Will: All right. Hello and welcome, everyone. Will here. It's a special episode of Waiting to Be Signed. With fx(hash) about to unlock their token and Open Form likely in the next few days, we've put together a different style of episode for you all. If you're familiar with Camille Roux and the call-in themed podcast he was doing about a year, year and a half ago, we took that as inspiration and reached out to a dozen or so artists rumored to be working on projects. A bunch of them came back, so we're super grateful and thankful that they took the time to participate here.

Each artist was asked to record their response to three questions: One, tell us about your project — what ideas and themes are you exploring here? Two, what was your experience like creating an Open Form project? How did you take into account the potential for large edition sizes, and the generational and evolutionary aspect now enabled by this feature? And three, how do you feel about releasing an art coin as part of your project — what will it be called, are you excited for the new system, and do you have any big fears or concerns?

Just to give you a taste of who's featured in this episode: we got recordings back from Rudxane, Agoston Nagy, David Seven, Gorilla Sun, ItsGalo, Julian Hespenheide, p1xelfool, Punevyr, PixelSymphony, and — making their podcast debut — Ty Vek. Very exciting.

We're going to kick it off with Ahmad Moussa, aka Gorilla Sun. Ahmad is a generative artist and educator who's been releasing work on fx(hash) since 2021. His first work, Furball, was one of the earliest collections released on the platform, and a few of his projects are still open for mint — I'll link them below: Exotic Carpets, Hexapeel, and a collab called Somewhere in Between. If you like what you hear from Ahmad, look forward to his upcoming Open Form project, and go check those out if you still have some Tez in your wallet you're looking to spend. All right, take it away, Gorilla Sun.

Gorilla Sun: Hey, hey, Gorilla Sun here. First off, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. I was just re-listening to the last episode, and I think Ciphrd and Cosimo already gave a fantastic explanation of the entire protocol — they covered most of what there is to know about Open Form gen art and $art coins. I'll try to supplement those topics with some of my own perspectives, particularly how I'm approaching building an Open Form project, and some thoughts on releasing an art coin.

It's crazy exciting to see that something that was just a conception a few months back is now finally going to become a reality. It's both exciting and scary at the same time, seeing how everything will unfold once the protocol goes live. But the energy and excitement have definitely come back — and I don't think I'm the only one who's felt this. You just have to look at how discussions have picked up again in Discord and on X.

Looking back, the most memorable moment from the past few months was writing that early API document for programming Open Form projects, based on a couple of specs and requirements Ciphrd had noted down in chat. At first it took me a while to wrap my head around how a simple list of input hashes lets you build an evolving generative artwork. But once you get a grasp of it, it really gets your gears turning. There are dynamic and evolutionary kinds of algorithms that don't make much sense for long-form gen art but are a perfect fit for Open Form projects. I think the artists currently gearing up to release with the new protocol are having those same realizations right now.

In long-form generative art, your task as an artist is to design an interesting parametric space where each individual output can stand as its own artwork. Usually that requires dialing in a relatively tight set of numbers, which often means cutting some really nice and special outputs just to prevent duds. In the current format, there's no way for collectors to do anything with those duds — once collected, you're just stuck with them.

Open Form generative art changes this. You still have to create an interesting parameter space — you don't want all your mints to be duds — but you have a lot more freedom in creating your artwork. Collectors can now reroll their mints, which gives you breathing room and a kind of safety net. Even if your algorithm produces a dud every now and then, it isn't a big issue.

Evolving is the big feature that makes Open Form a completely different beast to program. One way to think about it: each individual mint is now its own little generator that can spawn new NFTs. Each NFT is a self-contained system with its own set of parameters, and new mints can inherit aspects of the parent. The artistic challenge is figuring out how to model these mint progressions in a way that feels meaningful and rewarding to collectors — you want them excited to evolve their mint, and you want to reward them for doing so with a meaningful change to the evolved NFT compared to the parent.

What I find most challenging about programming Open Form projects is ensuring that the parent mint — the one collectors evolve from to create child mints — stays interesting enough on its own compared to those child mints. As the artwork evolves and gets enhanced over the course of a lineage, the existence of the parent should still be justified; it shouldn't just be an intermediary step for reaching the "real" artwork at some later mint depth. Reconciling those two things — making evolution add something new without detracting from the parent token — is the hard part. I think the right approach depends on the kind of artwork you're building, whether it leans more toward fine art or toward something more gamified. I'm curious to see how other artists model these mint progressions.

Overall, I'd describe Open Form generative art as a much more dynamic and interactive medium compared to the long-form paradigm. As for my own project, there's no direct line from the initial idea to the current version of the code — a lot of trial and error. I was initially looking for a practical example to include in the documentation and found that L-systems are a perfect fit for Open Form. It's a bit outside the scope of the podcast, but briefly: L-systems are string permutation grammars that let you mutate a series of characters, kind of like a strand of DNA. The hard part was translating that technical idea into something visually appealing. You might have seen some pixel patterns I shared a few weeks ago — I wasn't satisfied with those, and evolving them wasn't rewarding. So I iterated, exploring cellular-automata-inspired ideas since I was already working with a pixel grid — having each root of the project be its own random cellular automaton with randomly generated rules. Most of the time that resulted in a system that collapsed into random noise or a single color. Now I've settled on a more ALIFE-inspired piece I'm still fleshing out, so I'll probably have updates on that in the coming days.

Now, art coins. I know there's a lot of concern from artists about releasing one, and all of it is valid. I thought about it a lot myself, but I don't have any hesitation about releasing an art coin linked to one of my projects. I played around with coins quite a bit back when the whole Farcaster and $degen thing took off at the start of last year — not by investing my own money, but through airdrops and participating in the protocol — and that gave me a good grasp of how it all works. My advice: if you're planning to launch an Open Form project with an art coin, read up on how decentralized exchanges work, what coins are, how to trade them, and get a solid understanding before you dive in.

There's also a distinction between creating a coin for a single project versus creating a coin for your brand or entire body of work — we'll see how that plays out once it becomes available. At the start, coins will only be linked to single projects, and that's what I'll do. My project might get updates later, or I might group a second project under the same art coin, but we'll see.

