Layer Canvas vs Blackdove

Blackdove is a streaming platform for video art with its own line of displays. The Blackdove Digital Canvas is a commercial-grade 4K panel engineered by Samsung. On its product page, rectangles cost $1,999 at 32 inches, $2,999 at 50, $4,999 at 65 and $6,300 at 85, and squares $1,999 at 33 inches and $8,500 at 60; a 98-inch is listed separately at $8,350. It is anti-reflective, mounts in portrait or landscape, and carries a three-year Samsung warranty. Frames are sold separately, from $199 in alloy to $1,099 in wood.

Every canvas includes a year of the Patron subscription, which is $1,188 a year after that. The platform streams video artworks, adds new pieces weekly, and licenses them for display; some are also sold as NFTs.

Layer makes one display, the Layer Canvas: a 43.3-inch square with a 2160 x 2160 Quantum Dot Mini-LED panel, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and 1000 nits peak, built to show art and nothing else. It has a 3.2 GHz CPU and GPU because much of Layer Curation is generative: the work is code, and the Canvas runs it live. No two moments repeat. Art Intelligence sequences the collection to the room and the time of day, and in the Layer app you can shape a work’s density, color and speed and keep the variant you made.

The Canvas is $6,999 plus tax with the frame and wall mount included. Curation is $99 a month. Artists earn royalties for every second their work is on a wall.

This is the difference that decides the rest. The Blackdove Digital Canvas plays video files: a work is rendered once and streamed to the screen. Blackdove also sells a separate Generative Media Player, a $12,300 server it says can run algorithmic works. Layer builds that into every Canvas: it computes the work as you watch, so a generative piece by Casey Reas or Zach Lieberman on a Canvas is being made in front of you, and you can change it. A video of a generative work is a photograph of it. The Canvas is the work.

The closest Blackdove size to the Canvas is the 60-inch square at $8,500 before the subscription. Blackdove’s store lists frames for its rectangular sizes, not for the 60-inch square. The Layer Canvas is $6,999 with the frame and mount included. Blackdove’s 65-inch rectangle is $4,999 plus a frame, and its 32-inch is $1,999.

The subscriptions are the same price: $99 a month for Layer Curation, $1,188 a year for Blackdove Patron.

If you want a library of digital video art, it is a reasonable way to get one. Blackdove adds new pieces weekly, its Patron subscription is $1,188 a year, and the first year is included when you buy one of its canvases.

Worth noting that $1,188 a year is $99 a month, the same as Layer Curation, so the subscription is not the thing that separates them. What you are paying for is access to a video catalogue rather than ownership, and if the stream stops so does the art on the wall.

On a Blackdove Digital Canvas, as a recording: the canvas streams video, so a generative work is rendered to a file first. Blackdove sells a separate Generative Media Player, at $12,300, for works that run as code.

The Layer Canvas runs the work itself on a 3.2 GHz CPU and GPU, so a generative piece keeps generating on the wall and can take the time of day, the weather or the room as input. That is the technical difference between the two products and everything else follows from it.

Both pay artists, through different mechanisms. Blackdove licenses work into its catalogue and sells some pieces as NFTs; its store and product pages do not say what an artist earns per view.

Layer commissions work for the Canvas and pays artists royalties per second viewed, so a smaller number of artists build specifically for the hardware and are paid as it is shown. Narrower catalogue, closer relationship to the artists in it.

Blackdove is a screen for streaming video art, rectangular or square, in a range of sizes, with a Samsung panel behind it. Layer is living art as the artist made it, running live, responding to the room, on a museum-grade square built for nothing else. Both sit alongside the other options in the best art TV alternatives. Reserve a Layer Canvas for a $99 deposit, refundable before it ships.