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, sold in ten rectangular sizes from 32 to 98 inches and two squares, at 29 and 60 inches. It is anti-reflective, mounts in portrait or landscape, and carries a three-year Samsung warranty. Prices run from $1,999 for the 32-inch to $8,750 for the 98-inch, with the 60-inch square at $8,500. 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. Blackdove plays video files: a work is recorded once and streamed to the screen, and it loops. Layer 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, plus a frame at $199 to $1,099, for $8,699 to $9,599 before the subscription. 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.

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