The important thing to understand about art coins — which is still a bit vague — is that when the project linked to the coin is really good, you don't need to worry too much about the coin itself or its engagement. Interest in the project translates directly into interest in the coin, and vice versa. You still have to put yourself out there as an artist, promote and market yourself and your work — that's still necessary, and something I struggle with quite a bit myself.

To wrap up: it's been a really exciting couple of months, both behind the scenes at fx(hash), watching the protocol come together bit by bit, and as an artist, being among the first to explore this new medium and experiment with an entirely new way for generative art to live on the blockchain.

Will: All right, thanks Gorilla, that was amazing. We're going to keep it rolling here. Up next, we're going to hear from another fx(hash) legend, Punevyr — known by old-timers for Punevyr's Face and, of course, the absolute classic release Glass. Punevyr was an early artist on the platform, extremely prolific, often pushing the boundaries on collection size. Go take a look at their profile, which I'll link — projects like Focus, Yard Sale, Pain, and an amazing collab I won't even try to pronounce, who created the art for the TENDER pass. Punevyr also, until recently, held the record for the largest generative art project with Glyph, one of the earlier fx(hash) projects released on Base. So Punevyr is here to tell us a bit about their Open Form project. Take it away, Punevyr.

Speaker C: Punevyr here. Super excited to be releasing a new project. I love the constant growth from the fx(hash) team — it's cool that they're always building out new features for the platform and new ways for artists and collectors to evolve how they interact with it. Especially with this tool: I think OpenForm is a super niche, super cool idea. I'm really excited to see the different lineages my project gets built into and the different ways collectors can interact with it.

If you've collected some of my art, you may have noticed I've recently been going back and redoing some older pieces in a newer fashion. This one is a take on my really old project Metropolis — just kind of a neon-ish city. I've taken that and converted it into the ASCII library I used with Glyph, using some of the same algorithms but in a different form. I think it looks cool, as I do with all my projects, but it'll be up to people to decide if they think so too.

I've really liked the way OpenForm has been going, especially with the evolutions — I think that's a really cool concept and it's been fun to work with. I love the depth it gives, and I've always liked exploring the edges an algorithm can have. One of my favorite examples of that — I didn't even put it together until I read an article Ken wrote about it — is Glass. I love how that project shows the lengths the concept can go to: it goes from a simple cube to something growing to the size of the screen, or past it, forming these cool shapes. I think this project continues that idea of the potential infinite growth a simple shape can have, which is really fun.

The core evolutionary aspects here: it's just a city, so everything the buildings are made of can evolve — the characters that create them, the colors, the distribution of the colors, the scale of the buildings, the size and spacing of the buildings. I call them buildings, but they're just rectangles. They can grow and shrink and morph down the evolutionary line, and I've tried to uncap it as best I can, so it has kind of infinite potential.

I really love this open form the team has made. I didn't understand much of the art coin side of it until I listened to the Waiting to Be Signed podcast episode where they interviewed Ciphrd and Cosimo — that was super enlightening. Hearing them talk about it, hearing them excited about the art coin itself and the potential they feel it has, made me excited too. The concepts they laid out made me realize it means a project isn't just one and done — it's not alive and then dead once the mint is over. It really gives it more of a lifespan, and it lets collectors engage with it further. If they enjoy certain lineages, they can put themselves out there, and if others think it's cool too, they can build off that. That's a fun addition to the way collecting art can work.

Really excited to release this. Happy to be back — it's been almost a year since my last project — and excited to see how people like it.

Will: Thank you, Punevyr. That was great. Now we're going to hear from another amazing artist with a deep history on fx(hash), ItsGalo. ItsGalo is an architect and generative artist who has released on virtually every generative art platform I can think of. Standouts include his Art Blocks Curated release Raster, the Basalt series on Verse curated by Ivan, aka Lonliboy, and — personal favorites of mine — Computers and Printers on fx(hash). He recently released a book for Printers, and it's lovely — I own a copy. It's still available, linked below at criticalsoftware.org. It has the source code and all 256 iterations. Really, really nice. If you're a fan, go consider picking that one up. Now let's hear from the man himself.

Speaker D: Hi everyone, it's ItsGalo here. Excited to talk a little bit about my upcoming project. I've decided the name for it is going to be Dioramas. It's something I've been working on for the past couple of months, and it's a bit of a break from my typical 2D artworks.

I trained as an architect and I run an architectural practice, so I'm pretty well-versed in 3D — or at least in spatial practice. For the past couple of years, though, my artwork has really focused on exploring the materiality of two-dimensional pixels: the different effects a pixel produces on a screen, the materiality of the screen itself. Recently I've been trying to merge my 3D interests with that practice, so the abstraction I've been working with has slowly gained more depth, and maybe a bit more figuration — moving away from pure abstraction toward a hint of recognizable forms, while still staying under the umbrella of abstraction.

Dioramas is my first deep exploration of this in a long-form — or now, I guess, open-form — format. I'm building an algorithm that produces abstract, pixelated effects but also has figural qualities: recognizable elements like moving creatures, landscape forms. Landscape has been a recurring interest of mine, and with this project I'm bringing everything together to see what happens. It's fundamentally an experiment.

It's also a pretty in-depth coding experiment for me. I've been building my own low-resolution 3D engine for almost a year now, mostly out of frustration with existing 3D engines — not that they lack the capabilities I need, but they don't have the visual textures and qualities I'm after: pixel-perfect lines, pixel-perfect geometry, efficient downscaling. The traditional way to get that chunky pixel look is a CPU rasterizer at large scale or a GLSL filter, and I've pushed filters as far as they'll go. So I decided to build an engine from scratch to get the effects I want. Dioramas is almost a test case for that engine — not just a visual experiment but a technical one. We'll see how my game engine holds up. It's written entirely in WebGL, similar to Three.js in how it works, with the same kind of rendering loop. I won't get into the weeds, but it's a lightweight WebGL-based game engine I've been building for a while.

As for developing an Open Form project, I've been talking with the fx(hash) team about what that entails and going through their documentation, which is incredibly robust. The main challenge is producing something that can generate thousands of potentially intriguing iterations that can also evolve over time. With a long-form project, you typically calibrate the algorithm's parameter space around a projected number of iterations — say 500, or 64. For Open Form, that number is undetermined, so there's a lot of backend tweaking needed to get the variety the format requires.

