new media works are not static images. Many are time-based, algorithmic, networked, or interactive. A video may run for minutes, change with user input, or generate forever new variations. However, these artworks live fleetingly in festival circuits or as short clips on social platforms. On social feeds, art is reduced to short loops optimized for engagement, not experience. The result is that complex practices get compressed into clips that drive clicks instead of letting the work breathe and be encountered in depth.

This is a structural problem. What digital art needs is not one more platform, but an infrastructure — a cultural operating system that supports long-term access and sustained engagement. The comparison often used is Spotify for new media art. This analogy does not point to streaming mechanics alone. It points to structure: a system built for access and discovery, not for advertising, virality, or ownership. Music found a cultural infrastructure in Spotify and similar services. Digital art still lacks a system that preserves and presents works in ways respectful of their form and experience.

Infrastructure in culture means four things. First, long-term access. Works must remain available beyond exhibition dates. They should be revisitable, searchable, and retrievable like songs in a catalogue. Just as tracks remain accessible long after a release cycle ends, digital artworks require a stable address beyond the moment of exhibition.

Second, we need a curatorial layer that mediates meaning and context instead of a feed algorithm driven by engagement metrics. Curators frame works through themes, questions, and artistic approaches, offering context that becomes part of the experience itself. This mirrors the role of Spotify’s editorial playlists, where human curation guides discovery through mood, genre, and narrative.

Third, context must be part of the product. Art cannot be separated from its framing, its story, and its critical lens. And fourth, works must be treated as environments, not posts — places to enter and explore, not snippets to scroll past.

This is where CIFRA comes in, a UAE-based platform dedicated to the access, discovery, and long-term presentation of new media art. CIFRA positions itself as more than a marketplace or a social feed. Its mission is to make digital art engaging and accessible on all screens, not confined to passing events. The platform hosts over a thousand works across more than fifty genres from hundreds of artists around the globe.

The platform emphasises human curation. Artists publish works intended to be experienced online, and curators organise them into curated playlists. These collections are thematic and editorially framed, guiding audiences toward encounters that go beyond passive scrolling. Curated collections replace a social feed, creating an environment where works speak to each other and to viewers in context. The same principle applies to compensation. Rather than advertising-driven monetization, CIFRA allocates 51% of subscription revenue to a shared royalty fund that flows directly to artists.

The platform measures success differently. Traditional tech platforms focus on raw traffic and short-term engagement. CIFRA looks at how audiences return to works over time and how artists use the platform as a long-term reference point. This is closer to how a library, archive, or catalogue functions, extending the lifespan of new media art beyond exhibition cycles. An artwork on CIFRA stays accessible, visible, and discoverable long after a festival ends or a screen goes dark.