Active Image
The Symphony of Innovation
Background
Henning Lohner, the founder of Active Image, is a renowned German-American composer, artist, and filmmaker featuring an extensive collaborative history with prominent figures from music, photography, and the art industry.
Active Image supplies both a white-label ecommerce solution and a curated marketplace and platform for unique digital media.
Here, each and every individual piece of media is uniquely identifiable by a revolutionary authentication mechanism, the IRIS (the Integrated Recognition and Identification Signature). The IRIS is an innovative steganography technique invented by Henning Lohner and a highly qualified team of engineers at the Fraunhofer Fokus Institute.
The Active Image ecosystem consists of a dedicated app that streams unique digital artworks directly to personal devices such as smart TVs, digital canvases, tablets or mobile phones. The Active Image ecosystem utilizes the patented IRIS technology to ensure authenticity and provenance of each individual media (artwork, photography, film, etc); within this system advanced Blockchain technology is also deployed.
The Active Image platform furthermore allows resale and trackable renting of individual digital media artworks. This offers direct economic support to creators by generating royalties on secondary sales or rentals of their artworks or media and is the first ecosystem of its kind for recurring revenues of artwork sales and rentals.
The objective of Active Image is to develop the IRIS into a robust industry standard for digital uniqueness, effectively eliminating the general and specific problem of deep fakes.
In the meantime, Active Image can capitalize on the growing market of digital collectibles by offering exclusive, digitally unique artworks and media that are equally singular in the way they are transacted – and not based on bulk licenses or subscription models. This is particularly relevant to media artists as the art and music industry looks towards innovative revenue streams and fan engagement strategies beyond traditional media.
Challenges
Authenticity & Exclusivity
A major challenge has been the need to ensure authenticity and exclusivity in a market where digital content can be easily replicated. This is a historic issue in all reproducible media if they are to retain interest and value.
Strong Trust Protocol
Overcoming the skepticism associated with digital ownership and establishing a strong trust protocol have become more and more significant as the challenges of counterfeit imagery, forgeries, and fakes from the massive deployment of AI in all walks of life are taking over our understanding of what is real, true, trustworthy, and therefore valuable.
Verified Artworks
Through Blockchain and Pixel Steganography
Impact
Ensuring Authenticity and Exclusivity
NFQ Technologies successfully tackled the challenge of replicability in digital content by implementing advanced blockchain integration within the user-friendly platform developed for Active Image. The use of pixel steganography further ensures that each artwork is uniquely tagged and verifiable, thus maintaining exclusivity and authenticity. This robust solution has positioned Active Image as a trusted marketplace in the digital domains where collectors and creators can transact with confidence.
Streaming Exclusive Content
By developing the Digital Canvas feature, NFQ Technologies enhanced Active Image’s ability to attract and retain a diverse user base. This feature enables users to stream their Unique Digital Pieces across a wide range of devices, thereby improving user engagement and interaction with the platform. This accessibility ensures that Active Image remains appealing to both existing and new users, continually driving traffic and encouraging the influx of exclusive content.
Overcoming Skepticism and Establishing Trust
Skepticism surrounding digital ownership was addressed by creating a transparent verification process. The app developed by NFQ allows users to easily verify the integrity of their digital assets through a simple scan. This turned skepticism into trust and promoted a secure trading environment in the marketplace for unique digital media, finally allowing transactions with true value.
Activity up
via Multi-Device Streaming
Impact
Ensuring Authenticity and Exclusivity
NFQ Technologies successfully tackled the challenge of replicability in digital content by implementing advanced blockchain integration within the user-friendly platform developed for Active Image. The use of pixel steganography further ensures that each artwork is uniquely tagged and verifiable, thus maintaining exclusivity and authenticity. This robust solution has positioned Active Image as a trusted marketplace in the digital domains where collectors and creators can transact with confidence.
Streaming Exclusive Content
By developing the Digital Canvas feature, NFQ Technologies enhanced Active Image’s ability to attract and retain a diverse user base. This feature enables users to stream their Unique Digital Pieces across a wide range of devices, thereby improving user engagement and interaction with the platform. This accessibility ensures that Active Image remains appealing to both existing and new users, continually driving traffic and encouraging the influx of exclusive content.
Overcoming Skepticism and Establishing Trust
Skepticism surrounding digital ownership was addressed by creating a transparent verification process. The app developed by NFQ allows users to easily verify the integrity of their digital assets through a simple scan. This turned skepticism into trust and promoted a secure trading environment in the marketplace for unique digital media, finally allowing transactions with true value.
Verified Artworks
Through Blockchain and Pixel Steganography
Activity up
via Multi-Device Streaming
Solution Overview
NFQ expertly addressed Active Image’s need for secure digital transactions by designing a secure and user-friendly platform that incorporates cutting-edge blockchain technology while embedding the IRIS technology. This platform not only enhances security but also guarantees the authenticity of each individual artwork or digitally unique piece of media, providing a robust solution that underpins the trustworthiness of digital art and media transactions.
To further empower Active Image in their quest to ensure artwork and media authenticity, an advanced Pixel Steganography Solution was implemented. How this works:
Unique Identifier Embedding
In collaboration with Fraunhofer, NFQ implemented an advanced pixel steganography solution (patented) where a secret token, serving as a unique identifier for each artwork, is encoded directly into the image. This encoding process involves altering the actual bits that comprise the image, making the change imperceptible to the naked eye but detectable through close examination or pixel peeping.
Subtle Artwork Changes
The steganography technique introduces very subtle changes to the artwork that are only visible when the image is significantly zoomed in. These minor modifications are in effect the digital DNA of the image / medium. This DNA infusion does not alter the aesthetic value of the artwork but instead plays a crucial role in ensuring its authenticity and uniqueness.
Artwork Verification via Complimentary App
The complimentary app developed in partnership with Fraunhofer is designed to verify the authenticity of the artwork. Our ‘Explorer App’ functions like an augmented reality photo app: it captures the artwork displayed on any digital canvas, takes a decoding “snapshot”, and by using a proprietary algorithm performs reverse engineering. This process extracts and verifies the secret token embedded within the pixels, confirming the artwork's or the medium’s authenticity.
Unique Encoding for Limited Editions
For artworks that are available in limited editions, each individual copy is encoded with its own unique identifier using the pixel steganography technique. This ensures that each piece remains distinct and traceable, reinforcing its value and exclusivity in the digital marketplace.
Collect & Display
Digital Canvas
Our Services to Active Image
Unique Identifier Embedding
Subtle Artwork Changes
Artwork Verification via Complimentary App
Unique Encoding for Limited Editions
What our clients say
There are truly no words that can describe my gratitude towards the NFQ team and the incredible output they have contributed to our cause. Working with “my” NFQ team has been and is a joy in my life. Successful execution of ideas is a given; completely reliable, authentic, acute, intelligent, dedicated, and with care for the product and the people involved: I wouldn’t know what more to wish for!
Henning Lohner , Managing Director
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