For Dioramas, my approach has been to treat it like an evolutionary, almost ecological system. Given my interest in landscapes, creatures, and movement, I wanted to create a kind of world as the artwork — one that could evolve. I'm not using AI or anything algorithmically complex; I'm basing the structure on classical particle-movement algorithms — boids, old-school game mechanics that give particles behavior, very rudimentary lifecycle systems. Think cellular automata, flocking — those early video-game algorithms are what drive the movement and ecological dynamism of this little diorama world.

For Open Form, that means the world has different qualities and behaviors that emerge as pieces evolve. The idea — still somewhat early, though coming together fast now — is that the first root iteration shows a small chunk of a world, and with each subsequent evolution, the world gets larger and more populated, the way ecosystems grow. There isn't much complexity or feedback between elements, though — the birds stay birds; they don't really interact with the landscape in a feedback loop. It's a diorama: a dynamic illustration of an ecosystem. As pieces evolve, you get more birds, more creatures emerging in the landscape. The trees change shape, the landscape erodes or grows like mountains do.

Color plays a big role too — it mutates over time, and the main palette of each root piece sets the color lineage for its descendants. So there are recurring color traits, but not as a fixed "feature," since there are no color palettes as such. Instead, color is purely stochastic, drawn from a bank of around 40 colors I've been developing over the past couple of years to make sure they all work together. For this project, they'll be randomly shuffled from iteration to iteration, with evolution affecting things like how limited or expansive the palette is — some pieces might be super polychromatic, others nearly monochromatic, all dictated by the evolution parameters.

That's really how I'm envisioning the open-form aspect working. The diorama will be an animated, dynamic — not super interactive — visual installation in the browser, running on my own game engine. Hopefully it's visually striking and interesting to look at. That's really all I can hope for.

As for the art coin, I haven't thought too much about what mine will be called — that might be a surprise. I've never really had to name a coin before. I think about titles for my projects a lot; you may know my projects are often geologically inspired, formatted in all caps, sometimes named after geological phenomena, sometimes after specific qualities I'm exploring, sometimes referencing the history of computer graphics or video games. For the coin, I'm debating whether it should be tied to me personally — my name — or to something connected to my artistic interests, like pixels, art, color, low-poly aesthetics. We'll see what it ends up being.

I'm excited about this new system. I think it has the potential to become something we haven't really seen before in the digital art ecosystem, and I'm excited to see how artists respond to it and what new kinds of interactions it brings about. I'm also curious how the collector dynamics play out, given that collectors will have a bigger role in this system — locking iterations, producing seeds that can be evolved, and so on.

My biggest concern is that I honestly don't fully understand the economics of it. I've been involved in crypto- and blockchain-based art for a few years now, and I still don't know that much about the economic systems underpinning it. I'm a big fan of mainnet blockchain-based work — I release on Tezos and Ethereum, and I haven't released anything on Base before, so this will be my first project there. My concerns are mostly personal — that I won't figure out the economics of it all — but hopefully that becomes clearer soon. Really looking forward to releasing this project and hearing the feedback.

Will: All right, thanks, ItsGalo. That was great — looking forward to seeing the project. Now let's hear from PixelSymphony. PixelSymphony is an artist whose work explores the boundaries between geometry, philosophy, and generative process. You probably know them for their many plotted works on fx(hash), like Soul, Kink, Archetypes, and the most recent one, Poetics of Sinuosity. I've been fortunate enough to receive a few plots from them, and they look great. They're also an amazing Twitter follow — I'll link their profile below. They share a ton of their own art and process, plus work by non-NFT artists they enjoy, and as a result, so do I. It's a great source of inspiration and history if, like me, you came to this a bit late. So let's go, PixelSymphony.

Speaker E: First off, I want to say I've been a longtime listener of Waiting to Be Signed. This is one of those conversations I've imagined while out on walks listening to the podcast, so thanks for having me on, Will.

Earlier this year I spent a lot of time on a series called Poetics of Space, and that experience really shaped the trajectory I'm on now as an artist. It was about how geometry and spatial perception can act as frameworks for poetic experience — interior and exterior, enclosure and openness — with the circle as its recurring visual element. It turned out to be my most well-received work so far, both in collector response and in the conversations it sparked. There's something about the circle people are deeply drawn to: even as a basic visual motif, it's endlessly rich and genuinely mysterious, familiar and elusive at the same time.

That reception deepened my own fascination with the circle. I found myself asking why it specifically has this staying power, not just as an aesthetic choice but as a deeper conceptual problem. That's the background for what I'm now calling Asymptote of Form. Where Poetics of Space looked at how circles generate feeling and resonance in spatial context, Asymptote of Form tries to get at the root of the circle as a philosophical and mathematical problem.

The circle holds a strange status throughout history. In geometry it's defined as the set of all points equidistant from a center — which sounds perfectly clear on paper. But in the real world, physical or digital, a perfect circle is impossible. There's always approximation, always some flaw or edge that doesn't resolve. You're always in a state of almost-but-not-quite. So the series begins intentionally with basic polygons — triangles, squares, and so on — and systematically looks at how these forms transition as you keep adding sides, inching closer to the circle but never actually becoming one. What interests me is making that process, that endless recursion and refinement, visible. It's not about reaching the goal, but about lingering in the space where the effort itself is visible and the tension is preserved. Each image is both a record of failure and a celebration of the impossibility itself.

Philosophically, I'm drawing from a range of traditions: Aristotle's ideas about potentiality and actuality, where the circle is a kind of telos you're always working toward but never fully realize; Zeno's paradoxes, about never quite arriving; Plato's theory of forms, where the perfect circle is something you can only approach, never possess. There's a visual lineage too — artists like Bridget Riley, Kenneth Noland, and Frank Stella have been big influences, especially in how they explored repetition, instability, and the perception of geometric forms. Algorithmic art adds a whole new dimension to those questions: what does it mean to use code, its rules and logic, to chase something inherently impossible? Where does error enter the process, and how does randomness shape our perception of what's pure or ideal?

