In an increasingly hectic world that is always in motion, finding the possibility to always be where you would like to is not easy. And so, it could be that a collector who’d like to buy an artwork that he’s been aspiring to for a while from a London auction, must be at a New York reunion on the very same day.

There are of course solutions. It is enough to send a personal representative to the auction, giving up the excitement of the wager or participating via the internet or by telephone. But even these long distance means of participation have their negative aspects.

In the first place, the problems regard the transparency of the auction. Telephone and internet offers are not visible to the participants in the auction room if not through the auctioneer, and it is for this very reason that they are accused by many to be of little transparency.

In second place, there is the loss of that rise to a challenge that is the very soul of the auction. To have a competitor in front of you, being able to face them in a wagering game, challenging them with increasing offers is quite important. Participating through a distant link is definitely more comfortable, but it requires a great level of rationality when as we well know, the art investor especially at auction, behaves irrationally from an economic point of view.

One solution of centralising the auction room without giving up distant participation comes from a project developed by King’s College London in partnership with the University of Tsukuba in Japan. The so-called “intelligent gavel” allows the auctioneer to accept offers by participants via the internet exactly as if they were in the auction room.

The technology at the base of the project is complex but its function is extremely basic. A screen projects an image of the virtual participant, a kind of avatar that is present in the auction room along with the other participants. When he decides to propose an offer, the avatar raises his hand, in such a way that everyone in the room can see him. At this point, the auctioneer accepts the offer pressing a button and lighting up the screen. Everyone in the auction room is therefore aware that that collector has placed an offer.

The first experiment was carried out during the past few days at King’s College London. The two heads of the auction house Peter Wilson, Robert Stones and Nick Allsopp took part in an auction house simulation in which the participants were the College’s students.

The 20 lot auction calculated that each participant had 5,000 virtual pounds to spend at auction. One professor tried to receive offers by telephone, while another sent offers via the internet.

A wall in the room where the simulation of the auction was taking place contained the screen that projected the image of the absent participants. The experience seemed to have required great skill for the poor auctioneer. Effectively, the function of the mechanism depends on the gavel. It is the auctioneer who must pay attention to the offers in the auction room whether it is from the physically present participants or the avatars, and they must trigger the mechanism to receive distant offers when necessary. However at the end of the two sessions the movements already seemed simpler.

The technology promises interesting developments, and perhaps it could help those who have until now, decided to stay away from new technologies to be more enthusiastic about adopting these useful instruments.