Ultimately, Asymptote of Form is a meditation on imperfection, process, and the generative energy that comes from never quite arriving. The journey from Poetics of Space to this project has only deepened my fascination with the circle, with how form and process intersect, and with why certain shapes keep drawing us in no matter how many times we encounter them.

Working with the Open Form on fx(hash) has been unlike anything I've done before. The platform is fundamentally about scale and unpredictability — you're not making a handful of unique works, you're potentially releasing hundreds or thousands of pieces, and each one needs to stand on its own as both a compelling artwork and a generative system in itself. That forced me to think carefully about the generative logic. I didn't want superficial variation — not just a different color or a tiny tweak to the same composition. The core algorithm had to allow for real structural change. Sometimes a piece is built from recursive applications of mathematical sequences; other times it's layering so many polygons or circles that the form begins to dissolve; and there are cases where density or order breaks down entirely. I used a whole range of patterning systems — geometric progressions, random walks, proportional grids — a toolkit of mathematical and computational methods that all share this DNA of incremental approximation.

Open Form introduced a generational, evolutionary aspect that felt like the perfect metaphor for the project. Suddenly the work isn't static — there's a lineage. An output can become a parent, and its descendants might push the structural limits further or mutate in ways I hadn't thought of. For a project rooted in the philosophy of becoming, of never arriving, that was hugely exciting. It mirrors how mathematicians across cultures and eras have tried to square the circle — always getting closer, always leaving something unresolved for the next generation, never quite getting there. In my system, a child piece might have more sides, introduce a new kind of distortion, or even gesture toward three dimensions in a way its parent didn't.

This is where Open Form really diverges from traditional long-form generative art. With long-form, you surrender the whole range of possibilities to the minting process and let happenstance take over — every output is potentially unique, but fixed the moment it's minted, and every piece exists at the same generative depth. In Open Form, if collectors aren't compelled or curious by what they see at depth zero, the first layer, there's a real risk the deeper evolutionary layers — where the project could unfold, mutate, truly evolve — never get explored at all. As the artist, you're not just handing over the generative system, you're handing it to the community. Collectors become collaborators in the evolution of the work; their engagement determines whether the project stays on the surface or reveals its full dimensionality over time. There's real vulnerability in that, but also excitement, because it means the work can keep surprising me as much as everyone else. It becomes a living system whose fate is in the hands of the people who interact with it.

The whole art-coin concept is new territory for me, but it feels right in line with what fx(hash) has become — a platform that's always pushed at the boundaries of art, tech, and economics. Honestly, when it comes to naming the coin, I keep bouncing between Pixels, Poetics, Asymptote. There's a real chance I'll just pick whatever name I see first on my screen the morning of launch — so if you notice a last-minute switch, know that indecision is a generative feature, not a bug.

Joking aside, I've been following the fx(hash) team for a while — interacting with them on Discord, following their updates — and what stands out is how aware they are of the bigger issue at the heart of our space: the long-term sustainability of an algorithmic art practice in the current ecosystem. Attention, wealth, and engagement have gotten so concentrated that it makes the classic Pareto principle look quaint — at times it feels like 99% of engagement goes to 1% of artists. That might be exciting for a handful of people, but it's not sustainable for a living, breathing culture that wants to thrive and grow. I really commend fx(hash) for trying to fix that underlying issue. Open Form and now this art-coin system are both attempts to build something healthier — an economic structure that rewards depth and clarity of thought, that lets an algorithmic system shine for its depth rather than just its surface appeal or hype cycle. I appreciate that they're making room for projects with more verticality, more layers to explore, and giving collectors a stronger incentive to go deeper rather than just skim the surface.

I'm excited to see what this system enables, both for building community and for fostering richer conversations around value, evolution, and engagement. I'm hoping the coin can create a sense of participation where holding Poetics isn't just about having a token, but about being part of a live, evolving experiment. At the same time, I have real questions about how the coin economy will play out — will speculation drown out the slower, more thoughtful engagement that deep projects need to thrive? Will it create the right incentives for artists and collectors? I don't have all the answers. As a community we have to be ready to experiment, learn, and adapt. But at its best, I think this could be a step toward a more sustainable, more meaningful ecosystem — and in that sense, it's another version of the same experiment my work explores: approaching but never fully arriving at the ideal form. So, very excited for it.

Will: Thank you, PixelSymphony, so glad to have you on. Up next, another legend who got their start on fx(hash) — a handsome genius who really needs no introduction.

Speaker C: Ratchitect.

Will: Ratchitect captured the hearts and minds of many early fx(hash) collectors with projects like Bingo, Tick, Disrupt, and Giant Steps, then went on an absolute tour of the web3 ecosystem — releasing the stunning Hypnagogic with Verse, Fold with Grayler's DAO, Encore with Bright Moments, and Sheets with TENDER/HEFT — and had one of his early Ordinal works auctioned at Sotheby's. Ratchitect is finally returning to fx(hash) with an Open Form project. Tell us about it, please.

Speaker F: Hey, Will. The series I'm releasing is called Slips — almost a natural evolution of my earliest project on fx(hash), Bingo. It's inspired by the current state of technology, how we interact with systems we don't really understand, essentially playing inside a black box. We love to play, we love to gamble, we love to chase a win, even without understanding how to get there.

Each slip is a betting sheet made up of different games that follow barely any coherent logic. They evolve through three stages using random rolls: starting from a clean betting sheet, moving into a selection phase, and ending in a final validation. Each slip has a unique structure that progresses through those three phases, eventually becoming something like a collectible card rendering that same initial structure in various color palettes. I'm using "evolution" less as a literal process and more as a way to explore the progression of betting, using the random number generator as a tool to decide the final outcome.

At first I was hesitant to release this project — like many people, I've had mixed feelings about the financial mechanisms tied to these coins. But I think it's important for platforms in this space to experiment, and I'm excited to see fx(hash) try something new, especially at a time when things can feel overly polished and predictable. The space could benefit from more risk-taking. There's a tendency to reduce these conversations to pure financial speculation, but the technical side of coins and tokens is just as interesting, and I see Slips as a fun way to engage with that — using the mechanics of coins and logic as creative tools, not just market instruments.

One thing I'd like to explore is how the coin could be used beyond the mint itself. Instead of just using it as a ticket to mint a piece, I'm curious about tying it to a later stage in the work's lifecycle — maybe it could be burned, transferred, or interacted with in a specific way to unlock access to a physical edition. That kind of experimentation feels more aligned with the spirit of pushing these systems creatively, not just financially. Excited to just play around with it.

Will: Thank you, Rudxane. Always excited to see another work coming from Rudxane. Up next, we have Julian Hespenheide. Julian is a German designer and creative technologist working at the intersection of art, code, and visual storytelling. His practice revolves around text-based real-time animations deeply inspired by early computer aesthetics such as ASCII, PETSCII, and text mode art. A great example is his project FSM, released on fx(hash) in July 2023. By writing custom software from scratch, Julian builds intricate systems where every character is placed intentionally, creating dense, pulsating compositions that blur the line between image and code. His work explores rhythm, texture, and abstraction, often evoking both nostalgia and futurism. Julian, tell us about what you're planning for Open Form.

Speaker G: Let me rewind a bit and give some background. During my studies, I developed a deep interest in cybernetics — the science of control and communication in living organisms and machines — that I still carry with me today. I was searching for single units, like a single pixel or a data bit, and exploring their effects within speculative design scenarios, usually resulting in physical installations expressing those ideas. My master's thesis explored how to transmit data bits with the help of mycelium inside a fungal root system, alongside a broader look at cybernetic experiments with flora and fauna conducted by scientists during the Cold War.

So when I heard about the Open Form mechanics, I was intrigued, and one idea came to mind — not very original, admittedly: flowers, or rather the shoot system, everything above the root system. Cliché, ornamental, kitsch — those are the words that usually come to mind when you see flowers in generative art. How original can you really be taking flowers as inspiration today? I see the irony here, but I'm thinking about it in mostly technical terms, because with Open Form there's this pressure to adapt fast and get something out there while everyone's still figuring out the mechanics, which aren't fully mature yet. So yes, I'm doing something with flowers, I guess.

I wouldn't say there are too many themes in this new project. With my previous project, FSM, I started some world-building within a grid world. Using fx(iterations), I allocated each collected piece a single x and y coordinate within that grid, which has cardinal directions — north, northeast, east, and so on — and pieces adapt their properties based on where they sit: colder palettes in the north, warmer in the south, windier movements in the east or west, if I remember right. FSM was heavily inspired by Terraforms by Mathew Castle, but also by the satirical novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. I'd always planned to continue that world-building after FSM, so with Open Form I want to extend the flora of that same world. X and Y coordinates for a single flower will likely play a role again. There will be day-night cycles, so certain pieces are best enjoyed at night while remaining more dormant during the day. I'm coming up with small modules like this that are just fun and enjoyable. And of course, with Open Form's mechanics of genealogy — passing on genes and traits — the flowers should evolve, within their constraints and hopefully a little outside of expectations too.

My experience with Open Form so far has been a mixed bag. I really like the mechanic and the small but powerful API. The personal introduction from Alba and Gorilla Sun helped me the most in understanding it. But the whole thing feels very janky in execution. fx(lens), the environment for building the project locally, feels more like a patchwork of software than a proper development environment. It's fine if you have time to work around its quirks, but I had to dig deep into the Node packages and start modifying things myself just to make development somewhat comfortable. And getting good support from the team has been more of a 50/50 dice roll — in my humble opinion they're understaffed, and getting a snarky, unhelpful comment on a support ticket is unfortunately more likely than not.

That said, I think the mechanic itself has a lot of potential, and most projects coming out right now are just version-one thoughts from generative artists and designers exploring this new direction. For large edition sizes to work, I think there has to be something humble and easy to understand at the core of a project — something that makes you want to pick up another piece, reroll, or evolve a lineage further. The generational aspect is something I've always wanted but never knew how to express before. In my project, that could mean including more glyphs as petals for the flowers — which serve as the main output in text mode — plus color palettes, which everyone will do in some form, and unlocks of fun modules at specific generational depths. At generation zero, a flower might be pretty basic, but a few generations later, some petals could be replaced by a new micro-animation, making it more special down the line. If we could use tokens to save back-states into the pieces themselves — rather than just reroll or evolve — that would be ideal, though I'm too lazy, or not skilled enough, to program stateful smart contracts myself. Pixel Decks by Kim has this mechanic, I believe, and Terraforms can also be programmed with its "dream" function.

The introduction of art coins, for me, is absolutely not thrilling or exciting. The communication about the whole thing has been very poor — janky, unfinished. If you want to win me over, give me two or three clearly designed graphs that say, "Here's what we're doing, here's how it's going to go." Instead it's been a curve here, something over there, "you have to listen to this podcast," legal blah blah, lots of confusion — and honestly it feels like a weird excuse to hide the Open Form mechanic behind the art coins. When communication isn't good and feels more like a smokescreen, it's definitely not catering to the artists who are supposed to carry the whole thing. The demo hour, for me, was very confusing — it could have been renamed "investor meetup." So, not thrilled about the art coins.

One thing that was never addressed during the demo day, or anywhere else, is how much a bonding curve has to raise to be satisfied — something like $20,000 or so. When was the last time we saw a project hitting those numbers, especially after last summer's post-stamp prices during the whole BAYC-summer rodeo? Prices have deteriorated harshly since then, so my hopes aren't high. For a few stars with huge followings, this might be lucrative — I'm sure Ciphrd and some other big names will cash out quite comfortably with the art coin thing. But everyone else, including me, will most likely launch their art coins into nothingness, or at a huge loss. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, just realistic, cutting through some of the hype flaring up here and there.

Honestly, I have no idea what my coin will be called. My excitement for this whole thing is low, as I've said — I'm here more for the experiment of Open Form itself. Maybe if things had been communicated differently, I'd see it from a different perspective, but right now the comms feel more like "art coins good, join the cult," and I'm evolving — sorry for the pun — a bit of an ick toward the coins. If I had to point to any fears, it's that people won't trust a project enough to satisfy its curve, so the project basically never starts unless you release it prematurely and at a loss. That feels unfair to artists, who already have so much on their plate — developing the art, making sure the project is stable and runs everywhere, handling communication and promotion — and now, on top of all that, a one-person shop has an added anxiety curve where missing certain metrics means the whole project is dead in the water from the start. I find that highly concerning.

Anyway, to close: my project doesn't have a definitive title yet. I'm not a fan of profound or poetic titles — I lean toward being descriptive or purely technical. So whatever this Open Form piece ends up being called, expect something in that vein. You'll see it when it's floating around the spaces. That's it — bye.

Will: Awesome. Thank you, Julian, that was great. Up next, we're going to hear from David Seven. David is a conceptual artist based in the Netherlands — an award-winning architect by day and an algorithmic artist by night. His work explores the duality of human nature and the social condition, working in partnership with the computer. You might know him from projects across many platforms: Dactylogram on Feral File, Primal in collaboration with TENDER, and more recently There's a Hole in My Soul, released on fx(hash) on Base — still available to mint, and lovely; I'll link that below. David is here to talk to us about his upcoming Open Form project.

Speaker H: Hi, Will. Hi, Trinity. And hello, everyone. Thank you for having me today. I'm David Seven, and I'm currently finalizing an OpenForm project for the fx(hash) protocol's launch. I want to share some thoughts on my experience tinkering with this exquisite tool the fx(hash) team has built.

I'm not a developer, but I've been playing around with it for a while now, spending many hours working with the new API. I've been thinking about these dynamics for a long time, and I believe OpenForm could truly reshape how we create, experience, and interact with algorithmic art. I'm glad to share my excitement for the new dynamics we'll see emerging in the days to come.

Agency is another topic central to my practice, and in gen art it's particularly challenging to navigate. Blind minting can feel disconnected for collectors. Collector-curated risks diluting the artist's vision. Artist-curated limits the algorithm's exposure. But with OpenForm, I can create spaces where my intent, the algorithm's emergence, and the collector's choices all contribute to something special. It's like a playground where every interaction shapes a living narrative—collaborative, yet true to its core identity. I love that.

Accessibility is another fascinating aspect. We've seen incredible projects like QQL and Terraforms push the boundaries of community-driven art on the blockchain, but there was always some exclusivity to it—price walls, knowledge gaps, it wasn't for everyone. The fx(hash) protocol is different: an intuitive interface, affordable entry points, a robust toolset. It lowers the barriers for artists and collectors alike. I'm curious to see what we'll make of it, because it feels like an invitation to co-create and connect. Naive as it might sound, it embodies the ethos that drew me to Web3 in the first place.

Now, the dark horse: I had my reservations about $art coins. At first they seemed like an unnecessary layer, a push toward gamification. But the more I dug into it, the more I understood the relevance. By separating the artwork from the coin, the system lets collectors invest in the narrative of the work, not just the output—it deepens the connection and gives them a stake in its evolution. In an OpenForm project, time is a catalyst, not an expiration date. Each interaction with the artwork drives the coin's scarcity, increasing value for holders. So the longer we play, the bigger the reward on all levels, making the art coin the medium linking both agency and accessibility.

As for my experience with the new API—it's only been a few days, but it's already reshaping my approach. Normally I develop concepts on my best machine, using libraries I know well. I love experimentation, but there's always a clear plan. OpenForm is different. It calls for iterative chapters, layers that need to be tested as they're built and connected across each evolution. It's a shift that will personally push me into more experimental outcomes, feeding into a living process.

As for my project, I won't say much—it starts simple until it isn't. It'll all depend on the user's curiosity to push and explore deeper, if they wish.

By now you can probably tell I'm a huge fan of the new protocol. The fx(hash) team's drive, conviction, and courage are truly inspiring—not just in a Web3 context but in any creative venture. They've built a platform that weaves together the best values in creativity and co-creation, and for that, I'm sold. As thrilled as I am for the launch, I'm even more excited for what's next. I think the real magic will happen once the community gets hands-on with OpenForm. As an artist, I'm honored to be part of this moment, and I can't wait to see how this ecosystem grows. Thank you again for having me today. I'm all in for the journey. Bye.

Will: Thank you so much, David. That was great. We're rounding the bend into the finish line—a few more to go. Up next, a personal favorite of mine, someone we've talked about a lot on the show and been collecting for a long time on fx(hash): Agoston Nagy. Agoston is an algorithmic artist, systems thinker, and educator. He's released a ton of work on fx(hash) going back to some of the earliest days, with projects like Turing, Set, Dotwork, Kernel, Nil, and more recently Mono. He's also released a bunch of stuff on Highlight, which is really lovely. And more recently he did a procedural drawing series as part of Expanded.art's gallery The Path to Present: 1954 to 2024, exhibiting alongside artists like Marcel Schwittlick. I got one of those—it's a really lovely plot. Now let's hear from Agoston about his OpenForm plans.

Speaker I: It's been a long time since I released a piece on fx(hash). It takes time to develop an idea, to take care of all the parameters and properties of a project—time to mature and to bring forward all the nuances and depth that are possible. I'm excited about this OpenForm format because it opens up new possibilities, new directions within a piece. You can go into different corridors, different directions from one seed, and explore the parameter field of an algorithm.

With this piece, I'm trying to implement something about text—about the structural components of an HTML page itself, if I can put it that way. Working with div elements, pushing the boundaries of typography: ASCII art, typewriter art, this kind of thing I've been really impressed by lately. Live typography, live-changing HTML components. It's like touching the infrastructure itself, a bit like net art—when you use the medium and amplify its characteristics.

What I try to implement here is what I like to call an "ontological zoom"—a zoom effect where you can go in layer by layer, through each depth of the iteration. If you follow a path, you can zoom into the interface and go beyond typography. You can explore from a very abstract overview—an abstract animation with a limited, minimal color palette—and as you go in, you experience the different characteristics of that particular animation algorithm, that particular character set. As you increase the depth, the characters become larger, and after a certain threshold you bypass the typographical elements entirely and something else is just there.

So in this case, I'm not really interested in the evolutionary aspects of this OpenForm way of creation—more like you can go into different corridors, different paths, depending on which iteration you select to develop further from that specific seed. It's more like an abstract mental map, if I can call it that. You search and zoom through different high-level components and then low-level ones, down to the character level and beyond, where glitchy DOM elements appear and you go really into the semantic structure of the whole scene.

The title is Geotypes. It's inspired by geoglyphs—the Nazca Lines, these land-art-like drawings whose origins we don't really understand. There's a mystery to them: what's the purpose, what's the function of these very large-scale ancient creations? I find it interesting to connect these distant ages and eras—what inspired those ancient cultures—with contemporary digital networked culture. In a way, Geotypes brings to the table this sort of drawing element where you don't really know what you're seeing or where it originates from. The animations—the formations moving and constantly transforming on screen—can remind you of natural, noisy movements, or of more abstract configurations. It opens up the possibilities for interpretation.

I like to compare this to a kind of ontological reduction: you have something very complex at the beginning, and as you zoom in, wanting to see it from much closer, you turn that complex animation setup into very minimal components, which don't mean anything anymore. They're just noise—semantic noise of the system, of the network. You can feel the characteristics of the medium itself. I treat the whole canvas as an abstract UI, an imaginary device you navigate, and at any moment you're at a certain position, a certain zoom level.

Creating with OpenForm in mind is challenging, because you have to think about several directions at the same time: what happens if you start with a certain setup, and as it changes gradually, how does it stay interesting, or introduce some novel, surprising change through the whole process. It's very challenging, but very fresh, and I like thinking in these terms.

Working with the fx(hash) tools, like FX Lens, is very useful—you see your whole work rendered as a tree, and you can see each individual iteration. When you modify something in the code, you can see it reflected at each level, in each part of the piece. It's abstract, but I think it's a logical next step for this medium—where you can modify the code and try out different iterations. I don't know how collectors will deal with it or understand the whole concept, but as an artist and a creative tinkerer, it's really interesting to think about a truly dynamic medium.

With long-form, I've always been impressed by the immutability—you can't go back, can't revert, can't change what's carved into the blockchain. That archival safety is very interesting in the concept of long-form. But OpenForm is something else—maybe it's not really about the blockchain itself, but more about the generative possibilities and the open-ended nature of the work. I think of Umberto Eco's Opera Aperta, the open-ended work, where the piece is never finished but left open for further interpretation. It's a bit philosophical, but I like the idea, because we're dealing with software, and software isn't a closed, finished thing—it's a living entity that can be changed and altered over time.

Working with that in mind is really like sculpting time, sculpting choreographies, sculpting the different possibilities of a parameter field. It needs a lot of planning and thinking ahead—it's less improvisational; you have to decide in advance what you want to achieve across the different layers and levels of the piece. It's unusual to work with all of these aspects at once, but very interesting to see, and I'm curious where it will evolve in the future.

As for the art coin—I don't know yet what I'll call mine. Maybe something like a name for a unit you measure things with, rather than something "arty." To be honest, NFTs were quite new a few years ago, so now this idea of fungible coins is also new for the art world, and I'm honestly not that interested in that aspect of the change. We'll see how it turns out. Right now, I think the whole crypto space, and the art field connected to it, has its own challenges and difficulties, so there must be new ways to integrate new ideas and new ways for artists and cultural practitioners to succeed.

I'm curious how this will turn out. I try to integrate generative aspects into work that isn't closely tied to blockchain—I work across other mediums and outputs, installations, applications. So I'm not deeply immersed in the crypto space right now with these new coin releases. fx(hash) itself I find a very inspiring and experimental playground where I can try out new ideas and curiosities, so I'm just playing with it and we'll see how it turns out. It's really an open-ended experiment—including the art coin part of this project. So, we'll leave it open for now. Thanks so much, Agoston. That was great. Up next we have Pixelfool. Pixelfool has a ton of credits—I'll link to his website below. You probably know him best from his two fx(hash) projects, Overloaded, which was a really early one, and Trauma, released as part of NFT Show Europe in Valencia in 2023. He's also released works with Bright Moments, Verse, Feral File, and many other museums and platforms, so go check all that out on his website.

Recently it was announced that his upcoming project, which he'll be talking about in this segment, called Undeniable Failure, will be on display at the LED Cabinet in Amsterdam—the big outdoor display there that, if you remember from about a year ago, I believe Leander took over. This one was curated by fx(hash)—awesome for them, awesome for Pixelfool. Now let's hear more about the project.

Speaker J: This project is called Undeniable Failure. It's a continuation of other code-based projects of mine, and one of the things I've been most interested in is esoteric practice in computation. Computers have this history of being used for utilitarian purposes — even generative art started inside labs, and computers have mostly been used to solve problems and make our lives easier, to increase the speed of calculations, things like that. These days they're super straightforward: you have an interface that does everything for you.

What got me interested in computers as a kid was the mystery — this bunch of questions I couldn't answer. You'd see a very brutalist device, something that looks like a brick, and once you opened it, you'd see wires, circuits, but it was really difficult to understand. As time passed, computers became cleaner, shinier, more polished. What interests me is almost the opposite of that — the core of computers, the unexpected, the difficult-to-understand process happening behind the curtains.

With this project, my attempt is to keep exploring that: to type code that sometimes I don't understand, to use processes that may be harder to pull off but are so much more interesting. One question I keep coming back to is how I, as an artist, can engage with computers in the attempt of creating art that reminds me of phenomenological experiences — the kind we have in nature, or certain sensations that life gives us.

I've been very influenced by religion for a long time. And although I feel more and more apart from it as time goes on, I still think there's something in the narrative of religions, in certain practices, that connects us with archetypes, with histories, with things that make us feel human. So the big question is how I can build my art practice through computers in a way that connects me with something I don't fully understand, but that still makes me feel what it feels like to be human. One way I try to achieve that is by creating processes and things that are broken, not fully understandable. This project is very much about that — a lot of glitches. Most of the time I'm manipulating pixel arrays. Digital images are basically composed of numbers, a huge amount of data. So how can I tweak that at the core and arrive at unexpected results?

On the question of my experience creating an OpenForm project, and how I factored in the potential for large edition sizes and the generational evolution aspect: at first this project wasn't conceived specifically as an OpenForm piece — I've been working on it for about a year, it's been a long process. But one thing I've always liked as an artist, especially in digital art, is how abundant it can be. I've always released large editions; I like the idea of a lot of people being able to own my work. OpenForm is just another way of doing that.

I'm so grateful for the internet in general and how it's been a vector for learning. I'm from Brazil, and fifteen years ago, most material on generative art wasn't available here. I'd try to buy books on eBay or Amazon and sometimes they'd get lost and never arrive. If it weren't for digital access to learning material online, I probably wouldn't know most of what supports my process as an artist today. So I love how accessible digital art can be, how free of boundaries in distribution. I understand the scarcity and economics behind any market, including the art market, but I love the idea of spreading the work as much as I can. Working on a project distributed through an OpenForm algorithm just feels right to me.

As for the generational evolution aspect — it's super interesting. Anyone into generative art has come across algorithms that simulate nature, and evolution is one of nature's key aspects. Reflecting on that and feeding it into the work is fascinating. We've seen examples of this kind of mechanism before, so it feels like a natural path for code-based art — it's just so much more interesting now that we have tools that make it easier to achieve.

On the third question — how I feel about releasing an art coin as part of my project — I think there's a dual vision. We have speculation, not just in the art market but in society generally; we live under capitalism and rely on money to live, and markets tied to scarcity make that even more pronounced. Honestly, I try not to think about that too much when creating. What interests me is how money works in general — that's part of what caught my attention with blockchains and cryptocurrency, from creating microeconomies to the idea of a decentralized system. If there's one thing I think about with coins, it's how much they reveal about us — the weird, specific dynamics in which they work.

I wouldn't connect that directly to the work itself. I understand the work has market value and people may want to buy and sell it, but the healthiest way I try to think about it is: people should be buying artworks because they want to patronize the artist, so that artist can keep having the freedom to create and live off their work. That's not necessarily the vision I pursue for myself, but it's how I think when I'm buying other artists' work. I've been collecting a lot over the past four years, and it feels amazing being able to support your peers and see people continue creating because of that. That's my main concern here. I'm excited to see how it plays out, and I hope this is just another way of empowering artists to create more. Thank you, p1xelfool. That was awesome — really looking forward to seeing that one. I'm a little at a loss for words on how to introduce this last one. Thanks to everyone who's stuck around through this very long episode — I hope you've enjoyed hearing from all these artists. Now, an entity who is impossible to introduce: one of fx(hash)'s most regarded mysteries.

Speaker J: Hi. Ty Vek is going to speak to us for the first time, I think, in some form of speech. Anyone familiar with fx(hash) knows Ty Vek for the huge splash they made as an anonymous artist releasing Commune, Verdant Brute, and Artifice — three spatially related series accompanied by long blog posts about their influences, which sparked a ton of theorizing about who Ty Vek actually is. They followed that with the Self series — Id, Superego, and Ego — which took great advantage of the fx(hash) params system. Now they're returning with an OpenForm project. If you follow them on Twitter, you've probably seen the works in progress. Let's hear all about it from Ty Vek now. I hope you enjoy this one.

Speaker G: Hello.

Speaker K: I am Ty Vek, with a fake voice. I'm pretty excited about OpenForm projects, and mine in particular — even if I may be misusing it. The project is called Inner Forms, and it picks up where the Self trilogy left off. That was all about Freud's id, superego, and ego; this one looks at Carl Jung's theories on archetypes and the collective unconscious. Inner Forms uses the generational evolution of OpenForm to abstract how primordial images are passed on from generation to generation.

I said "misusing" OpenForm earlier — what I mean is that what gets passed from piece to piece might not be obvious, and the system seems optimized for that. So I'm here more with a warning: don't expect predictable evolutions. The patterns passed down may be composed in entirely individual ways that may or may not be detectable when compared to their parent. I don't want to lose that long-form excitement of not knowing what to expect. That should keep things exciting, especially with a very large edition size. New composition types will reveal themselves at certain generations — some not even available until the 50th. As you go deeper, the aspect ratio will grow with each generation, until it becomes five times taller at the 256th generation.

More about the concept and mechanics is on my website, along with a fair number of sample outputs — I'm sure our lovely podcasters will link it below. My coin will be called $TyVek, and honestly, I have no idea if this whole art coin business is a good idea, but we're going to find out, aren't we? Degenerates could ruin the whole thing with some good old pump-and-dumps, but hopefully art will win out in the long run. My biggest concern is the user experience, since I haven't seen or used it yet — but I have trust issues, and general uncertainty will probably be my downfall. Fingers crossed this whole thing doesn't completely implode. In the meantime, head to the little playground I put together on my website so you can play with Inner Forms before it's published. Thank you so much, Trinity and Will, for having me on. It's been a pleasure. Cheers.

Will: Thank you, Ty Vek — and yes, we will link it below; I neglected to mention that in the intro. So please, if you want to play with the generator, follow the link to the Ty Vek website in the description. Check the description for links from many of the guests on this episode.

To wrap it all up: it was awesome to have so many artists participate in this. It feels like a really big moment in fx(hash) history. We're all excited, a little nervous, but excited to see what OpenForm and the fx(hash) token protocol do. A common theme across all of these recordings was a love of experimentation, a love of what OpenForm can do for generative art, a love of the idea of a project without a definitive end date — but also a lot of trepidation and uncertainty around what using these tokens might mean for artists, collectors, and speculators. Hopefully we'll start to find out shortly after this episode releases.

I'm excited to see all of these projects release within the first few weeks of the protocol launch, and we'll try to convene another Will and Trinity episode to talk about the first couple weeks of OpenForm. It's been really fun coming back briefly from hiatus to make these episodes. Hope you've all enjoyed them.

Speaker H: Thank you.

Will: And if you haven't gotten your claim and you're hearing this, please go check it — it will close once the OpenForm platform launches, and you won't be able to get your free fx(hash) if you're entitled to any. Connect your wallets, check, create an ETH wallet if you haven't, move a small amount of ETH to Base. If you can't figure it out, jump into the fx(hash) Discord — plenty of team members, including me, and community members are there to help. Time is ticking; we're down to the wire. This is coming out likely just days, if not a week, before the claim closes. So that's it — final warning from Waiting to Be Signed, at least. Hope you all enjoyed this one, and we'll be back again soon-ish to talk about how all this OpenForm stuff played out. Bye, everyone.

Speaker C: Bye.

Speaker J: We're waiting to be signed. Always. We're waiting to be signed. The rail of the wind. To be signed. We're waiting.

Speaker K: Always.